The implications for Wales of the Government's proposals on constitutional reform - Welsh Affairs Committee Contents


3  Reducing the size of the House of Commons and equalising the size of parliamentary constituencies

21. Part 2 of the Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill reduces the number of Members of the House of Commons from 650 to 600, and requires every parliamentary constituency (apart from two constituencies in Scotland) to contain the same number of registered voters within a 5% margin.[15]

Reducing the number of parliamentary seats in Wales

22. The Bill makes provision that the number of registered voters in each of the proposed 598 constituencies must be within 5% of the electoral quota, defined as the number of registered voters in the UK divided by the number of constituencies.

23. There has been a separate electoral quota for each nation of the UK until 2007 (when the quota for England was also used for Scotland). This has resulted in a wide divergence in the number of voters per constituency. According to the British Academy Policy Centre, at the 2010 general election, there was "an average of 56,545 electors across the 40 Welsh constituencies, compared to 63,101 in Northern Ireland, 65,498 in Scotland, and 71,882 in England".[16] Should the House pass the Bill the calculation of the new electoral quota is expected to come out at approximately 76,000 voters per constituency. As a consequence, representation of Wales in Westminster is projected to be reduced by ten seats from forty to thirty seats, a 25% reduction.

24. The Government argues that:

… redrawing constituencies will make representation in the House of Commons fairer and gives everyone's vote more equal weight, wherever they live [...] following the reforms a vote cast in Wales will be worth the same, no more and no less, than a vote cast elsewhere in the United Kingdom. Wales will continue to have a strong voice at Westminster, with the same degree of representation as elsewhere in the United Kingdom.[17]

25. Other witnesses argued that Wales has in strict numerical terms been over-represented at Westminster since at least the 1832 Great Reform Act, in recognition that a small nation needed to have its voice heard at Parliament. The House of Commons Library gives background on representation in Wales:

Before 1832 Wales returned 24 MPs to the House of Commons. Each of the 12 counties were represented by one Member, with the remaining 12 MPs representing Parliamentary boroughs. This remained the pattern of representation until the Parliamentary reforms of the nineteenth century. After the reforms of 1832 each county in Wales continued to return a single Member, with the exception of Carmarthenshire, Denbighshire and Glamorganshire which each returned two. The Act also created two new Parliamentary boroughs: Merthyr Tydfil and Swansea. The total number of MPs returned for Wales after 1832 was therefore 32. By 1918 this had increased to 37. As related above, representation for Wales was set at the 1944 Speaker's Conference as a minimum of 35 and now stands at 40.[18]

26. As witnesses argued, this situation is not unique to the UK. The United States Senate and the Senate in the Australian Federation are just two examples of legislatures where smaller states are given greater representation than their population might otherwise justify.[19] Nor has the "over-representation" of Wales been a matter of particular concern amongst the electorate at large in the UK, so far as we are aware.

27. The former Secretary of State for Wales, Rt Hon Paul Murphy MP, who currently represents Torfaen, argued that "the reduction of MPs [...] is unprecedented [...] Wales has had a dedicated number of MPs in Parliament since the middle of the Sixteenth Century. This is to safeguard the rights of a small nation in a United Kingdom".[20] Other submissions expressed concern that there will be "a negative impact upon Welsh representation in the UK Parliament"[21] and that "the voice of Wales will be lost".[22]

28. However, the view that Wales merits a disproportionately greater number of MPs than a strict numerical calculation would justify was not held by all witnesses. Professor Richard Wyn Jones, Wales Governance Centre, Cardiff University said, "it is hard to imagine how [a reduction from forty to thirty MPs] has a huge impact in terms of the Welsh voice in Westminster, particularly because, on the whole, Welsh MPs do not behave en masse as a single block".[23] All witnesses however acknowledged that Wales was the nation of the UK most affected by the Government's proposals, and that a 25% reduction of MPs was a significant step to make.

29. In a democracy, it is an important consideration that every effort is made to ensure that votes have equal weight. However, no electoral system genuinely delivers a wholly "fair" outcome in these terms. Notwithstanding this principle, other factors legitimately weigh in the consideration of where the balance of fairness lies. It is also important that the interests of each region of the United Kingdom are properly heard at Westminster. The Government's proposals would reduce, at a stroke, the number of MPs representing Wales by 25%. By any yardstick, this would be a profound change to the way that Wales is represented in Parliament.

Equalisation of constituencies

30. Linked to the reduction of MPs in the House of Commons, is the proposal that each seat should be equal in size. It is the responsibility of the Boundary Commission of each of the four UK nations to draw the 600 new constituencies, with new rules for the redistribution of seats.

31. Mr Edward Lewis, Secretary to the Boundary Commission for Wales, explained that

… the principal change, of course, is that the issue of parity is very much centre stage. Under the current legislation, although parity is there, other factors are equally dominant in the process. So, the new Bill will actually focus on the parity issues, rather than on some of the other considerations that the Commission currently takes into account".[24]

Mr Paul Wood, one of the Commissioners, added that "issues such as local ties and historical ties, which may have had more weight previously, are clearly subsumed in the legislation to the numerical issues".[25]

32. Mr Lewis explained the approach to equalisation;

… we will try to take account of local government boundaries [...] the advantage we have in Wales is that the whole of Wales is also subdivided into communities, and electoral divisions can consist of one or more community. Where communities have a council and are 'warded' for electoral purposes, there is a further possibility of breaking down numbers within that community. So, I think that we have some significant flexibility in the way we are structured, to create the parliamentary constituencies.[26]

However, some witnesses argued that the new boundaries would alter fundamentally the nature of representation in Wales. The Rt Hon Paul Murphy MP argued that

… the creation of very large constituencies, rigidly defined by numbers, will destroy community-based constituencies since it would appear that, to create such constituencies, local ties, geography and tradition are likely to be ignored.[27]

Lewis Baston of Democratic Audit, also noted that "there are a few particular local peculiarities in areas of Wales. Certainly, there are more anomalies than there are in England in terms of island and remote rural areas, and urban formations in the valleys of south Wales, which do not really have a reflection elsewhere".[28] In contrast, the Boundary Commission for Wales noted that whilst some communities are likely to feel divided between constituencies, there was "no evidence" to suggest MPs in larger constituencies would be distanced from their constituents.[29]

33. The unique position of Wales in terms of its geography, culture and history has long been recognised in its Westminster constituencies. We recommend that the Government brings forward amendments to the Bill to permit the Boundary Commission to give greater weight to these factors when drawing up new constituencies than it is currently allowed under the current proposals.

Decoupling constituencies for the National Assembly for Wales from Westminster constituencies

34. Section 2 of the Government of Wales Act 2006 provides that the constituencies for the National Assembly for Wales are the same as the parliamentary constituencies for Wales. In order that the Assembly does not experience a corresponding reduction in Members, Clause 11 of the Bill decouples the constituencies for the Assembly from those at Westminster.

35. There are a variety of views that might be taken on the severing of the link between Westminster constituencies in Wales and those for elections to the National Assembly. The link in Scotland has been broken since the 2005 general election, and though this has, reportedly, created some problems they do not appear to have proved insuperable. However, this is an example of an under-examined issue which appears to have been rather brushed aside in the race to legislate. There is a strong case to be made that this issue should have received further investigation.

Scrutiny of the Executive

36. Under the Government's proposals, an effect of reducing the number of MPs is that the executive will be drawn from a smaller pool of elected representatives. Although this issue was not the prime focus of our inquiry, a number of witnesses expressed concern that it would result in a greater influence upon the House of Commons by the executive.[30] Lewis Baston of Democratic Audit, argued that under the Government's proposals "we are reducing the number of people capable of scrutinising the Executive without actually reducing the Executive. That seems to me to be the wrong order".[31]

37. Government is most effective when Parliament is able to provide effective and rigorous scrutiny. A reduction in the number of MPs without a corresponding reduction in the number of Ministers would increase further the dominance of the Government over the House of Commons and is clearly a matter of great constitutional importance. We strongly recommend that the Government clarify its position on this matter.

Voter Registration

38. The electoral quota, which will determine the size of a constituency, is based on the number of registered voters, not on the total of those eligible to vote. It has been estimated that the difference between the two across the whole UK is 3.5 million.[32] The Boundary Commission for Wales noted that:

… the problem is that if you use the population, the starting point for the calculation of populations is the census. The next census is in 2011. The data from that won't be available till mid-2012, which is rather late for this work [...] we feel that the electoral register, because it's a more robust register, is a more robust figure to use.[33]

39. On 15 September 2010, Mr Mark Harper MP, Minister for Political and Constitutional Reform, made a statement on the Government's plans for individual electoral registration. He claimed that:

… it is widely recognised on both sides of the House that the current arrangements for electoral registration need to change [...] individual registration provides an opportunity to move forward to a system centred around the individual citizen [...] I am announcing today that we will legislate to implement individual registration in 2014.[34]

Mr Harper told us that "the UK electoral registration system compares very well with comparable democracies across the world, with about 91% or 92% of eligible voters registered".[35] However, there are, we presume, wide variations around this average between different types of constituency. We recommend that the Wales Office produce estimates of registration levels in each constituency of Wales to inform debate on the Bill's effect on Wales.

40. Although the Government has pledged to implement individual voter registration by 2014, constituencies for the general election scheduled under government plans for 2015 will be based on electoral data from 2010. John Turner from the Association of Electoral Administrators believed that "individual registration [...] perhaps ought to be the catalyst for [boundary reviews...] so, running the boundaries in the general election after next would seem a more sensible approach to me, simply in terms of the mechanics of switching the registration system".[36] Despite these and similar arguments, Ministers have confirmed that the Government is determined to press ahead with its plans for introducing new boundaries in time for the general election in 2015.

41. It is in the interests of all democrats that all eligible voters are able to cast their votes at elections. While we note that the Government is committed to increasing the number of voters on the electoral roll, we also note concerns that, once individual voter registration has been implemented in 2014, the 2010 electoral roll, which will be used to determine the electoral quota for the new constituencies in 2015, may be outdated.

42. We recommend the Government reconsider its plans to introduce boundary changes based on 2010 data and consider ways in which more accurate and up-to-date data on those eligible to vote can be gathered.


15   The exempt constituencies are Na h-Eileanan An Iar (Western Isles) and the Orkneys and Shetland Back

16   Ev 23 Back

17   Ev 27 Back

18   The Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill, Research Paper 10/55, House of Commons Library, September 2010 Back

19   Ev 24 Back

20   Ev 30 Back

21   Ev 32 Back

22   Ev 31 Back

23   Q 45 Back

24   Q 3 Back

25   Q 8 Back

26   Q 4 Back

27   Ev 31 Back

28   Q 49  Back

29   Q 13 Back

30   Ev 33 Back

31   Q 51 Back

32   Q 55 Back

33   Q 29 Back

34   HC Deb, 15 September 2010, cols 883-884 Back

35   Q 78 Back

36   Q 55 Back


 
previous page contents next page

House of Commons home page Parliament home page House of Lords home page search page enquiries index

© Parliamentary copyright 2010
Prepared 25 October 2010