Why is the Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill causing so much trouble in the House of Lords that the normal co-operative approach has broken down?
The simple answer is because this piece of legislation is really two constitutional bills joined together to reflect the political needs of the two coalition parties.
There is not a problem about a referendum on the alternative vote that the Liberal Democrats desire. They could have that whenever they like and they could have it by May 5, which is the date they want. There is a much bigger problem surrounding the Conservatives’ desire to reduce the size of the House of Commons by 60 seats.
There is an issue of principle that no government should decide the number of MPs unless there is all-party support or there has been an independent assessment of the effect of the proposed reduction. There are peers on all sides of the House of Lords who are willing to see the size of the House of Commons reduced in number. I am one of them. However, the critically important issue is how you decide the number and how you ensure it does not favour one party over another.
When I have been among those acting as independent observers at overseas elections, one of the many things we looked at is who controls the size and structure of the parliament. If this is done without all-party support or an independent assessment, then you mark them down and watch out for other undesirable practices. So how can we possibly justify doing this in the United Kingdom? It undermines Britain’s strong reputation for fairness and legitimacy in our political system.
The way we are approaching this bill invites regular gerrymandering of the Commons. If the Conservative-led Government can decide without prior agreement to change the size of the House to suit its political needs, then any future government can do the same. The danger is clear. A government is elected and ministers decide they would have a better chance of winning again if they change the numbers. This is an open door with a welcome mat to continuing changes in the size of the House of Commons after a general election. This is highly undesirable and constitutionally very questionable.
The figure of 60 MPs came from a document written in 2004 by the Conservative MP Andrew Tyrie. It was a thoughtful document, discussing a number of possible options, but openly explicit that the reduction of numbers would increase Conservative representation in the Commons. His argument was based on what he thinks is an unfair distribution of voters. I don’t agree, but the point is that following the publication of Tyrie’s document, David Cameron repeated the assertion. Tyrie rightly recognised that the decision should be reached in discussion with the Labour Party. I would have said in all-party talks. That has not happened.
Tyrie also said that the size of the ministerial team in the Commons would have to be reduced at the same time. I agree. Worryingly, there is no mention of this in the bill. If you reduce the size of the Commons, then you must also reduce the number of government ministers in the House. If you don’t, then the executive increases its power and influence over the legislature because there are fewer backbenchers to hold the government to account.
As Professor Anthony King of Essex University has noted, you also reduce what he calls the “gene pool” of alternative ministers because they are drawn from the backbenches and there will be fewer of them.
There is a good case for reducing the number of ministers in the Commons. However, when dealing with important and complex issues of this type, the Government should follow the normal procedures for a constitutional bill. It may be impossible for the coalition to separate the two parts of the bill because it is the core of their political marriage, but that does not mean you ignore the other safeguards on scrutiny of constitutional bills. There was no green or white paper to consult on this; there has been no pre-legislative scrutiny; the bill was guillotined in the Commons. The constitutional committees of both the Lords and Commons expressed concern about the way this bill was structured.
The Government’s desire to rush into important legislation without going through the proper parliamentary procedures and without trying to get a consensus lies at the core of its problems. There are a number of ways out of this difficulty. Both the Labour Party and the Conservatives now know that there has to be some form of compromise.
One option could be around the way we decide the size of the Commons. If the Government were to propose a Speaker’s conference or independent assessment, then it may be possible to allow some change to take place now while the wider issue is still under consideration. It does not have to be rushed, as is currently happening, and change could still be achieved before the next general election. Presumably, it is this rushed legislation that Vince Cable was referring to when he mentioned a “Maoist tendency” in the Government’s legislative programme.
Other negotiations are desirable in order to give the Electoral Commission greater flexibility on the way constituency boundaries are drawn up. The Government has already lost one vote on this concerning the Isle of Wight, but there are a number of other constituencies where greater flexibility is required.
Currently, the House of Lords is stuck in a wholly undesirable and long drawn-out struggle over a bill which is politically important to the Liberal Democrats and the Conservatives. The political difficulty is understandable, but the concerns of the governing parties could be addressed without trying to drive through ill-thought-out and rushed constitutional legislation.
The proper course is to get the referendum through and then take a little more time to get the critical constitutional matters right. The talk of a guillotine being imposed by the Government is dangerous and for a Conservative Prime Minister to destroy one of the core principles of the House of Commons would be strange indeed.
The British constitution is remarkably robust, but it always benefits from considered and collaborative change.
Clive Soley is a Labour peer and a former chair of the Parliamentary Labour Party
