House of Commons Hansard Debates for 15 Jun 1992

Mr. Barnes : There is a set of figures that could be used to correct the under-registration of 1991, which was supplied to me in written answers on 6 and 11 February. The figures show the electoral registration in England and Wales, and are accompanied by comparative estimates of populations. The figures show that there is a shortfall in each district. Such figures are also available for Scotland on the basis of parliamentary constituencies, and in each constituency there is a shortfall : in one constituency it is about 5,000. The figures are slightly excessive because they include some overseas visitors, but in general they point more to those who should be on the register than to those who were actually on it.

Mr. Bermingham : I am grateful to my hon. Friend for his intervention. He has underlined the point that I was trying to stress. If the real number of electors is 5,000 more than the number which is shown on the electoral returns, the seat may still be within the guideline of 67,000 or 68,000. That means that it would not be necessary to alter the boundaries of the seat. On the other hand, the real figure may take the number of electors way above the constituency norm, and it may be necessary to move a ward from that seat into an adjacent seat.

I understand the political implications of these matters, but if we are to start on the basis of fairness and equality of numbers, which should be the commissions' primary concern, we must do the proper ground work and get it right, which means having electoral registers that are up to date and reflect the true electorate in particular areas. If the commissions begin their deliberations with inaccurate registers, that will be a recipe for disaster. As I have said, until someone defines for me what is meant by "local government boundary", I shall not rest easy in my bed.

5.59 pm

Mr. Rod Richards (Clwyd, North-West) : I am grateful for the opportunity to deliver my maiden speech. In keeping with the tradition of the House, I shall commence

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by paying tribute to my predecessor, Sir Anthony Meyer, a tribute which I am sure will be fully endorsed by my constituents. Sir Anthony first entered the House after the 1964 general election as the Member for Eton and Slough. When he made his maiden speech on 10 November 1964 he spoke of his predecessor, Mr. Fenner Brockway, in a manner which uncannily is a fitting tribute to Sir Anthony himself following his retirement from the House about 28 years later. He said :

"I know that Mr. Brockway was not always an uncontroversial figure, but I assure hon. Members that in Eton and Slough he was widely loved, loved not only for the way in which he spent himself for his constituents but also because, over and above being a great constituency Member, he was a citizen of the world, not always a very orderly citizen and sometimes perhaps rather unwise, but always conscious of his duty to humanity at large and to suffering humanity in particular." [ Official Report, 10 November 1964 ; Vol. 701,c. 889.]

Sir Anthony's sense of duty to suffering humanity was never more apparent than during the floods that devastated Towyn and Kinmel Bay two years ago, when thousands of people were driven from their homes by the raging sea. Sir Anthony and Lady Barbadee were in the sea physically helping to rescue the many elderly and disabled people who live in that area, as well as helping the very young. Sir Anthony's commitment to the well-being of those unfortunate people in the aftermath of the flood was no less equally total. As a constituency member, Sir Anthony Meyer was a model example.

Having mentioned the disaster that befell many of my constituents, I wish to place on record my admiration for the local authorities, the police, the rescue services, the voluntary organisations, the Welsh Office and its agencies, British Rail and the many individuals who have contributed to restoring the devastated area and to returning life to normality for the residents of Towyn and Kinmel Bay.

Clwyd, North-West is a small coastal constituency which stretches from Rhyl in the east through Abergele to Colwyn Bay and to Rhos-on-Sea and beyond. Although those popular tourist centres are the mainstay of the local economy, the small cathedral city of St. Asaph and Rhuddlan, with its Norman castle, are also key attractions for visitors.

It is worth noting that a significantly higher proportion of the people of Clwyd, North-West are of pensionable age--some 28 per cent., compared with an average of about 18 per cent. in the remainder of Wales. It goes without saying that people get wiser as they get older, which helps to explain why Clwyd, North-West is the safest Conservative seat in Wales--and in the context of this speech, long may it stay that way.

During the 1980s, the people of the county of Clwyd took full advantage of the opportunities presented by Conservative policies and they are now well placed to build on those opportunities during this decade. The decline of traditional industries and their trade unions in north-east Wales has been matched by the flowering of new industries with new technologies and new ideas. It has been a transformation, which has also been seen elsewhere in Wales. Economic benefits have no boundaries and, unlike the Labour party, we recognise the industrial revolution for what it is--a continuous process of change, innovation, new technology and the adaptiveness of working people.

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In the national health service, the people of Clwyd are poised to benefit from the groundwork of the 1980s. Many general practitioner practices are already fund holders and Glan Clwyd district general hospital has already applied to my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Wales for NHS trust status. In education, the constituency's schools are already reaping the benefits of the local management of schools and there are strong signs that some will apply for grant-maintained status.

I said earlier that my predecessor, Sir Anthony Meyer, first entered the House in 1964 as the Member for Eton and Slough. He lost the seat in 1966, but returned to the House in 1970 as the Member for Flint, West. In 1983, the boundary commission recommended that the coastal wards of the Colwyn borough, previously within the Denbigh county constituency, together with the boroughs of Rhuddlan and Rhyl--previously part of West Flintshire-- should be included in the new constituency of Clwyd, North-West. Those proposals left the constituency with a 1981 electorate of slightly more than 61,500. The separation of Rhyl from nearby Prestatyn was regarded as less than satisfactory, but the commissioners argued that to have included Prestatyn within Clwyd, North-West would have led to an imbalance in the electorates of the remaining Clwyd seats. The position in 1992 is that Clwyd, North-West has an electorate of 67,350, about 9,000 more than the electoral quota.

As the House is aware, on 3 March my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Wales announced proposals for fundamental changes to Welsh local government that will have a bearing on the report of the Boundary Commission for Wales. My right hon. Friend's proposal was to replace the present eight county councils and 37 district councils with 23 unitary authorities, which will be responsible for almost all local government services. I want to say how much I welcome my right hon. Friend's bold and imaginative initiative, following the constructive and positive approach of Welsh local authority associations. I want also to say how welcome is the extended period of consultation that my right hon. Friend has given to local authorities in this matter. The removal of one tier of local authority bureaucracy, unclear responsibility and anaemic accountability will be welcomed throughout the land.

Equally welcome is my right hon. Friend's rejection of demands by the opposition parties for an Assembly in Wales. On the one hand, the Welsh nationalists would have an Assembly to be used as a stepping stone to full independence. On the other, the Labour

party--cynically--would have an assembly to be a talking shop for their new army of redundant councillors. The Liberal democrat is the usual muddle in the middle.

The people of Wales are no more persuaded by those demands, transparently motivated by political self-interest, than they were in 1979 when similar proposals by the then Labour Government were overwhelmingly rejected in a referendum.

The full extent of the great reforms of the 1980s relating to trade unions, education and health will, I believe, become more and more apparent during the 1990s. They are already in place, so time will tell. The reform of local government will have equally profound and beneficial consequences towards the end of the century and beyond. Getting local bureaucracy off the backs of the people will be justly rewarded by a grateful electorate.

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6.8 pm

Mr. Robert Maclennan (Caithness and Sutherland) : It is both a privilege and a genuine pleasure to follow the maiden speech of the hon. Member for Clwyd, North-West (Mr. Richards). He paid felicitous tributes to his predecessor, Sir Anthony Meyer, who is well remembered in this House and whose independence was always admired. His will indeed be a hard act for the hon. Member for Clwyd, North-West to follow. Controversy of a party nature was not introduced into his maiden speech, and he has left the House in no doubt that he is likely to be less rebellious and to give less anxiety to the Patronage Secretary than did his predecessor. That in no way vitiates what was an admirable speech. The hon. Gentleman described in graphic terms some of the problems and achievements of those who live in his very beautiful constituency. I hope that he will have many opportunities to grace these debates and to bring his own angle of vision to bear upon them.

The Second Reading of the Bill follows hard on the heels of the general election. General elections throw up much evidence of what is wrong with our electoral system. That upon which the Bill focuses is perhaps less in the minds of many members of the public than other features of the recent election, which they might reasonably look to Parliament to legislate on while the memory is fresh. Many will regard the decline in the number of those on the electoral register as a matter not to be passed over as lightly as the Home Secretary passed over it in his speech. When he dealt with that question, he showed a complacency that bordered on the partisan. I hope that the Government will not sit back and just accept the under- registration of the electorate which so distorts the ultimate outcome. During the recent election, many other matters of administration gave rise to comment upon which we might have expected there to be legislation, or at least some clarification. For example, there is confusion about the polling card. I found that many of my electors believed that it was necessary to carry the card with them to the polling station in order to cast their vote. At least an active campaign--if not legislation--to make clear the purpose of the polling card is necessary, if that confusion is to be avoided.

Matters that affect the postal vote might be regarded as having at least as high a priority as the matters contained in the Bill. The Home Secretary spoke of the greater mobility of the British public. That affects people and their place of residence not just when it comes to the work of the boundary commissions, but from day to day, from week to week, from month to month. It should be much easier to obtain a postal vote. Legislation may be required to ensure that application forms for postal votes are easily obtainable within just a few days of the announcement of a general election. Like the right hon. Member for Birmingham, Sparkbrook (Mr. Hattersley), I did not expect the Government to introduce a fundamental constitutional Bill. Most certainly the Bill is not that. I did not think that they would address the easiest way to deal with the disparity in the value of a vote.

The example given by the Home Secretary was that the vote of a voter in Peterborough was half the value of a vote in Kensington. I do not expect the Home Secretary to address that question by introducing a system of proportional representation. That would be a fundamental

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reform. However, I regret the fact that the Home Secretary has not even considered entering into discussions with other political parties about the issue. I believe that at a stroke it would eliminate most of the problems that the Bill is designed to correct. We should not have what is becoming an increasingly unsatisfactory system of boundary determination which, however this House tinkers with it from time to time, will continue to produce distortions.

Mr. Barnes : Proportional representation advocates the principle of one person, one vote, one value. The problem is that not everybody has one vote. Before we consider the question of one person, one vote, one value, would it not be logical to get the electoral register right? Even under proportional representation, the electoral register can result in distortion. PR could lead to distorted results in a referendum. If, for example, the Danes had had a different electoral register, the result could have been different.

Mr. Maclennan : The hon. Gentleman knows that that was my first point : that there is a serious deficiency in the electoral register and that the Government ought to introduce proposals to deal with it.

To return to the wider question of electoral reform, however much we tinker with the present system there will continue to be great disparities. For over a quarter of a century I have represented a constituency with a third as many electors as those in some of the larger constituencies. I am naturally extremely conscious of that discrepancy, although I have no doubt that under any system of election there will be difficulties over the problems caused by sparsity of population, such as those that prevail in the highlands and islands of Scotland.

My constituency extends over some 2,800 square miles, with not the best of communications. The hon. Member for Westminster, North (Sir J. Wheeler), the Chairman of the Select Committee on Home Affairs, spoke of the desirability of equalisation and of modern communications overcoming these problems. He ought to travel around some of the remoter parts of the British isles before he comes up with pronunciamentos such as that.

Mr. Brian Wilson (Cunninghame, North) : I endorse entirely what the hon. Gentleman says, particularly about geographical disparity. Does he join me in welcoming the fact that when this matter was raised at the last Scottish Question Time the hon. Member for Edinburgh, West (Lord James Douglas-Hamilton), who knows something about the geography and other considerations, took an entirely different view from that espoused by the hon. Member for Westminster, North (Sir J. Wheeler)?

Mr. Maclennan : Yes, that is fair. So, indeed, did the Home Secretary. I think that the Home Secretary found that there was a certain restiveness on the Back Benches while he gave the reasons for retaining the status quo vis-a-vis Scotland and Wales in their relationship to England. I do not go so far as the Home Secretary. If we moved towards a federal system of government, there could, in my view, be a more equal relationship between the value of the vote cast in Scotland for the federal Parliament and the value of the vote cast in England. I commend the Liberal Democrat party's proposals, which were described by the former Secretary of State for

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Scotland, Mr. George Younger, as the most logical and coherent of the proposals that had been put forward for the improvement of the government of Scotland.

Mr. Nigel Evans (Ribble Valley) : Can the hon. Gentleman tell the House why the Liberal Democrats did so appallingly badly at the last election? Was the reason for the poor result the Liberal Democrat party's support for proportional representation, or its support of federalism, or both?

Mr. Maclennan : I quarrel with the hon. Gentleman's premise. The Liberal Democrats in Scotland returned to the House with nine Members, which was not far short of the Government's number. A degree of modesty about the Conservative party's achievements in Scotland is certainly in order.

The reality is that the Bill has been introduced in an unceremonious and ill-considered fashion. I interrupted the Home Secretary, who was kind enough to give way in his usual manner, to ask him what consultation he had had with the chairman of the boundary commission who is, as a matter of fact, Madam Speaker. He replied that he had notified her of the Government's intentions. It is an unsatisfactory arrangement that the chairman of the boundary commission should be merely notified of the Government's intentions. However courteous such a notification may be, it smacks of pure formality. I believe that the chairman of the boundary commission should have a more than formal role, especially as the chairman of the boundary commission is also Madam Speaker. By her presence as chairman of the boundary commission she in some way symbolises the very independence of the commissions.

Mr. Rooker : I disagree with that point. The fact that the Speaker of the House is the chair of the boundary commission prevents hon. Members from criticising the boundary commission in a serious and hard-headed way, simply because it may be misconstrued as an attack on the Speaker. The fact is that the Speaker plays no role in the commission and does not attend the meetings. I believe that the Speaker should have no role and should not be the chair of the boundary commission. The boundary commission should be up front with a positive role. If it did things with which the House disagreed, we should not then be prevented from complaining about it.

Mr. Maclennan : I do not disagree with the hon. Gentleman, nor he with me. I am speaking about what I believe the presence of Madam Speaker as chairman conveys emblematically. It conveys a sense of the independence and of the irreproachability of the commissions. Like the hon. Gentleman, I do not think that the appointment is desirable. Those bodies should be at arm's length from the House, although also open to scrutiny and cross- examination by the House before the House decides whether to accept or reject the boundary commissions' recommendations. The hon. Gentleman and I are not alone in that view.

The Hansard Society for Parliamentary Government produced a report last year which was commended by Sir Barney Hayhoe, whose elevation to another place has been noticed, as worthy of considerable and careful study by all interested in parliamentary matters. The 1991 report on election campaigns was chaired by Sir Christopher

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Chataway, who also recommended that the Speaker's connection with the boundary commissions should be severed for, I believe, good and sufficient reasons.

The point about consultation with the Speaker may not have been calculated to embarrass the Speaker, but there is an inherent and unattractive consequence of the failure to consult. In introducing the Bill at this time, without any serious consultation, the Government have put themselves in the position of appearing to be partisan. In such a matter in which, to quote the words of the Hansard Society report,

"Under the so-called First Past the Post' electoral system the drawing of constituency boundaries can have a very significant effect on party fortunes",

it should not be left to individual parties to proceed in this way. Nor is it sensible to do as the Government have done, which is to introduce a Bill which deals only with the question of timing and not with the other anomalies and difficulties faced by the boundary commissions.

The Boundary Commission for England produced a report last year in which it drew on its experience to draw attention to the problems that it saw. There was nothing in the Home Secretary's speech, nor is there any provision in the Bill, to tackle the problems that the Boundary Commission for England has identified. The two principal problems it highlighted are the problem of popular participation in the boundary commissions' work and the problem of conformity of decisions between different parts of the country.

On the latter point, we might have expected to hear how the Government viewed the 1983 Court of Appeal decision in the case referred to by the hon. Member for St. Helens, South (Mr. Bermingham). In the case the Labour party sought judicial review of a number of decisions by the boundary commission and of the way in which it conducted its role. It did so because it believed that the boundary commission was giving undue weight to one of the rules in the existing legislation which required it to operate within county boundaries or, in the case of London, within borough boundaries which it would be extremely difficult to ignore.

I do not think that the law, as expressed in the Court of Appeal case and as consolidated in the Parliamentary Constituencies Act 1986, is satisfactory. I remind the Minister what the Master of the Rolls, Lord Donaldson, said in that case.

"It is clear in our judgment of these matters that although they may all be properly regarded as interlocking"

that is, the five criteria set out in schedule 2 to the 1986 Act "the requirement in rule 4 that so far as is practicable' constituencies shall not cross county or London borough boundaries must be regarded as taking precedence over the requirement in rule 5 concerning the size of the electorate in each constituency". In establishing the case for seeking a redrawing of boundaries, some attention should be paid to the priority to be given in law to the requirement to conform with what the hon. Member for St. Helens, South described as "the skin" of the county boundaries. I should have thought that the greater desideratum is to seek to give greater equality to the value of the vote, although I repeat that I do not believe that that will be achieved without an alteration in our electoral system which will introduce a system of fair voting. The Bill is exceedingly important and it may create acute difficulties for the Boundary Commission in

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Scotland, and probably in England, because of the proposed reforms of local government and because of the provisions of clause 3, which draw attention to the fact that the boundary commission will have to pay attention to local authority boundaries at a time when they are not merely fluid, but wholly uncertain.

Indeed, the approach of the Secretary of State for Scotland has not been spelt out beyond an adherence to a very broad view that there should be single-tier authorities. I do not know whether he means that in the highlands and islands of Scotland we should have a single Highland region with no tiers below it, or whether we are to have some new authorities based on districts.

If we are to have a single-tier authority in the highlands covering approximately half the land mass of Scotland, the boundary commission will not be greatly assisted by reference to local government boundaries when deciding how to allocate populations to parliamentary constituencies in future. That is an example of the difficulties and uncertainties that face the boundary commissions which make it inappropriate to proceed as the Government suggest.

I accept what seems to be common ground between the right hon. Member for Sparkbrook and the Home Secretary that the widening disparities in populations of constituencies should be tackled before the next election. However, it should not be tackled in the way suggested in the Bill. It should not have been tackled by the Government introducing a Bill on a matter of considerable constitutional importance without consultation, discussion or external advice and simply, apparently, to satisfy their own urgent desires to secure their position.

I cannot accept what the right hon. Member for Sparkbrook said about the probability that the Bill will make no difference. That is part of the right hon. Gentleman's well-known optimism in respect of the fact that Labour will form the next Government whenever the election is held and whatever boundaries may be decided. That is a misconception. The Bill is partisan and the way in which it has been introduced is enough proof for citizens of objectivity who are concerned about such matters. I hope that the Government will take the Bill away, reconsider it, discuss it with other political parties and then bring back a better Bill.

6.31 pm

Mr. Ian Bruce (South Dorset) : Before considering the Bill specifically, I wish to refer to the maiden speech of my hon. Friend the Member for Clwyd, North-West (Mr. Richards) and to echo some of the comments of the hon. Member for Caithness and Sutherland (Mr. Maclennan) about my hon. Friend's predecessor, Sir Anthony Meyer. I hope that I can do that with the full weight of my 83,000 constituents and not belittle the 31,000 constituents of the hon. Member for Caithness and Sutherland who so eloquently placed on the record his views of Sir Anthony Meyer.

My new colleague the hon. Member for Clwyd, North-West will, in his parliamentary career, miss the charm and friendliness expressed by Sir Anthony, particularly in the way in which he treated new Members of Parliament. As a new Member five years ago, I well remember the charm and help that Sir Anthony showed me. I wish to place that on record and the fact that he did wonderful work for his constituents and for the

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Franco-British group, of which he was chairman for many years, building up a relationship between this Parliament and the French Parliament.

Sir Anthony and I shared problems with sea defences. The pictures of flooding which were so graphically shown on television enabled many of us who had concerns about our sea defences to alert the Government, who have changed their thinking a great deal in respect of sea defences in the past few years. Sir Anthony Meyer was the key in that he concentrated people's minds on the issue.

Our new colleague, the hon. Member for Clwyd, North-West was previously a broadcaster with the BBC. There will be great rejoicing in heaven that one of the sinners has repented. We can certainly do with a few poachers turned gamekeepers on the Conservative Benches. I welcome him and his excellent maiden speech, which I am sure is the first of many speeches that he will make in the House over the years.

Before coming to this place, many people are unsure about the animosity across the Chamber. They are uncertain whether it is real or feigned. As the Leader of the Opposition and his deputy had spent so long slaving away to achieve a position in which they would be able to table their own legislation, it was rumoured that the Government might be kind enough, in this new Parliament, to introduce a Bill more of less in their honour, embodying the kind of socialist principles that we knew they would want to stand for : equality, fairness, job creation, minimum wages and more public spending. When one considers the Bill, one has to admit that the Home Office has come up with the right Bill to encompass such wonderful legislation and thus put that fairness into practice.

We must therefore wonder why the right hon. Member for Birmingham, Sparkbrook (Mr. Hattersley) was so curmudgeonly in his greeting for the Bill. I wonder whether Labour will want to force a Division at the end of the debate. Conservative Members believed that the Labour party still stood for those socialist principles of years ago, but I am afraid that we got it completely wrong. The Labour party no longer stands for fairness, equality or job creation, although it perhaps still stands for minimum wages and more public spending.

I wonder whether that may be a slight reflection on the fact that there are shortly to be elections to the shadow Cabinet and for the Labour party leadership and deputy leadership. One of the candidates, the hon. Member for Dagenham (Mr. Gould), has said that he believes that previous elections to the shadow Cabinet involved some gerrymandering and fiddling. The House must be grateful that he made that public and brought it to our attention, although one wonders why he did not blow the whistle when he did so well in those elections rather than leaving it till now. Perhaps he believes that the system is not going to work this time.

Conservative Members believe in fair elections. During the Whitsun recess I visited the Manchester industrial museum. I recommend that people should visit that museum. Yesterday I found in my pocket a piece of paper which I had obviously picked up in that excellent museum. That piece of paper recorded one of the most important things to happen in our political history. It carried the six points of the people's charter produced in 1838 by the

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Chartists, who were instrumental in pushing the modern Conservative party and eventually the Labour party into parties of mass movement. The Chartists' fifth condition was well written and is as pertinent today as it was in 1838. It seeks :

"5 EQUAL CONSTITUENCIES, securing the same amount of representation for the same number of electors, instead of allowing small constituencies to swamp the votes of larger ones."

Mr. Robert B. Jones : In commending that principle, I hope that my hon. Friend will not go along with the other principles. I doubt whether many of us would be in favour of annual Parliaments, although we might be more sympathetic to the idea of having three acres and a cow.

Mr. Bruce : My hon. Friend assumes that I do not have political amnesia. As in all good political speeches, one refers only to those parts which help one's argument. One does not confuse the mind of the listener. I do not believe that we need annual Parliaments, about which the Chartists state :

"thus presenting the most effectual check to bribery and intimidation since though a constituency might be bought once in seven years (even with the ballot) no purse could buy a constituency under a system of universal suffrage in each ensuing twelvemonth : and since members, when elected for a year only, would not be able to defy and betray their constituencies as now."

I am not sure whether that holds for elections to the Labour shadow Cabinet.

Mr. Barnes : If the hon. Gentleman looks at his leaflet, he will see that the three acres and a cow have nothing to do with the six points of the charter that were associated with the ideas propounded by Feargus O'Connor, who was a Chartist leader. The six points of the charter, including annual elections, are all about arrangements for this House and for electoral arrangements. Five of the six are in place in one form or another.

Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Janet Fookes) : Order. Before the hon. Member for South Dorset (Mr. Bruce) continues, the relevance of his previous points is becoming increasingly obscure to me.

Mr. Bruce : Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker. As you can see, I am being led down a path that I was not trying to follow. I was about to make a point about my constituency of South Dorset. Before the Reform Act 1832, my constituency was represented by no fewer than 10 Members of Parliament. Many people realise that I often do the work of 10 men, but I wish that I were paid to do the job of 10 men. We in South Dorset believe in the fairness of the system. In giving up nine of our previous seats, we believed that we should ensure that equality of size of constituency is maintained.

We in South Dorset, along with people in other constituencies, hate the thought of change. I certainly hate the thought of having to lose 20,000 or so constituents who have been loyal and kind to me over the years. The boundary commission, which is to sit in Dorchester on Tuesday and Wednesday, will consider all the counter-claims and try to get the best balance so that there is symmetry between the areas which could be amalgamated to give rise to the eighth Dorset constituency recommended by the Parliamentary Boundary Commission. The Bill is absolutely right. We must have the changes in place in plenty of time for an election in 1996 or 1997. At the beginning of 1995, people will be able to set up a

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new association in Dorset, select a candidate and do all the necessary things, including much fundraising. That will have to happen in all the constituencies that are changed. I do not like to lose people, but we shall disfranchise people unless we make adjustments. If adjustments are to be made, it is best to make them quickly. That is what the Bill would do.

Many hon. Members have mentioned the strange idea that, within the United Kingdom Parliament, there should be the same general rules for selecting the size of constituencies but that those rules should be circumvented on a national basis for Northern Ireland, Wales, Scotland and England, with a different number of people per constituency in each case.

Figures have already been provided by my hon. Friend the Member for Westminster, North (Sir J. Wheeler), but the most striking figure is the difference between 54,000 per constituency in Scotland and more than 69,000 per constituency in England. In effect, four Scotsmen from an average-sized Scottish constituency moving to an average-sized English constituency would end up with only three votes. That is often turned the other way round, but why disfranchise Scotsmen or Welshmen who come to live in England? As I have a geographical affinity with both countries, perhaps I should have an extra third of a vote.

We should settle the matter now. One way of doing that would be to amalgamate the four boundary commissions into one and then divide the total population by 651--or even 650, to go back to the figure before the additional seat was recently created--and consider perhaps 65,000 constituents per seat.

The point has been made that we have to have special rules for very sparsely populated areas, and I fully agree, but those special rules could be applied on a United Kingdom basis. For places such as the Western Isles with 23,000 constituents, it would be easier to spread the additional number of constituents to be absorbed throughout the whole of the United Kingdom rather than just in Scotland. My namesake, the hon. Member for Gordon (Mr. Bruce) already has to look after 80, 000 constituents in Scotland. If we are to look after constituents in the Western Isles and in the Caithnesses and Sunderlands of this world, taking account of sparse populations, the burden should be spread over the whole of the United Kingdom. With a United Kingdom Parliament, there is no need for an artificial barrier which separates out the different countries.

This is a good Bill as far as it goes, and the House should support it. I should be extremely surprised if the Labour party divided the House on the issue. The matter should be for the good sense, good judgment and honour of all Members of Parliament. We can rely on the boundary commission, as we have done previously, to do its job well, and this additional legislation will help it to do just that. 6.46 pm

Mr. Harry Barnes (Derbyshire, North-East) : All English Members have received a newsletter from the Boundary Commission for England stating that the general review of boundaries is intended to be produced by mid-1995. Clause 2 states that that should be done by the end of 1994, merely bringing the measure six months

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forward. It then allows that, even if that is not done by that date, it is not statutory : no action can then be taken for failure to produce the review at that time.

It is a peculiar measure which tries to gee up the work of the boundary commission when that could be done by other techniques--for instance, clause 1 allows extra resources, and also the Government could merely encourage that activity. Why do we have that date, just six months earlier? It looks as though everything would be okay under the previous arrangements, and there would still be time to act. Perhaps the commission would have come forward with reports prior to mid-1995. That allows a suspicion to arise in people's minds about what is taking place.

One of the greatest defects in the measure is that the 1991 electoral register will determine the quotas and will decide what is to be done within a certain county in relation to the numbers to be divided up. Massive numbers of people are missing from the electoral register. Before 1987, the electoral register was not

unproblematic--there were many errors in it. Many ineligible people were included and others who were eligible were not included. In a rough and ready way, it always balanced out the errors. A report by the Office of Population Censuses and Surveys in 1981 showed that there were sets of compensating errors of about 7 per cent. in the register. By the end of its life a typical register was already about 16 per cent. out. So there were problems.

But there were not great problems with boundary reviews. As there were sets of compensating errors and the total figures were more or less correct for individual areas, we did not have great problems in working out quotas and deciding how many parliamentary seats there should be in a shire seat.

However, the electoral register was hit from 1987 onwards, coinciding with the introduction of the poll tax. The problem occurred first in Scotland and then moved to England and Wales. There was no problem of a lack of numbers in Northern Ireland, the difference being that Northern Ireland never had a poll tax : it never had two sets of registers which interfered with each other and affected the registration of certain groups of people.

The shortfall between the numbers on the registers and the estimated population is not evenly distributed throughout the United Kingdom. If they were evenly distributed, the quotas might work and things might be reasonably okay in some rough and ready sense, but there is a serious maldistribution of the missing people. We heard the maiden speech of the hon. Member for Clwyd, North-West (Mr. Richards) this evening. The figures for Clwyd seem reasonable. They are probably as good as those for any other county area in England, Wales or Scotland, but in other areas the figures are serious. There are many shortages in the London area. Usually in large conurbations the numbers problem is considerable.

I referred in an intervention to a parliamentary answer which spelled out the problems. First, on 6 February, between columns 293 and 296 of Hansard, I was given the figures for Scotland. There is a shortfall of 140,000 between the estimated population and the number of people on the register. The figures are divided into district areas and parliamentary constituencies. Each of the parliamentary constituencies shows a shortfall between its electorate and the relevant population figure. In eight constituencies, the shortfall is 3,000 or more. In two constituencies, it is 4,000. In Strathkelvin and Bearsden,

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5,000 people are missing, and in Midlothian and Perth and Kinross, 4,000 people are missing. That is a serious factor which needs to be corrected.

Mr. McCartney : I was born and brought up in Strathkelvin, and my family stay there. It is one of the growth areas of west central Scotland. One cannot move for new housing. The area is developing from a former mining area into a commuter area for Glasgow. It is astonishing that the figures show a serious drop in the electorate when, in population terms, Strathkelvin is a growth area. It is one area of Scotland where, even now, growth is continuing, to the detriment of the green belt. One cannot travel from Glasgow all the way through to Cumbernauld and Strathkelvin because of the build-up of population and development in the area.

Mr. Barnes : I thank my hon. Friend. I must make the point clear. I am talking about the difference between the number of people on the electoral register and the number of people entitled to be on it. It is possible that the electorate in Strathkelvin has grown. Part of the hidden problem is that we often do not see the shortfall in electoral registration because we see the electorate growing in various areas. However, the population on the register might not grow by anything like as much as it should.

The problem in Strathkelvin might be exactly that new people are moving in and the arrangements do not allow registration to take place quickly enough to include the new people. Yet the people who move in are entitled to be on the electoral register in future and should be taken into account in determining the boundaries. So we know where the problems are in Scotland, because the Scottish Office is kind enough to provide the statistics. For England and Wales, I received a written answer from the Department of Health. Even though the Home Office has responsibility for ensuring that electoral registration takes place, the Department of Health collects the figures. The answer in columns 473 to 480 of Hansard of 11 February shows that the shortfall for England is 1,750,000--a massive disparity. Areas such as Barnet, which is represented by four constituencies, show a shortfall of 34,000. Other shortfalls are : Brent 26,000 ; Camden 30,000 ; Ealing 43,000 ; Islington 29,000. Cities such as Manchester have a shortfall of 35,000. Birmingham has 31,000 missing, and Bradford has 33,000.

In some areas, such as Clwyd, there is not a great problem, but in other areas there is a serious problem and there will be a considerable maldistribution if we plough ahead with the current arrangements and those proposed in the Bill. To prevent that maldistribution, we could decide to act on the estimated relevant population figures rather than the figures for those who are on corrupt registers ; or we could take emergency action to get the electoral registers right. If we got the electoral registration figures right, we could complete the exercise.

I accept the principle that we should have equal electoral districts. I grant that there are some extra problems in Scotland, but I support the general principle that electoral districts should be of equal size as far as possible. I want us to move towards that as soon as possible, but we must do it on the correct information. Otherwise, considerable injustices will be created within the electoral system.

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The evidence that the electoral register is in such a bad way is produced by the OPCS. It published an article in issue 64 of "Population Trends" in summer 1991, which showed the disappearance of the electorate which, as I said, tied in with the introduction of the poll tax. Furthermore, the greatest percentage of people missing from the electoral register is among attainers--the people who are about to be placed on the register for the first time. Presumably it began to be understood that it was less easy to discover such people if they did not appear on the electoral register, and therefore the poll tax register. They could not be found on any previous register. There is no problem with the percentage of attainers on the register in Northern Ireland. Registration of attainers is probably healthier than ever in Northern Ireland. Perhaps the political parties in Northern Ireland do a great deal to encourage electoral registration. Unfortunately, such encouragement has fallen by the wayside in England, Scotland and Wales.

At one time, when the Labour party was emerging, people were engaged to a considerable extent in encouraging registration. They believed that their way forward was to ensure that electoral registration took place. Seats would surely flow from ensuring that all the voters in an area were registered. We need to put the electoral register right.

The Home Office is currently involved in discussions that could lead to a solution. According to a parliamentary answer that I was given, the circumstances surrounding the general election are being investigated, including the state of the electoral register. Representations have been made by political parties and other interests, and by about October a report may have emerged. The Office of Population Censuses and Surveys is also conducting an investigation, and we shall gain some valuable information as a result.

The Bill should be put on hold until we have secured the information that will allow us to establish equal electoral districts very rapidly. We cannot do that, however, on the basis of a large quantity of information that is invalid and incorrect, and electoral registers that were corrupt at the time of the election. Owing to the poll tax factor, about 1.5 million people were missing from the registers. If we assume that that figure represents an anti-Tory cohort, we can also assume that, if the names had not been missing, there would have been a hung Parliament.

Mr. Tony Banks : I take my hon. Friend's point about the inaccuracy of the registers : we feel strongly about that in London. I challenge him on another point, however. I may have misunderstood him, but he seemed to say that the people who are missing from the registers had failed to register because of the poll tax. That applies to a certain percentage of the population, but in my borough, for instance, more names appeared on the poll tax register than on the electoral register.

Mr. Barnes : Under the poll tax legislation, it was possible to transfer people from the poll tax register to the electoral register. During the legislation's Committee stage, the Opposition moved that that should be obligatory--that people should be transferred automatically, thus adding to the number on the electoral register. As it was not obligatory, transferral was happening in some areas and not in others. A number of lists and

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provisions are used for poll tax registration purposes ; it might be much more legitimate to use them for electoral registration purposes.

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