Schedule 11

HC Deb 17 July 1972 vol 841 cc180-6

RULES TO BE OBSERVED IN CONSIDERING ELECTORAL ARRANGEMENTS

Amendment made: No. 757, in page 237, line 8, leave out 'So far as is reasonably practicable' and insert 'Having regard to any change in the number or distribution of the local government electors of the country likely to take place within the period of five years immediately following the consideration'. —[Mr. Graham Page]

Mr. John E. B. Hill

I beg to move Amendment No. 570, in page 237, line 9, at beginning insert 'subject to the need to prevent any division from being of such a large area, or from containing so many villages and hamlets, that the county councillor representing it would find it difficult to keep in touch with or to serve his or her constituents efficiently'.

Mr. Speaker

With this we are to take Amendment No. 772, in page 239, line 9, at end insert— (d) the need to prevent any ward or electoral division of any district from being of such a large area, or of containing so many villages and hamlets, that the district councillor or councillors representing it would find it difficult to keep in touch with or to serve his, her or their constituents efficiently.

Mr. Hill

It will be within your recollection, Mr. Speaker, that my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Huntingdonshire (Sir D. Renton), whose name appears at the top of the Amendment, cannot be here tonight to move it for the very good reason that, although he is an admirable Member of Parliament, he is an even better husband and this is his silver wedding anniversary. I am therefore moving it at rather short notice and if my knowledge is deficient, my interest is great.

I am interested in the way the criteria as described in the Schedule and just amended by the last batch of Amendments came to be decided upon. I suffer from the disability of not having served on the Committee but as far as I can find out this was not discussed then. The source of the change, as far as I am aware, seems to have been in the consultation papers circulated to the various local authority associations and other bodies concerned, on a confidential basis initially. It is not easy for the ordinary back bencher to have access to these papers and it has taken quite a bit of research to find the relevant document. The Library did not even receive a copy; it had to ask for it. I want to put on record the four paragraphs which seem to be the basis on which these criteria are now fixed.

I quote from the consultation paper on electoral arrangements in England and Wales issued by the Home Office and dated 31st March, 1971. Paragraph 7 states: The Bills will prescribe the broad criteria on which each council area is to be divided in order to return an appropriate number of councillors. These will serve as a guide when the electoral areas are devised for the first elections, and when subsequent alterations are in question.

8. In counties at present, the population of each division must be approximately equal, subject to regard being had to area, to a proper representation both of the rural and of the urban population, to their distribution and pursuits, to the last census, and any consider able change since then. The phrase about proper representation has given rise to the practice of rural weighting (or over-representation of rural electors in recognition of difficulties of communication, etc.). In fact, the ratio of rural electors per councillor to urban electors per councillor varies from 2:3 to 5:6.

9. In Greater London, so far as reasonably practicable, the ratio of electors to councillors must be 'as nearly as may be' the same in every ward: but account must be taken of likely changes within the next 5 years and of the importance of local ties and of easily identifiable boundaries.

10. The Government propose that the criteria for the new local authorities should be similar to those prescribed for Greater London."

It is against that background that we have moved from the so-called rural weighting. This could be unfortunate. What may suit Greater London may not necessarily suit the sparsely-populated areas. There is no comparable area of scattered population in Greater London. The green belt is thickly populated. I ask my right hon. Friend to insert: Subject to the need to prevent any division from being of such a large area, or from containing so many villages and hamlets, that the county councillor representing it would find it difficult to keep in touch with or to serve his or her constituents efficiently. Unless this is accepted the rule will insist that the number of local government electors shall be as nearly as may be the same in every electoral division. The words "as nearly as may be" are virtually binding on local government commissions.

We have just accepted an Amendment which imports into the criteria the further qualification Having regard to any change in the number or distribution of the local government electors of the county likely to take place within the period of five years immediately following the consideration. This means that one is entitled to look forward to likely population movements. But population movements in rural areas may well be downward. The situation could easily arise that in order to get the number of electors required by these rather tight criteria, certain rural county divisions will continue to get larger and larger.

I have in mind thinly populated areas in Norfolk such as the Breckland. We must bear in mind the problems of representing mainly arable areas in which a small population is evenly scattered over a vast landscape. The elected member has a great problem in terms of time and distance in keeping in touch with electors. We feel this acutely as parliamentary representatives but at least we in Parliament are paid to do the job. In this case we are asking the local people to come forward and act as councillors in rural areas. They may find themselves asked to take on divisions which are unfairly large purely because of the counting of heads to get as near the average as possible.

This argument applies to local government perhaps even more than to parliamentary government, and the situation there is bad enough. In local government the councillor need to know the area, its geography, its land and its roads with a degree of detail which the parliamentary representative does not require. Certainly a local councillor will need to know the state of the roads, and even to know which trees have attracted tree preservation orders. There are all sorts of details which come up with which he must be familiar. There are many planning matters with which he must deal which require exact local knowledge of his area.

Planning decisions may mean that some villages will expand while others will not be allowed to. Therefore, an artificial distortion may creep in which prevents a sparsely populated area increasing its electorate at all.

For these reasons I feel that it would be wrong to make the criteria as rigid as they are at present. I hope that the Minister will take another look at this matter. I am certain that the rural Members of Parliament and the rural representatives on county councils did not appreciate the effect of the Bill's proposals as they now stand. It was a shock to me to find that this new formula was being fastened on to the country areas and I think it is a mistake.

10.15 p.m.

Mr. Oakes

We appreciate that the hon. Member for Norfolk, South (Mr. John E. B. Hill) is moving the Amendment on behalf of his right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Huntingdonshire (Sir D. Renton) who is, very properly, celebrating his silver wedding this evening, but we on this side of the House totally resist the Amendment and hope the Government will do likewise.

In the Second Reading debate the Secretary of State made it very clear to my right hon. Friend the Member for Deptford (Mr. John Silkin) that there would be no question in this Bill of rural weighting. If anything, I think that hon. Members on this side of the House could make out a far better case, if there were to be weighting at all, for urban weighting. It is the urban district councillor who has far more and more acute problems to deal with very often—problems of overcrowding, problems of traffic, problems of social services—than his rural counterpart, who may rarely come across them.

The Amendment is openly and clearly to make provision for rural weighting in county areas and in county districts. Under the Bill, and under Amendments we have passed this evening, it is clear that there is to be one county councillor for a county electoral district. If under the terms of the Amendment we take into account the rural nature of that district, that inevitably must considerably narrow down that area so that rural weighting must inevitably result—and, as one of my hon. Friends says, there might be political considerations in this. The Government, to their credit, have resisted many Amendments of this kind to the Bill, Amendments which could have led to political motivation, if one were to unscrupulous.

Mr. John E. B. Hill

I could not have made myself clear. I am not wishing to go back to rural weighting, even if I regret the decision which has been made. The Amendment does not go anywhere near back to rural weighting. If the hon. Member will look at it he will see that it seeks to avoid saddling a county member with a constituency he cannot fairly cover.

Mr. Oakes

Yes, but my point is that if we seek to do that, to narrow down the area to a smaller population and give it one county councillor, inevitably we have rural weighting. As to the point which the hon. Gentleman makes about a constituency in a rural area sometimes becoming smaller, the Boundary Commission will have continuous reviews of the areas and can take care of that so far as the populations are concerned.

This is a bad Amendment, and we on this side are totally opposed to it. I hope that the Minister of State will resist it and not even say he will have the matter considered further in the Lords.

Mr. Carlisle

I have considerable sympathy with the argument which my hon. Friend the Member for Norfolk, South (Mr. John E. B. Hill) has put forward and which, I am sure, could be summarised by saying that none of us, whether as a Member of this House or as a county councillor, likes to represent an area which is geographically so large that one feels one is in some way unable fully to keep in touch with all the interests one represents.

Of course, I appreciate that we have on many occasions argued that we must keep areas of the sort of size in which there can be cohesion and close relationship between the individual councillor and the area he represents, but I am afraid I must tell my hon. Friend that there is a serious difficulty in achieving what he is asking for. In a rural area one individual councillor of the county council must have a small electoral area because the population is sparse throughout that geographical area; and if, as a result, that electorate is to be small in number, so that it does not cover too large a geographical area, it follows, either that the other divisions in the county are to have electorates of similar size and that there will therefore be a substantially over-large council, or that some divisions will have fewer electors than others within that county.

Despite what my hon. Friend said, I do not think that there is any alternative to that. It means that we are back on the question of rural weighting, and on that issue the Government have made their position clear. They put out the consultative paper to which my hon. Friend referred, they received the views of all the local authority bodies and all the political parties, and my right hon. Friend made clear on Second Reading that the principle of rural weighting should no longer be continued in local government.

I can see the strong argument which my hon. Friend puts forward, but other hon. Members on both sides of the House have argued equally strongly the case for urban weighting. I do not want to say tonight that one case is better than the other; arguments can be put forward on behalf of each. The Government have decided that the only fair and sensible thing to do is to decide that everyone's vote should count the same, and that is what the Bill provides by the wording in Schedule 11. I know it will disappoint my hon. Friend, but I must ask the House not to accept the Amendment.

Mr. Charles Morrison

I am a little disappointed by my hon. and learned learned Friend's reply. Amendments Nos. 570 and 772 do not in principle reintroduce rural weighting; they merely provide greater flexibility in the criteria which have to be considered in respect of electoral areas. In certain areas there may be an equally strong or even stronger argument for urban weighting, and my hon. Friends and I may have made a mistake in not introducing an Amendment to cover urban weighting in certain areas. But these Amendments are aimed at coping with the exceptional case, and I accept that there may equally be an exceptional case in an urban area. I should therefore like my hon. and learned Friend to think again about this and consider whether an Amendment to cover both rural and urban weighting might be added in another place.

Amendment negatived.

Amendments made: No. 758, in page 237, line 19, at end add 'of the county'.

No. 759, in page 237, leave out lines 19 to 23 and insert— (3) Subject to sub-paragraph (2) above, in considering the electoral arrangements referred to in sub-paragraph (1) above regard shall be had to. —[Mr. Carlisle.]

No. 556, in page 237, line 37, after 'that', insert 'London'.

—[Mr. Graham Page.]

No. 760, in page 238, line 3, leave out 'so far as is reasonably practicable' and insert— 'having regard to any change in the number or distribution of the local government electors of Greater London likely to take place within the period of five years immediately following the consideration'.

No. 761, in page 238, leave out lines 15 to 20 and insert— '(6) Subject to paragraphs (a) and (b) of sub-paragraph (5) above, in a case falling within that sub-paragraph, regard shall be had to'.

No. 762, in page 238, line 35, leave out 'so far as is reasonably practicable ' and insert— 'Having regard to any change in the number or distribution of the local government electors of the district or borough likely to take place within the period of five years immediately following the consideration— (a)'

No. 763, in page 238, line 39, leave out '(3)' and insert '(b)'.

No. 764, in page 238, line 42, leave out '(4)' and insert 'and (c)'.

No. 765, in page 239, leave out lines 1 to 5 and insert— '(5) Subject to sub-paragraph (2) above, in considering the electoral arrangements referred to in sub-paragraph (1) above, regard shall be had to'.

No. 766, in page 239, line 29, leave out 'the number and' and insert 'any change in the number or'.

No. 767, in page 239, line 30, leave out 'and any change in either'.