HOUSE OF COMMONS (REDISTRIBUTION OF SEATS) (SHEFFIELD) DRAFT ORDER IN COUNCIL, 1953 (Hansard, 22 April 1953)

THE PARLIAMENTARY UNDER-SECRETARY OF STATE FOR THE HOME DEPARTMENT (LORD LLOYD)
My Lords, these Draft Orders give effect, without modification, to the recommendations made by the Boundary Commission for England in their Report, submitted to the Secretary of State on January 23, 1953, under Section 2 (3) of the House of Commons (Redistribution of Seats) Act, 1949, and laid by him before Parliament in pursuance of subsection (5) of Section 2 of that Act. In accordance with the proviso to Section 3 (6), the Orders will not affect any Parliamentary Election until the next Election after they come into force. They are of a formal nature, I think, and with the permission of the House I will move them en bloc. Accordingly, I beg to move that the Draft 1076 Orders, reported from the Special Orders Committee on March 28 last, be approved.

§ LORD SHEPHERD
My Lords, I do not rise to oppose the Motion that has just been moved, but as a member of the Special Orders Committee and a Member of your Lordships' House I think there is a statement that should be made before we give our approval to the Orders now before the House. When the Special Orders Committee meet and consider matters of this kind, they have before them, in addition to the Orders themselves, the Report of the Boundary Commission for England. On page 2 of the Report in this case, I found two small paragraphs which intrigued me. In these the Commission stated: Only one objection was received to our proposals"— that is, in the localities concerned. It was represented to us that we should defer making any recommendations affecting the parliamentary boundaries of the constituencies affected by one borough extension until the next general review. We had already considered this matter when framing our provisional recommendations and after further consideration we see no reason to modify our proposals. Noble Lords will remember that before becoming a Member of your Lordships' House I was professionally interested in subjects of this kind, and I was naturally inquisitive concerning the two paragraphs I have quoted from the Report. To which order was objection made; and upon what basis were the objections made? To my astonishment, the officer who attended the Committee on this occasion as a representative of the Home Office had not the information by him and could not give me the answer to either question.
This placed both myself and the Chairman of the Special Orders Committee in some difficulty. Normally, we can accept these Reports as being formal, so far as this House is concerned, and can give our assent without much trouble. The noble Lord who presides over the Committee suggested—and I willingly agreed—that we should pass the Orders in the normal way, and that the Ministry should send me later the information that 1077 I required. That placed me in some difficulty, as I realised afterwards, because the decision of the Special Orders Committee is given in accordance with a formula. With your Lordships' permission, I should like to quote the Committee's Report on these Orders. It was: That in their opinion the provisions of the Orders do not raise important questions of policy and principle: That the Orders are founded on precedent: That in the opinion of the Committee the Orders can be passed by the House without special attention, and that no further inquiry is necessary before the House proceeds to a decision on the Resolution to approve the said Orders. The Committee were giving a decision in the dark, and it will be realised that there might be an occasion when serious trouble might ensue.
Since then I have had a first communication from the Home Office which informed me: That the objection mentioned in the Report of the Boundary Commission (which you asked about) related to Ipswich, and it was made by the Sudbury and Woodbridge Divisional Labour Party. No information as to the arguments for the objection was given. I asked for further information, and later I was informed: That no reason was given by the Sudbury and Woodbridge Labour Party for their objection. They merely said that it was unnecessary to make recommendations for altering the boundaries now when the next general review was due to take place in 1955. I say at once, that, had that information been before the Special Orders Committee at its recent meeting, I should have accepted the decision of the Boundary 1078 Commission without question, because I am in favour of these partial schemes of redistribution which arise out of the extension of borough boundaries, so that when general reviews take place we do not have those broad sweeping proposals of formal Redistribution Schemes. I thought it desirable that I should raise this matter in your Lordships' House to-day in order that the Ministers concerned, or their Ministries, may, in future, when placing Orders before the Special Orders Committee, be, quite sure that the appropriate information is available.

§ LORD LLEWELLIN
My Lords, before we pass from this matter, although we have all been interested in what the noble Lord, Lord Shepherd, has said, I should have thought that this House would be unwise to take any action except a purely affirmative one on matters which particularly concern another place and not ourselves. It is true that we have the power not to approve one of these Orders, but I should have thought that was something we should be reluctant to do. This is purely a House of Commons matter, and I think that normally we should pass formally such Orders, which do not affect your Lordships' House any way but do affect the redistribution of seats in another place.

§ LORD SHEPHERD
My Lords, by leave of the House may I say that I agree with what the noble Lord has just said? However, I would suggest to him, and to noble Lords generally, that even when a decision of this House has to be taken in a formal way we should at least know to what our formal decision commits us.