HL Deb 14 March 1989 vol 505 cc157-60

7.39 p.m.

The Earl of Arran rose to move, That the draft orders laid before the House on 1st February 1989, 25th October 1988 and 8th February 1989 be approved.

The noble Earl said: My Lords, these orders will give effect to the final recommendations of the Boundary Commissions for England, Scotland and Wales after their supplementary reviews of European Parliamentary Constituencies (or EPCs as I shall call them). The European Parliamentary Elections Act 1978, as amended, requires all EPCs to be made up of whole constituencies and to be as close to the electoral quota, the average electorate, as possible. Once the boundary commissions have altered the boundaries of parliamentary constituencies, and these changes have been put into an Order in Council, the commissions are obliged to look at the effect of the changes on EPC boundaries.

The present structure of EPCs was laid down in 1984, using the new constituencies devised in the last general reviews of constituencies which were completed in 1983. Since then the English commission has reviewed 139 parliamentary constituencies and the Scottish and Welsh commissions have each reviewed 30. Many EPCs are now therefore made up of only parts of constituencies. The boundary commissions have reviewed all these EPCs: 34 in England, six in Scotland and three in Wales. They published proposals during 1988 which would re-align the EPC boundaries with the altered parliamentary constituency boundaries.

The vast majority of these changes are quite uncontentious. Comparatively few electors are involved: no more that 375 in any one move in Wales or in Scotland. Even those few changes involving over 1,000 electors in England, with 1,924 electors moving between Cheshire East and Cheshire West and 1,030 between Lancashire East and Lancashire Central, represent less than half of 1 per cent. of the electors in the EPCs involved.

The only area of serious controversy was in the Cornwall and Plymouth EPC, where objections led to the holding of a public inquiry in July 1988. The point at issue here was not the minor boundary changes between Plymouth Devonport and South Hams, but the principle of separate representation for Cornwall. The assistant commissioner who conducted the inquiry considered that a strong case had been made for a separate Cornish identity but he was not convinced that this should displace the primary requirement of electoral equality. In 1988 Cornwall on its own had an electorate of 361,471; the Cornwall and Plymouth EPC had an electorate of 541,768 and the average electorate in England was 552,234. The English commission has therefore recommended, and the Government accepted, that the Cornwall and Plymouth EPC should be modified only by the boundary changes I mentioned.

The orders all follow the same format: Article 2 provides that the named European parliamentary constituencies shall be constituted by those altered parliamentary constituencies set out in the article. The schedules to the orders set out the names and areas of the altered constituences.

I commend these orders to your Lordships. They will ensure that the European elections are fought on the proper boundaries. The changes they introduce are not new: they follow at least two earlier boundary changes in local government and parliamentary constituences. I beg to move.

Moved, That the draft orders laid before the House on 1st February 1989, 25th October 1988 and 8th February 1989 be approved.—(The Earl of Arran.)

Lord Underhill

My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Earl, as I am certain is the House, for explaining these orders. I have read in complete detail the reports of the three boundary commissions. As the noble Earl says, to a great extent the numbers of the electorates involved are inconsequential.

I looked very carefully at the report of the assistant commissioner who conducted the local inquiry into the representations on the separation of the Plymouth constituencies from Devon. I am completely in agreement with the commissioner. I know that there are certain strong feelings and believe that 15 representations were made about the possibility of separating Plymouth from Cornwall. From the figures to which the noble Earl referred, it is apparent that to do so would mean a difference of 160,000 in the single Cornwall constituency as against the electoral quota and that cannot be justified on the grounds of democracy or equitability. As that is a major consideration, I am confident in supporting the three draft orders.

Lord Mayhew

My Lords, we on these Benches also feel some sympathy for those people in Cornwall who object to the arrangements made but we find the orders in themselves unacceptable.

They are what one would expect. The Government have no need to fiddle constituency boundaries when they have fiddled the electoral system as a whole. Once again, for the third time, we find a British Government setting out to impose on the electorate for the European Parliament a totally inappropriate electoral system which suits themselves. Once again the Government have prevaricated and delayed on the Council of Ministers to avoid the implementation of the clear provisions of the Treaty of Rome in favour of a single electoral system. Once again they have obstructed. Once again they are set to distort the political balance of the European Parliament.

In 1984 more Conservative MEPs and more Labour MEPs were elected than was justified by the votes they won. The Alliance won one-fifth of the votes but no seats. In the South-West and the Home Counties we won one-quarter of the votes but no seats. The Government have made themselves a laughing stock in Europe, with a reputation as Europe's prime electoral fraudsters.

I cannot remember when, or indeed if ever, the Conservative Party has won a majority of seats at a General Election with a majority of votes. Of course it knows well that it can win a majority of seats with a minority of votes so long as it can prolong the life of its old, discredited, unfair, undemocratic electoral system known as first past the post.

The last public opinion poll I saw, by MORI, asked the following question: As you know, the next elections to the European Parliament are due in 1989. Could you please tell me whether you support or oppose introducing proportional representation for the next elections to the European Parliament? After eliminating the "don't knows" the answers were: support, 78 per cent.; opposed, 22 per cent.

However, the idea that the voters should have any influence whatever on the way that they elect their representatives to Parliament or to the European Parliament is totally foreign to the Government. The Government's view is that Members of Parliament should choose how they are elected. Conservative MPs in the majority should choose how they are elected to Westminster and to the European Parliament; otherwise they might not get as many seats.

It is a remarkable and scandalous situation. I speak with a little personal feeling on this because I remember standing in the first European Parliament elections and winning a large enough proportion of the poll to win easily in any member country of the European Community except the United Kingdom. I had a higher proportion of the poll than hundreds of MEPs who were actually elected.

Why are the Government doing this? Perhaps the Minister will tell the House why the Government are taking this attitude alone among all the European governments. It cannot be that they think the proportional electoral system will produce a weak government because of course elections to the European Parliament do not produce a government. It can hardly be that proportional representation is too difficult to understand when all the other electorates in Europe cope with it easily. It cannot be because under the existing system an MEP has a personal relationship with his electorate of 500,000 voters.

What is the reason? We all know the reason. It is because the Government are afraid that if they have a fair proportional electoral system for European elections it will undermine their stern resistance to a fair electoral system for the Westminster Parliament. They know that they can get a majority of the seats with a minority of the votes with their unique and discredited electoral system. They know that they can then set up an exclusively Conservative government against the wishes of the majority of the voters and force through legislation on the poll tax and the privatisation of water or electricity or maybe implement policies on social security, health or whatever, again against the wishes of the majority of voters.

Ironically enough, today in many parts of the world; namely, in Africa, Latin America, Eastern Europe and even in the Soviet Union, the idea is growing that governments should be elected by, and be responsible to, a majority of their electors; the same applies to all the European countries of the West excluding Britain and to the election of an American President. There are just a few governments in a few countries that reject the idea. The British Government are one, the Albanian Government another; likewise the Iraqi Government and the South African Government. They all say the same. A government does not need majority support. Power sharing with other parties is incompatible with firm and decisive government. Only one-party government will do.

That is a disgrace. Even before the slightly diminished audience for this debate, I have no hesitation in speaking out at what is a grotesque scandal. I am sure that none of the governments I have mentioned—the Albanian, the Iraqi, the South African or the British—fiddle the constituency boundaries. They so arrange matters that they do not need to. That is the position of the British Government today. I have no hesitation at all in speaking very sharply about it; it is a grave scandal. I await the Minister's reply with interest.

The Earl of Arran

My Lords, I should like to thank the noble Lord, Lord Underhill, for expressing general agreement with the orders. The noble Lord has read them carefully and with diligence and agrees with what they are trying to establish.

I regret that the noble Lord, Lord Mayhew, has chosen to use this instance to mount a case for proportional representation. I remind him that this evening we are debating orders made as a result of reports of the Parliamentary Boundary Commissions for England, Scotland and Wales. We are not debating the electoral system laid down in the European Assembly Elections Act 1978. I do not propose on this occasion to go into the merits of the proportional representation system.

On Question, Motion agreed to.