Orders of the Day — House of Commons (Redistri Bution of Seats) Bill

Part of the debate – in the House of Commons at 12:00 am on 10 October 1944.

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Photo of Mr Thomas Harvey Mr Thomas Harvey , Combined English Universities 12:00, 10 October 1944

I beg to move, to leave out from the word "That", to the end of the Question, and to add: this House, whilst welcoming this Bill as a step on the road to electoral reform regrets that the Bill, by providing that each constituency shall return one or at the most two Members, gives no assurance of securing fair representation in this House of the electorate in proportion to the votes cast. I ask the House to turn from the glowing picture it has had from the hon. Baronet who has just spoken, and which he painted with such pride in the glory of the history of the City of London throughout, the ages, to the Bill itself, what it is and what it might have been. This Bill very fairly represents a selection of the recommendations of the Speaker's Conference, and I agree with all that has been said hitherto about the friendly spirit that prevailed in that Conference, and the happy atmosphere to which the revered and honoured chairman of the Conference so largely contributed himself. But I profoundly regret, and I am not alone in regretting, that the Conference, while producing such valuable minor reforms in our Parliamentary system, left untouched the great evil, that is felt in the country by a large and increasing section of the community, that Parliament itself, from the very methods by which it is elected, fails to be, and must fail to be, fully representative of the electorate of the nation and of the thought and considered judgment of vast numbers of electors, who wish to play their part as citizens in the Government of their country.

It is true that the Bill does—and I gladly recognise it—redress certain grievances. It gets rid of the unfairness of the abnormally large constituency, and it sets up, for the first time, this permanent machinery for the revision of constituencies, so that they may be adjusted, as they should be, to at least an approximate equality. That is all to the good, and I welcome it, but this is a time when we need to go further than that if we are to have a Parliament in future which can face the immense tasks before it, and feel that it really represents the nation as a whole.

When the Prime Minister, a year ago, announced the forthcoming Speaker's Conference, he made it clear, in his statement to the House, that the Government wished for consideration of various plans, schemes and proposals, so that there might be the assurance that the result of a General Election should be fully and truly representative of the views of the people. That, I am afraid, is what we have failed to do. We have no assurance in our existing system that the result of a General Election will be fully and truly representative of the views of the people. Turn to our history in the last 50 years, and you have convincing proof that, at every General Election, there has been some distortion in the representation in Parliament of the views of the electorate. Sometimes, it has been a gross distortion, monstrously unfair: sometimes, it has been small; but, in no case—and we can look at the analyses prepared of the representation in Parliament in the last 30 years—has this electoral system given a membership of the House of Commons truly corresponding to the bodies of electors responsible for its election.

We cannot get any assurance that it will happen in future. It might happen by an accident, but we know that, in certain parts of the country, they could not have it, under the present single-Member constituency arrangement. You will have large areas of the country where there will be substantial minorities of convinced and understanding citizens who could never hope to return a Member, and it is no answer to their grievance to say that there is injustice to other bodies, in other parts of the country. Two injustices to different parties, in different parts of the country, do not add up to make justice. We need a system which will secure, as it has secured in other countries, fair representation for each considerable body of opinion.

Truly, it is one of the tragedies of our history that our system involves, again and again, the loss to Parliament of some of the finest minds in the country. I do not think of the personal loss to the leader—a brave man will bear it bravely, as brave men have in the past-but I think of the loss to the country. Was it right that Mr. Arthur Balfour should be missing from the opening of the 1906 Parliament? [Interruption.] Was it right that Mr. Asquith, at a later time, should be absent from the sittings of this House? The country wanted them both. There is no question that the country, as a whole, did not wish to see the best representatives of large sections of the community excluded from Parliament, and I do not believe for a moment that my hon. Friend who interrupted would want it. He would not wish to see the leaders of parties with whom he disagrees, excluded from this House by an electoral accident.