New Clause 1 - Electorate per constituency

Part of Parliamentary Constituencies Bill – in the House of Commons at 4:15 pm on 14 July 2020.

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Photo of Andrew Bowie Andrew Bowie Conservative, West Aberdeenshire and Kincardine 4:15, 14 July 2020

I am fully aware of that; I was speaking about the entirety of Parliament. I am going to get back to my speech, because I am conscious of time and I know that Madam Deputy Speaker would like me to wrap up quite soon.

I would never suggest that Members of this House would have anything but the good of our country and their constituents as their motive for supporting or opposing legislation in this place, but the practice of MPs voting essentially on whether to abolish themselves is wrong. We saw it with the previous iteration of this Bill in the last Parliament: there was talk of deals and swaps; colleagues and friends were eyeing each other suspiciously over the top of newspapers in the Tea Room, looking out for trip hazards at the top of stairwells. One almost fancied an early retirement, as one of my good friends said to me on my 32nd birthday.

Likewise, we cannot see essential boundary changes stymied by political machinations, as we did in 2012 when Nick Clegg abandoned the then boundary review, worrying that his party would lose about 15 seats. It is important that we oppose amendment 1 in the name of the Leader of the Opposition, which would seek—as it says in the explanatory statement—to “maintain the status quo”, because the status quo does not work. The draft Order in Council giving effect to recommendations no longer being subject to any parliamentary procedure or approval before it is made is an important and positive move, and hon. and right hon. Members should oppose amendment 1, which would remove it. Of course it remains in Parliament’s gift to create new primary legislation to manage this, as it always has.

I turn briefly to the Scottish National party’s new clause 2. I must admit that I was rather disappointed to see that it is so depressing in tone. Protecting seats in the devolved nations is, of course, an admirable thing to fight for, but to do so at the expense of English constituencies is deeply unfair. Had the new clause in the name of David Linden sought to protect the number of English seats, I may even have found myself walking through the Division Lobby with my friend on the SNP Benches.