Parliamentary Constituencies (Amendment) Bill — House of Commons, 2017-12-01
Topic: Government Operations
Victoria Mary Boswell Prentis (Conservative, Centre-right): It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Aberavon (Stephen Kinnock), who clearly cares deeply about the needs of his constituents, though I disagree fundamentally about the purpose of the 2011 Act, which rejigged the boundary system. I must take issue with my right hon. Friend the Member for Forest of Dean (Mr Harper) when he described some of those speaking in the debate as anoraky. Far from hearing anoraky people, we have heard sensible people engaged in constitutional matters, yes, but also in one of the most important things we can ever talk about in this place, which is of course the way we represent our constituents. I am particularly grateful, therefore, for the opportunity to speak today We have heard about the Bill’s main aims: to retain 650 constituencies, to allow for a 7.5% limit, to make the boundary commissions’ use of electoral data be from this year’s general election, and to alter the timing of subsequent reviews. Having listened to today’s speeches, I think that many of us agree that there is a case for some change, but I am not convinced that the Bill is the way to go about it. As many colleagues know, I have the enormous honour to represent the area where I have lived all my life. I am very familiar with where my constituency starts and finishes. My childhood was spent living on a farm that crosses the boundary line As you know, Mr Speaker, I live on the Northampton shire-Oxfordshire-Buckinghamshire-Warwickshire border, so boundaries are a concept with which we are extremely familiar. Indeed, we have continual difficulties with cross-border issues, though these are not constituency cross-border issues—we work very well with our neighbouring constituencies, as you know, Mr Speaker. We have difficulties with, for example, police and fire and health services, and of course the church diocese divides close to the bottom of our garden. We are split between two local enterprise partnerships, OxLEP and the South East Midlands LEP. Boundary change is not a new concept to me either. When my father stood down as the MP for Daventry in 2010, his constituency had just been divided, during the fifth periodical review. It was a case—dare I say it?—of two for the price of one, when my hon. Friend the Member for Daventry (Chris Heaton-Harris), who is in his place on the Front Bench, and my right hon. Friend the Member for South Northamptonshire (Andrea Leadsom) were elected to the House. Between them, they inherited the constituents my father had represented for two and a half decades My own constituency was created in 1553—I am looking at my hon. Friend the Member for Harwich and North Essex (Mr Jenkin)—during the reign of Mary Tudor. When visitors come to Parliament and are shown the beautiful stained glass in St Stephen’s Hall, they can find the arms of some of the oldest parliamentary cities and boroughs, and if they look carefully, they see that Banbury is there. Just as we are one of the oldest constituencies, we are also, as several hon. Friends have said, one of the largest, with over 90,000 people on our electoral roll—almost 20,000 more than the constituency of the hon. Member for Manchester, Gorton (Afzal Khan) My right hon. Friend the Member for Forest of Dean (Mr Harper) made some very flattering comments earlier about my ability to represent my constituents, and he also made the point that we are growing locally at an unprecedented rate. As a national leader in house building, we have 23,000 new homes planned in the next decade. We are building houses at the rate of three a day, and these are often not one-bedroom properties but long-term houses for families, with three, four or five bedrooms and with plenty of space for families to grow. Yet, as every new resident registers on my electoral roll, their vote is, effectively, diminished. The vote of Mrs Clark, Mrs Wood or Mrs Smith in Glasgow North is worth almost twice as much as Mrs Clark’s vote in Banbury The idea of equalising the number of constituents predates all of us in this House. The Chartists first suggested it in the people’s charter of 1838, and it is important to read what the charter said. Point 5 of the Chartists’ demands—[Interruption.] This is a working-class movement for political reform—Opposition Members might want to listen. Point 5 refers to equal constituencies, securing the same amount of representation for the same number of electors, instead of allowing less populous constituencies to have as much or more weight than larger ones.