Parliamentary Constituencies (Amendment) Bill — House of Commons, 2016-11-18
Topic: Government Operations
Andrew John Gwynne (Labour, Centre-left): It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Wellingborough (Mr Bone). He made a thoughtful and powerful contribution on the issue. Our politics might not be the same, but he is undoubtedly a champion for parliamentary democracy, and his contribution shone through in that respect I also thank my hon. Friend the Member for North West Durham (Pat Glass) for introducing this important Bill. She has done a lot of work on it, and she makes a powerful point that she is not doing so for her own political advantage because, as she told the House, she is not standing at the next election. I place on record that that will be a great loss to the House. She has been a great Member of Parliament for the people of North West Durham in the time that she has been here, particularly with her expertise on education, and she will be missed. If the last act that she performs is to ensure that the House of Commons can hold the Government to account in the future, she will have done a fine job. Opposition Front Benchers fully support her Bill The Labour party agrees with the principle of equal-sized seats, which has long been written into law and is the main purpose of the boundary commissions’ work. Before we hear messages to the contrary, we have to remind the House that when Labour was in office, we enacted the fifth boundary review in 2006—it was politically detrimental to the Labour party in terms of seats lost—because we believed then, as we do now, that we have to have boundaries in place that fully reflect the general populace. However, the proposals to redraw our boundaries are unfair. They run the risk of being undemocratic. In many parts of the United Kingdom, they are unacceptable to the local populations To see evidence of that, one only needs to consider what the Government have done while espousing the need to cut the costs of an elected Chamber. The nub of the Bill, as the hon. Member for Wellingborough said, goes beyond how many MPs there should be or who represents where. It is about how democracy in the United Kingdom functions. I remind the Minister that, in opposition, the Conservatives promised to curb the costs of government and limit the number of special advisers, but the number of those advisers has increased by more than 20%, from 79 before the May 2015 election—the most recent election—to 97 in December 2015. That is the highest recorded number for a majority Government ever. In total, this Administration have spent £45 million on wages and severance pay for special advisers during their time in office. It is curious that Government estimates show a saving of £12 million from the cutting of 50 Members of Parliament. That is roughly the same cost to the public purse as the severance packages that the previous Prime Minister handed out to those who left office at the same time as he did When the new occupant of 10 Downing Street came into office in July, space had to be found for those special advisers and close friends who had been so callously thrown on to the scrapheap. They might not be experts, but they surely need a chance, too. In September, the bloated Benches of the other place swelled even further when a raft of them were ennobled by the former Prime Minister, taking its membership to more than 800—far greater than the size of this House. That act debased the other place’s responsibility to check and challenge the Government, turning it into little more than an opportunity to honour former party donors and friends.