Parliamentary Constituencies (Amendment) Bill: Committee Stage — House of Commons, 2018-06-19
Topic: Government Operations
Siobhain Ann McDonagh (Labour, Centre-left): It has been the honour of my life to represent the constituency in which I was born for the last 21 years. For all but a brief and unheralded period as a Whip, I have been a Back-Bench MP. I do not regard my job as second rate to any shadow Minister or Minister, as the role of constituency MP is a vital one in our democracy and political discourse. Everything that has happened over the past 20 years has made me feel that even more. Whether on Brexit, austerity and the huge effects of significant cutbacks in public expenditure that have fallen on the poorest in our constituencies, people who have had hard times finding work, people who cannot find homes or people who feel that the NHS is not meeting their needs, it is our job to represent those voices. Reducing the number of constituencies would make that job harder. It would make it more difficult to represent the voiceless and therefore to keep our political show on the road Under the first proposals from the Boundary Commission, my constituency of Mitcham and Morden was to be split across five different parliamentary constituencies. That is the fault not of the Boundary Commission, but of the rules that it was required to enforce. One fairly moderately sized London constituency was to be split between Streatham, Wimbledon, Tooting, Sutton and Cheam, and Carshalton and Wallington—a total of four different London boroughs. Whether I continue to be the MP for Mitcham and Morden or not is not the point. My constituency has deep and abiding ties that bind it, including hundreds of years of history in the parishes of Morden and Mitcham. People believe that they live in an area, that they are part of a community and that they know who to blame when things go wrong So why do it? Why reduce the number to 600? Why not 700? Why not 550? Why 600? People talk about equalisation. What do we mean by equalisation? We mean the numbers in the parliamentary constituency. But what about the people who live in my constituency, some 11,000 of them, who cannot vote in a parliamentary election but can vote in a local election? When somebody comes to my advice surgery, I—like, I am sure, all Members of this House—do not ask them, "Are you an EU citizen? Can you vote in a parliamentary election? Are you on the electoral register?" That is not my job. It is my job to represent my constituents, whatever their status, to the best of my ability Equalisation—what equalisation? What list, what community, and what factors? We know that young people are less likely to be registered than older people. We know that certain ethnic minorities are less likely to be registered. We know that private renters are less likely to be registered. We know all those things but we wish to exclude those people and have more of them living in some urban constituencies. Is a poor black boy not as entitled to be represented as an older woman from the home counties? Equalisation—what equalisation We hear about saving money. I have a suggestion: if we want to save public money, which is a perfectly laudable suggestion, why not introduce automatic electoral registration? Victoria state in Australia, with a population of 3.5 million, managed to get 95% accuracy on its register by employing five people. In my borough of Merton, there are currently 155,841 people on a register of some sort, and we employ more than five people to get that number of people on to it. So if we want to save money, we could get a better form of electoral registration But this is not about any of those things. It is not about representation. It is not about saving money. It is not about equalisation. It is about the profound effect of the American Republican party on the Conservative party. It is about issues of electoral registration, presenting ID at polling stations, gerrymandering boundaries and breaking up communities. I have had the absolute honour to fight for President Barack Obama, as candidate and President, in two elections. I have been to Ohio; I have been to Virginia; and I have seen where they deregister people, taking away their right to vote, and gerrymander their boundaries. That provokes anger and discontent, and people feel that they are not a part of legitimate society I urge one nation Conservatives to think about the impact of these reforms on our society at a time of great turbulence. Some things matter more than small issues of political expediency. This is about the way we run our democracy. The fact that our boundaries are determined by rules and not by party political preference is really important to us. We need to have a cold, hard look at what the impact of these boundary changes will be and what this says about us and our democracy.