Following Monday night’s majority vote for the Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill, Isle of Wight MP Andrew Turner responds today.
His office tell us that he has submitted an amendment to the Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill asking for an exception to be made for the Isle of Wight.
The exception being requested is for the constituency to not be split between the Island and the mainland.
If the exception is made, as it has been for the Scottish Isle, it would then be down to the independent Boundary Commission to decide whether there should be one or two MPs to represent the 110,000 voters on the Isle of Wight.
Cross-party support
Mr Turner has already received support from MPs Eleanor Laing (Con, Epping Forest), Mike Hancock (Lib-Dem, Portsmouth South), Graham Allen (Lab, Nottingham North), Dr Julian Lewis (Con, New Forest East), and Angus MacNeil (SNP, Na h-Eileanan an Iar).
Delayed response from Nick Clegg
Last month Mr Turner wrote to Deputy Prime Minister, Nick Clegg requesting a response prior to the second reading debate. Despite chasing, the response arrived just minutes before the debate on Monday.
“I wanted to know details about how the various exemptions to the rules on constituency sizes had been decided because I would then have been able to raise questions about it during the debate on Monday. However, I only received an e-mailed reply seven minutes before the Commons, so that was impossible. I will now be tabling some Parliamentary Questions to try to elicit the information I am seeking from the Deputy Prime Minister and I will follow up with another letter.
“Mr Clegg has said that either he or one of his Ministers will visit the Island to hear the views of residents. He says he is taking ‘direct responsibility’ for the Bill so I hope he finds the time to come himself. I hope to get answers to my questions before that happens.”
A full unedited version of Mr Turner’s letter and Nick Clegg’s response below.
To The Rt. Hon. Nick Clegg MP
11th August 2010Political and Constitutional Reform Committee
Along with fellow Committee members I was very grateful that you took an early opportunity to give evidence to us in July. However, I share the concerns already voiced by our Chairman about the way in which the Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill is being pushed through, with no time for proper consideration by our Committee. I must admit I had very much hoped that after the changes which led to committee members being elected to their posts that we would have had a stronger autonomous voice with which to hold the executive to account as well as adequate opportunity to do so.
In view of the lack of another opportunity to properly raise these issues prior to the next stage of the Bill’s passage through the House, I hope you will assist me with an early response to the points made in this letter.
To put my questions into context, during the evidence session on 15th July you told us that we should ‘come to terms with the need for extensive political reform in order to re-establish public trust in what we do here in their name and on behalf of constituents’. You also forcefully made some points with which I am very much in agreement; namely that, power should be accountable with adequate checks and balances, and that in the past too much power has been insufficiently transparent and that politicians need to be held to greater account.
During the evidence session I asked you about the principles you had taken into account in making the two Scottish Island constituencies exempt from the proposals about electoral size in the Bill. You told me that both constituencies were divorced from the mainland ‘in a way that is widely recognised to be unique’, quoting the time that it takes for a ferry to get to the Shetland Islands from the Scottish mainland. You neglected to mention, of course, that both constituencies enjoy scheduled air services, From Inverness you can fly to the Western Isles in 40 minutes and Orkney in 45 minutes. Indeed the official tourism website for Orkney www.visitorkney.com on their ‘getting here’ page says :
‘Remote from the harassing turmoil of modern urban life, but easily accessible seven days a week – Orkney is nearer than you think.’
Sumburgh Airport on Shetland is apparently the fourth busiest airport in Scotland.
I would be grateful if you could give details about the threshold of ‘remoteness’ you used when making decisions about the exemption of these two constituencies from the legislation regarding electoral quotas, and also what are the factors you consider to be ‘unique’ to these constituencies.
You told the Committee that the two constituencies were very large because of the ‘dispersed nature of the islands’ that form them, from which I inferred that you felt that any additional travelling time needed to travel around the constituency should be taken into account. Was that assumption correct, and if so what consideration was given to balancing that time burden against the reduced workload that arises from serving a much smaller number of electors?
You said you thought that nobody had spoken to Rt Hon Charles Kennedy MP about the geographic limit on constituencies prior to announcing the decision about the geographic cap on constituency size. Could you please confirm that neither Ministers nor civil servants did so and that no representations were received on the issue?
Could you also confirm those points in relation to the two Scottish Island exceptions?
When talking about the geographic cap on a constituency size you said that ‘the practical effect is pretty limited’. I understand that the Boundary Commission can approach the review in a number of ways, but could you kindly let me know what assessment was made of how many constituencies might be affected by the geographical cap of 30,000 square kilometres?
With regard to the geographic cap you decided the ‘best rule of thumb would be take approximately the size of the largest constituency presently’ and take that forward as a maximum. Can you please explain why that principle was adopted for the geographic size of constituencies, but not applied to the number of electors in existing constituencies?
Both existing exceptions and the third possible exemption to the proposed rules on the size of parliamentary constituencies apply to Scottish constituencies. Yet you have apparently decided that all other constituencies will have to be more equal, not just Scottish constituencies. This leads to an imbalance in favour of Scottish voters, to the detriment of the other constituent nations; this is especially iniquitous as many powers are already devolved to the Scottish Parliament. Could you explain the reasoning behind your thinking?
You were kind enough to say to me that ‘you are well known as an outstanding constituency MP with an electorate of 109,000’. Could you please tell me how you came up with the figure of 600 MPs that will lead to an average constituency size of 76,000? What consideration was given to making constituencies larger than that with a commensurate reduction in the number of MPs and the cost of politics?
You pointed out that there are ‘about 37 seats which are around 80,000’. Do you have any evidence that those MPs who represent larger numbers of voters do not give as good a service to their constituents as those with smaller seats?
During the evidence session on 22nd July, Peter Facey of Unlock Democracy expressed concerns that there had been no debate about what the function of the House of Commons should be or what the number of MPs should be to fulfil that function. He said that we were putting the cart before the horse and saying that we can cut the number of MPs and only then discuss what functions they should be carrying out. Could you tell me why you did not adopt a more measured and balanced approach to cutting the number of MPs?
If the proposals in this Bill are implemented as they currently stand my own constituency of the Isle of Wight will be split and around a third of Island voters would be merged with a mainland constituency. This prospect has been treated with dismay on the Island, and a cross-Party campaign has been formed which has the active support of thousands of people and such organisations as the Isle of Wight Chamber of Commerce and the local media. The local Council has indicated that we should remain as a single constituency and our Parish Councils are also passing resolutions to that effect.
Your own colleagues in the Isle of Wight Liberal Democrat Party have said they:
‘actively oppose the hiving off of any part of the Island in an un-natural and deeply silly attachment to part of the mainland’.
Opposition to these plans is staunch and united. The coalition Government has given a commitment to a fundamental shift of power from Westminster to people. The Government has also committed to promote decentralisation and democratic engagement, and end the era of top-down government by giving new powers to local councils, communities, neighbourhoods and individuals. Yet there will be no opportunity for the residents of the Isle of Wight to appeal against the decision to break up the Island as a single Parliamentary constituency.
Under the circumstances I believe it would be appropriate for either the Prime Minister or yourself as his Deputy to visit the Island to hear how my constituents feel. I have already invited the Prime Minister and I enclose a copy of my letter to him. In the event that he is unable to visit the Island within the requested timeframe, and taking into account your own words about taking direct responsibility for the political and constitutional reform agenda, I would welcome confirmation that you will come yourself to the Island prior to the Committee Stage of the Bill. It would clearly be an opportunity for you to explain to my constituents why you know best about how the Isle of Wight should be represented in future, in direct contradiction to their wishes.
I apologise for the length of this letter and the level of detail that I am seeking, however with such little time to scrutinize the Bill in Committee and your commitment to greater transparency and accountability when making decisions on behalf of the people we represent I am sure you will understand the reasons for my questions.
I look forward to hearing from you.
Andrew Turner
Member of Parliament for the Isle of Wightc.c. Graham Allen MP, Chairman of the Political & Constitutional Reform Committee Steven Mark, Committee Clerk
You can read Nick Clegg’s reply which is saved in PDF format.
