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Parliamentary Constituencies Bill

It seems that this afternoon in some of the debate we are dancing on the head of a pin. We all seem to be in favour, and we are now down to whether the variance should be 5% or 7.5%. I come back to the point I made earlier. Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe international standards recommend a variance of 10%.

It is clear from the debate so far that people are worried about the splitting of communities. A lot of that is because the Boundary Commission takes the approach of building on wards. I probed the Minister on this earlier, and was grateful for the analysis that she gave. As she said, the Boundary Commission is following the rules that have been set down. What needs to change is the idea of following county boundaries and local authority boundaries. You know what? Our constituents really do not care whether their MP happens to have in other parts of the constituency council areas from another authority. Today constituents just tap in their address to find out who their MP or councillor is. I doubt that people in the south of my constituency know the small villages in the north of it.

In fact, many of my constituents are surprised at the size of my constituency in the city of Leeds. There are eight constituencies in the city. One seat is a third of the geographical area. So it is difficult to see where the argument lies for the Boundary Commission saying, “We must keep constituencies within a local authority because it confuses people if we don’t.” It does not. People are only interested in who their MP is and who empties their bins. They really do not care which other bits of the constituency might have other bits in it.

On that basis, by far and away the most sensible thing that the Boundary Commission can do in this electoral review is, as my hon. Friend the Member for Romford (Andrew Rosindell) has said several times, to build on polling districts, which are much smaller. To put that into perspective, in the city of Leeds the wards are simply too big to build at 650 seats, even with plus or minus 7.5%. The commission has to split wards. Oddly, I have a polling district in my constituency, not just a ward, that is split between me and the Leeds East constituency.

The reality is that we all love our constituencies. I absolutely adore my constituency. It is my home, my community. I am into my third decade of living in my constituency. It is a matter of huge pride and honour every day I come into this place that I represent my home area and people. It is breaking my heart to lose any of my constituency. No one wants to say, “Well it is time to lose this bit here”; the reality is that my constituency is too big. It will have to have areas chopped off it. That breaks my heart because I love every single part of my

constituency, from the mining heritage to the farming heritage to all the areas around. I have seen how it has grown in the years I have lived there—decades, now. It is very important to me, and I represented it on Leeds City Council before I was honoured to become its MP.

If we build on polling districts, a great number of constituencies will not have to have huge changes made to them. We may be able to keep the majority of the seats as they are and take just some areas out and put them in other constituencies. The vast majority of constituencies may be able to stay the same. That is important, because for me it is a matter of huge pride, honour and love for every single one of my constituents. It will be deeply upsetting to lose some of them, but it is going to have to happen. If we build on polling districts, we can limit the impact that the boundary review will have.

6.44 pm