CONSTITUENCY CHANGES

Sorry Betty, I'm going to bore you this week! We have seen the proposed changes to constituency boundaries from The Boundary Commission for England and Wales. The consultation period ends on the 8^th of December and you can be sure that I will send them a copy of this article! I urge any of you who have an interest to have your say.

The boundary changes first appeared on my radar shortly after the Parliamentary Expenses scandal when many questions were being asked triggered by the damaged reputation of Members of Parliament. This subsided as other more pressing matters engaged our attention but in the Conservative manifesto the question popped up again. Once in power, the coalition government proposed the changes as an add-on to the referendum on changing the voting system. This caused an immediate furore as it was seen to be muddying the waters and this was exacerbated by holding the referendum on a day when other votes, particularly the Scottish Parliamentary elections, were being taken and could skew the result. Eventually, though on the original date on the grounds of cost, the question was modified to “At present, the UK uses the “first past the post” system to elect MPs to the House of Commons. Should the “alternative vote” system be used instead?” We all know the result, 'first past the post' remained in place and the supporters of change retired to their corners, bruised and battered. This left the question of boundary changes on the agenda and the coalition decided to direct the Boundary Commission to examine the matter. Though nominally independent, the Commission were given a clear brief which was to 'rationalise' the existing boundaries to give constituencies that had roughly the same number of electors in each. At the present time there are 650 constituencies in the UK with an average of about 70,000 electors in each but widely varying areas due to different densities of population.

This is where I first run into difficulties when I try to understand the need for change. We are told that the number of MPs will fall slightly and that this will result in a saving. I have yet to see a 'saving' of this sort that actually resulted in less money being spent. We are also told that because of changing population distribution, more people living in large towns and cities, discrepancies between the number of electors means that some constituencies are over-represented and some under represented in terms of voter numbers. I have no doubt that this may be true but is this causing serious damage to the governance of the country? At this point the cynical (or realistic) part of my brain kicks into gear. One thing I am certain of is that no political party would propose changes that could damage their representation. The experts in this field tell us that the most likely overall result would be damage to the Labour and LibDem parties. This figures! By the way, I recently came across a definition of 'expert' by the famous physicist Niels Bohr, he said that an expert was a person who had made all the possible mistakes in his/her particular field. I like it!

So, the prospect of the changes makes me confused and suspicious. Perhaps it might be helpful to look at the history, no surprise there! We need to start by looking at the old Clitheroe seat which used to have two seats in Parliament. The borough's representation was reduced to one MP by the Reform Act of 1832. In 1885 the parliamentary borough was abolished and the name transferred to a new county division which returned returned one MP until it was abolished for the 1983 general election being largely replaced by the new Ribble Valley constituency. Clitheroe returned a Liberal or Conservative member and was considered to be a safe 'Shire Seat'. However, in 1902 the good shire Tories and Liberals got a bit of a shock. There was a by-election caused by the raising to the Peerage of Sir Ughtred Kay-Shuttleworth as Baron Shuttleworth of Gawthorpe and David James Shackleton, the Labour candidate was voted in largely because of the rise of the cotton industry in Colne and Nelson and the increase in Labour support there. At that time Nelson was nicknamed 'Little Moscow' due to the prevalence of Left Wing politics. Labour represented the seat until 1922 when the removal of the voters of Nelson and Colne by the creation of the new constituency of Nelson and Colne in 1918 caused Clitheroe to revert to the Tories. In the 1945 election it changed to Labour in the landslide but from 1950 until the abolition in 1983 it reverted to the Tories. The present Ribble Valley constituency and is now recognised as a safe Conservative seat with the lower half of the vote split fairly evenly between the LibDems and Labour. In 1983 Nelson and Colne became Pendle and took in those parts of the Pendle Borough, i.e. West Craven, that had previously been part of the Skipton constituency as a result of being on the Yorkshire side of the shire boundary. It's important to note that from this point to the present day, Pendle Borough had identical boundaries with the Parliamentary seat.

The proposal before us is that the Pendle seat will be split. West Craven going to Ribble Valley and the rest of the constituency being subsumed into the Burnley constituency which at present shares its boundaries with Burnley Borough. This is where I start to have problems and to be honest, smell a rat. In recent months there has been discussion about proposals to abolish Pendle Borough and split it up. I have consistently argued against this on the grounds that at the moment Pendle has sensible geographic boundaries, a good administrative record and that change for the sake of some political blue sky thinking would be a grave mistake on the grounds that if it ain't broke, don't mend it. I apply the same thinking to the Pendle constituency, it has the same sensible boundaries, is a tight administrative area and has the advantage that the sitting member has only one local authority to deal with. As things stand, transferring Nelson and Colne into the Burnley constituency would introduce the complication of two local authorities.

A similar argument applies to West Craven. If transferred to Ribble Valley it will become an outlier of a huge area spreading from the outskirts of Preston to the moors above Slaidburn. We already know what the consequences of this isolation can be from our present experience with the Lancashire County Council and I have consistently advocated the abolition of this 19^th century remnant of local government. They are of about as much use to us as a chocolate teapot. My verdict on the proposed changes is that they will fragment sensible existing administrative linkages and will make it almost impossible for the respective MPs to do their job properly.

There is more. Consider the effect of the changes on local government. They will tend to encourage 'reform' and could be the thin end of the wedge in the creation of larger and more unwieldy administrative units. I hold that in local government 'small is beautiful' and stands a better chance of giving good service to local citizens. Here again I am confused, I hear politicians advocating 'localism' and 'the big society' based on efficient local self-help when at the same time they are advocating change which will damage the former and budget cuts which damage the latter. This is obviously either duplicitous or mistaken.

My argument against the changes is that they will do nothing to make administration or effective governance easier. On the contrary, the evidence is that they will damage our existing standards. No allocation of this nature is perfect but what we have now is sensible, has been proved to work and I see nothing that is proposed which will improve it. If you agree, have your say by accessing the Boundary Commission website. I promise that this article will head for them like a winged arrow today. There will be no point in complaining after the fact if you don't speak up now. Action this day!

No pic this week.


Stanley Challenger Graham




Barlick View
stanley at barnoldswick.freeserve.co.uk