A long night ahead after all?
Kerpow! The Lords have just put the cat amongst the pigeons by "insisting" (as they say in parliamentary jargon) on their amendment for a 40% threshold before a referendum on changing the voting system is automatically valid - if a smaller proportion of the electorate turns out and the referendum backs a change in the voting system, the matter is referred to Parliament for decision. Where whipping a "yes" decision on a small turnout through would be a nightmare for the government...
The original motion was only passed by a single vote; the Lords "insisted" by 277 votes to 215. So it looks as if the crucial crossbench vote is turning out against the government. And so are some Tory veterans like Lords Lawson, Forsyth and Lamont.
Peers are cross because they don't believe their amendment was fairly described by the Constitutional Reform Minister Mark Harper - they say it is not a wrecking amendment because the referendum does not fail on the 40% threshold: it merely leads to the decision being referred to Parliament. And they also indulged in a fair bit of Lib Dem bashing.
It may also be that the normally adroit Mr Harper has given a double hostage to fortune first by mentioning the strong majority in the Lords for keeping the Isle of Wight as a single seat as a reason for the government's concessions on that point (see posts below); words which are now being taken as an invitation for peers to stage an emphatic show of strength on every disagreement with the Commons.
Second, some peers believe the Wight concession abandons the principle of uniform-sized constituencies, strengthening the arguments for allowing more flexibility in constituency size.
And Mr Harper's just had a very narrow squeak on that very point. The crossbench peer, Lord Pannick, moved that peers should again insist on his amendment providing an exceptional 7.5% variation in the size of constituencies - and lost by a single vote.
So the Commons will now have to disagree with the Lords again, and see what happens. That clock is ticking, and it could be a long parliamentary night after all.
~RS~q~RS~~RS~z~RS~53~RS~)
I'm Mark D'Arcy and I'll be writing about what goes on in the chambers and committee rooms at Westminster.
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I love a rainy night.
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The 40% threshold was only really of use to Labour as a hostage to try to get the government to accept amendments to the clauses dealing with equalisation of constituencies. Now that the government has narrowly got its way on the latter, I wouldn't be surprised if Labour peers either back down or don't bother to turn up in sufficient numbers to insist on the 40% threshold next time it pings back to them.
So, that being the only issue left to debate, I don't predict a late night after all.
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What posts below? OK. With a voting population of 108,253 (2006), it is far and away the largest constituency in terms of votes in the UK. Splitting it would certainly make sense but how? Logically, you would take the old local authority boundaries prior to unitary authority. It would work in terms of populations but would probably gift South Wight to the Tories in perpetuity and create a LibDem/Tory marginal in Medina. You could, I suppose do what they did just across the water in New Forest and split east and west. That would split the vote of the old Medina Borough and probably gift both constituencies to the Tories. I am not sure how useful any of this would be but certainly nearly 110,000 people is a hell of a lot just to have one MP.
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The extra Isle of Wight seat that the government have 'conceded' has merely reduced the number of seats to go round for the rest of the country. Most likely this government 'concession' will be at the expense of a further Labour seat lost.
The Conservative MP for the Isle of Wight was happy to see a single constituency for the island, even if that meant his constituents were underrepresented. So this so-called 'concession' actually represents a gain for the government, i.e. a further exacerbation of the gerrymandering that the coalition was already undertaking with the boundary review process.
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At 5:31pm on 16 Feb 2011, IanR wrote:
The extra Isle of Wight seat that the government have 'conceded' has merely reduced the number of seats to go round for the rest of the country. Most likely this government 'concession' will be at the expense of a further Labour seat lost.
The Conservative MP for the Isle of Wight was happy to see a single constituency for the island, even if that meant his constituents were underrepresented. So this so-called 'concession' actually represents a gain for the government, i.e. a further exacerbation of the gerrymandering that the coalition was already undertaking with the boundary review process.
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if this were a football game, that would be described as 'a consolation goal' , Labour currently having a bagful of gerrymandered seats on this criterion!
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As I predicted in comment #2 on this thread, nearly half the peers who voted earlier this afternoon to keep the 40% threshold, didn't bother to turn up to insist on it the second time round, so the government won the day on virtually the same number of votes (for the motion to accept the Commons' disagreeing with the threshold amendment) - 215 in the first vote, 221 in the second.
Tory Lords such as Lamont and Tebbit were being used by Labour peers in the latter's attempts to twist the government's arm to water down the constituency equalisation proposals. This tactic very nearly succeeded - one vote the other way would have swung it.
I suspect if the Lords had insisted on the 7.5% variation for exceptional circumstances, then the government might instead have accepted a 7.5% variation for all seats, so as not to risk arguments over what constitutes 'exceptional circumstances' causing the entire boundary commission reorganisation process getting bogged down to the point where the changes could not occur in time for the 2015 general election.
All in all, a valiant effort on the part of Charlie Faulkner et al!
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