Afternoon summary
- David Davis, the Brexit secretary, has told MPs that it is unlikely the UK will be just reliant on WTO rules to govern trade with the EU when it leaves. (See 3.25pm.) He has also said there is no need for parliament to be given a say in the decision to trigger article 50, starting the EU withdrawal process, because when ministers initiate this using prerogative powers, they will be acting with a mandate from the referendum.
1/2 @DavidDavisMP: Article 50 is an example of Crown Prerogative, now backed up by the mandate of 17 million people #Brexit
— Foreign Affairs Ctte (@CommonsForeign) September 13, 2016
2/2 @DavidDavisMP:Crown Prerogative + mandate means we don't need another referendum, election or vote in Parliament pic.twitter.com/4Vmg7GPbKa
— Foreign Affairs Ctte (@CommonsForeign) September 13, 2016
- Nick Clegg, the former Lib Dem leader and former deputy prime minister, has told a press gallery lunch he expects Liam Fox, the international trade secretary, to resign within the next 18 months. He said:
I do feel sorry for Liam in particular. I’m not a betting man, but if I was I would put a fair amount of money that Liam Fox will resign in a huff within the next 18 months.
He doesn’t have a job and he doesn’t appear to have realised that yet. If the United Kingdom doesn’t leave the customs union, which apparently is still an open question in Whitehall, then he is heading a department without purpose because he cannot negotiate all these fantastic trade deals with Papua New Guinea and Tanzania and China and India and Australia.
There’s only 15% of British trade goes to countries which are outside the European Union or with which we don’t have a European trade deal or in the process of having a European trade deal. So this idea that there is these Elysian Fields of unbridled 19th century trade waiting for us, where apparently everyone will give us exactly what we want even though we’ll be a fraction of the size of what we were when we were negotiating partners of the EU, it’s a nonsense.
- The chances of EU citizens settled in Britain retaining all their rights to live, work and retire in the UK after Brexit have been rated as zero by legal experts. As Lisa O’Carroll reports, a leading barrister who specialises in international public law told a House of Lords panel on Tuesday it was “inconceivable” that the laws would survive entirely intact.Prof Alan Vaughan Lowe QC said this was the price millions of people – including 1.3 million Britons abroad and 3 million non-Britons living in the UK – were likely to pay for Brexit.Such was the uncertainty surrounding negotiations and the demands of other EU states, he said, that the British government might have to consider compensation for British citizens abroad if some rights, such as access to Spanish or French healthcare, were lost.
- Jeremy Corbyn has announced plans for “a strategy aimed at making Labour’s mass membership a dynamic organising and campaigning presence in every corner of Britain, in order to empower communities and win the next general election”. It will involve setting up an “Organising Innovation Taskforce” and the establishment of Labour Organising Academies.
- Dick Newby has been elected Lib Dem leader in the Lords, replacing Jim Wallace who is stepping down.
That’s all from me for today.
Thanks for the comments.
Crispin Blunt asks about Guy Verhofstadt’s comments about the UK having to allow free movement of EU citizens if it wants access to the single market. (See 1.48pm.) He says he thinks this is not new.
Davis says the language about the single market gets very confused. People muddle access to the single market with membership of it.
He says the government will seek to acquire the best trading capacity for Britain. That could mean either access or membership, he says.
Foreign Office budget will need to double or treble after Brexit, says foreign affairs committee chair
Crispin Blunt says his committee thinks the Foreign Office budget will have to double or treble after Brexit, because promoting the UK in the world will become much more important when it is outside the EU.
- Foreign Office budget will need to double or treble after Brexit, says foreign affairs committee chair.
Davis says the cabinet committee on Brexit has met at least twice. But that was during August. He expects it to meet at least once a month.
And minister talk to each other about Brexit on other occasions, he says.
Daniel Kawczynski, a Conservative, goes next.
Q: I engage with the Polish community. There have been some anti-Polish incidents, but I am concerned the media may be overplaying them. What can you say in reassurance?
Davis says hate crimes like this are unacceptable and will always be treated firmly.
Davis does not try to defend Vote Leave’s promise about Brexit raising £350m per week for NHS
Labour’s Ann Clwyd goes next.
Q: Why did you abandon the promise to give £350m a week to the NHS when we leave the EU?
Davis says he made no such pledge. She needs to ask the people who did say that.
(Davis was not associated with Vote Leave, which made that promise. He was linked instead with the rival group, Grassroots Out.)
- Davis does not try to defend Vote Leave’s promise about Brexit raising £350m per week for the NHS.
This is from the FT’s Jim Pickard.
Strikingly David Davis admits that when he said last week the government would protect workers rights post-Brexit twas only "personal view."
— Jim Pickard (@PickardJE) September 13, 2016
And this is from the Tory committee member Nadhim Zahawi.
@PickardJE He also said that there was NO disagreement from within Gov. Jim you need to tweet the whole quote.
— Nadhim Zahawi (@nadhimzahawi) September 13, 2016
Blunt asks what the government will do to ensure parliament is kept informed. The European parliament will be kept informed, and in some cases MEPs will be given information on a confidential basis. Will that go to parliament too?
Davis says the government will not give away its negotiating position. But he will ensure that select committee chairs getting the information going to MEPs in confidence.
Crispin Blunt asks Davis to send the committee a copy of the reply the government will be sending to the memo from the Japanese government setting out Japan’s Brexit demands (pdf).
Labour’s Mark Hendrick goes next.
Q: Do you envisage a bespoke agreement for the UK? Will it be brought out of a hat like a rabbit at the end of this process?
Davis says the government will act in the national interest.
Q: The Japanese have said what Japanese businesses fear is a situation where they cannot say what way the negotiations are going. That is true of companies around the world.
Davis says Hendrick should go back to what the Japanese ambassador said on the Today programme on the first day of the G20.
Q: What about going back to blue, British passports - not these “pink” EU things?
Davis says he is not in the business of symbolism. He is in the business of delivery.
Andrew Rosindell, a Conservative, goes next.
Q: Some people are worried the government will not leave. What actions can you take, even small actions, to reassure people?
Davis says his department has been set up. The decision has been taken by the people, and the government will deliver it.
The PM has said time and time again there will be no second referendum and no reversal, he says.
Q: Could we look at Efta as a transitional option? We could leave the EU earlier, and go into Efta.
Davis says he does not see that as an option.
The government’s plan is to leave the EU at the end of the process.
Until then, the government will obey EU law and “be a good EU citizen”.
At the end “we will be a good global citizen”, he goes on.
Crispin Blunt goes next.
Q: The talk of “grey hair” is a bit worrying. Have you found it difficult getting experienced staff.
No, says Davis. He says only today a senior law firm offered to second three partners to the department.
Daniel Kawczynski, a Conservative, goes next.
Q: Why is it taking so long to trigger article 50?
Davis says that the government has to do the analysis first. This is time consuming.
For example, look at the “passporting” issue that allows the City to trade in the EU. Some sectors are heavily affected; others aren’t.
Q: Do you have sufficient resources?
Davis says that is not the problem. But it has taken time to set up a department.
His staff are young, smart people. But they may not have experience in the City or in industry. In the next phase he wants to bring in people “with grey hair”, he says.
Q: When do you think other EU leaders will complain about the amount of time the UK is taking to trigger article 50?
Some people are saying that already, Davis says.
But they are the other side of the negotiation.
And they need time too, he says.
He says Michel Barnier, the European commission official in charge of Brexit, is setting up his own unit too. He has 25 people working for him, Davis says.
Labour’s Mike Gapes goes next.
Q: You said Brexit should not be used to undermine workers’ rights. Is that your personal view, or the government’s view?
Davis says he was giving his personal view. But he has no reason to think the government would do something different.
He says in a negotiation it is a mistake to identify red lines. If you do that, your opponent goes straight for the red lines, he says.
David Davis keeping his cards close to his chest: "If you lay out red lines, your opponent will go straight for them & use them as leverage"
— Jack Blanchard (@Jack_Blanchard_) September 13, 2016
UPDATE: This is from Gapes.
In @CommonsForeign @DavidDavisMP told me workers should not lose rights under Brexit but only his personal view not that of the government
— Mike Gapes (@MikeGapes) September 13, 2016
Updated
Here is Vote Leave Watch, a campaign intended to hold the Brexit campaign to account, on Davis’s comments about the WTO. (See 3.25pm.)
Davis admits that UK would fall onto WTO arrangements if we leave and get no trade deal. Means destructive tariffs on UK exports #LeaveWatch
— Vote Leave Watch (@VoteLeaveWatch) September 13, 2016
Davis says he sees “nothing to fear” in any of the possible Brexit negotiation outcomes
Davis says it is a bad idea to go into a negotiating fearing any of the outcomes.
He says:
I see nothing to fear in any of them [the potential outcomes].
- Davis says he sees “nothing to fear” in any of the possible Brexit negotiation outcomes.
For example, people cite the costs of various options, he says. But they do not look at what could be done to mitigate those costs.
As an example of the preparatory work going on, Davis says his department is doing an assessment of the cost of non-tariff barriers. But it won’t necessarily publish this information. That would be “a gift to the other side”, he says.
Davis says his department has about 200 people in it. He is taking a small number of very high calibre civil servants from departments. But he is not trying to duplicate the work department do.
Nadhim Zahawi, a Conservative, goes next.
Q: You cannot give a running commentary on negotiations. But when do you expect the government to agree a clear set of objectives?
Davis says this is the main reason Theresa May has said article 50 will not be triggered until the the new year because the government is assessing negotiating aims and negotiating tactics. It will settle those some time in the new year.
He would rather go a month late and get it right than go a month early, he says.
He says the PM has said article 50 will not be triggered this year. But she has also said the people expect the government to act expeditiously.
Once it it established its aims, the government will say something about them, he says.
Davis says it is unlikely UK will be just reliant on WTO rules to govern trade with EU when it leaves
Blunt says he asked another question in his letter to Davis. He asked on what terms would the UK trade with the EU if no free trade deal has been struck by the time we leave. Davis said in his reply to the letter that the government hoped to get a good deal.
Q: But the government cannot guarantee getting an agreement in time, can it?
Davis says the UK could end up relying on World Trade Organisation (WTO) rules. But that is not a “likely outcome”, he says.
- Davis says it is unlikely the UK will be just reliant on WTO rules to govern trade with the EU when it leaves.
Blunt says he wrote to Davis asking if the government could put into effect all EU regulations that become redundant when the UK leaves in a single act of parliament. But Davis wrote back saying he could not reply, because a court case about the government’s right to use article 50 is underway. Blunt says he does not follow this reasoning.
Davis says you could try to pass one massive piece of legislating transferring all EU laws into UK laws.
He says simple legislation would help the government go early.
Alternatively, the government could try to put into effect EU regulations with a mix of primary legislation and secondary legislation.
Or, finally, it would try to do it all in one massive bill, making less use of delegated powers, he says.
Blunt says the committee took the view that not planning for Brexit was “gross negligence”. It would be gross negligence too to assume the Lords will pass this bill.
Davis says he has yet to take this decision.
He says he wants to leave the EU within the normal article 50 timetable (two years). And he will make the legislative plans to enable that to happen.
But he won’t be speculating on how parliament will vote, he says.
Crispin Blunt, the committee chairs, starts.
Q: Will there have to be parliamentary ratification of the decision to leave the EU?
David Davis says there will have to be changes to the European Communities Act 1972. And they may be other legislative moves.
Q: There is a majority in the Commons for leaving. But that is not necessarily true of the Lords.
Davis says he hopes there will be a majority in both houses.
Blunt says he agrees with regard to the Commons, but it is an “open question” whether that applies in the Lords. Some peers, like Lady Wheatcroft, seem very determined to block Brexit, he says.
Q: Would it be sensible for the legislative process to start soon, so there is time to use the Parliament Act if the Lords blocks the bill?
Davis says he does not accept the premise of Blunt’s question. He says the government will be acting with the biggest mandate every given to a government.
David Davis gives evidence to foreign affairs committee
David Davis, the Brexit secretary, is about to give evidence to the Commons foreign affairs committee. I will be covering the hearing in detail.
Electoral commission says it does not want to be a 'truth commission'
In a recent report about the EU referendum (pdf) the Electoral Reform Society said the Electoral Commission, or another body, should be given the power to intervene when “overtly misleading” information is published during a referendum campaign.
Today the Electoral Commisssion has published its own report about the referendum. It says the referendum was well run, and specifically said it would not be appropriate to turn the commission into a “truth commission”. It says:
One thing we have not recommended, however, is any role for the Commission in regulating the ‘truth’ or the content of what campaigners say. At every electoral event, there is fierce questioning about the accuracy of campaign arguments, and this poll was no different. It is right that campaigners and the media should scrutinise each other’s contentions and that information is widely available for voters to do the same. But we do not believe that a role as a “truth Commission” would be appropriate for us given the breadth of our other functions.
Here are some more pictures from the rally outside parliament in support of the Orgreave Truth and Justice Campaign, ahead of their meeting with Amber Rudd, the home secretary, this afternoon.
And here is Seumas Milne, Jeremy Corbyn’s director of strategy and communications, at the event - doing his mafia hitman impression.
This is what the Press Association has filed on the rally.
Campaigners for a public inquiry into the “brutality of policing” at the 1984 Orgreave miners’ picket have gathered with Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn and other MPs for a demonstration in London ahead of a meeting with Home Secretary Amber Rudd.
Corbyn, shadow home secretary Andy Burnham and veteran Labour MP Dennis Skinner were among those attending the demonstration outside Parliament.
Skinner said he wanted the government to keep its promises.
He told the Press Association that an inquiry would reveal that “what we suspected at the time is true”.
Skinner added: “The police at Orgreave were called upon to write the same thing over and over again about every single miner they arrested.”
Burnham said the Government could not be “selective” about which injustices were investigated and “which were hidden”.
He told the Press Association: “I pay credit to the Prime Minister for the way she saw the job through on Hillsborough.
“But now, all the evidence points fully towards Orgreave.”
The Orgreave Truth and Justice Campaign (OTJC) wants an investigation into wrongdoing around the police’s handling of events outside Orgreave coking plant, between Sheffield and Rotherham, in June 1984.
A spokesman said they hope Tuesday’s meeting with Amber Rudd will “reinforce the case for a public inquiry into the brutality of the policing of pickets”.
Pickets complained of excessive force by some of the 6,000 officers brought in to police the strike. A total of 95 miners were charged following the clashes but their trial collapsed.
Labour members will chose a byelection candidate to stand in Jo Cox’s former seat within a fortnight, party officials have confirmed.
In an email to Labour members, the party invited candidates to apply to be Labour’s candidate in the Batley and Spen byelection by 12pm this Friday 16th September.
Applicants will be interviewed by the party’s national executive committee in London on Monday 19 September and those shortlisted will take part in a consistency hustings on Friday 23 September, when local members will vote for their preferred candidate.
The party doesn’t publish a list of those who have applied because some candidates want to remain anonymous in case they chose to apply to stand in other constituencies.
Applicants must have been members of the Labour party for 12 months prior to 16th June, the date Cox was killed. Jo Cox was shot and stabbed in her constituency a week before the EU referendum.
The Conservatives, Greens, UKIP and the Lib Dems have announced that they will not field a candidate in the byelection as a mark of respect. UKIP member, Waqas Ali Khan, will stand as an independent, as will Jack Buckby for the party Liberty GB.
UPDATE: This post has been amended because originally it said the email had just been sent to Labour members in the constituency. But it has been sent to all Labour members.
Updated
Lunchtime summary
- Downing Street has rejected a call from a cross-party Lords committee for MPs to be given a say in the decision to commence the EU withdrawal process. The commitee said the government should not trigger article 50 (starting the two-year process) without “explicit parliamentary approval”. But the prime minister’s official spokeswoman said Theresa May did not agree. She said:
We take a different view. The government has set out clearly its position, which is that this is a decision for government. Both Houses of Parliament decided to put the decision about whether or not we remain a member of the EU in the hands of the British people and we now need to get on with delivering that decision.
- Guy Verhofstadt, the European parliament’s lead Brexit negotiator, has said the government should trigger article 50 soon, in order to complete the process before the MEP elections due in May 2019. He has also said the UK will have to allow free movement of EU citizens if it wants access to the single market. He made his comments on Twitter.
#Brexit should be delivered before 2019, when EU politics enters into new cycle & the @Europarl_EN starts new mandate.
— Guy Verhofstadt (@GuyVerhofstadt) September 13, 2016
If UK wants access to #SingleMarket, it must also accept the free movement of citizens. Our four freedoms are inseparable.
— Guy Verhofstadt (@GuyVerhofstadt) September 13, 2016
- Campaigners for a public inquiry into the “brutality of policing” at the 1984 Orgreave miners’ picket have gathered with Jeremy Corbyn and other MPs for a demonstration in London ahead of a meeting with Home Secretary Amber Rudd.
- Theresa May has met Myanmar’s leader Aung San Suu Kyi for talks in Number 10. They were due to discuss bilateral relations between the two countries and what the UK can do to help with Myanmar’s reconciliation process as well as its democracy and respect for human rights.
- Scottish ministers will have to make billions of pounds of cuts to pay for costly new policies being planned at the same time as a sharp fall in UK government funding, economists have warned. As Severin Carrell reports, some key public services, including local government, face real terms cuts of up to 17% over the next four years to protect frontline services such as health, schools and policing, according to a forecast from the Fraser of Allander Institute, a thinktank at Strathclyde University.
Sadiq Khan, the Labour mayor of London, has said that cutting the number of MPs representing London would be a mistake. The case load of a London MP is “humongous”, he said.
I think the government is making a big mistake reducing the number of Labour MPs in London. At the same time they are increasing the number of unelected peers in the House of Lords as a reward for sucking up to the previous prime minister.
Theresa May has been meeting the Myanmar leader Aung San Suu Kyi in Number 10.
Photograph: Facundo Arrizabalaga/EPA
Photograph: POOL/Reuters
This is from Huffington Post’s Paul Waugh.
On boundary review, No10 source makes clear PM is "committed to the secondary legislation" needed to enact reduction of MPs from 650 to 600.
— Paul Waugh (@paulwaugh) September 13, 2016
And this is from Politics Home’s Kevin Schofield, who has probably been speaking to a different source.
Senior Conservative source says there a "60-40" chance the boundary changes WON'T happen.
— Kevin Schofield (@PolhomeEditor) September 13, 2016
Anthony Wells, the YouGov research director and author of the UK Polling Report blog, has written a good analysis of the impact of the boundary commission changes. He thinks that, under these plans, the Tories would have won a majority of 40 in 2015.
Here’s an extract.
Looking at England and Wales as a whole, it looks as if the Conservatives would lose 10 seats, Labour would lose 28 seats, the Liberal Democrats would lose 4 and the Greens would lose one (by my calculations the new Brighton North would be a close three-way marginal, with the Conservatives narrowly ahead of Labour). That means at the last general election the Conservatives would have won a majority of 40, rather than the majority of 12 they actually got.
His figure is exactly the same as Lewis Baston’s (see 12.01pm.)
The Conservative MP Philip Davies has spoken out against the proposed boundary commission changes. He told BBC News:
My main concern is that we are reducing the number of MPs. At the same time we aren’t committing to cut the number of government minister, and that will mean that the government will have more control over the House of Commons and it will be harder for the House of Commons to hold the government to account.
The House of Lords constitution committee has published a report this morning saying the government should not trigger article 50, the process starting the two-year EU withdrawal process, without “explicit parliamentary approval”. My colleague Owen Bowcott has written up the report here.
Here is the committee’s news release, and here is the report itself (pdf).
Toby James, an elections expert at the University of East Anglia who runs Electoral Management, a consultancy, has written an interesting blog about the boundary changes. He says that actually 8m people are missing from the electoral register.
If these names were missing evenly across regions, age and socio-economic groups then there would not be a problem. However, the evidence is that the register is less complete in urban areas (especially within London), among recent movers and private renters, Commonwealth and EU nationals, non-white ethnicities, lower socioeconomic groups, citizens with mental disabilities and young people. This means that these groups will receive less representation in Parliament. Political inequality will be hard wired into the composition of the House of Commons.
Take, for example, the difference between young and old. Nearly all (96%) of over 65s are on the register – just under two-thirds (65%) of 18-19 year olds are. This means that the boundaries will be drawn to give elder citizens more representation at the cost of younger citizens.
Here are two boundary commission articles worth reading.
Overall, Labour are probably down by about 25 seats in England and Wales, with the Conservatives net losers by about 10 seats. This would be enough to give the Conservatives a larger majority in a smaller parliament if the 2015 votes had been cast under the proposed boundaries: about 320 seats out of 600, a majority of 40 seats rather than 12.
Conservative toeholds in mainly Labour areas such as Bolton West and Bury North would be switched, but the Tories would strike back in west Coventry, Cumbria and Southampton Test for example.
The Tories are also helped by the detail of changes to free-standing marginal towns such as Lincoln, Stevenage, Harlow and Worcester, where the addition of outlying Tory suburbs and villages will give their MPs an extra thousand or two votes to pad their majorities.
The swing that Labour needs in order to win a majority or displace the Conservatives becomes even larger than it is at the moment, although new marginal seats in London will add some low-hanging fruit if Labour can get a favourable swing.
The proposed boundaries, which will make constituencies equal in terms of the number of voters in each constituency, tear the Labour leader’s seat asunder into the new seats of Finsbury Park & Stoke Newington, notionally held by Diane Abbott, and Islington, held by Emily Thornberry.
Although party rules mean that a Labour MP has a territorial claim on their constituency if the new seat retains at least four-tenths of the old, Corbyn’s seat, the smallest in the UK, was always at risk. In practice, a seat for the Labour leader should easily be found, with the leader’s aides saying that the best outcome would be for “us all to move east”, with Abbott taking up Hackney Central, to which she also has a claim, Meg Hillier – who has a claim to both Hackney Central and Hackney West & Bethnal Green taking the seat of Hackney West & Bethnal Green, and Rushanara Ali, the MP for Bow and Bethnal Green, moving to take the seat of Poplar and Limehouse, whose current MP, Jim Fitzpatrick, is widely expected to stand down at the next election.
Here is some academic comment on Twitter on the boundary changes.
From Chris Hanretty, a reader in politics at the University of East Anglia
For topology nerds: the compactness (area/perimeter) of #boundaryreview proposals is greater than current English constituencies (1/2)
— Chris Hanretty (@chrishanretty) September 13, 2016
Low compactness=a sign of gerrymandering. On this indicator no sign of anything "funny" going on (tho that's often in eye of beholder) (2/2)
— Chris Hanretty (@chrishanretty) September 13, 2016
From Will Jennings, a politics professor at Southampton University
Issues with #boundaryreview: a) basing constituencies on registered voters problematic in terms of representation, b) place/identity matters
— Will Jennings (@drjennings) September 13, 2016
From Philip Cowley, a politcs professor at Queen Mary, University of London
They may be "the 'Tories' boundary changes". But they are not the Tories' boundaries. A small, but important, difference.
— Philip Cowley (@philipjcowley) September 12, 2016
From Glen O’Hara, a history professor at Oxford Brookes University
PM going to find it hard to push these #boundaryreview changes through with v small majority. Another reason early GE may eventually appeal.
— Glen O'Hara (@gsoh31) September 13, 2016
Very early days, but having thought #boundaryreview might be better than expected, first impression: this worse for #Labour than feared.
— Glen O'Hara (@gsoh31) September 13, 2016
So: #boundaryreview. In 1990s #Labour blunted their effect with skill, expertise, attention to detail. Do they have the same resources now?
— Glen O'Hara (@gsoh31) September 13, 2016
Although there have been some claims that the boundary commission plans amount to gerrymandering, the spoof Sir Peter Mannion account has tweeted a helpful link to a 2014 Washington Post blog that makes the point that proper gerrymandering (ie, the American version) is something altogether different - and eye-wateringly shocking.
Your periodic reminder that, no, the #boundaryreview is not 'gerrymandering'.
— Sir Peter Mannion MP (@PeterMannionMP) September 13, 2016
THIS is gerrymandering:https://t.co/6iduThq3Xr
And here are some more general comments on the changes from MPs.
From Labour’s Chris Bryant
Boundary changes are a charade. It's daft to cut MPs when population is growing and base seats on registered voters rather than population
— Chris Bryant MP (@RhonddaBryant) September 13, 2016
From Labour’s Neil Coyle
Boundary review not about savings as rising number of Lords cost more than Commons savings. Ignores MP caseload. Tory vote rigging at worst.
— Neil Coyle (@coyleneil) September 13, 2016
From Labour’s Barry Sheerman
Constituency boundary changes will punish the poorest areas of our country as places with most problems need greatest support from MP!
— Barry Sheerman (@BarrySheerman) September 13, 2016
From Therese Coffey, a Conservative
seems Labour back to Animal Farm politics - some seats are more equal than others apparently, if they are Labour held seats
— Therese Coffey (@theresecoffey) September 13, 2016
From Caroline Lucas, the Green MP
Have major reservations about #boundaryreview but, please, whatever this is, let's not call it 'fair votes'. 1/3
— Caroline Lucas (@CarolineLucas) September 13, 2016
Vast majority will still be left disenfranchised. Upper chamber still appointed. Commons still elected under rotten FPTP #boundaryreview 2/3
— Caroline Lucas (@CarolineLucas) September 13, 2016
If politicians serious about giving people a voice then they need to commit to a fair voting system. Simple as that. #makevotesfair 3/3
— Caroline Lucas (@CarolineLucas) September 13, 2016
Here are some tweets from MPs about changes to their own constituencies.
Big boundary changes for Redditch. Proposals mean 8 new wards in from Bromsgrove and losing the Inkberrow ward.
— Karen Lumley MP (@Tell_Karen) September 13, 2016
Boundary review proposals mean Colchester constituency is set to retain all current Wards and include East Donyland (Rowhedge) from 2020.
— Will Quince MP (@willquince) September 13, 2016
My thoughts on the initial recommendations of @BCE2018 and changes to my constituency https://t.co/qSg6Cya8pM pic.twitter.com/68HyS9CnGb
— Nigel Huddleston MP (@HuddlestonNigel) September 13, 2016
Boundary changes proposals suggest I'll lose Melbourn, Bassingb'n, Mordens, Queen Edith's but gain some new areas. https://t.co/DqidNhTRKf
— Heidi Allen MP (@heidiallen75) September 13, 2016
Boundary Commission proposes changes to Dover & Deal constituency - let me know what you think. Full details here: https://t.co/ZqhFNFh6v6
— Charlie Elphicke (@CharlieElphicke) September 13, 2016
My statement on the #boundaryreview proposals: pic.twitter.com/WMgdNEuZ0E
— Ruth Cadbury MP (@RuthCadbury) September 13, 2016
Gerrymander fears over new boundary proposals as CroydonCentral swaps 2 Labour wards for 2 Tory wards in CSouth to create safer Tory seat
— Steve Reed (@SteveReedMP) September 13, 2016
Boundary changes for Sefton Central more sensible than last time. Formby and most of Crosby kept together.
— Bill Esterson (@Bill_Esterson) September 13, 2016
Boundary proposals for my constituency make sense locally and as part of the bigger picture
— Jonathan Djanogly (@JDjanogly) September 13, 2016
Very happy with Boundary Review proposals for #EastSurrey. Constituency stays intact and not losing any areas.
— Sam Gyimah MP (@SamGyimah) September 13, 2016
What the proposed Boundary Review means for Oldham West & Royton - https://t.co/jlViYiUNy4 #boundaryreview #BoundaryChanges
— ᴊɪᴍ ᴍᴄᴍᴀʜᴏɴ ᴍᴩ (@JimfromOldham) September 13, 2016
Labour is complaining that the boundary proposals are based on electorate data from December 2015 not from June 2016, by which time 2m more people had registered because they wanted a vote in the EU referendum. On the Today programme Jon Ashworth cited Lewisham as an example of a place where there was a 20% difference between the December 2015 and June 2016 electoral registration figures. He was quoting from these figures produced by the Electoral Reform Society which is also objecting to the proposals on the same grounds. This chart shows the 10 areas where the electorate increased the most in the six months up to the referendum.
And here is an Electoral Reform Society chart showing how the seat changes would differ area by areas if the more up-to-date information had been used.
Katie Ghose, the Electoral Reform Society’s chief executive, says using the old data “risks skewing our democracy”.
The fact that this boundary review is being conducted on the basis of registered electors, rather than the actual population, risks skewing our democracy. Areas with the lowest levels of registration are often those that already have the least voice in politics. Young people, some ethnic minority groups and those in the private rented sector are all less likely to register to vote than others. That makes many of them effectively cut out of the new political map.
Ghose also said that the 5% threshold (the rule that all constituencies must be no more than 5% bigger or smaller than the average, 74,769 voters) was too rigid; that cutting the size of the Lords should take priority; that cutting the number of MPs but not the number of ministers would make it harder for the Commons to hold the executive to account; and that the best way to make votes count would be proportional representation.
Here is the chart from the Boundary Commission for England giving region by region figures for the number of seats that will be lost.
Chris Skidmore, the minister for the constitution, has written an article for the Telegraph justifying the plan to cut the size of the Commons and equalise constituency sizes. The Cabinet Office have also posted it on their website. Here’s an extract.
The idea of equal sized constituencies, giving each voter an equal share in our democracy, was first proposed by the Chartists, whose People’s Charter of 1838 called for such a measure to be introduced as an essential cornerstone of democracy.
Nearly 180 years later, this boundary change will help to correct the historic injustice of unequal representation.
You only have to take a quick look at our parliamentary constituencies to understand that the status quo is simply indefensible.
Seats such as Wirral West, with an electorate of 54,232 are given equal representation as Manchester Central, with 87,339 voters. In Bristol West 82,067 voters are given the same democratic right as nearby Bath, with just 60,966 voters, while seats such as Arfon in Wales (37,739) are judged the democratic equal of north-west Cambridgeshire (89,991).
Current boundaries are drawn up on data that in many cases dates back to 2000. By 2020, if we continue to rely on such out of date figures, then MPs will be representing seats woefully out of step with modern demographic changes. We cannot afford to miss the opportunity to address this glaring inequality in our democracy.
This is what Patrick McLoughlin, the Conservative party chairman, is saying about the boundary review.
Boundaries should be drawn up in an impartial and independent way so I welcome the boundary commission’s proposals to implement parliament’s instruction to ensure equally-sized constituencies. Without these reforms, MPs could end up representing constituencies based on data that is over 20 years old.
We will work with our MPs, councillors and local associations in our response to the consultation process. The Conservative party will be following a policy of ‘no colleague left behind’ to minimise the disruption that boundary restructuring can sometimes cause in the short term.
I’ve asked the Conservatives for some guidance as to what “no colleague left behind” actually means. I will let you know when they get back to me.
Here is more from Jon Ashworth’s interview with the Today programme. Ashworth is Labour’s spokesman on this issue, and shadow minister without portfolio in the shadow cabinet.
- Ashworth said Labour was “in favour of the principle of more equal constituencies”. But the party objected to these plans, he said, because they did not take into account 2m people who only signed up for the electoral register shortly before the EU referendum, and after the cut-off point used by the boundary commission when making its calculations.
- He said Jeremy Corbyn was entitled to say that inner-city constituencies should not be enlarged (see 9.22am) because inner-city constituencies were particularly likely to have people missing from the electoral register. For example, Lewisham was said to have 20% under-representation, he said.
- He said that as Labour allocated seats to serving MP, it would not allow the process to be used as a chance to deselect people.
This is not about deselecting MPs. And if people think it is about deselecting MPs, they are going to be in for a shock because this is about ensuring that MPs have the right to contest seats where they’ve got a claim.
- He said some of the boundary commission proposals did not respect natural boundaries.
- He said the plans would disadvantage Labour.
- He said it was hypocritical of the government to propose cutting the size of the Commons when it was increasing the size of the Lords.
CPI inflation unchanged at 0.6%
Here is the Press Association story on the inflation figures.
Inflation was unchanged at 0.6% last month as rising food and transport prices were offset by a slip in the cost of clothing, wine and hotels.
The consumer price index (CPI) inflation stalled in August after stepping up in June and July by 0.5% and 0.6% respectively, the Office for National Statistics (ONS) said.
Economists had been pencilling in a rise of 0.7%.
The ONS said there was “little sign” of the plunge in the value of the pound to 31-year lows following the Brexit vote being passed through to consumer prices.
However, the producer prices index was impacted by the sterling’s slump, with input prices rising 7.6% in the year to August and imported material prices climbing by 9.3% over the period.
The fall in the value of the pound makes British goods cheaper to export on the global market, but makes imported goods and products more expensive.
The retail prices index (RPI) - a separate measure of inflation, which includes housing costs - fell to 1.8% in August, down from 1.9% in July.
Mike Prestwood, head of inflation at the ONS, said: “Fuel costs falling more slowly than a year ago as well as rising food prices and air fares all pushed up CPI in August, but these were offset by hotels, wine and clothing leaving the headline rate of inflation unchanged.”
Boundary changes could give members chance to ditch rightwing MPs, says Labour NEC member
The Today programme this morning played an interesting packaged compiled by Ross Hawkins illustrating the potential problems the boundary changes could cause for Labour. Hawkins went to Wales, and he quoted Darren Williams, a Cardiff councillor who was recently elected to Labour’s national executive committee as one of the six pro-Corbyn leftwingers who took all six constituency seats up for grabs. It was a notable victory for the left.
Williams said he thought the boundary changes would provide members with an opportunity to get rid of anti-Corbyn MPs. He said:
I do think the redrawing of boundaries does present an opportunity for the selection of some new candidates who may be more in tune with the views of ordinary party members.
Wayne David, the MP for Caerphilly (and a non-Corbynite) told Hawkins that a purge of this kind would led to “civil war”.
I’ll be extremely concerned if Jeremy Corbyn’s allies in Momentum took the opportunity of this gerrymandered boundary review to try and purge Labour MPs. If the national executive decides to reopen this matter, then I think it’s a recipe for civil war inside the party.
In an interview with the programme Jon Ashworth, the shadow minister without portfolio and the party’s spokesman on this issue, said Williams was not speaking for Corbyn on this. Ashworth said:
Darren Williams is a new member of the national executive committee. I’m sure people in Jeremy’s office will be tearing their hair out at that contribution because that is not the position of Jeremy or his people.
Today marks an important step in a process that may (or may not) radically reshape the House of Commons, and significantly diminish Labour’s chances of winning the next election. The government wants to cut the size of the House of Commons from 650 MPs to 600 MPs and today we are getting draft plans for new boundaries for England and Wales. Labour is said to be overrepresented in the current House of Commons, on the basis of the number of voters per Labour constituency compared to number of voters per Conservative constituency, and if the changes are actually implemented, the Conservatives will almost certainly benefit. But the “if” is important. The Tories tried, and failed, to implement boundary changes in the last parliament and it is quite possible that rebel Tory MPs, unhappy about the prospect of losing their seats, could block the process again.
Partly this is a story about electoral politics, and the way the voting system impacts on the Conservative/Labour battle. But redrawing boundaries means MPs end up fighting colleagues from the same party for the right to represent the new and most winnable constituencies. This is never an easy process at the best of times, but it poses a particular challenge for Labour, where some grassroots activists are looking for an opportunity to purge MPs disloyal to Jeremy Corbyn.
Here is our splash on the story.
And here you can read more details of the proposals in full.
- Here is the press notice from the Boundary Commission for England. And here is the consultation page, where you can find details of the proposals constituency by constituency.
- Here is a guide to the plans for Wales. And here is the Boundary Commission for Wales website.
The plans for Northern Ireland were published by the Boundary Commission for Northern Ireland last week. And the Boundary Commission for Scotland is due to publish its proposals in October.
Labour has been criticising the plans mainly on the grounds that they are not based on the most up-to-date electoral registration figures. But Jeremy Corbyn, the Labour leader, whose own seat is set to disappear under the proposed changes, has also criticised the entire philosophy behind the changes, saying it is wrong to expand the size of inner-city constituencies. He said:
I’m very unhappy about the size of the new constituency that has been put forward. Multiple-needs areas, such as I represent, don’t need to be too big. They need to be places where MPs can represent them properly, just like anywhere else in the country.
I will post more on this as the morning goes on.
Here is the agenda for the day.
9am: The cabinet meets.
9.30am: Inflation figures are published.
10.30am: Angela Rayner, the shadow education secretary, addresses the TUC conference in Brighton.
10.30am: Sir Alan Moses, chair of the Independent Press Standards Organisation, gives evidence to the Commons culture committee on press complaints.
11.15am: Theresa May meets the Mynamar leader Aung San Suu Kyi in Downing Street
3pm: David Davis, the Brexit secretary, gives evidence to the Commons foreign affairs committee.
4.30pm: Members of the Orgreave Truth and Justice Campaign meet Amber Rudd, the home secretary.
As usual, I will be covering the breaking political news as it happens, as well as bringing you the best reaction, comment and analysis from the web.
If you want to follow me or contact me on Twitter, I’m on @AndrewSparrow.
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