R11-19

In responding to the recommendations, the Government would make it clear that in those areas that fall to the devolved administrations, it is for them to take a view on how to respond to, or act on, the Committee’s recommendations
The Government agrees that the provisions to transfer operational responsibility for conducting electoral boundary reviews to the Electoral Commission should be repealed. The existing independent review bodies perform well within the terms of their remit, and it seems a better fit with the spirit of devolution that work to determine electoral boundaries should continue to be undertaken in that part of the UK to which the work relates.
The PPERA provisions were in part intended to help ensure consistency of approach to reviewing and determining boundaries. We therefore propose that the Electoral Commission should retain an oversight role in relation to the review of electoral boundaries.
The Electoral Commission should have an express power to review the local and parliamentary boundary review process as it operates in any part of the UK, and make such recommendations for improvement of the process as it considers appropriate.
The Government believes there is value in having an independent body make the executive Orders to actually implement boundary changes once the review process is complete. In England, we will therefore wish to consider if the Electoral Commission should retain its role in making the Orders that change local government electoral boundaries in England. In Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland scrutiny of local government boundary Orders is undertaken by the Scottish Parliament, National Assembly for Wales, and Northern Ireland Assembly, respectively. Responsibility for the local government boundary reviews in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland is devolved and it is for their respective administrations to determine the effectiveness of the current arrangements.
This recommendation flows as a consequential from R17, and the Government therefore agrees with it. We will put matters in hand to make the necessary practical and legal arrangements to remove the English local government boundary review work from the Electoral Commission. As with R17, primary legislation will be required to give effect to this recommendation.
The Government supports this recommendation. In Wales, a single joint secretariat already serves the Parliamentary and local government boundary commissions. This seems to work well, operates on a non-statutory basis, and appears to offer a good model for how we could proceed in England.
In England, we will look to harmonise taking forward the unification of the Parliamentary and local boundary commission secretariats with the likely removal of the Parliamentary secretariat from its current host organisation (the Office for National Statistics) consequential upon the statistical reform agenda. The Government will wish to consider whether there should be a greater degree of merger between the Parliamentary Boundary Commission and the Boundary Committee in due course.
In Northern Ireland, it is agreed that there would be benefits in the Parliamentary and local government boundary commissions sharing joint secretariats. Such an arrangement would need to be underpinned by arrangements to ensure that the different lines of accountability that would exist for the secretariat (to the Speaker, the Secretary of State and the Assembly) remained clear. The Northern Ireland Assembly would need to be content to participate in the creation of a joint secretariat if it were to be fully comprehensive.
In Scotland, the post of Secretary to the Boundary Commission for Scotland and the Local Government Boundary Commission is a shared post, but the Commission Secretariats largely work as two separate organisations. The Local Government Boundary Commission is accountable to Scottish Ministers. We are currently considering whether there is a case for more shared posts and functions, and are in discussions with the Scottish Executive about this.
The Government agrees that it is appropriate to review this legislation again, to assess whether it remains fit for purpose some 21 years after it was first made, and 15 years after it was last amended. We are, in particular, conscious of particular concerns expressed in recent years about the current arrangements. These concerns have been expressed, and often recommendations for improvement advanced, by individuals in Parliament, academics working in the field, and, significantly, sometimes by the Parliamentary Boundary Commissions themselves.
We depart from the recommendation of CSPL in one regard, in that the commissioning of this review should rightly be the responsibility of the Government rather than the Speaker’s Committee on the Electoral Commission. It is, however, undisputed that the review itself should be run quite clearly independently of Government, and Parliament should be given the opportunity to debate the conclusions and recommendations of the review.
As to the extent of the review, we see no good reason why it should not take the opportunity to look at all aspects of the current legislation on Parliamentary Boundary Reviews, with two specific exceptions: 1) the deliberate over- representation of Wales and Northern Ireland in the UK Parliament; and 2) that each constituency shall return a single MP. In both cases, the underlying concepts involve much wider constitutional issues than a simple consideration of the boundary review process. On over-representation, this would require consideration of fundamental pillars of the devolution settlement, which we do not believe would be an appropriate topic for this review. The question of single member constituencies is really about the voting system used to elect MPs – this is already the subject of a specific Government review, so would again be inappropriate to include in this context.