Boundary changes: time to join the dots

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/jan/28/boundary-changes-mps-constituency-size

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How many MPs should sit in the House of Commons? It is an important question but it cannot be answered in the abstract or in isolation. How many people should sit in parliament's second chamber? And what are the different roles of the two bodies? These are important questions too. Then there are others, all of them connected to the rest. How should parliamentarians be elected? The same method for the two houses or different ones? How does the UK parliament mesh with the devolved institutions? Or with local government? What is the best size for a Commons constituency? How much variation from the mean should be allowed? The list is a very long one.

The coalition government and the current parliament have been more ambitious than some of their predecessors in attempting to provide connected answers to these connected questions. Yet on Tuesday MPs are due to take a vote that could bring an end to that effort. The return to the Commons of the electoral registration and administration bill will be marked by a government attempt – or more precisely a Conservative party attempt – to keep the proposed new constituency boundaries alive.

Commons arithmetic suggests that they will probably fail. The Tories will vote one way. Most of the other parties – the Democratic Unionists are playing their cards close to their chests – look likely to vote the other. There will be much huffing and puffing about putting party advantage before democracy, most of it true. But the bottom line is that the new boundaries look likely to join reform of the voting system and House of Lords reform on the scrapheap of the 2010-15 parliament.

Do not lament, if it happens, the death of the boundary reform plans. The redrawn boundaries tried to solve one problem, the growing inequality of constituencies, at the expense of a number of others: the tradition of constituencies with a strong community identity, lasting boundaries, a comprehensive and accurate register, and fairness to devolved regions. It attempted to replace a system that was unfair to the Conservatives with one that stacked the deck too much in their favour.

Yet the problems remain, and are serious: too many MPs, far too many peers, unfair voting systems, no elected Lords, and boundaries that are out of date. No wonder the public is cynical. But the lesson of these failures is not that all politicians are rogues. It is that the only effective solution is one that connects all the issues and is cemented by an all-party grand bargain. The best way to achieve this is to plan for it in advance. A constitutional convention, like the one that paved the way for devolution 20 years ago, is an obvious way forward. It is time for an all-party (and none) initiative that learns from the coalition's record of failure.