Does Size Matter?

We’re hearing a new line on the proposed reduction of the House of Commons. Nick Clegg told the Commons yesterday that “We have a more oversized lower Chamber than any other bicameral system in the developed world.”

By our reckoning, there are only ten countries with bicameral systems in the developed world (fourteen if you include presidential systems with bicameral legislatures), so it’s a fairly weak comparison. Even then, the following table shows why Clegg has his wires crossed:

Three countries (Ireland, Switzerland, and Austria) have more “oversized” parliaments than us. And most of the bigger countries are federalised, meaning that they have a whole extra tier of elected representatives with legislative powers. The only country that comes anywhere near being an appropriate comparison is Italy – and its lower house is roughly the same size as ours.

This argument marks a departure from the ‘classic’ ‘Reduce and Equalise’ rationale – that boundaries as they stand are biased against the Conservatives. The Conservatives went into the last election with a manifesto pledge on ‘Fair Vote Reforms’ that focused exclusively on this proposal. Again we thought we’d separate the fact from the fiction.

Here’s what it takes to get elected in Britain and its constituent nations.

Taking Britain as a whole, the average Labour seat is about 2,000 electors smaller than the standard size of a constituency, and the average Conservative seat about 2,000 electors larger. These are not large discrepancies, at 2.7% above and below the average, and politically of little consequence. If – and this is a highly artificial exercise – one could magic into existence constituencies to make both Labour and Conservative seats conform exactly to the British average, this would mean adding 8 seats to the Conservatives and taking 7 away from Labour.

The average constituency is a bit smaller in Scotland than in England, despite the equalised basis on which they have been allocated. This is for two reasons – allowance is made for the particular difficulties of Scottish Highland and Island geography, and because the numbers of registered electors have declined in the big city areas of Scotland. The average Scottish Labour seat, though, is only 919 electors smaller than the average British Labour seat, suggesting that Scotland’s over-representation is not a huge issue in overall electoral system bias. If the Conservatives had done better in Scotland (for instance, if their hopes of winning 11 seats had come off) this source of bias would have been reduced even further.

The Conservatives did gain ground in Wales in 2010, and the small size of Welsh constituencies is a factor in size differences between the parties. The 8 Conservative MPs from Wales actually tend to represent rather fewer electors each (879) than the 26 Welsh Labour MPs. Tory success in Wales therefore reduced this source of intra-party difference a bit, but with Welsh Labour providing 10% of the Parliamentary party this drags the average size of Labour seat down a bit more than 8 Tories among 305.  The over-representation of Wales is one that may be justifiable at present given the need to protect the interests of a smaller nation in a devolved state in which the majority-English national legislature retains such extensive powers over Wales, but it is certainly worth revisiting as devolution proceeds.

In England, the average Conservative seat is 1.4% (1,003 electors) over the English standard size, and the average Labour seat 2.4% undersized (1,744 electors), a very small differential.  This is worth 3 more Tory seats and 5 fewer Labour seats, again hardly the vast disparities that some politicians and commentators profess to believe in.

The problem lurking in the background is that all these numbers are based on registered electors. The number on the electoral register in a constituency is not a stable figure. It rises and falls with genuine population movements, the electoral cycle (it now being possible to join the register a lot later than previously possible during an election campaign) and administrative decisions. The introduction of Individual Electoral Registration will, if Northern Ireland’s experience is anything to go by, make the registered electorate a more volatile number than it has been until now.

The main administrative factor is that some people who are qualified to vote are easy to find, and some are not. If a person lives in a whole house (rather than a flat), has lived there several years, and has English (or Welsh) as their first language, they are likely to be very easy to get on the register. If someone is young, has moved recently, lives in a rented subdivided house, or is vulnerable by means of language or learning difficulties, they are going to be difficult to get onto the register. Electoral Commission studies have repeatedly found large scale under-registration, concentrated in the cities (a 2010 study found 75% registration in Glasgow, suggesting that far from being over-represented the city should have one or two more constituencies). If under-registration is a problem in the cities, Labour seats are disproportionately affected.

If electoral registration is 90%complete in Labour seats, and 94% in Conservative seats – as is quite possible given the urban concentration of Labour seats -  the average English Labour MP in fact has more people qualified to be electors than the average English Conservative MP.

There are some relatively minor size effects, stemming mostly from the fact that two areas where the Conservatives are electorally weak (Wales and Scotland) have rather smaller constituencies than average. But again the case that the Conservatives are seriously disadvantaged by biased boundaries is weak.

We’ve already looked in depth at what the proposals might mean for Wales and Scotland. With seats in the Welsh Assembly tied to the Welsh seats in the House of Commons by law, we could see the Senedd reduce to a size that renders it incapable of governing. In Scotland the new constituencies would have to take a knife to well-established communities.

Voices from the government benches have echoed some of these concerns, with Conservative Isle of Wight MP Andrew Turner launching a campaign to stop the Government slicing his ‘oversized’ constituency in two and giving half to another MP.

If our House of Commons isn’t oversized and boundaries aren’t unfair perhaps it’s  time for the coalition to change the record.  This government seems determined to pursue this ‘Reduce and Equalise policy,  but it needs to pick its arguments carefully and be fully aware of the unintended consequences of such a move.