Reduce the number of MPs and you automatically reduce the size of the gene pool, says Anthony King in today's Observer
“Tomorrow the House of Lords debates the blandly named parliamentary voting system and constituencies bill. Their lordships will probably focus their attention on the alternative vote, but they might care to spend a little time discussing the government's proposal to reduce the size of the House of Commons from 650 MPs to 600.
The idea sounds attractive but is actually a very bad one. Nick Clegg, the bill's principal parliamentary proponent, claims that the number of MPs has inexorably crept up. Not so. The number of MPs is lower today than it was a decade ago and no higher than 20 years ago. There are more MPs now than there were immediately after the war, but in 1945 there were 640. An increase from 640 to 650 over six decades hardly constitutes hyper-inflation.
More to the point, if the number of MPs has increased marginally the number of their constituents – the people they are supposed to serve – has soared. At the end of the war, the average MP had roughly 66,000 constituents of all ages. By 1980, because of the increase in Britain's population, that number had risen to more than 88,000. It now stands at nearly 96,000. If the government gets its way, by the next election it will be 105,000 – an increase since the war of roughly 60%.
That by itself would result – and has already resulted – in MPs having heavier constituency workloads. But, of course, constituents nowadays expect far more of their MPs than they once did. Far more constituents email, phone and write to their MP. The "good constituency member" was once a relatively rare beast. Now all MPs are expected to be diligent – and may be punished if they are not.
Clegg claims that cutting the number of MPs will yield an annual saving of £12m. Perhaps, but that notional saving is liable to be reduced when MPs demand – and vote themselves – increased resources for carrying out their constituency responsibilities. The Electoral Commission is also likely to need more money to carry out a radical redrawing of constituency boundaries.
Moreover, reducing the number of MPs, far from bringing their elected representatives closer to the people, would also in many cases have the effect of increasing the distance – including the physical distance – between them. At the same time, the proposed wholesale re-jigging of constituency boundaries would inevitably disrupt those ties that already exist between MPs and "their" people.
But the real crux of the matter is none of the above. What really matters is that one of the House of Commons's principal functions – some would say almost its only function – is to provide the "gene pool" from which most ministers are drawn. Reduce the number of MPs and you automatically reduce the size of the gene pool.
That might not matter so much if there were many fewer ministers than there are now and/or if prime ministers had a larger body of really able parliamentary supporters to draw upon. But the number of government ministers, unlike the number of MPs, has expanded enormously – depending on how one does the count, the government now consists of at least 84 ministers compared with only 36 a century ago – and party leaders privately despair of the quality of many of those they feel obliged to appoint.
Reducing the number of MPs would have yet another regrettable knock-on effect. It would reduce at a stroke the number of backbench and opposition MPs available to scrutinise legislation and hold the government to account. The House of Commons, compared with other national legislatures, is already a feeble affair. The present proposal would enfeeble it further.”
Anthony King is professor of government at Essex University and author of The British Constitution
