Now who says we don't need a Bill of Rights?
Democracy is about how a government comes to power: constitutionalism is about the limitations a government accepts in the exercise of that power once it has gained it. With its House of Com- mons (Redistribution of Seats) (No 2) Bill—better known as Mr Callaghan's gerrymander Bill—the present Govern- ment is attempting at one stroke to per- vert both democracy and constitutional- ism in Britain. However complex the details may be, the fundamental issues are clear.
Not that the details are really so obscure. Given a constituency system of electing Members of Parliament, demo- cracy demands that all constituencies should be as near as is practicable equal in size, so that each citizen's vote is of approximately the same weight. Even so, this will not ensure that each citizen's vote is of the same importance, since a vote in a marginal seat is obviously more important than one in a party stronghold. But this blemish cannot be removed with- out abolishing the constituency system and moving over to proportional repre- sentation, which has its own defects and which neither major party supports. Thz best that can be done, therefore, is to ensure that any such vagaries are the results of chance and not of political manipulation.
Hence the decision, by all-party agree- ment in 1944, to entrust the regular re- drawing of constituency boundaries (so as to ensure continuing equality of size) to independent, standing Boundary Com- missions. This decision now stands enshrined in an Act of 1949, amende& by another Act of 1958, in each case passed with all-party agreement. In prac- tice these Acts have a bias in favour of Labour, since they provide for no equalisation between English, Scottish and Welsh constituencies, but only for equalisation within England, Scotland and Wales—with the result that Labour- dominated Scotland and Wales are signi- ficantly over-represented at Westminster. But those are the rules, and for the past quarter of a century all governments have agreed to abide by them.
Until now, that is. For the declared object of the Government's Bill is to ignore the Boundary Commissioners' latest proposals—the first for fifteen years, during which time population movements on an unprecedented scale have led to the grossest inequalities in constituency size—except in a small number of carefully selected instances. The ostensible reason—that if and when the Redcliffe-Maud recommendations for new local authority boundaries are imple- mented there might be some administra- tive inconvenience if, for a few years, these boundaries and those of parlia- mentary constituencies do not coincide— is such a palpable nonsense that it has already been laughed out of court. Nor is the Government's real reason hard to seek : independent experts have cal- culated that implementation of the Boundary Commissioners' recommenda- tions would deprive the Labour party of anything between ten and twenty seats; Mr Wilson expects the result of the next election to be very close, and he hopes that this Bill will enable him to win it.
At the present time some peers are afraid that to defy the Government on this issue would provoke Mr Wilson to abolish the House of Lords, and thus re- move the one clear barrier against any subsequent Labour Bill to prolong the life of Parliament. which they consider a serious possibility. But despite these fears it seems clear that, unless the Govern- ment itself has second thoughts and with- draws the Bill (which has never so far happened except when its own back- benchers have rebelled), the Upper House will sooner or later vote the Bill down.
It will do so, not for any party advant- age—indeed there can be none: for under the Parliament Act the Lords' maximum power is to delay a Bill for a year, which means that the gerrymander Bill will still become law next July, well in time for an October election. It will do so, rather, be- cause the only duty of the House of Lords is to serve as the watchdog of the consti- tution. and because the majority of con- scientious peers—Conservative, Liberal and cross-bench alike; and doubtless, in their hearts, many Labour peers too— are in no doubt that the Government is acting in flagrant breach of the constitu- tion. Mr Callaghan has accused the Tories of being motivated only by pique at being deprived of seats they feel they should win, and implied that they would behave just as badly themselves given half the chance. Even if this were true, it would be irrelevant. What matters is that unconstitu- tional behaviour, whatever the circum- stances, must not be allowed to go un- checked. A gesture of protest, however ineffective in the long run, has to be made. If a despotic government then decides to abolish the House of Lords altogether. as a reprisal, so be it. At least then we shall all know where we stand.
The danger, however, is the reverse: that the Government may docilely accept the peers' use of their delaying power, and so encourage the belief that there is no constitutional crisis facing this country after all. For in fact there is a very real constitutional crisis, which has already manifested itself over the affair of the Kenya Asians, among many others, and of which the gerrymander Bill is only th.: latest and most blatant example. It is this: that the House of Commons can no longer be relied upon to protect either the unwritten constitution of this country or the constitutional rights of its citizens, and that the House of Lords is powerless to do so. This is not simply because of th,t 'undemocratic' composition of the unre- formed Upper House (unreformed, inci- dentally, only because Mr Wilson volun- tarily withdrew a reform Bill that enjoyed all-party front bench support); the pro- posed reformed House of Lords would have been equally impotent.
The plain fact is that a second chamber, however constituted, is not enough. The SPECTATOR has long argued that we shall never succeed in protecting what is left of the British constitution and the constitu- tional rights of the people of this country unless we are prepared deliberately to limit the absolute power of the Govern- ment by providing ourselves with at least the rudiments of a written constitution. including a Bill of Rights enforceable by the Courts and against which the legal validity of Acts of Parliament could be tested. The Government's behaviour over the Boundary Commissioners' report merely underlines just how urgent and just how necessary this major constitu- tional reform has become. But until it does come all those who believe in con- stitutional government must fight the present battle with the only weapons they have.
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