Peer seeks to break House of Lords deadlock over voting reform bill

Lady D'Souza, the convenor of the crossbench peers, is to try to break the weeks-long deadlock in the Lords over the bill introducing the referendum on AV and redrawing Britain's constituencies. The impasse is threatening to turn into a full-blown constitutional crisis. She is to table an amendment for a vote on Monday that would reinstate public inquiries in proposals by the Boundary Commission to redraw constituencies. The amendment, if accepted by ministers, might be taken as a serious sign that the government is willing to make concessions on the redrawing of constituency boundaries, a process denounced by Labour as gerrymandering. The public inquiries would be exceptional, time-limited, possibly at the discretion of the Boundary Commission and not designed to prevent the complete redrawing of the boundaries in time for a 2015 general election. D'Souza is to make her move following discussions she held separately with David Cameron and Ed Miliband yesterday. The government is removing public inquiries from the process of redrawing boundaries, as part of an attempt to cut the numbers of MPs to 600 and broadly equalise the number of voters in each constituency. The government has said political parties should rely on written appeals to the Boundary Commission but she is hoping that her compromise of time-limited public inquiries might be accepted by both sides. In addition, if her amendment was accepted it might be taken as a broader sign that ministers recognise that they have to make concessions if they are to make sure the bill reaches the statute book in mid-February – in time for the Electoral Commission to prepare for the planned 5 May referendum on AV. In debate late on Wednesday Lord Wallace, speaking for the government, insisted: "It is not a fundamental principle of the bill that there should be no public inquiries." D'Souza has indicated to the government that she would prefer the government does not attempt to tear up Lords rules by introducing anything that smacked of a guillotine on the debate. The Lords, by long tradition, has never timetabled debate, leaving peers to regulate their own debates. The AV bill has been in committee for 14 days, an unprecedented period which is seen by crossbenchers as filibustering that is bringing the house into disrepute. Cameron met crossbenchers on Wednesday to urge them to accept a guillotine. But crossbench peers believe a government attempt to introduce a specific guillotine for this bill would be seen by peers as pressing the nuclear button, changing centuries of tradition as a revising chamber and upsetting the constitutional balance. They are concerned that if a vote on a guillotine was put and then lost, the crisis would simply have deepened. "They would have pressed the nuclear button, and have nothing else left," said one crossbencher. Miliband has given private assurances to D'Souza that he is not seeking to use the Lords to stop the AV referendum, but is looking for specific concessions on the process of redrawing constituency boundaries. The government is introducing a rule that the Boundary Commission must ensure no constituency can vary by more than 5% from a norm of 76,000. Labour claims this will override counties, wards and natural geography. D'Souza is looking at various ways in which the Boundary Commission can be given flexibility to vary the percentage more widely in order to accommodate existing constituency and ward boundaries.