Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill

Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town Excerpts

Wednesday 15th December 2010 Lords Chamber

Moved by

[Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town]

43: Clause 8, page 6, line 4, at end insert—
“( ) over 25% of the electorate have voted in the referendum,”

[Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town]

My Lords, I start by saying that I should like to de-group Amendment 44. I apologise to those Members of the Committee who did not know that; I sent a notification earlier, but not by the deadline. I understand that the Government have been pre-warned. Clearly, Amendment 44 is a different issue from the others in this clause and in that way it is better for the Committee.

Amendment 43 is a very simple one to add to the noble Lord’s simple Bill. It requires that, for the automatic outcome of the May referendum to be triggered, there would have to be a turnout in the UK of at least 25 per cent. The reasons for this are so obvious that they hardly need stating. The idea of introducing a major constitutional change on a vote of perhaps 10 per cent or 20 per cent of the electorate will seem to make no sense to anyone, be they for or against the AV proposal. Furthermore, on a low turnout, the numerical winning number could be alarmingly small. Should voters be fairly equally balanced between yeses and noes, the all important endorsement for the outcome by popular opinion would be missing.

The intention of this amendment is, in a way, twofold. It partially asks the question whether we want to change. In other words: can people be bothered? Are they interested enough in the matter to turn up and vote? Or, if they are already voting for the Scottish Parliament, the Welsh Assembly, or for their local councillors, are they bothered enough to complete the second ballot on this matter of AV? This is really important, given the understandable desire of the coalition, with which I have some sympathy, albeit a sympathy perhaps not shared by many of my noble friends, to capitalise on the voting date already in many people’s diaries and offer this second choice on the same date. But this makes the threshold even more important, which is the second intention of the amendment. Should there be, for example, a 35 per cent turnout for the local elections, but then only a 15 or 20 per cent turnout for the referendum, what on earth would that say about the saliency of this choice? If perhaps a third of those who actually enter the polling station voted for their Scottish Parliament Member, their councillor or their Assembly member, and then did not take the extra 20 seconds to vote for or against AV, what would that say about the interest in this issue that engrosses so many of us in your Lordships’ House and in this Committee today? I do not anticipate any such lack of participation in that referendum.

I certainly do not anticipate any such lack of participation on the part of those who already go to the polling station. I may have some concerns about London, but that is a different matter which is not before us now. My 25 per cent figure is modest.

[Lord Campbell-Savours]

I am sorry to trouble my noble friend, but that is an incredibly low figure. Perhaps she will correct me, but if a majority of people on a 25 per cent poll voted, it would mean that only one in eight persons had actually voted for a change in the electoral system. Is that what my noble friend’s amendment means?

[Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town]

My noble friend is right: it is extremely modest. As he knows, I am a very modest person, asking for very modest amendments to the Minister’s very simple Bill. Other amendments have been tabled in the names of other noble Lords on both this side of the House and on the Cross Benches which are perhaps a little less modest than mine. The amendment is offered in the same spirit of generosity as when I did not divide the House on the issue of voting at the age of 16 and 17. I did not want to embarrass part of the coalition. It is tabled as a modest amendment to make it all the easier for the Government to accept it.

[Lord Campbell-Savours]

Does my noble friend recognise that, in the event that one in eight people vote to approve the question asked in the referendum, it would be extremely difficult for those of us in favour of electoral reform to justify a change in the electoral system ourselves? We would be placed in an utterly impossible position with such a low turnout and small number of votes cast in favour of the question.

[Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town]

I accept that the amendment is exceptionally modest. My fear is that, without even this as a backstop, we could risk having an even lower turnout and then be faced with what we do at that stage. Because this is an automatic trigger, it is not a referendum to advise the Government or Parliament about what they should do, but would automatically lead to that change. It is essential for there to be a threshold. Otherwise, we could be facing a low turnout and having to decide what to do about it. I am someone well used to dealing with risk management.

[Lord Tyler]

Does the noble Baroness recognise that the problem with thresholds for turnout is that not voting is turned into a no vote? Has she had the opportunity of examining carefully the persuasive argument of Mr Christopher Bryant, to whom reference was made earlier at some length, on 2 November, when he not only argued conclusively on behalf of the Labour Party against thresholds of this sort but was also most effective in securing a massive vote against them: 549 against 31. Has the noble Baroness had the opportunity of examining the arguments of Mr Christopher Bryant and, indeed, those of her colleagues who all went into the Lobby to vote against such thresholds?

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[Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town]

I take a lot of responsibility for Chris Bryant. I have known him a long time. I gave him his first job in the Labour Party. That started a beautiful career on his part; he somewhat overtook me somewhere along the line.

I have indeed remonstrated with the said Member of the other place on this matter, but I think—in fact, I am fairly sure—that I have persuaded him that it is right for us to put this modest little measure to this House. There are two points here. First, if we can never put anything that was not put in the other House, what is the purpose of this House? Secondly, the longer we look at the issues of the acceptability of that referendum, whether one is in favour of AV or against it, the more important it seems to all of us that the result, whatever it is, should be endorsed wholeheartedly and that even those who have lost the argument feel that there was a good turnout and it was a good decision. That is important.

The answer is not that we should not have a threshold. It may indeed be a question of my being too modest in my proposal—it is modest—but I am confident that the acceptance of that principle is something that the Committee should agree to and should be written into the Bill. I find it worrying that otherwise we will have a Bill that makes no allowance for a very small turnout. We might then be faced with the question of how we would deal with that.

Being versed in risk management, which is how I spend most of the rest of my life—that is how we manage things in organisations—I know that one tries not to arrive at a situation without having thought about it before, assessed the risk and mitigated it to the extent that it is possible so that you do not have to scrabble around at the last minute, dealing with results that might have been foreseen.

Actually, I am confident that we will get a 25 per cent turnout, but I would much prefer that the amendment was part and parcel of the Bill. It would not necessarily negate the results of that referendum; it would bring them back to the two Houses of Parliament to say, “How do we now deal with this? Do we think that, despite the threshold being small, it was such an overriding result one way or another that we can live with it? Or maybe a slightly different question about a more proportional system than this, which some Members would like, would be better. Or do we do as the Irish did—put it to the people again until they vote the way we want?”. It gives Parliament and the Government the ability to think how to respond to a situation should it be too low a turnout.

I believe strongly that big constitutional changes should not be made without the will of the people, and the will of the people is as much about turning out to vote and expressing that as it is about the way that they cast their vote. I beg to move.

[Lord Williamson of Horton]

My Lords, noble Lords cannot imagine how pleased I am to see the noble Baroness, Lady Hayter of Kentish Town, moving this amendment. That is so for two reasons: first, because I am interested in the amendment and I support it; and, secondly, because I have sat through almost five days of discussion in the Committee and have heard a large number of extremely important interventions. Some of them did not interest me very much, I have to say, but I have been here and heard them all. I fully accept noble Lords’ right to raise points, but they have done so a large number of times.

Now we come to an amendment that I am interested in because I share the view that it is reasonable, in a situation where we continually tell ourselves that we are dealing with a constitutional issue, that we should have some threshold, as is the case in a good number of democracies in the world. It is true that there are some disadvantages. It is claimed that it could confuse the electorate, though I do not accept that argument myself. I think that the electorate will understand perfectly clearly that they were voting on a certain issue and that they had given their opinion only above a specific threshold. There is also the possibility that quite a lot of people who abstain would consider that they would have given a no vote. However, once again, I do not think that we should attribute to the electorate ideas that they might not have. They might feel quite confident that they will cast their vote and that it is perfectly reasonable that it should be laid down in the procedure that a reasonable percentage of the electorate should vote on an important issue.

Therefore, in principle, it is a good idea to have a threshold. We could have an argument about whether it should be 25 per cent—we have two more amendments here which have a different percentage—but I am very keen that the issue should be raised, as it has been by the noble Baroness. It would be a serious dereliction of duty if we went into a constitutional amendment and had not properly discussed whether or not there should be a threshold. It is an important point and we know that in a good number of other countries there is a threshold in constitutional issue referendums or votes, either in the procedure for initiating a referendum or in the threshold required to validate the vote, which is what we are talking about in this case. This is a subject that ought to be debated in this House. I support the procedure. I accept that 25 per cent is pretty low but we have to launch the debate and see what views are taken in relation to a threshold in the constitutional referendum.

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[Lord Strathclyde]

My Lords, this useful little exchange has demonstrated why we rather oppose these thresholds on turnout or anything else.

Fundamentally, this is about turnout. The noble Lord, Lord Elystan-Morgan, said that the amendment was an insurance against the disaster of a low turnout, which noble Lords have said that they feared. Let me reassure the House. There are a number of reasons to believe that this will not be the case. Combining the referendum with other elections on 5 May will increase voter turnout. The campaigns in the run-up to the referendum will increase public awareness and people’s desire and interest to vote. Additionally, the work of the Electoral Commission in promoting public awareness about the referendum and the media coverage that the referendum will receive gives us reason to believe that the referendum will secure a very healthy turnout. Indeed, statistics from previous referendums in the UK show that turnout is on average about 50 per cent.

The Bill does not specify a voter turnout threshold since it is not necessary or desirable. We should listen to the overwhelming vote against this type of amendment that was cast by another place. I very much hope that the noble Baroness will withdraw her amendment and that other amendments in this group will not be moved.

[Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town]

My Lords, I have had an interesting lesson in politics tonight. I am growing up fast. I thank some of the speakers for part of that. I was made to feel very sheepish by the excellent research done by the noble Lord, Lord Lamont, on other jurisdictions and by the noble Lord, Lord Lawson, on the noble Lords who sat with him in another place. I have also had a few lessons on arithmetic and one on the continuity of effort by my noble friend who continues as chair of his local party. My noble friend Lord Howarth of Newport said that I was being “simply inadequate” about the 25 per cent threshold. The words “ridiculously small” came from the noble Lord, Lord Lawson, but I think the sentiment was the same.

We still find that, at the core of this, the “small premium” that could achieve insurance against the remote possibility of small turnout remains essential and a constitutional issue of great importance for this House to consider. Unlike the election of a government, it is effectively irreversible. We want as many people as possible to have bought into the change should it happen. The full-hearted consent was how somebody put it. It is interesting that, other than the Minister, the only opposition to this has come from the Liberal Democrats—a party that has the word “democrat” in their name. I find it interesting that they oppose this fairly minor bit of democracy of having a threshold. There should be a threshold because it is a decisive referendum. It is not an artificial barrier. Unlike my good friend George Cunningham, I cannot deliver a magnificent speech to persuade you all of that this evening. I hope that these discussions will continue. However, to allow that and further consideration, I beg leave withdraw this amendment.

Amendment 43 withdrawn.