Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill

Baroness Liddell of Coatdyke Excerpts

Monday 15th November 2010 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Liddell of Coatdyke]

My Lords, I do not think that I have ever agreed with the noble Lord, Lord Lamont, but I certainly agree with him that it is absurd to suggest that our politics is broken. It is manifestly not broken, but we are naive if we do not accept that the craft of politics has seldom been held in lower regard. I regard this legislation as a wasted opportunity. Had the constitutional conventions been adhered to, had we had proper consultation and pre-legislative scrutiny, and had we had time to go through the Bill in its entirety, there would have been the opportunity for cross-party agreement on the issues that are raised in the Bill. That would have been for the good not only of the country but, especially, of this House and the other place. Instead, we are left with a shoddy piece of legislation that has been cobbled together at short notice. The only thing on which I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Rennard, is his comment that his party did not win the general election. My party lost the election. No party won the election. In such circumstances, I should think that it is important to show humility rather than arrogance; this is an arrogant piece of legislation.

It is very notable that in the other place there were very few Liberal Democrat or Conservative Back Benchers who supported the legislation. It has also been extremely interesting tonight to look at the Benches opposite—the wasteland on the other side of the Chamber. Where are the supporters? Among those who have spoken tonight I have counted three who support the legislation. I am not sure whether my noble friend Lord Lipsey, who is not in his place, supports the Bill or whether he just supports AV.

I support the idea of a referendum on AV, but I also have to say that, after four and a half years in Australia watching AV in operation, I have become extremely sceptical about it for one simple reason. Deals have to be struck for AV to work. Some of those deals are done openly and transparently, but some of them are done behind closed doors and you get very bizarre results as a consequence. The balance of power in the Australian Senate is held by the No Pokies party. “Pokies” to people of my noble friend Lord Foulkes’s generation and mine usually means ice cream cones, but in this case it means one-armed bandits. Because of the operation of the system of preferences, No Pokies, which is a one-man party, can hold the Australian Government to ransom. That is one of the consequences of AV.

Australia has compulsory voting. If we had had the opportunity properly to scrutinise this Bill, perhaps we could have discussed issues such as compulsory voting, which would provide a long-term, rather than short-term, benefit to society. In Australia, the fine for not voting is peanuts—something like 20 or 30 Australian dollars—but people are so used to going out to vote that they do so automatically. You do not have to vote for a political party; you can spoil your paper. If we had had the opportunity to discuss these matters, we would have had a real opportunity to advance the progress of the legislation.

I also find it bizarre that the Prime Minister, immediately after the election, went up to Edinburgh and spoke about respect for the Scottish Parliament. What respect was shown when it was told, not even consulted, that the referendum would be on the same day as the Scottish parliamentary elections? A Motion has been passed by the Scottish Parliament opposing that, and we have already heard from my noble friend Lord Touhig about the situation in Wales. That lack of consultation does not show respect, nor does it show a proper understanding of, and respect for, the constitution.

I want to address the issue of 600 seats. I am pretty agnostic about the size of constituencies, but I find it bizarre that in the coalition discussions the Conservatives, who have a history of arguing for 585 seats, and the Liberal Democrats, who have a history of arguing for 500 seats, reached a compromise of 600 seats. How did that work out? It is incumbent on the noble Lord, Lord McNally, when he replies to this debate, to explain to us why we are to end up with more seats than were in the manifestos of the two parties that are now in coalition. It is bizarre. The noble Lord, Lord Strathclyde, could not keep his face straight—as well he might—when he had to answer questions on these matters. We need an answer on these matters.

I do not want to delay the House too long as the hour is late, but I want to look at the parliamentary boundary commissions and public inquiries. In the other place, I was privileged to represent the town of Airdrie, which is even older than the Church of England. The first references to Airdrie were in 576, but it was at the peak of its national significance between 1160 and the middle of the 19th century. Airdrie was a base for the Covenanters. In 1832, the town hall became a hospital for the victims of cholera, which is very much in our minds at the moment. The reason that I make those points is that Airdrie is an historic town. In the early 1990s, a proposal was made to split Airdrie right down the main street. The noble Lord, Lord Baker, pooh-poohed the idea of local communities being interested in such matters, but I have to say to the noble Lord, who is not in his place, that he needs to get out more because, where I come from, people are passionately interested in the history of their communities—perhaps that is because my constituency included 19 mining villages, as we know that miners are passionately interested in history. In that public inquiry, there was great unanimity of support for retaining Airdrie as one town and a very convincing case was put for retaining Airdrie’s historic links with the towns and villages known as the Fortissat villages—a reference to the 40 who sat with the Covenanters in those villages. That case was made by John Smith, who died 36 hours later. As a consequence of the hugely persuasive argument that he put on behalf of his community, the constituency of Airdrie and Shotts was preserved and I went on to represent it.

I make that point about local inquiries because, if you come from where I come from—I take my title from the village of Coatdyke, in which I was born and brought up, which lies between Airdrie and Coatbridge and has been alternately contained in a constituency, split and quartered in all sorts of different shapes such that it should probably be renamed “Hokey Cokey”—everyone in the communities of Airdrie and Coatbridge has a real view about the importance of their community. Years on—and, like Miss Jean Brodie, I am in my prime—I am still referred to in Coatdyke as Bessie Lawrie’s daughter, regardless of the fact that I am now a noble Baroness, because communities have histories and those histories are very important indeed. For this House and this Government to demean that sense of community and involvement is to show contempt for society. As we heard earlier, the hypocrisy of a Government who promote the big society to argue against people’s faith in society and love and admiration for the society that has forged them, is indeed a travesty.

My mother used to say, “Marry in haste; repent at leisure”. Here, we are legislating at haste, and the country will repent at leisure. I hope that, in the best traditions of this House, we can be a genuine, revising Chamber to save the coalition from what it has achieved with this legislation. There are many Members of the Liberal Democrat Benches in this House and in the other place whom I count as friends. They have been let down by this legislation. AV is not PR but a miserable little compromise, which has been cobbled together only to save skins for the future. However, the electorate are not daft and will see through it. That is why, in the days and weeks that lie ahead, we must do our utmost to amend this legislation to make it at least in some way fit for purpose. As of now, the Bill is not fit for purpose.