Queen’s Speech

Baroness Randerson Excerpts

Monday 1st June 2015 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Randerson (LD)]

My Lords, I wish first to congratulate those noble Lords who made their maiden speeches today. Each one was excellent and eloquent. In particular, I must congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Lisvane, whose title reflects the links with my own city of Cardiff.

There has been a remarkable level of agreement across the House today on concern at proposed changes on human rights and on a need for a constitutional convention. Many noble Lords have spoken about Scotland. I want to start by redressing the balance and talking about Wales. I strongly welcome the new Wales Bill, on which work was well under way in the last Government. I welcome the Government’s intention to take it forward now. I believe that the Liberal Democrats were instrumental in ensuring that further devolution for Wales was high on the agenda and am delighted that it is now in this first gracious Speech. I will, however, warn the Minister that I will be pushing the boundaries on the Bill in terms of the additional powers that it proposes for the Welsh Assembly because the Liberal Democrats want to see policing, in particular, added to that list and some other areas. I remind the Government that the lesson of the last five years on devolution is that government initiatives which looked bold at the start were often overtaken by events. There has to be a coherent approach to create constitutional stability in Wales. In particular, I will also be pushing on reform of funding for Wales. I welcome the initiative to introduce a funding floor for Wales but any funding gap identified must be dealt with as a matter of immediate urgency. The Government must not stall and progress on this issue must continue.

We in Britain pride ourselves on our unwritten constitution. It is such a false pride and my party has argued for decades for a modern, written constitution but that of course has not been in the interests of the two largest parties. Now we are in a terrible muddle. A number of forces have combined, as many noble Lords have said today, to put us in an emergency situation—an untenable and unsustainable situation—because we are now in a multi-party state, with the electorate struggling to cope in a system which was designed in the 19th century for a two-party state. This produces ridiculous results. I thank the Electoral Reform Society for its publication today, which includes some very important statistics.

One can pluck any one of a host of those statistics to demonstrate the unfairness of the system. As my noble friend Lord Rennard referred to, a majority Government have been elected on just 37% of the vote and 24% of the potential electorate. Nearly a quarter of voters did not vote Conservative, Liberal Democrat or Labour. UKIP, as many noble Lords have referred to, got 12.6% of the vote and one MP, whereas the Conservative Party got three times as many votes by percentage, and 331 times more MPs. The SNP got 50% of the vote in Scotland and 95% of Scottish MPs, which is unfair to all the other parties. I contend that these results are not just unfair, unpredictable and random; they are also dangerous for our democracy and potentially fatal for our union.

There is also the issue of the wasted votes. Nearly three-quarters of the votes cast made no difference to the eventual outcome, with 22 million people knowing that they wasted their time. Voters are increasingly aware of the problems of first past the post and struggle to make sense of it—to make it do what they want it to do. We are all familiar with tactical voting; we now have vote-swapping websites. I suggest that we, who boast proudly of being the oldest and most established of the modern democracies, should be ashamed that the electorate are driven to this. The Minister referred to the evolution of our constitution at the beginning of the debate but we do not have the luxury of evolutionary timescales. We are nowadays subject to internet time, where public opinion expects swift solutions.

The Minister also said that the Government have the answer to the West Lothian question—if only it were that easy. I challenge the Government to produce a law which does not affect Wales, either directly or indirectly. Such laws are very rare, and to come up with a solution involving simply Standing Orders will not solve the problem.

Among the multi parties that I have referred to, there is a strong strand of nationalism associated with devolution. The distortions of our system are emphasising the differences between the four nations of the UK. A different party is dominant in each nation: the Conservatives in England, Labour in Wales, the SNP in Scotland and the DUP in Northern Ireland. This is driving us apart rather than forging us together.

For the Conservatives in government, I believe that the price of maintaining the union may well be that in the end they are forced to accept some form of proportional representation. I do not believe that they will offer it willingly; there is a tradition in this country that Governments give way on constitutional reform rather than coming out to embrace it. I say to the Labour Party that it needs to face up to the fact that it may no longer be able to win under the current system.

There are many other issues, such as funding, where a doubling in the amount of donations since 2005 points to an increasing reliance on a small number of wealthy donors who get increasing power and control. I say to noble Lords that this issue will come back time and again to haunt political parties until it is sorted.

Then of course there is the role of our House. For the first time in history a Conservative Government face a House of Lords that they do not dominate. My party, which wanted to see reform of this place, will say that we make no apologies to the Government for the fact that they will face an uphill task at times to get this House to accept and support their measures. It is our belief that reform is needed all the more now that the composition of the House bears so little resemblance to the political results in the other place.

If you overlay that with the self-imposed earthquake of the EU referendum and the proposals on human rights, you have a strong need for a constitutional convention. Events around the Scottish referendum have shown that a decisive result does not always decide the matter; the tremors tremble on. Our constitution has to be seen as a whole. You cannot shake up one part without the rest of it feeling the aftershocks. As ever, these Benches will be taking a strong interest in these constitutional issues. It is on constitution and human rights issues that the contrast between this Government and their predecessor will be most stark.