Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill

Debate between Earl of Clancarty and Lord Lipsey

Monday 6th December 2010 Lords Chamber

[Lord Lipsey]

I see that that is what the amendment would do. However, it adds not one choice, but a plethora of choices without defining what they are, all with completely different characteristics one from the other and having very little in common except that they can, just about sometimes, be squeezed into the rubric of proportionality. That is why this is not a suggestion that should carry faith.

When the referendum campaign comes, I guess that what will happen in the last few weeks is that those who are against any change will say something like, “If you don't know, vote no”. They will try to capitalise on people’s ignorance. Even those in this Chamber—and there are many sitting around me—who favour first past the post would probably rather it was not decided on that basis. They would probably rather the people took a clear view of the virtues of the electoral system that we have and the virtues of the alternatives and made their verdict on that, which we would all accept as the way forward. This is a recipe for an extremely blurred choice of ill-defined alternatives which is hard to explain and unfair to ask people to grapple with. It is made even worse because unless the referendum date is moved as a result of the amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Rooker, which we passed earlier, they will be grappling with this choice at a time when they are dealing with local elections, new mayors and, in Scotland and Wales, with the all-important question of what their national governments should be. This is a seductive amendment, but it is profoundly misguided and I hope therefore that the House will not countenance it tonight.

[The Earl of Clancarty]

My Lords, I support Amendment 16 in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Owen. In the Committee debates that we have had so far, one thing has been left out to a large extent: the perspective of the public. The referendum should be about fairness and trust: being fair to the public and trusting the public. I support the amendment in the broad spirit in which I interpret it, which is that the public should be given a proper choice and not the restricted one that would currently be imposed on them.

I have heard people say quite a lot recently that the public are not very interested in voting systems. As an example, they are more interested in how the cuts will affect them today, tomorrow and the next day. Yes of course; most people are not going to be that exercised at present about something that is still fairly abstract and we are not even quite sure will actually happen, but when the public has confirmation of the date and the terms of the referendum, they will, with help from newspapers, TV and the internet, rapidly become experts in different voting systems.

However, there will be qualified interested only if the choice is between first past the post and AV: and no wonder, since a win for first past the post cannot possibly be interpreted as a ringing endorsement if AV is the only other option on the ballot paper. Likewise if AV wins, that too cannot possibly be seen as the system the public would most prefer if they have been denied other key voting systems.