Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill Debate
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Lord Barwell
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Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill
Lord Barwell Excerpts(14 years, 2 months ago)
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Mr Syms
I am not sure that the average voter will be much impressed by having a choice between one to seven or just a supplementary vote. I think they will be utterly confused in the coming referendum, and who wins and who loses may well be in the lap of the gods.
The weighting of votes is the weakest element of AV. I am committed to the coalition agreement and I will vote for the Bill and support the Minister, but I will also participate in the debate and I think that, regardless of whether the amendment of my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch is a probing amendment, it is a useful contribution to the discussion of the relative merits of the AV system, which does not have many merits.
Gavin Barwell (Croydon Central) (Con)
I will be very brief and I will try to stick directly to the issue in hand. I agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch (Mr Chope) that no electoral system is perfect, and I believe that first past the post is the best system for electing Members of this House. However, I do not agree with the Maoist principles to which the hon. Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant) just referred. If we are going to put a choice to the people, those of us who believe in first past the post should want to propose against it the best possible version of AV so that if the referendum result is the opposite of what we want, we still get an acceptable electoral system.
To answer a question posed by my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch in his opening remarks, I believe the reason the Government have got this right and their proposal is better than the supplementary vote system is that if we are going to give people the option of a preferential voting system it should be the option that gives electors the maximum flexibility possible. I am opposed to preferential systems that make people express a preference. I think that many of my constituents will choose just to cast a first preference vote for the candidate whom they most want to be elected, and I am opposed to the supplementary vote system—which the previous Labour Government forced on us in London—because it allows those electors who wish to express preferences to express no more than a second preference.
My position is very clear, therefore. I am in favour of first past the post, but if we are to give people a preferential system it should be a system that allows electors to express their preferences.
Mr Mark Williams (Ceredigion) (LD)
Is the hon. Gentleman’s point not borne out by the fact that in multi-member wards where people are obliged or asked to cast many votes, they frequently just cast one, two or three? This is a matter of choice, therefore.
Gavin Barwell
In my experience of council elections, most people cast votes in accordance with the number of vacancies that there are, but some people do decide that they want to vote for only one or two candidates, perhaps because there are not three candidates on the ballot for whom they wish to vote, and that is their democratic right.
I believe the Government have chosen the right system. If it were ever used, it would give maximum choice to my constituents. Therefore, with respect, I say to my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch that his amendment is misplaced.
The Parliamentary Secretary, Cabinet Office (Mr Mark Harper)
It is a great pleasure to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Croydon Central (Gavin Barwell), whose remarks have been very supportive.
The amendment tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch (Mr Chope) is very interesting, but I fear that it does not do what he seems to think it does. As he is an experienced Member, I say with some trepidation that his amendment is defective. He seemed to be explaining that, in effect, it delivers a supplementary vote system under which only the top two candidates are capable of winning the election and all the other candidates are eliminated, and therefore voters only express two preferences. That is not what his amendment does, however. It limits the number of preferences to be expressed to two, but that does not have the effect he was hoping for. Under his amendment, it would still be possible for a candidate who had come third and been eliminated to win the election if they were the recipient of many second preferences. I therefore fear that his amendment is technically defective, because it does not do what he clearly outlined he wished it to do. Given that, I ask my hon. Friend to withdraw it.
In choosing the form of AV that is proposed in the Bill, we were very clear that we wanted the optional preferential system as we did not want voters to be forced to vote for candidates they could not stomach. We thought it was not right to force voters to have to express a preference for a British National party candidate, for instance, when they think that the views that that candidate espouses are repugnant. However, we also thought that voters should be free to vote for just one candidate if they so wished. There should be maximum choice for the elector. That is why we chose the system that is in the Bill as the one to put to the electors, and I recommend it to the Committee.
Chris Bryant
The hon. Gentleman knows that in majoritarian systems, there is a disproportionate benefit for parties that get beyond 40% of the vote. That is a simple fact, so in a sense, his argument is partly in favour of a change to the electoral system, which I am sure he supports, although I suspect he supports a fully proportional system rather than the one subject to the referendum. However, it is not true to suggest—as we read in some of the propaganda—that it takes fewer votes to elect a Labour MP than a Conservative or Liberal MP. [Interruption.] I am not denying that that has happened, but it does not happen because of the drawing of the boundaries. It sometimes takes fewer votes to elect a Labour MP because of the tendency of likely Labour, Conservative or Liberal Democrat voters to live in certain areas.
Gavin Barwell
Has the hon. Gentleman seen the report by the British Academy entitled, “Drawing a New Constituency Map for the United Kingdom”? It finds that a number of factors give rise to the apparent bias in the electoral system, but that constituency boundaries were worth 18 seats to the Labour party at the last general election. He is right to say that there are a number of factors, including the distribution of the vote, but Labour seats are smaller on average than Conservative seats. That independent analysis found that that was worth 18 seats to Labour at the last general election. Has he seen that report and would he like to comment on it?
Chris Bryant
I have seen the report and I agree with some elements of it. I agree with the bits that agree with me and disagree with the bits that disagree with me and that are unhelpful to my argument. The hon. Gentleman mentioned one of the bits of the report that is not helpful to my argument, so I was not going to refer to it.
Chris Bryant
I happened to see that programme, and it helps my argument, so I am quite happy to refer to it.
Gavin Barwell
I am grateful for the hon. Gentleman’s honest answer to my question, and I do not mean to be unhelpful to his argument, but if he accepts that analysis—
Gavin Barwell
The hon. Gentleman must do a little better in explaining why he does not accept that analysis. If, as the independent British Academy report suggests, the current boundary system favours the Labour party, albeit in a minor way, does he accept that it is unreasonable to allow that unfairness to continue, and does he agree that it should be addressed before the next general election?
Chris Bryant
There are a lot of misconceptions in relation to the supposed benefits or otherwise of the system to the Labour party. For instance, I heard frequently during the general election—this is before Cleggmania rose and fell—that the system was unfair because the Conservatives would need to be 10 points ahead to gain a majority. That is not precisely the hon. Gentleman’s point, which I will come to in a moment, but many people forget that the difference between winning an election and winning a majority is significant in our system. However the boundaries are drawn, the moment a party gets over the 40% mark in a majoritarian system such as ours, it tends to do rather better than its share of the vote would suggest.
Chris Bryant
My hon. Friend makes precisely the point that I have laboriously tried to make, and far more succinctly. He is right that a wide range of factors pertain to the different number of votes it takes to elect Labour and Conservative MPs. The Liberal Democrats are not in contention in a large number of seats in the country but none the less gain 15% or 20% of the vote nationally. They accumulate a lot of votes around the country, but do not necessarily secure seats in the House of Commons. That is one function of the majoritarian system. I do not think that the number of votes necessary for election indicates fairness or unfairness in relation to drawing the boundaries. Short of gerrymandering the boundaries so that the pockets of Lib Dem voters around the country ended up in the same constituencies, we would be unable to overcome that element of unfairness.
Gavin Barwell
I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for giving way to me a third time. I completely agree with his argument on the number of voters that it takes to elect MPs from certain parties. However, for the benefit of hon. Members who have not seen it, the British Academy report shows that the average electorate in Labour seats is significantly lower than the average electorate in Conservative seats. Even after we strip out factors such as turnout and the advantageous concentration of the Labour vote in certain parts of the country, a partisan advantage is still derived from the way in which the boundaries are drawn. In the average Labour seat, there are just over 69,000 electors, but in the average Conservative seat, there are just over 73,000. That is unfair. Should it not be corrected before the next election?
Chris Bryant
I have said several times already in the course of these debates that there should be a greater drive towards equalisation. However, as we will debate under clause 9, I do not want the drawing of our constituencies to be merely mathematical. Other things must be taken into consideration.
Gavin Barwell
The problem that the hon. Gentleman is trying to explain occurs under the current rules. There are plenty of constituencies in this Parliament that cross local authority boundaries. We already have and deal with the problem to which he alludes.
Gavin Barwell
The hon. Gentleman made the point that, if we go for greater electoral equality, we will have seats that cross local authority boundaries, but there are already significant numbers of Members representing seats that cross local authority boundaries. Lots of London seats cross London borough boundaries. [Interruption.] No, the London borough of Croydon is not crossed, but the neighbouring borough of Bromley has a seat that crosses into Lewisham, and that applies to the seats of lots of hon. Members. It is perfectly straightforward.
Gavin Barwell
Yes, there are seats at the moment that cross regional boundaries. The seat of Brigg and Goole is in Lincolnshire and Yorkshire.
Chris Bryant
I am not sure who is giving way to whom now. The hon. Gentleman makes a point, and it sounds like he is happy with crossing those boundaries—[Interruption.] And clearly the Minister is relaxed about it as well. However, I am less relaxed about it. There is already a problem with it, but there is no need to exacerbate it.
Political boundaries are one thing—in the end they are in our minds, they are a political construct—but geographical and cultural boundaries are not just boundaries that we have imposed; they have been given to us by others.
Gavin Barwell
The group of amendments that the Committee is being asked to consider poses the Government three questions: what is the rush, why have a review every five years, and do we not need to address the issue of under-registration? I want briefly to address those three questions.
Before I do so, however, I want to make a point about partisanship. It is important to reflect the fact that any discussion about the boundaries of our constituencies is bound to have partisan considerations, and it is much better that we should acknowledge that up front, rather than trying to pretend otherwise. I believe that the current boundaries are unfair, for reasons that I will come to. They are unfair to the Conservative party, but I also believe that they are unfair to my constituents—the people of Croydon, who are under-represented in this House. However, to make the point that this issue is about political balance, I should make the related point that the local authority ward boundaries in my borough are also unfair, but they are unfair the other way round.
The Temporary Chair (Hugh Bayley)
Order. I must encourage the hon. Gentleman to get on to the question of registration and under-registration. He has made his opening remarks, and he should now address the questions raised by the amendment.
Gavin Barwell
I take your point, Mr Bayley, but some of the amendments in the group are also about the need for speed and whether the proposals in the Bill should take effect by October 2013. The point that I was trying to make in an earlier intervention is that the average size of Labour seats is significantly smaller than those of Conservative Members. That is an unfairness and it is important to correct it, but I shall take your advice and come on to the issue of registration.
Gavin Barwell
I am nervous about being drawn back into what I have just been told to move off, but I will give way briefly.
Chris Ruane
Is the hon. Gentleman aware that the information I have received from research by the Library shows that of the top 100 seats with the most number of unregistered people, 96 are Labour seats? Should it not be borne in mind, when he is pointing out unfairness this way and that way, that those unregistered people are in Labour seats?
Stephen Pound
I apologise for interrupting the hon. Gentleman, because he is making a coherent and cogent case. I must point out, however, that there are empirical data out there, and that we do not have to rely on guesswork. As any Member of Parliament will tell him, his or her constituency roll will show EU and Commonwealth citizens who can register but cannot vote for their Member of Parliament. Bizarrely, even though those people will surely come to their Member of Parliament for advice and assistance, they will not count when it comes to classifying the size of a parliamentary constituency. Surely that cannot be right.
Gavin Barwell
Well, there we go. The hon. Gentleman is suggesting, with his customary eloquence, that we go even further than the hon. Member for Swansea West did. I think he is arguing that we should use the whole over-18 adult population as the basis for deciding the boundaries. Indeed, in an earlier intervention, he said that he had a significant number of asylum seekers in his constituency who, although they were ineligible to vote, still gave rise to casework.
There are many different proposals for ways in which we can develop these figures. My point about the hon. Member for Swansea West’s amendment is that we cannot come up with a definitive figure. We can start with the census and take into account the electorate, and we can then use other data sets to refine that information, but we cannot come up with an accurate figure.
My own view is that we should stick with the current basis, which looks at the published electorate, but that we should also take action to deal with under-representation, which affects certain parts of the country more than others. The hon. Member for Swansea West talked about poverty, and the hon. Member for St Ives (Andrew George), who has now left the Chamber, referred to work carried out by the Electoral Commission that showed that the transience of the population—the churn—was the key factor. There are certain groups within the population, including the black and minority ethnic community, young people and people who live in the private rented sector, that are much more likely to move frequently, and that is the main causal driver of this problem.
Mr Stewart Jackson
Does my hon. Friend agree that the difficulty in the past 15 or 20 years has been that the Boundary Commission has not been guided by Government regulations specifically to look at future population changes? That has been an important factor in making many, if not most, of the constituencies in this country out of date almost as soon as they are created.
Gavin Barwell
That cuts to the point of one of the amendments, which deals with the frequency with which we carry out the reviews. That is an important point, because if we had more regular reviews, they would be based on more recent data, and we would not see such dramatic changes. If we had a review every five years, we would not see significant changes in many of our constituencies.
Geraint Davies
The point I was trying to make, which I think has been misrepresented by the new hon. Member for Croydon Central, is that we should use the best data available on those people who are 18 and over and eligible to vote. I have accepted that we will not get a perfect number, but I propose that we should do the best we can with the data sets available to get as accurate a picture as possible, and that that is the best basis for a fair democracy. That would be much fairer than simply relying on registration figures.
Gavin Barwell
I take that point, but my response would be that, rather than using figures that are guesstimates, we should use the actual electorate figures. We should also, however, take action across the country to replicate the work of the best local authorities to drive up representation.
Gavin Barwell
I am going to conclude my speech now; I have taken a number of interventions, and I promised that I would not speak for too long.
We have just had a boundary review, for which many Opposition Members will have voted, that was based on electorate figures. None of these points about tackling under-representation were made when the orders were put through in the last Parliament to implement those boundary changes. Although the point is a good one, it was not applied previously.
In conclusion, the people of Croydon are significantly under-represented in this House, and I think we need urgent action to address that unfairness. We certainly need to take action to deal with under-registration, but the current boundaries are not fair, which is why it is important to take action quickly to put that right.
Austin Mitchell
I rise to speak—briefly, I hope—in support of amendment 127. I gather from my hon. Friend the Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant) that we are going to press it to the vote. I also support amendment 341, which I hope the hon. Member for Leeds North West (Greg Mulholland) is going to put to the vote—he must. I support amendment 38, too, tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for Blackley and Broughton (Graham Stringer), which he is going to press to the vote.
All three amendments are an attempt to soften the rigours of the brutal redistribution proposed in clause 8. Indeed, it is a redistribution so brutal that it amounts to a gerrymander. The pretext is that the unequal seats work against the Tory party. We have heard that argument put at length by the hon. Member for Croydon Central (Gavin Barwell). It is true that the inequality in seats helps the Labour party and works against the Tory party, to which I would reply, in the classic words of Demosthenes, “Ah, diddums. What a great shame”! Various factors are relevant, including turnout, people taken off the register, which happens all the time—[Interruption.] Ah diddums, rural seats and so forth. Another factor, which has not been dealt with in the debate so far, is that the population moves.
There was a similar bias in the 1950s, but then it favoured the Tory party because of rural seats and the rurality factor. I hope Members will remember—I certainly do; I am old enough to remember—that the Conservative party won power in 1951 and had a working majority, but Labour had secured over 500,000 votes more than the Conservatives. The system then worked in favour of the Conservatives, who at that time were not so adamant about the need for a redistribution and a massive upsetting of the whole system to make it fairer. Now they are adamant. That unfairness towards the Conservatives persisted until the 1960s. Now it has worked the other way because of the subsequent drift of large Labour majorities out to the suburbs, where the vote is more evenly distributed.
These amendments all provide an opportunity to modify the brutality of the redistribution that the Government propose, with Liberal support, to remedy this deficiency. Clause 8 is effectively creating what I would call a doomsday machine. It is rather like the monsters my grandchildren watch on television. They are called transformers—they are huge metal monsters that go out clumping all around the country. It is a kind of redistribution by Blitzkrieg! It is just like that when this has to be done so suddenly and in defiance of any community centre or local government boundaries.