Elections Bill

Lord Grocott Excerpts

Lords Hansard - Part 1 & Committee stage
Wednesday 23rd March 2022 Lords Chamber

The number of rejected papers in May 2021 was indeed higher for those elections than for those using first past the post—0.8% for local government elections, 2.7% for PCC elections and 4.3% for the mayor. However, the number of rejected papers for the Mayor of London election was notably higher than the previous election; the figure in May 2016 was half this at 1.9%. The Electoral Commission says that the most significant difference for the May 2021 mayoral election was the new ballot paper design. Combine that with the large number of candidates—there were 20—and the need to split them over two papers and you can see where the problems emerged. These are perfectly solvable problems in the supplementary vote system. It does not require a change of voting system. It could be addressed simply by changing the design. As with London, I am sure that other parts of the country could follow suit.

[Lord Grocott (Lab)]

Can the noble Lord enlighten the House by telling us how many results of mayoral elections would have had a different result had they been held under first past the post?

[Lord Kerslake (CB)]

The noble Lord had better ask the Minister; I do not have those figures, but I am happy to dig them out. The point I make still applies. As in London, I am sure there is scope for better systems to improve the design of the papers and reduce rejected numbers.

The last of the Government’s arguments is consistency. Those in favour of PR might argue that the way to achieve consistency would be to move all elections over to PR. You do not need to go that far; as I explained earlier, people are perfectly able to live with different electoral systems.

I think the real reason the Government have done this, as has already been alluded to, is the results of the elections themselves. Out of the 15 directly elected mayors, none represents the government party; out of the 10 metro mayors, including the Mayor of London, only two represent the government party. I can understand why the Government find that a disappointing result, but I do not think that is a good reason for taking forward a major constitutional change to an electoral system without meaningful consultation.

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[Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)]

These were exchanges on and off the Floor of the House of Commons.

That would have been a major set of changes to voting rights that might even have included some form of examination of our voting system. I draw attention to Amendment 140, which suggests that we need a citizens’ assembly on methods of voting for different elections in this country. That would be highly desirable, encouraging an intelligent approach and taking out of the control of parties the question of whose advantage is most looked to in this respect.

This Government have mucked about with local government over an extended period. I am not a great fan of metro mayors—certainly not metro mayors without the scrutiny of elected assemblies—but the Government have them. The Government have reduced the number of local councillors, and now they want to muck about with the system, partly because what Michael Gove and other enthusiasts thought they wanted—independently minded people like we saw in New York and Chicago—has not yet emerged very strongly. But some of those who emerged are rather good, or not so good, Labour candidates, who do not please the Government. Be that as it may, we have a current system for elected mayors.

The only argument, in effect, that the Government can make in defence of this change is that the voters of London and other cities are not as intelligent as their counterparts in Ireland, Scotland and elsewhere and are not capable of understanding a complicated system such as the supplementary vote and therefore we have to go back to the first past the post. That is not a good argument, and I look forward to hearing what alternative argument the Minister may wish to produce.

One of the problems with the first past the post system is that it works really well only when there is a clear two-party system and the two-party system has broken down in almost all democratic countries in recent years, except for the United Kingdom and the United States. In the United Kingdom and the United States, factionalism within both major parties has almost wrecked our politics, partly because the extremists —or less moderate—in both major parties have done their best to take over their party rather than going off and forming their own.

I was very struck by an argument made by the noble Lord, Lord Hayward, during our previous day in Committee, which was that you need to be very careful about how the selection process for candidates works because in most constituencies in Britain the selection process decides who will be the MP. The attraction of any form of alternative voting, supplementary voting or proportional representation is that it gives the voter some choice among candidates.

[Lord Grocott (Lab)]

In European elections, for example, if you are top of your party’s list, it is pretty close to being a safe seat.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)]

The noble Lord and I will have conversations about list systems and non-list systems off the Floor of the House.

On Amendment 144C on proportional representation in local elections, I recall very clearly many years ago that the borough of Rochdale had all-out local elections and thus required three candidates for each ward rather than one. What was most striking was that that was the point at which Rochdale ceased to have overwhelmingly white male councillors because if the Labour Party, the Liberal Democrats and Conservatives each had to choose three candidates, they tended to choose one white man, one woman and one Asian. That gave people a choice and in some wards people voted for the woman or the Asian in greater numbers than they did for the Labour or Conservative candidate, which you might think is not a bad thing as a matter of choice in elections.

I remind the noble Lord, Lord Grocott, who is deeply committed to the idea of the constituency, that until the first five years of my life the tried-and-tested constituency system in the United Kingdom included a large number of multi-Member constituencies. The last double-Member constituencies were abolished in 1945. I know I am older than him and that was not in his lifetime. We had a number of three and four-Member constituencies in counties and large boroughs, so if we are talking about things that are un-English, English history—the tried-and-tested systems referred to by the noble Lord, Lord True—includes multi-Member constituencies and different forms of voting in return.

Now is not the time to have a full debate on methods of voting, but I commend to the Committee the idea that we should move towards a citizens’ assembly. I hope that whoever makes up the next Government will indeed move forward on this, but I also say as strongly as I can that now is not the time to introduce into a Bill at a late stage, as Clause 11 does, a proposal that the Government have introduced solely because they think it will advance the Conservative Party and disadvantage others.

[Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)]

I will allow the noble Lord on my right to speak first.

[Lord Grocott (Lab)]

No, no. Go on.

[Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)]

I know he will interrupt me anyway.

I declare an interest as a vice-president of the Local Government Association and one of the rare people who has been elected under a proportional system to the London Assembly and under first past the post to a council. It has always struck me that I was told by Conservative voters in both areas that they voted for me rather than a Labour or Liberal Democrat person. Under both systems, they realised that there were options other than voting for the person that they might first vote for.

I know the Tory party struggles with the future and does not like modernisation, except when it really suits it, and proportional representation is the future. It is obvious that other democracies—I am not even sure that this country is a democracy any more, but I will grant us that status—have been using proportional representation for years.

There is more grumbling on the Labour Benches about what I am saying and I really wish they would do it quietly so that I could not hear them.

Proportional representation is the future. First past the post is a relic of the past when small groups of landowning gentlemen would gather in a small room to cast their votes to put another landowning gentleman into a room to represent their interests to the monarch. That is really not a system that we want to continue. As the franchise has expanded to include women and non-landowning men and the population has grown, so the number of voters is many times what it once was and social diversity has increased massively. We are now at a point when first past the post simply is no longer an appropriate system. The idea that winner takes all leaves many millions of people unrepresented in Parliament and in councils.

It seems to benefit the two main parties, Labour and the Conservatives. They are apparently content to take turns to run the country. Sometimes they do well and are handed a substantial majority in spite of the fact that they do not have a majority of voters behind them, and sometimes they suffer and end up in opposition. However, it does not suit Labour as well as it thinks it does. In the previous century the Conservatives won 20 elections and the Labour Party only nine. Labour does not benefit from first past the post. If Labour wants to form more Governments—we see this reported endlessly—it will have to appeal to more voters, which means to people like me, who might give them a vote if my preferred candidate is not able to carry a majority. We need PR, and that means real democratic reform, such as the amendments in this group, which I support; I will be happy to vote for any of them. If they throw in a new, real green new deal, that would improve the odds of Labour forming a new Government a lot.

First past the post feeds into the overly confrontational system we have at the moment. The nature of British politics is not very attractive. The parties are forced to fight viciously by the very nature of the electoral system. In the other place and here, we confront each other across the Chamber. It is very unhealthy in terms of being able to work together and find any sort of consensus. The first past the post voting system is designed to create conflict and opposition and it enables a small bunch of right-wing politicians to run a corrupt and uncaring Government on a mandate given by fewer than half the voters. Consensus building in politics is the future and will help us to claw our way out of the climate crisis.

You have to ask: do the general public like the way things are run? No, they do not—they will tell you that they do not like the constant fighting and braying that they see in Parliament, and they wonder why politicians cannot work better together. They wonder why campaigns are run with dirty tricks and character assassinations, and they wonder why politics and politicians—us—cannot be better. These are all reasons why we need to change the voting system, to transform our democracy into something really democratic and to allow people to be represented by the politicians who most closely align with their values, opinions and hopes for their future—to stop people being forced to choose the lesser evil.

[Lord Grocott (Lab)]

My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Jones, arguing for consensual politics in a characteristically aggressive speech—and it is a pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Wallace, as well. There must be a misprint on the Marshalled List, because the noble Lord told us that he did not want to discuss proportional representation. But there is an amendment tabled here, with his as the lead name, proposing a new clause with the heading, “Proportional representation for elections to the House of Commons”. I do not know whether he wants to discuss that—

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)]

I said “at length”. I assure the noble Lord that I can discuss proportional representation at very great length, but I fear that might tire the Committee.

[Lord Grocott (Lab)]

I shall certainly follow the injunction not to speak at length, but I cannot resist responding to arguments about proportional representation. Oddly enough, I think I am the first the noble Lord so far to speak passionately in favour of first past the post, which shows once again how unrepresentative this House can be of British public opinion. On two specific occasions, it has been the subject that dare not speak its name. There are two issues that have not been mentioned, either by the noble Lord, Lord Wallace—and I do not blame him—or by the noble Baroness, Lady Jones. One is the small matter of an opinion poll, and I shall call it that to be a little contentious, held in 2011, which consisted of 19.2 million voters, who the noble Baroness, Lady Jones, has told us probably represent something that is dying out and departing. That opinion poll was in a referendum which the Liberal party made a condition of its membership of the coalition—and at any stage, if the noble Lord, Lord Wallace, wants to interrupt, of course he can. He was a Minister in that Government.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)]

I thank the noble Lord for the invitation. He will remember that this was the first occasion on which Dominic Cummings managed very successfully to make the argument that it would be much too costly to change the electoral system and that the money would be much better spent on the National Health Service instead—an argument that he also used in the Brexit referendum. In neither case was the money spent on the NHS.

[Lord Grocott (Lab)]

Well, to bring Dominic Cummings into it sounds like a good argument to a point that I was not discussing and do not intend to discuss.

The referendum was a condition of the Liberal Democrats’ membership of the coalition Government; they said that there should be a referendum on the voting system in this country. Some 19.2 million votes were cast, 6 million in favour of the alternative vote system and 13 million for first past the post, as specifically referred to. There was a 2:1 majority for first past the post, and a widely held debate right across the country. I am pretty shocked that, having demanded that referendum and having rejected the result, which is not an unusual characteristic, the noble Lord wants, by means of an amendment to a Bill, to change the electoral system away from first past the post, not by another referendum—because referendums keep giving him the result that he does not want—but by an amendment to a Bill. I find that a very unsatisfactory way of proceeding, but I am afraid that it has become a behaviour pattern. I am sorry, because I agree with the Liberal Democrats on a lot of aspects of this Bill, but not on this. It is a very similar pattern to what was followed in relation to the European referendum, whereby they voted for the referendum, did not like the result but knew that it was too big a risk to put it back to the people—so, instead of having another referendum, they proposed to change it without one and back to the original situation.

I am afraid that this approach of no compromise with the electorate that seems to be being offered by one party to this discussion is really not a satisfactory way for democrats to proceed. Of course, people can change their mind; people might decide, at some future date, that they want to change the electoral system. But, again, I have noticed—and this is why I both enjoy but am frustrated by discussions about the voting system—that one thing that people who are in favour of changing from first past the post always manage to do, whenever you criticise them for anything that they are proposing, is to say, “Oh, that’s not the kind of proportional representation that I’m in favour of—it’s completely different.” In fact, of course, they will even argue, although it was more proportional, that the proposal in the 2011 referendum, which was for the alternative vote system, was not proper proportional representation. It is not, but it is much more proportional —and I am quite certain that they see the electoral systems for mayors, police commissioners and everything else just as a stepping-stone towards proportional representation.

I am the first noble Lord to mention the referendum. The other thing that proponents of proportional representation always avoid mentioning is the test bed that we had for quite a long time—thankfully, no longer —for elections to the European Parliament. They were done on the basis of proportional representation. I remind supporters of the system of the arguments that are tediously repeated about the great merits of proportional representation, the principal point of which is that it reaches parts of the electorate that are ignored at present. It is said that there are tens of thousands of Labour voters, say, in the south of England and tens of thousands of Conservative voters in the north of England who never have their voices represented, and that if you released all that potential by proportional representation, the public would be energised.

[Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)]

How does the noble Lord explain the fact that, when you have a PR system—it does not matter in which country—you get loads of Greens elected? Does not that sound as though there is an unexpressed need under first past the post for Greens? I do not know why noble Lords are all laughing: there are three out of 25 on the London Assembly.

[Lord Grocott (Lab)]

I was listening carefully to the noble Baroness’s speech, and she seemed to be suggesting that quite a lot of votes were not votes for Greens at all but votes for her personally. I have never kidded myself about that, with regard to elections that I have fought, because I have lost too many—I cannot afford to say that.

I have said that the standard argument is that proportional representation energises people. But the turnout for European elections in 2009 was 35%, which is lower than in local government elections, generally. In 2014, it was 36% and in 2019 it went up to 37%, but that was because large numbers of people were voting for a party to scrap the European Union, as we know. So let us please hear from any proponents of PR who happen to emerge during this debate an explanation as to why they do not attach any significance whatever to a referendum held on the subject, and precisely why it is, when a PR system has been tried in this country, it has not involved large numbers of people turning out to the polls. In fact, although admittedly it is for general elections, good old first past the post is the one that continues to attract far and away the biggest turnout of any of the other fancy electoral systems on offer.

Finally, I will mention an important point: PR kills the link between an MP and a constituency. That is the heart of it. I speak as a former MP—there are many others in this House—in saying that, whenever MPs are accused of getting out of touch with the electorate, the answer is always the same, and it is true: if you hold surgeries every weekend and have meetings—

[Lord Kerslake (CB)]

Could the noble Lord perhaps address the point I made in my contribution? Whatever your views about disconnection during a general election between the vote and the person holding the seat, that does not apply to metro mayors in the way it works. Similarly, the noble Lord talks of countering the referendum, but we are here changing the voting system—we are not adding PR but reducing the current use of the system—without consultation at all.

[Lord Grocott (Lab)]

I am the wrong person to ask about directly elected mayors or police and crime commissioners because I have always been opposed to both. On the method whereby they are elected, I prefer a parliamentary system in local and national government —namely, a system whereby whoever holds executive power is subject to constant control, management or association with the people who decide who should be in the Executive. Some of my best friends are elected mayors or police and crime commissioners, but the system—certainly that for police and crime commissioners —is not worth having a great debate about. I repeat: the link between an MP and a constituency keeps the feet on the ground.

Finally, I think the proponents of PR call it “fair votes”—I tend to think of it as “unfair votes” because it certainly results in unfair power. It effectively means that the third most popular party of the three major national parties is the one pretty permanently in office. Nick Clegg would no doubt still be Deputy Prime Minister—there is a thought for you—almost for life, because it is always a question of which of the two main parties the third party will associate itself with. That leads to disproportionate power and influence for the smallest of the parties, which is not a system to be defended. Let us at least agree that the amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Wallace, can either be not moved—he does not seem keen to debate it—or, preferably, defeated.

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[Lord Scriven (LD)]

Sorry, 2022. It feels as if this debate started last year.

The YouGov tracker looks at a number of issues. One issue that it has been tracking for 10 years is people’s perceptions of voting and voting systems. The question it asks is:

“Some people support a change in the British voting system to proportional representation, where the number of MPs a party wins more closely reflects the share of the vote they receive. Other people support retaining our present voting system, First Past the Post, which is more likely to give one party an overall majority in the House of Commons and avoid a hung Parliament. Which voting system would you prefer?”


In March 2022, the latest figure—and this has been a trend for over 10 years—the vast majority of people who give a preference support PR, with 44% in favour of PR and 27% in favour of first past the post. Among Liberal Democrat voters, 62% support a PR system while 21% are in favour of first past the post. The party with the highest number of people who support first past the post is the Labour Party; 64% support PR and 13% support first past the post. I accept that among Conservative voters there is a small majority for first past the post.

We should look at the Red Wall seats. This is really important because a lot of people really feel that their vote does not count, that they do not have a voice and that in some constituencies there are MPs for life. In certain parts where I come from, people say, “No matter who you put up, if they wear a certain colour of rosette then they will get elected.” This is not a middle-class or a southern debate; in the north, 43% support PR and 28% do not.

[Lord Grocott (Lab)]

Could the noble Lord remind us of his sample size? Mine was 19.2 million.

[Lord Scriven (LD)]

That was 11 years ago. I am trying to point out to the noble Lord that people’s views change. I am not prepared to accept that 2011 is still how the public feel.

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[Lord Liddle (Lab)]

It was said in the councils of which I was part that it would be a good idea to shake up conventional politics at the local level. That was the argument.

[Lord Grocott (Lab)]

I do not normally draw attention to this but my noble friend and I were both working in No. 10 at the same time. I would say two things: first, if that was ever discussed, I never heard it; and, secondly, if I had heard it, I would have been ferociously opposed to it.

[Lord Liddle (Lab)]

I have no doubt about that; that is why we would not have mentioned it to my noble friend. I am trying to make the point that there is an argument for something that opens up politics a bit more.

In the case of mayors, it is not like voting for an MP, where you are basically voting for who you want to be Prime Minister or which political party you support. It is very much about who you want to govern your local area, and they should have the widest possible base of support.

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[Lord Stunell (LD)]

My Lords, I want to make a brief contribution on Amendment 144C in the name of my noble friend Lord Shipley, relating to proportional representation in local government. My noble friend Lord Scriven, the noble Lord, Lord Murphy, and others have spoken on it as well. I want to pick up one remark made by the noble Baroness, Lady Noakes, that the problem with, for instance, the European elections and the nature of the voting system for them was that those elected were too distant from the electors. I will make a couple of points relating to local government, which I think might be relevant.

Last May, in the local elections, 3.2 million people voted Conservative but still found themselves in a local authority that had no Conservative councillors at all; 40,000 of those were in Manchester, the neighbouring authority to my authority of Stockport. Those 40,000 people voted Conservative, but they did not get one Conservative councillor elected in Manchester. In fact, there has not been a Conservative elected to Manchester City Council since 1992. There are actually a large number of local authorities where one or the other of the two big parties does not have any representatives at all in that area.

The Conservatives have no councillors elected in Newcastle, Norwich, Newham, Oxford or Cambridge. There is a list, but I will not go on any further than that. Conversely, of course, there are plenty of Labour voters who are not represented at all by a councillor in the authority in which they reside: 5.8 million Labour votes were cast for candidates in local authorities where no Labour councillor at all was elected. When it comes to being distant from the electors, we need to bear in mind the very polarising effect of first past the post in quite a number of our local authorities.

One place where Labour has no councillors is the Royal Borough of Kingston upon Thames in London. Labour had 36% of the national share of the vote at the last round of elections but no Labour councillor was elected. That was a Liberal Democrat stronghold, but in Harrogate, 23.4% of people voted for Labour candidates, but none was elected. That is a Conservative stronghold.

It is not just whether people have representation at all in a local authority; it is whether they have appropriate representation, depending on the strength of the electorate who supported them. I picked out just one local authority—not completely at random—the London Borough of Richmond upon Thames, where in 2018, 78,491 votes were cast for Conservative candidates, and that resulted in the election of 11 councillors. In fact, they lost 28 seats as a result of that. They should, in fact, have had 20 seats, had there been a more proportional system.

I will not detain the Committee any further on that but point out simply that this amendment would introduce a change to local government in England which would be very much to the benefit of local democracy and the fair representation of people. It would give people a voice or a channel of communication, at least, for their point of view in practically every town hall in the country.

On the much wider debate that has opened up, I say simply to the noble Lord, Lord Grocott, that in 2010, when he stood for election on the Labour manifesto, he stood on a commitment to introduce the alternative vote. Indeed, I remember, as one of those who took part in the negotiations with the other parties in the start-up of the coalition Government, having a discussion with senior members of his party about that proposition.

[Lord Grocott (Lab)]

If I heard aright, the noble Lord said that I stood in the election of 2010, but I am afraid that I was in the House of Lords by that stage.

[Lord Stunell (LD)]

How very wise the noble Lord was to miss that particular commitment, is all I can say. A number of his colleagues were blessed by that promise.

To return to the substance of Clause 11 and the amendments moved by the noble Lord, Lord True, I remind the Committee that the Law Commission said that there should be a comprehensive overhaul of election legislation brought forward in a proper Bill. The Committee on Standards in Public Life produced 47 recommendations for change. Both those ideas have been rejected by the Government on the grounds that there has not been enough time, it needs more consideration and there would have to be wide consultation before they could be brought in. Finding that this proposition has been dumped into the Bill is inconsistent with that view against having a comprehensive reform of electoral law, along the basis that independent sources strongly recommend.

I was impressed by what the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman, said about the views of the Mayor of Greater Manchester and his reasoning. That struck me, as someone who lives in the area over which the mayor casts his eye, more powerfully than it probably did other noble Lords. There is no element of self-interest in what the Mayor of Greater Manchester said. It grieves me to say that in the May mayoral election, Andy Burnham, the mayor, won a plurality of votes in every ward in every borough in Greater Manchester, including all those which at the same time returned Tory, Liberal Democrat and, in one or two cases, independent councillors. There was a clear view from the electorate that they wanted this personality as the Mayor of Greater Manchester. Whether we like to believe it or not, it clearly transcended people’s normal political convictions to say, “In this case, I am voting for this person.” That characteristic of the mayoral election frankly surprised me, because I am not a supporter of mayoral systems, but I must admit there was a powerful advert for it in that election.

There is also a powerful advert there for the retention of a first and second choice. It was not called into play in Greater Manchester so we do not know what the figures would have been, but we know the result in those places where it has been called into play, and people have quite easily adopted the idea that they have a preferred candidate but, if it cannot be that one, there is another who would do as their second best. That development of an overall mandate is a powerful benefit of the present system, whatever its authorship might be. It might well be the first time that the noble Lord, Lord Campbell-Savours, and I have been on the same side of any discussion.

I strongly support the view that we should delete Clause 11 and retain the current system of electing our mayors in the big cities.