Procedure and Privileges Committee
Debate between Lord Grocott and Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb
Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)
I wonder whether the noble Lord, Lord Forsyth, has checked how many people are actually in the bar rather than at their desks.
Lord Grocott (Lab)
The noble Lord, Lord Forsyth, knows that the number of occasions when there are votes between nine and 10 at night is very much a minority of the sitting days of the House. Of course, it is true—we all know this, in the other Chamber as well as this one—that the number of people working is considerably more than the number of people participating in a debate, but I still stand by those statistics. To keep the whole Chamber functioning for the number of people—three, four, five or six—who actually want to take part in the debate is out of all proportion.
Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)
My Lords, as the first woman to speak in this debate, I would like to say that I support the original idea from the Procedure Committee. I thank the Senior Deputy Speaker for bringing this to a vote, which I was very concerned about. This does not go far enough for me. I think we are limiting ourselves by starting so late in the day. I also apologise to the noble Lord, Lord Grocott, for attempting to reply in his place. I am really sorry about that. I will do my best not to do it again, but that is not a promise, just a hope.
Society has changed and this House is not keeping up with society. There are people here now who actually have happy home lives. We do not want to stay for social stuff. We do not want to be collegiate. We want to do the job and then go home perhaps and have a glass of wine with our partner rather than, forgive me, other noble Lords.
For me, it is a dinosaur move. Before noble Lords take offence at the idea of dinosaurs, they were an incredibly successful life system. They lasted millions of years. But, of course, they were defeated by a climate catastrophe that they did not realise was coming—just let me throw that in there.
Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)
Yes, there was no Green Party.
I have visits at all times of the day. I would be interested in knowing the exact details of educational visits and I personally will set some up for schoolchildren, I hope when the House of Commons is actually sitting so that they are not excluded from there.
The noble Lord, Lord Forsyth, said lots of things that I disagree with. One of the things he said was that the House of Lords is held in contempt. My experience is that the House of Lords now has more credit given to it than it ever has since I joined—admittedly I am a new Member of only nine years.
Elections Bill
Debate between Lord Grocott and Baroness Jones of MoulsecoombWednesday 6th April 2022
(2 years, 7 months ago)
Lords ChamberRead Full debate Elections Act 2022 View all Elections Act 2022 Debates Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts Amendment Paper: HL Bill 141-I(Rev) Revised marshalled list for Report - (5 Apr 2022)
Lord Grocott (Lab)
My Lords, I have heard speeches from the noble Lord, Lord Woolley, on a number of occasions. Each time, I have found him completely convincing. The one line I will pick up on is his reference to the level of fraud identified by prosecutions as being “a matter of fact”. I just want to put another couple of matters of fact in front of the House.
Fact one is that, whatever you think are the rights and wrongs of voter ID, it is a new hurdle that people will have to surmount in order to vote. Whether it is a big hurdle or a small one is a matter of debate, but there is no doubt whatever that it is a hurdle. In our many experiences of elections, great effort is made in our electoral system at the local level to try to minimise the difficulties that people may experience to make it easier for them to vote.
A simple example is the siting of polling stations. I am sure that dozens of people in this House have spent ages saying, “It’s no use putting the polling station there because people won’t go to it—it’s too far away. You need one nearer”. Why do we say these things? Because we want to make it easier, with the fewest hurdles possible in the way of people exercising their right to vote.
I remind the House that there has been a serious decline in turnout in British general elections. When I first fighting them, the turnout was around 75%, generally speaking. It is now around 65%. We are going in the wrong direction. I submit that this clause will send us even faster down that slope.
All I propose to say for now is this: what has been missing throughout our debates is any estimate whatever —even a guesstimate would be an improvement—from the Minister as to precisely what the effect on voter turnout will be in the event of this Bill becoming law. He cannot have it all ways. It will either improve turnout or worsen the situation. Which way it will go cannot be a matter of fact because it is an estimate, but I would have expected at least some information from the Government Front Bench, in this crucial respect of voter turnout, on their estimate of the effect of this Bill on that figure. We have not had one so far. I am not optimistic that we will get one from the Minister when he winds up—but I live for ever in hope, as you do when you are in opposition. Even at this stage, so that we can judge it in the event, I hope that he will tell us his estimate of the effect of the Bill on turnout.
Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)
My Lords, I rise to speak to these amendments and throw the Greens’ considerable weight behind the noble Lord, Lord Woolley. It is slightly scary speaking after him and the noble Lord, Lord Grocott, because they tend to carry the House, whereas I am not sure that I do.
Some people have described voter ID as a solution in search of a problem. Actually, I think that gives the Government far too much credit, because this is a cynical ploy. It is a clear attempt by the Government to make it harder for people to vote in elections. That is the only motive I can see when we have this sort of Bill in front of us. More cynically still, it will disproportionately stop BAME, working-class, Gypsy, Roma and Traveller people voting. These people find it hard enough to vote already. Anything you put in their way will stop them voting completely; that is preventing democracy.
The Government are spreading fake news about there being massive election fraud in this country. I hope we can get these figures out there, because that is a nonsense. I do not understand why the Government persist in this fake news.
Elections Bill
Debate between Lord Grocott and Baroness Jones of MoulsecoombWednesday 23rd March 2022
(2 years, 8 months ago)
Lords ChamberRead Full debate Elections Act 2022 View all Elections Act 2022 Debates Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts Amendment Paper: HL Bill 96-V Fifth marshalled list for Committee - (21 Mar 2022)
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.
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 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—