Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill

Debate between Lord Hamilton of Epsom and Lord Garel-Jones

Wednesday 8th December 2010 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hamilton of Epsom]

My Lords, I failed to contribute to the Second Reading debate on this Bill and have not had the opportunity to spell out the reasons why I am so deeply unhappy about Part 1. Unlike the noble Lords, Lord Campbell-Savours and Lord Lipsey, I do not believe in any form of proportional representation. The first-past-the-post system has served us extremely well. I do not think that we should move away from it. The problem is that if you believe in any form of proportional representation, you have to believe, like the noble Lord, Lord Campbell-Savours, in coalition government. I know that we have such a Government, but I do not think that that is an overwhelming reason to change the electoral system, which would make it more likely that we would have coalition government in perpetuity.

Surely, the problems of coalition government are being pointed out very well. For example, one could think of the problems that the Liberal Democrats have on the whole question of student fees. The press say to the Liberal Democrats, “Ah, it was a commitment in your manifesto that you would stop student fees rising. Why aren’t you voting against the rises in student fees?”. But the whole point of coalition government is that the coalition partners bin all their manifesto commitments. That is what comes from coalition government. You end up not with any precise party that you voted for with its commitments in its manifesto; you end up with a mish-mash and certain commitments are dropped. I as a Conservative am rather unhappy that the coalition Government seem to have dropped all the commitments that we had in opposition. I think I remember the Prime Minister saying when he was in opposition that he regarded reform of your Lordships’ House as a third-Parliament issue. Now we have reform of the House of Lords trundling down the road as fast as it can be organised.

[Lord Garel-Jones]

Would my noble friend be prepared to go a little further and say that one of the inevitable consequences of a fully proportional system is that the Government and the programme that emerges thereafter is, by definition, a programme that no one has voted for?

[Lord Hamilton of Epsom]

I totally agree with my noble friend. Indeed, you could argue that the coalition agreement drawn up immediately after the election was something that no one voted for. I thought that the Conservative commitment was to repatriating powers from Europe, but nothing much seems to have happened on that front, and I thought that we were going to repeal human rights legislation. A number of things have gone from the Conservative manifesto. I am rather surprised that the Liberal Democrats have been attacked in the way that they have been for binning commitments in their manifesto. That comes with coalition. If the country votes for coalition, which basically is what it has done, it must expect to end up with a Government who produce a number of policies for which no one has voted. That is why I am extremely unhappy about changing our electoral system to make coalition government more likely.