Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill

Lord Howarth of Newport Excerpts

Monday 6th December 2010 Lords Chamber

[Lord Howarth of Newport]

My Lords, I fear that a number of important issues are all too liable to become confused in the minds of electors on 5 May if the referendum is held on the same date as the local elections. The Government are understandably preoccupied with advancing their policy of a referendum in which the people of this country will be offered a choice as to the future system of elections to the House of Commons. It is a profoundly important issue. Also to be held on that day are local elections, which are profoundly important as well. We ought to keep the interests of local government in the forefront of our minds, as there is a question about respect for local government that we should consider very carefully. However, perhaps I may come back to that point in a second.

Whichever side of the argument we may be on—in favour or against the alternative vote system—and whichever side we are on in the argument about whether there should be some sort of change to the system of electing Members of Parliament, I think we all agree that this is a momentous issue of the utmost importance. It is also an issue that will be considered only on very rare occasions in our political life. I believe that there is a compelling case for keeping the nation’s deliberations on that issue distinct from the deliberations on other important issues that are to be put to the vote. Therefore, in the interests of clarity and wise decision-taking, and, as my noble friend Lord Rooker put it to us, in the interests of simply not rushing the process, there seems to be a very strong case for holding the referendum separately from, and later than, the local government elections.

The noble Lord, Lord Fowler, argued in favour of holding the two elections on the same day precisely on the basis that the referendum is extremely important and that it would be most unsatisfactory if it were to be determined on a low turnout. However, I put it to the noble Lord that there is a better and more reliable means of ensuring that there is an adequate turnout, which is to introduce a threshold requirement into this legislation. That is a debate for another day but I think we shall have that debate. Personally, I hope very much that Parliament will conclude that we should not change anything so fundamental in our constitution as our system of elections to the House of Commons on a derisory turnout, that we should insist on a requirement for a minimum percentage of those entitled to vote and that, if that minimum percentage is not reached, there will be no change to the system. I think that that is a better way to secure the entirely valid objective of the noble Lord, Lord Fowler.

Perhaps I may come back for a moment to the question of respect for local government. One sadness of my political life is that in all the years that I have been in one House of Parliament or another I have seen local government disparaged and demeaned, and, if I may say so, that has been all too characteristic of Parliament and of Governments of all parties over a long period. We are at risk of showing insufficient consideration and respect for the validity and importance of the local elections on 5 May next year. One understands why in the mid-1970s central government felt that they had to move to restrict some of the more exciting activities of local government. Indeed, one Secretary of State said that the party was over.

But the Treasury—above all, the Treasury, I believe—exploited that opportunity quite ruthlessly. Expenditure in this country and power in this country are, in a way, a zero-sum game, and the Treasury was deeply resentful of any fiscal independence on the part of local government and of any independent rights that local government might have to raise money. So we saw increasing restrictions. We saw capping. We saw limits on borrowing. We saw an increasing tendency of government to ring-fence the grant to local government through specific grants. All of this has been profoundly bad for our democratic culture in this country. If there is an alienation from our politics in this country then I believe that, in important measure, it stems from this source. Therefore I think that we should always think very carefully about the standing of local government, the dignity of local government and, indeed, the independence of local government to act as a check and a balance within our constitution and within the power structure of this country.

To muddle up the issues on 5 May next year could with some justification be interpreted as cynical and as far too characteristic of the habitual attitude of central government and, I fear, of Parliament to local government. For that reason also, therefore, it would be unfortunate if the two sets of elections were to be held on the same day next spring or early summer. However, the amendment in the name of my noble friend Lord Rooker is not prescriptive in this particular matter. It allows a margin of flexibility. It allows the Government to reflect carefully on whether it is wise to hold the referendum on the same day as the local elections. As my noble friend said, it also provides a contingency margin so that, if we do indeed find that the preparations cannot be advanced with sufficient speed and the conditions in which the referendum would be held would be unsatisfactory, the Government can with dignity adjust the date and we can still go ahead with the referendum on this extremely important issue, but we can do so in a sensible set of circumstances. So I hope that the House will be willing to support my noble friend Lord Rooker if he presses his amendment this afternoon.

[Lord Soley]

My Lords, I rise with one intention only: to ask a specific question of the noble Lord, Lord Strathclyde, and ask him to deal with it in his response. In asking it I should declare an interest as one of the political panel drawn from all the political parties, from both the House of Commons and the House of Lords, who act as advisers and information givers to the Electoral Commission.

At the moment the Electoral Commission believes that it is possible to hold these elections on joint dates without problems. Along with everyone else, however, it acknowledges—I think this was the key point made by my noble friend Lord Rooker—that problems could arise; and if they do arise, that will have a major impact on how well the referendum—or indeed the elections, but particularly the referendum—is held.

If in the course of events the Electoral Commission decides that it is not able to conduct a referendum in a manner that is acceptable to both national and international standards, will the Government put off the referendum to another date? That is an important question and I hope the noble Lord will address it with some care.

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[Lord Howarth of Newport]

I am very grateful to my noble friend, who has certainly done his homework and research very carefully indeed. Have I been advised correctly that the type of AV system that the Government propose should be used for elections to our House of Commons is found elsewhere in the world only in Papua New Guinea and Fiji? Has my noble friend, in the course of his research, found any lessons of more general application from those two laboratory experiments, which may be useful for us to think about as we consider an appropriate system for use in this country in the future?

[Lord Campbell-Savours]

I have identified those areas, but I think that the more relevant results are those in Queensland in Australia and in Scotland, which we will go through in some detail as we proceed on the Bill.

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[Lord Strathclyde]

I accept the noble Lord’s point; he has made it before. Perhaps if we were doing it differently, it would be done in a different way. For reasons of confidentiality and of making a statement, and rather than allowing the rumour mill to flow, it was right to make the decision we did.

[Lord Howarth of Newport]

Can I tempt the Leader of the House to apologise on behalf of the Government to Members of the Scottish Parliament and the Welsh Assembly, as I think there has been discourtesy towards them? He was good enough to say just now that possibly, if the Government were doing this again, they would do it differently. Will he go a step further and make a handsome apology? They have been treated with discourtesy and disrespect.

[Lord Strathclyde]

I do not believe in apologising when I am not fully aware of the facts.

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[Lord Howarth of Newport]

This amendment is a helpful and important one. It certainly needs more work, and I do not think that it should be passed as it is at present drafted, but it points in the right direction. The political parties have been right to come to the view, and have somehow stumbled in the past 12 months or so into agreement on the notion, that it is now timely to offer the opportunity to the people of this country to revisit their electoral system and consider whether they want change.

It is too melodramatic to talk in terms of a crisis in our political culture, but it is realistic to acknowledge that there is a malaise and a widespread disaffection from our politics, and a widespread view that elections are determined by small numbers of voters in small numbers of constituencies, and therefore that large numbers of votes are wasted. That is wrong in principle and unsatisfactory in practice. It may be that the malaise would be dispelled were we to be blessed with good government. If we were to enjoy a period of government under which the people of this country came to the view that they were being wisely and benignly governed in the interests of all the people and that they could look forward to unlimited peace and prosperity, no doubt the demand for constitutional change, such as it is—it is not very well articulated, but I think that it is there—would abate.

[Lord Foulkes of Cumnock]

Would my noble friend care to come with me to Scotland, where we have had a change in the electoral system for the Scottish Parliament for the past 10 years, and where he will certainly find that that malaise has not been dispelled? He is living in a fool’s paradise.

[Lord Howarth of Newport]

I absolutely recognise the force of what my noble friend says and would be happy to visit Scotland with him at any time. However, I disagree with my noble friends Lord McAvoy and Lord Grocott, who contend that there is simply no public interest in this question. While I accept that it is something of a preoccupation of the chattering classes and the professional political class, those of us in politics who believe that there is significant dissatisfaction in our political culture and that it has something important to do with the electoral system simply seek to understand the public mood and to see what ways there might be to improve on it.

It is right that we have a referendum on the future electoral system to be used in this country for elections to the House of Commons, but if we are going to do it we should do it properly. It seems quite absurd to have a great national debate and to go through all this palaver, expense and effort to resolve a timid and incomplete choice between first past the post and the alternative vote. If we are to have a referendum on the future electoral system of this country, a rare and very important event, then let us allow the people to have the choice between the range of plausible and significant systems. I support my noble friend Lord Campbell-Savours in his view that the supplementary vote should be among the choices offered at a referendum. That means, if we are going to do it properly, we would have to take time over it and the debate would have to be much more extended.

It makes no sense at all to try to rush a debate of this complexity and importance through in the brief period between whatever date this Bill gains Royal Assent and 5 May. Let us have a sustained exercise of political education and debate, following which a decision shall be made. How that decision should be arrived at—the technicalities of the choice to be offered in the referendum—certainly needs more careful examination. I am worried that offering a choice between four major options —but that choice to be determined by AV, which is among the choices to be offered—might somehow bias the outcome. I do not know; I think these things need careful thought. But we should not fluff this opportunity. We should enable all the important choices to be fully considered. That must surely be right. From a personal point of view, I suspect that I would end up voting for first past the post. But it is right that everybody should have the freedom to decide between the major serious options. This amendment is not the occasion to rehearse the virtues or defects of any particular electoral system. The question is whether the full choice should be offered to the people, or the limited choice that it has suited the political parties to offer so far. I hope that it will be the wider choice.

[Lord Touhig]

My Lords, I would not go into the Lobby and support the noble Lord if he were to push this to a vote tonight, but I welcome proposed new subsection (4) which states:

“In Wales, a Welsh version of the question is also to appear on the ballot papers”.

I remind noble Lords that Wales is the only part of the Union where a substantial number of people speak two languages. Indeed, 20 per cent of people in Wales speak English and Welsh, so it is important that any ballot paper should contain information in both languages. Indeed, there are five parliamentary constituencies in Wales—Ynys Mon, Arfon, Dwyfor Meirionnydd, Ceredigion, and Carmarthen East and Dinefor where the majority of people speak Welsh as their first language. We will come to that when we come to the part of the Bill on boundaries. I hope that we will have support around the House when we try to ensure that those Welsh-speaking areas will not have their representation in the House of Commons diminished.