Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill

Lord Lawson of Blaby Excerpts

Wednesday 15th December 2010 Lords Chamber

[Lord Campbell-Savours]

I have read the Hansard of the whole of that debate. It is clear that the decision that my honourable friend took was on the basis that there was a possibility of differential turnout arising from the arrangement whereby the referendum takes place on the same day as a number of other elections throughout the United Kingdom.

[Lord Lawson of Blaby]

As the noble Lord, Lord Elystan-Morgan, said that I was going to intervene in this debate, I had better do so; indeed, I had intended to do so. It is the first time that I have intervened in Committee on the Bill and I shall try not to detain noble Lords for too long. I do not need to, because the noble Lord, Lord Elystan-Morgan, made a number of important points with which I agree but, in particular, my noble friend Lord Lamont made all the main points very convincingly.

I just add one or two points to that. First, this is not merely a constitutional matter; it is a constitutional matter of great importance. If there is a low turnout, it may well be that that is because too many people are puzzled by exactly what the implication is of a change from first past the post to the alternative vote, so they do not feel able to cast their vote. For that reason, you might get a very low turnout. In fact, the alternative vote system is generally agreed to be a totally capricious system. Every inquiry that has looked into it, such as the Jenkins commission, found it to be totally capricious. It could produce extraordinary results.

Seeing the noble Lord, Lord Bach, in his place—I am very glad to do so—I give an example from the constituency of Blaby, which I had the honour of representing for 18 years and five general elections. I mention the noble Lord, Lord Bach, because he was one of my most distinguished constituents. Not only that, if I remember rightly—he will correct me if I am wrong—he was chairman of the constituency Labour Party.

[Lord Bach]

I still am.

[Lord Lawson of Blaby]

The noble Lord is a glutton for punishment. As the noble Lord, Lord Bach, will confirm, a characteristic of the constituency of Blaby was that it was always clear that the Conservative candidate—and I was fortunate enough to be the Conservative candidate for all those years—would come first past the post by a huge majority. However, two things were uncertain. The first was whether it would be an overall majority or fall short of an overall majority. In the five elections I fought, I had an overall majority in three of them and failed to get an overall majority in the other two. It was also uncertain as to which candidate would come second—whether it would be Labour second and the Liberal Democrat third, or the Liberal Democrat second and Labour third. In fact, on three occasions the Liberal Democrat came second and Labour third, and on the other two occasions it was the other way round, with Labour second and the Liberal Democrat third.

However, under the alternative vote system, which of the two came second and which of the two came third would have determined the result of the election. If the Liberal Democrat came third, it is a reasonable presumption that the second preferences would have been divided equally between myself and the Labour candidate and therefore they would not have affected the result; I would still have been elected. If, however, Labour came third, it is a reasonable presumption that the Labour voters would have given their second preference to the Liberal Democrat rather than to me—regrettable though that judgment might have been—in which case the Liberal Democrat would have been elected. Therefore the decision as to who was elected depended on who came second and who came third. It is an absurd, totally capricious system.

Furthermore, under the alternative vote system, if I had wished to maximise my chances of being elected, which is a reasonable ambition, I would have privately told all my closest supporters to vote Labour because that would reduce the risk of Labour coming third. I did not do that because we did not have the alternative vote. It is a ludicrous and capricious system which encourages insincere voting.

If we are going to introduce something like that—if we do make that move—there is a risk that when the public tumble to what is happening they will be extremely dissatisfied with it and there will be a serious loss of faith in our democratic system. It is important that that does not happen by inadvertence, as it were, because of a small poll. We will want as many people as possible to have bought into the change to reduce the risk of them becoming disaffected with our democratic system. We have problems of disaffection with our democratic system as it is; we do not want to maximise that. So we must have a threshold. As my noble friend Lord Lamont and others have said, every country has some kind of special supermajority or threshold requirement whenever it is making a constitutional change.

The question then arises of what kind of threshold it should be. Should it be as with the Cunningham amendment—I shall come briefly on to that—of January 1978, I think it was, in the Scotland and Wales Acts where the majority has to be X per cent—in that case the winning side had to get 40 per cent—or should it be a turnout threshold? I confess that I think that the Cunningham amendment was a better system; a threshold on overall turnout is not as satisfactory. However, I take the point of my noble friend Lord Lamont that it is arguable that to have a threshold for the winning score would be in conflict with the coalition agreement, whereas we have established that that is not the case with a threshold for turnout.

I confess within this private space that I do not regard the coalition agreement as holy writ and, although I am not the greatest constitutional expert, I do not believe that it is even protected by the Salisbury convention. Nevertheless it is right that we should have some regard for it on this side of the Committee. For that reason I am prepared to support the idea of an amendment introducing a threshold for turnout. I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Elystan-Morgan, that 25 per cent is ridiculously small and that it should be somewhere in the order of 40 per cent or 50 per cent.

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[Lord Maclennan of Rogart]

Does my noble friend agree that the noble friends to whom he referred had one thing in common beyond their membership of his party and that was their desire to prevent the outcome being one that gave devolution to Scotland and Wales and that, similarly, those who are of the mind that he has expressed are in favour of preventing any change in the constitution today?

[Lord Lawson of Blaby]

I made clear the reasons for my argument. My noble friend is right that I quoted only my noble friends who voted in that way but it was a Labour amendment tabled by George Cunningham and had huge support too in the Labour Party. That was why it was carried.

For the life of me I cannot imagine why anyone would wish to see the alternative vote system. It is a crazy system and the only clear beneficiary might be the Liberal Democrat Party so it is possible that that has influenced its opinion slightly, although I think that is purely a coincidence. But it is very regrettable that the noble Lord is so keen to get the alternative vote system introduced that he is prepared to do it in a hole-in-the-corner way.

[Lord Grocott]

My Lords, I agree wholeheartedly with everything that the noble Lord, Lord Lawson, said, except in one respect. He anticipated, or perhaps reflected, on what might have happened, or could happen, in terms of people’s second preferences should there be an alternative vote system, or had there been in his constituency in the past. He made the assumption that every Labour voter would probably vote Liberal as their second preference. However true that may have been in the past, having seen the Liberal Democrats’ performance during the past six months, I would not make that assumption now. Not least, we have a coalition, so where do I put my second preference? I hope that the question will never arise, because, as I have made plain, if we were to have a referendum—and I would prefer that we did not—I would hope that the no campaign won.

I am very mindful of the time, so I shall not go on at any length. However, I have put my name alongside Amendment 44B in this group, which puts the threshold at 50 per cent, and I should like to make a couple of points. The first is to remind the Committee that, as my noble friend Lord Rooker pointed out very clearly, this is not an indicative referendum; it is a referendum which legislates. Should it be carried under the Bill as it stands, even by two votes to one—I know that I shall be criticised by the noble Lord, Lord McNally, for going to ridiculous extremes, but we have got to see the logic of the argument—the legislation would be passed. It would become part of the constitution of our country and represent the most dramatic constitutional change for a very long time.

I take it as read—at least, I hope that I can in this Committee—that if a Bill were passed at Third Reading in this House by two Members to one, with the remaining 800 Members wherever they preferred to be, and although it would be unchallengeable in constitutional law, it would be seen as ridiculous. I cannot believe that there is anyone in this House who does not think, though they may not want to put it in the Bill, that there has to be a threshold for a decision of this magnitude. The noble Lord, Lord Lamont, made a number of the points that I would have made. I simply say that I wholeheartedly agree with him that we are quite an unusual country—not unique, I think, but close to it—in there being no distinction between ordinary law and constitutional law. The only difference that we seem to apply is that it is increasingly assumed that major constitutional changes have to be ratified by referendum, which is not unreasonable. The reason for having a threshold is that, to quote a seasonal comment, a constitutional change is not just for five years; it is probably for life. If, as I half-anticipated, I had been intervened on and a noble Lord had said that Governments are elected by less than 50 per cent, I would have said that Governments come and go—we are now told that they can come and go only every five years, but they do come and go—whereas I think that we can all acknowledge that, should this change be made, it is incredibly unlikely that it would be reversed in our lifetime. That adds even greater import to the suggestion that we should be absolutely clear about the decision that we are making.

My amendment is for a 50 per cent threshold. It is not a figure that I have plucked out of the air, although “50 per cent” has constantly been repeated by the proponents of constitutional change. I have glanced through the most recent turnouts under the various electoral systems that operate in our country—there are far too many in my view, but that is not the point of this amendment. For local county council elections in 2009, it was 35 per cent; for Westminster parliamentary elections in 2010, it was 65 per cent; for the Greater London Assembly election in 2008, it was 45 per cent; for the Scottish parliamentary election, it was 51 per cent; for the National Assembly for Wales election, it was 43 per cent; for the European parliamentary elections, it was 34 per cent; for the European parliamentary elections in Northern Ireland, it was 42 per cent; for the Northern Ireland Assembly elections, it was 63 per cent; for the local government elections in Scotland, it was 53 per cent; for the local government elections in Northern Ireland, it was 62 per cent; for the Bedford Borough Council mayoral election, it was 30.9 per cent—I bet no one knew that one; and for the Greater London mayoral election, it was 45 per cent.

I hope I can convince the Committee that, for a major constitutional change, a 50 per cent turnout is not an unreasonable figure to validate that change. In fact, it is quite a modest figure bearing in mind that only half of those voting need to have voted in favour for the constitutional change to take place, which means one in four. Is it really an extremist position to suggest that, before we make this huge change, we should require one in four of our fellow citizens to vote in favour of it? That is the simple argument that I am presenting to the House and I hope the House will accept it.

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[Lord Rooker]

I have kept out of this debate, but I will give the Leader of the House the reason. It was the result of one of the finest speeches that I heard in 25 years in the House of Commons. The place was packed and I suspect that half the people in there did not know at the beginning how they were going to vote. George Cunningham turned the House around. I say that in all sincerity; he is no personal mate of mine. It was an absolutely magnificent speech. That was a big factor, along with the bit of low cunning that people saw as a consequence as well.

[Lord Lawson of Blaby]

If I may, while my noble friend is having a well earned rest, let me say that it was not a whipped vote on the Conservative side. It was a free vote and we were influenced in the way that the noble Lord, Lord Rooker, described. As an indication that it was a completely free vote, my noble friend Lady Thatcher, the Prime Minister at that time, did not take part in the Division. She did not vote—or did she? I do not recall.

[Lord Falconer of Thoroton]

She was Leader of the Opposition.

[Lord Lawson of Blaby]

Sorry, she was leader of the party, but she did not take part. It was a completely free expression of opinion based on principle.

[Lord Strathclyde]

My Lords, that just goes to show what happens when you have unwhipped votes. I am sure that my noble friend Lord Lawson knew which way he was going to vote on that day and rightly so. That is all part of the fabric of history that has brought us to this point. My point of principle remains that if people want to vote they need to know that, if there is a majority, they are going to get what they voted for.

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[Lord Lawson of Blaby]

If my noble friend will allow me, let me say that it is not as simple as that. It is not the case that an abstention will count as a no vote. It might well be the case that, if there is a considerable body of opposition to the change, it will win if its members vote, but if they stay at home and do not vote, that will allow the people who vote yes to win if they get over the threshold. So it is by no means as simple as my noble friend said; in fact, what he said is totally wrong. It might be that in certain circumstances it would help the no case, but in other circumstances it would help the yes case. That is the truth of the matter and people will therefore be inclined to vote if they understand what they are voting about.

[Lord Falconer of Thoroton]

Just to follow up on that important point, what is the evidence that the noble Lord, Lord Strathclyde, is relying on?