Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill

Debate between Lord Lipsey and Lord McAvoy

Wednesday 19th January 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Lipsey]

My Lords, the Bill provides for an equalisation in constituencies so that their electorates have to fall within bands of plus or minus 5 per cent, with only two exceptions. This amendment proposes a small but important change that that should be not plus or minus 5 per cent of the electorates but plus or minus 5 per cent of a notional electorate, which is calculated to provide for shortfalls in registration.

I will turn to the substance of the argument in a minute, but I want to make one point that pervaded our earlier debates and which, as the House’s resident statistical geek, rather grates on me: the tendency of people to prefer an exact figure, however ill based and peculiar, to an estimated figure, however well calculated. The fact is that the registered electorate is a very poor figure indeed for calculating anything. I will come to the detail in a minute, but will say now that only 91 to 92 per cent of the actual electorate are registered. Some 3.5 million people are missing from the electoral register. We all want better registration, but it will not come in an instant. So it is not really a good figure.

I cannot help but contrast the imprecision of that number—not that it is a precise number; it is a meaningless number—with the precision of the 5 per cent that is allowed each way. I have argued in various contexts that the Bill is too inflexible for the purpose that we all share, which is equalising the size of constituencies. That led me to wonder whether there was not a way of coming up with a notional figure for electorates that more nearly reflected both up-to-date figures and the actuality of the number of should-be electors in each constituency that also deals with non-registration.

I remind the Committee of the figures. Non-registration is very serious, but it is concentrated in particular groups. The Electoral Commission published in March 2010 a study, The Completeness and Accuracy of Electoral Registers in Great Britain. The figures given in it are striking: 56 per cent of 17 to 24 year-olds are not registered. Of private sector tenants, 49 per cent are not registered. Of people from black and ethnic minorities, 31 per cent are not registered. That distorts the figures on which we are trying to base size of constituency in the future.

If those figures are soundly based—everyone can look at the Electoral Commission’s study and see how soundly based they think they are, but it seemed a good piece of work to me—it would be possible to construct mathematically and with no great difficulty a model that provided a decent estimate of what the electorate in each constituency would be if everyone who is eligible to register had done so. This would have certain effects. For example, it would mean that inner-city areas tended to have rather more representation, while stable suburban areas had rather less.

There are various advantages to this. First, MPs represent everyone. Therefore, an estimate of the notional electorate—actually, the number of people who really live in their areas—would be nearer to the number of everyone whom they represented than the actual registered electorate. Secondly, it would be a more robust measure in a system of registration that will have great noise and perhaps instability injected into it. In principle, individual registration is a great thing. As we know from Northern Ireland, the reality, at least at first, can be very different from the theory.

[Lord McAvoy]

The noble Lord’s amendments are always very clever—first class; a lot of work goes into them. Who would establish the model to apply to constituencies, who would decide which model was applied to which constituency, and how long would the noble Lord propose for that to take?

[Lord Lipsey]

The Electoral Commission would be the obvious body to do this work, because it has done the original study and is very familiar with it. I do not think that it would take long at all, given a decent computer; it is a perfectly simple mathematical formula. It would generate a notional electorate for each constituency. I agree with the noble Lord—I was going to say this later—that there are practical matters to be sorted out later about whether the proposal is workable. That is why I said that the amendment is exploratory and is not necessarily the finished article.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Lipsey]

The noble Lord might be right. I did not say that this particular proposal should go to everyone for consultation. I said, in general, that I did not agree with the proposition that you could not raise an issue in this House in Committee without first consulting everyone who might be affected. This amendment has been on the Marshalled List since the moment I tabled it.

[Lord McAvoy]

My Lords—

[Lord Lipsey]

Will the noble Lord, Lord McAvoy, please be very kind and allow me to finish my answer to the noble Lord, Lord Rennard, inadequate though it might well be?

The amendment has been on the Marshalled List for two or three weeks. We have had briefings from the Electoral Commission in the course of the proceedings on this Bill, and if it thought this was nonsense it could have said that it was nonsense in one of those briefings. It has not done so and I do not intend to apologise for raising the matter this evening.

[Lord McAvoy]

I urge my noble friend not to give too much—if any—credence to anything the noble Lord, Lord Rennard, has to say about political controversy and lack of consultation. He supports a constitutional Bill that is being rammed through this House and that has had no pre-legislative scrutiny, no consultation and no appeal. I urge him not to pay too much attention to the noble Lord. In fact, I would not pay any attention to him.

Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill

Debate between Lord Lipsey and Lord McAvoy

Monday 20th December 2010 Lords Chamber

[Lord McAvoy]

Does my noble friend agree with my findings, not on a scientific basis, that during and after the poll tax fiasco the importance of people wanting to be on the register was undermined because a whole strata of people found there was a financial advantage not to be registered and somehow there was something lost in the community about the importance of wanting to register? No matter how allegedly better the registers are now, there must be a residual effect of the poll tax. So it may be better but there is residual damage.

[Lord Lipsey]

I entirely agree with my noble friend. Indeed it is not just the poll tax; there are a number of factors the whole time that cause people to avoid anything that identifies them as individuals and which they think the authorities could catch up with. It may be for bad reasons: they may perhaps be illegally in the country or fear they are here illegally; or good reasons: that they fall for some of the liberal myths about the nature of the modern state and think that they may all end up in prison if they are identified. I do not take it by any means for granted that the improvement in the electoral register will continue over time.

It is rather like opinion polls. Opinion polls measure less and less because fewer and fewer people are willing to answer the questions because they are frightened that they may be held to task for the answers they give. There is therefore a serious risk of the deterioration of the electoral registers, which makes it all the more wrong that this Bill should have the exact number on the electoral register and the exact number of people in each constituency as its target and also makes it right that, in so far as we can improve these things at all, the amendment moved by my noble friend should be adopted to make them as good as they can be. But that will never be very good.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Lipsey]

My Lords, I can understand the case that my noble friend Lord Beecham is making and it is seductive. However, it removes some of the most desirable features of the AV system, which is designed to produce a much wider choice for voters. That includes, for example, the possibility of voting for a party that really has no chance and which you know will come bottom of the polls, without at the same time wasting your vote. There might be, for example, a local campaigner with a specific goal which you strongly support, but you do not necessarily want to waste your vote entirely by supporting that candidate if there is a danger that it will be eliminated. The amendment means that it is less likely, rather than not likely, that the winning candidate will get 51 per cent of the vote. As we know, under the present system, only a third of Members of the House of Commons received as much as half of their electorate’s votes. We do not have an exact figure as to what that would increase to under AV, but if you said 86 per cent or 90 per cent, you would probably be right. The amendment would reduce that back down again nearer to the present third. For those reasons, I cannot support my noble friend in his well meant amendment.

[Lord McAvoy]

My Lords, I support the amendment of my noble friend Lord Beecham but only in the context of where we are with that system. I believe very strongly that the first past the post system should stay and I do not want anyone to say—although, of course, I cannot stop anyone saying it—that supporting the amendment in the context of where we are necessarily means that I am deserting my support for first past the post.

This is a modest amendment. On the other hand, romantic candidates, Official Monster Raving Loony Party candidates and the “independent with a cause” candidate can all sound okay but, in a serious parliamentary democracy, is it right that such a small proportion of the vote should be used elsewhere? We are running serious elections for serious and responsible elected positions and, although having the freedom to stand for election and to campaign and so on is an absolute right, I do not think that that type of candidate who polls less than 5 per cent of the vote should be allowed to distort the electoral system and the democratic process. Then again, I keep asking myself why people get involved in that kind of party when it is all a lot of nonsense. Nevertheless, speaking as a realistic politician, I have to say that the amendment is before us and it needs to be discussed. However, if anyone wishes to use their charms on me, I am still willing to be convinced by an objection to my noble friend’s amendment.

My noble friend Lord Lipsey is great to listen to and I admire him. He is a formidable person but I do not think that he came up with any reason why the amendment should be opposed. He came up with an intellectual reason, and it is right and proper that that is aired. However, we have to take the real world into account and I do not think it is right for a party with a small percentage of the vote to distort the vote. In the context of what we are discussing, I have no hesitation in supporting my noble friend’s amendment.

Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill

Debate between Lord Lipsey and Lord McAvoy

Wednesday 15th December 2010 Lords Chamber

[Lord Lipsey]

I support my noble and learned friend Lord Falconer’s amendment. The need for it reflects in part the baleful effects of the Government’s plan to have the referendum on the same day as other elections, because inevitably there will be a cluster of party-political broadcasts as part of the campaigns. That means that a ban of this kind is all the more essential because there will be a temptation at times for various parties to include the referendum in those broadcasts. Of course, it is possible that the referendum will not take place on 5 May—we shall see—but the circumstances in which it took place later could mean that the ability to use a party-political broadcast to campaign for or against AV could considerably prejudice the result of that referendum.

Let us take a case whereby the referendum is held at a time when the coalition has broken up, which seems a more likely prospect today than it would have done about a fortnight ago. In that circumstance, the Conservatives would no longer have any inhibition about campaigning flat out for what they believe in, which is that AV is a bad thing, and they could well wish to devote a party-political broadcast—or party-political broadcasts, come to that—to smashing into AV, if only in the hope of defeating their erstwhile friends in the Liberal Democrats on something that they greatly want.

The idea of party-political broadcasts, although they are propagandist things, is that they are balanced; everyone gets a go at one, so they cancel each other out. Within a referendum campaign, however, to allow for party-political broadcasts arguing one side of the case where it is a matter of chance whether or not there is a party-political broadcast arguing the other seems to be an extremely unfair way to conduct the campaign. I therefore support my noble and learned friend’s amendment.

[Lord McAvoy]

My Lords, I, too, support the amendment of my noble and learned friend on the Front Bench. I shall start with my usual obsession and say that, on reading the amendment and indeed the Bill, I was motivated by my usual and, I would say, well founded lack of trust in the behaviour of Liberals in these matters. My noble friend Lady Liddell has mentioned various referendums—or referenda—but, being parochial and from the Royal Burgh of Rutherglen, I shall bring it down to the Royal Burgh level.

As I have mentioned previously, we had a local council campaign regarding local government reform in 1994-95. It was an all-party campaign. Everybody behaved themselves, except guess who? We had the local Liberals trying to slip in leaflets and bits about themselves as if the campaign was somehow theirs. It caused great annoyance among the rest of the voluntary committee and they were reprimanded.

No doubt somewhere in the Chamber somebody will jump up to say, “How parochial and petty”. I plead guilty to that. However, I am further reinforced in my position on this amendment by comments from my noble friend Lady Liddell. I have an awful guilty feeling that, as part of the Labour no campaign, I contributed to the finances to seek the interdict that she referred to. I am quite sure that she will have a word to say to me later about that.

As my noble friends Lady Liddell and Lord Foulkes pointed out, the election broadcast compounded or, even worse, took advantage of pushing the boundaries of what were the rules and what was policy. Though it is absolutely wrong, the temptation will always be there. This should be very well controlled in order to make sure that election broadcasts are not hijacked for narrow political purposes.

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[Lord McAvoy]

My Lords, briefly, the very point that my noble friend Lord Campbell-Savours has mentioned is the one that has particularly worried me: the rich men and women who have made plenty of money—worked hard and earned the money—and decide to influence the political process with an influx of money into either individual constituencies, as sometimes seems to happen, or on a national campaign. I do not think that is right. I am seriously interested in the response of the noble Lord, Lord McNally, to that, because I am certainly interested in taking up his offer of widening and deepening the bonding that has taken place between the two of us.

I am also inspired to speak very briefly following the noble Lord, Lord Lamont, who mentioned that he really cannot remember what he said a few years ago. None of us can remember everything we said a few years ago, but sometimes there is relevance in what we say. The referendum is being driven by politics. The date is being driven by politics. We are told that we should not revise and scrutinise because 5 May is set in stone and that we should not do anything to put that in jeopardy. It is our job to revise and to scrutinise legislation and we should not be accused of spreading things out. This issue is political. I shall briefly give a quote:

“I think referendums are awful. The late and great Julian Critchley used to say that, not very surprisingly, they were the favourite form of plebiscitary democracy of Mussolini and Hitler. They undermine Westminster”.

That is the bit that interests me.

“What they ensure, as we saw in the last election, is if you have a referendum on an issue, politicians during an election campaign say ‘Oh, we're not going to talk about that, we don't need to talk about that, that's all for the referendum’”.

This refers specifically to the euro campaign. The quote continues:

“So during the last election campaign the euro was hardly debated. I think referendums are fundamentally anti-democratic in our system and I wouldn't have anything to do with them. On the whole, Governments only concede them when Governments are weak”.

That was Chris Patten, now the noble Lord, Lord Patten of Barnes.

[Lord Lipsey]

My Lords, this is proving to be a most illuminating debate. When the Minister replies, can he illuminate us further? I got rather confused between two arguments that he is putting, both of which are perfectly sustainable but which are simply impossible to run together.

One argument is that there is nothing wrong with the present law; it deals with absolutely everything. I do not think that that argument stands up because it has been destroyed by the arguments of my noble and learned friend Lord Falconer and my noble friend Lord Campbell-Savours, but it is a perfectly sustainable argument by its own logic. Another argument which the Minister came to later, however, says, “Well, the law may or may not be right, but it would be totally confusing to participants if we changed it now”. That is a sustainable argument that leads to a clear conclusion: if it is going to confuse participants, we need to put the referendum date back, as my noble friend Lord Foulkes said, sort that bit of law out and then go ahead with the referendum.

The Minister can take either line as far as I am concerned, and the House will take its view on whether it supports it, but he really cannot run both lines simultaneously. I know that the late Jimmy Thomas said that if you cannot ride two horses at once you should not be in the circus, but it gets a trifle tricky if they are galloping in opposite directions.