Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill

Debate between Lord Maxton and Lord Anderson of Swansea

Tuesday 1st February 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Anderson of Swansea]

That is one way of seeking to limit the zeal of any particular officer. It may well be that there should be written into the clause some test of reasonableness or otherwise, but we have to have some limit.

The final comment I would like to make on the amendment is on the point made by my noble friend Lord Lipsey, which was supported by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Mackay of Clashfern. I had the privilege of being an observer, or monitor, at both the South African election in 1994 and the first free election in Namibia in 1989. What amazed me at the time was that many people who had not had the opportunity before—those who were non-white—had such enthusiasm to get to the ballot box. I recall seeing young men carrying their aged mothers on their shoulders to get to that ballot box. I recall the long queues of people waiting to vote. All of those, in fact, who were in the tent at the relevant time, were allowed to vote. For any democrat it was a wonderfully emotional and uplifting moment.

As the noble and learned Lord, Lord Mackay, has just said, it was very different when we saw the people who had been excluded from voting at the time of the last election. As a democrat, I was extremely happy to see the display of real anger on the part of those who were excluded. We wait with interest to see how the Electoral Commission will respond, but surely it is not beyond the wit of man, or woman either, to give out cards to those waiting in the queue at 10 pm to enable those who have made the effort to vote on time to do so. Indeed, everything must be done to encourage people to vote. Someone who is turned away at the last moment because there is a queue may, in the future, join the ranks of those who do not vote. Let us look very carefully at this in order to encourage democracy.

[Lord Maxton]

My Lords, as someone who takes an interest in the field of IT and new technologies, I have to say that the idea that we still vote by putting a cross on a piece of paper, having had to travel somewhere to actually put that paper into a box, appals me. I would not dream of booking a holiday or anything else in any way other than online through my computer and paying with a bank card. There is some security risk, maybe, but not very much, yet we still have this absurd system for voting. But, of course, almost the first thing this Government did was to abolish the one way we could have had electronic voting by getting rid of the rather small system of ID cards that we were introducing. If we had ID cards, we would not have any of this bother.

This real point is this. My noble friend is right at one level to say that in Scotland we are going to have two ballot papers presented to us—but we are not because we are going to have three of them. There will be one using the first past the post system to elect the Member for the constituency, and a second paper giving a list of parties to elect. That, by the way, raises the point made earlier by my noble friend Lord Rooker about where you stand on the ballot paper. In my view, it is almost certain that Alex Salmond is the First Minister of Scotland because he made sure, when using the list system, that he was listed as “Alex Salmond for First Minister” rather than “SNP”. He was at the top of the list and probably got just about enough votes to make sure he won the election.

We are now to have the AV paper to contend with as well, and some people will find it difficult. The referendum is very important, but a problem that may arise is that some people in Scotland will decide that the Scottish elections are considerably more important than the referendum for AV. After all, the Scottish Parliament deals with the education system, housing and all the social issues that affect people’s lives. They may say, “I can’t be bothered with the referendum paper. I will deal with the Scottish Parliament ones”. If the turnout for the AV referendum is smaller than it is for the Scottish Parliament, that will begin to cast doubts on the referendum itself.