Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill

Lord Newton of Braintree Excerpts

Monday 7th February 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Howarth of Newport]

I agree entirely with my noble friend that these are further defects. PR condemns us to a perpetuity of coalition Governments and gives disproportionate power to third and lesser parties, as we have seen for many years with the Free Democratic Party in Germany. I would not wish to vote for it, but my point is that people should be allowed the opportunity to vote on all the serious choices that ought to be considered when we are contemplating the possibility of changing the electoral system. I am confident that first past the post would prevail and I would campaign for it, but it would be a salutary exercise in our democracy if we were to reconsider what our electoral system should be, with every reasonable option being available to the people.

I am surprised, therefore, that what Mr Clegg thought of as a “miserable little compromise” in offering the option of voting only for AV now appears to him to be a happy little compromise. I fear that he regards it as a stepping stone towards another referendum, which he hopes will not be long delayed, in which people, finding that they have been sold a pig in a poke with AV, decide that they do wish to move on to STV after all. In an earlier debate I quoted the Constitution Committee of your Lordships’ House, which deprecated the resort to referendums. Indeed, I think that to lead us from one referendum to the next because the first referendum offers an inadequate choice to the people that they quickly find unsatisfactory would be a thoroughly bad thing.

For these reasons, I support the amendment in the name of my noble friend Lord Campbell-Savours, and I hope that he will want to pursue it with all the vigour he can muster.

[Lord Newton of Braintree]

My Lords, I do not particularly want to follow the remarks of the noble Lord, Lord Howarth of Newport, not least in that I would not want to go down the partisan path he took in the middle of his speech, no doubt unintentionally. I do, however, want to find out exactly what is being asked because I found myself getting a bit open-mouthed at some of the things that the noble Lord, Lord Campbell-Savours, said. Do I understand that he wants a proposition that says, “Do you want change?”, to which in any normal circumstance, even if your wife says that you need a new dressing gown or pair of slippers, you ask what the alternative is? Then, when they ask you what the alternative is, you say, “We do not actually have an alternative. There are a dozen, 15 or 20 of them”. Once you have decided whether you want an alternative, the politicians will decide what alternative you want. I am bound to say that that totally lacks credibility, and I could not conceivably vote for it.

[Lord Falconer of Thoroton]

My Lords, at the heart of the amendment in the name of my noble friend Lord Campbell-Savours is the proposition that there has not been sufficient examination of what the right system is. It reflects the thump-thump-thump throughout this debate that there has been no adequate examination of the various voting systems. I notice that the noble Lord, Lord Newton of Braintree, who is very much to be admired, is indicating from a sedentary position a word that suggests he does not necessarily agree, but I do not invite him to express it.

That is not just my view; it is the view of the two Select Committees in both Houses of Parliament, it is the view that underlay the amendment of my noble friend Lord Wills calling for a commission of inquiry, and it is the basis upon which my noble friend Lord Campbell-Savours has put his amendment now. Like everything on Report, it is a refined version that says, “Let us have it, but only if there is a desire for change”. The fact that when Lady Newton of Braintree proposes that the noble Lord, Lord Newton of Braintree, buys a new dressing gown, he says yes, does not indicate that everyone, when confronted with change, says yes. Indeed, most people, when confronted with change on important political issues, tend to say no, so I will be interested to hear the view of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Wallace of Tankerness, on this issue, and the answer to the proposition that if the public want change, we should examine what the right change is before we give them only one choice.