House of Lords Reform

Lord Wharton of Yarm Excerpts

Monday 27th June 2011 Commons Chamber

[James Wharton (Stockton South) (Con)]

I am broadly in favour of the Government’s proposed reforms—at least, I was until the right hon. Member for South Shields (David Miliband) appeared also to be, at which point I wavered a little. I am coming back round as the debate goes on.

I have listened carefully to what hon. Members have had to say and we have heard strong arguments on both sides, which have served to highlight that this is a very difficult issue with which the House has been asked to grapple. However, that is not a reason for shying away from doing what I believe is—broadly speaking—the right thing. I agree with many of the Government’s objectives—I agree that the other place grows too large and that it raises issues of accountability and balance in how people are appointed—and I have looked at the proposed reforms and read the White Paper. It contains some good ideas. Indeed, I support 15-year elected terms, on condition that Members cannot seek re-election and the House is elected by thirds. That is a positive step that will tackle many of the issues that have been raised today.

My support is still slightly tentative, however, because I have a very serious reservation about the method of election proposed for the other place. At the moment, the proposed method is the single transferable vote. If one believes in proportional representation—and let us set aside the merits or otherwise of PR itself—STV has some advantages. It is relatively proportional and it allows individual members of the public to rank the candidates whom they want within a party slate, and so diminishes the power of parties to influence directly who gets elected—in a way that the closed list system does not, for example. STV gives the public the power to choose, but in the context in which we are now talking it is fatally flawed.

If we are looking at electing 180 senators—or MLs, Lords, peers, whatever they will be called—we must be looking at huge electorates in each constituency. In order for STV to be proportional, constituencies of four or more members are necessary. The larger the constituency—in terms of the number of members representing it—the more proportional the outcome of an STV system. In Northern Ireland, when STV was introduced, there were constituency sizes of six elected members. There have been debates in Ireland about the best size of constituency, and indeed wherever STV or a version of it is used across the world that is a long-running topic of debate. STV, therefore, would deliver elected members representing upwards of 500,000 people—voters—each, in which the public would be expected to rank candidates of their choice based on their preference.

In the north-east region, we would have four, possibly five, members of this new Chamber. As well informed an electorate as we have in the north-east, people would struggle to pick between party candidates on an individual candidate basis, because candidates would have to appeal to an electorate of some 2.5 million. Studies have shown, therefore, that an STV system discriminates against people whose names, by accident of birth, place them towards the end of the alphabet. I declare an interest, having a surname that places me at the end of the alphabet. When people are asked to rank in an STV system, many of them vote by party, as we know. The good, right-thinking people of the north-east would look for the Conservative candidates and rank them 1, 2, 3 and 4 in the order in which they appeared on the ballot paper—[Interruption.] Opposition Members shout “Shame!”, but those few people who may be confused and choose to vote for them would do the same. Therefore, this system discriminates almost directly against people based on where their name appears in the alphabet, and I urge the Government to think very carefully about introducing it.

This discrimination is well observed and indeed the Electoral Commission, in a report on ballot paper design in 2003, observed it. When Professor Dunleavy gave evidence to the Political and Constitutional Reform Committee, he also raised this issue. If we are even to discuss STV, we need to find a way to state clearly that this problem would be tackled, so as not to introduce a biased system, on the basis that it was an improvement, that would discriminate against people based on their surname. For many of the reasons discussed today, I broadly support much of what has been said on both sides of the argument, but in my own mind I still fall more or less on the side of the Government and am likely to support their proposals. However, I will not support them if they contain STV in an unreformed form, so I hope that the Government will think carefully about the electoral system that they use.