Elections Bill (Twelfth sitting)

Aaron Bell Excerpts

Committee stage
Tuesday 26th October 2021 Public Bill Committees

[Cat Smith]

I must say that I was very surprised when we received an instruction motion. To be honest, I had not seen one before during my time in this House, and I did not realise that the Government had been so disorganised that they had forgotten to put one of their manifesto commitments in the Bill, but by all accounts, that is exactly what has happened. It is not only chaotic, but deeply disrespectful to the House.

Our colleagues who do not have the privilege and joy of serving on this Committee got to debate the Bill on Second Reading, when we had no idea that this new clause would be included. Although we are able to debate this new clause, our colleagues were not able to raise concerns about it on Second Reading. It is disrespectful to our colleagues that they have not yet had the opportunity to raise concerns about this clause, but it is also disrespectful to this Committee. When, through the usual channels, we decided which witnesses should give evidence to the Committee, we did not know that a new clause was going to be tabled that would massively shake up the way in which many elections take place in England and Wales. We were not able to get witnesses who were experts in voting systems before the Committee, so that we had the opportunity to quiz them—to ask questions and explore whether the first-past-the-post system is as desirable as the Minister seems to think. We did not have the opportunity to explore how successful, or perhaps otherwise, the supplementary vote system has been in mayoral elections in England, or in police and crime commissioner elections in England and Wales. None of that was allowed for, which is disrespectful to this House, this Committee, and our colleagues who did not have the opportunity on Second Reading to ask questions and scrutinise the Government.

Moving beyond the incredibly disrespectful way in which new clause 1 has been tabled and turning to its specifics, I ask the Minister what consultation she or her predecessor have had with Mayors about whether this was a change they were seeking. Having spoken to many elected Mayors over the past few weeks, it strikes me that they did not know that this was coming, and it has come as something of a surprise. There was no clamour for it from their offices, and they are deeply hurt that the Minister has not reached out to them to consult with them on this new clause.

Specifically looking at London—I admit that I have had to swot up a fair bit on this issue, because I am not a London MP—in 1998, in the Greater London Authority referendum, Londoners were asked whether they wanted to have a Mayor and an assembly, and it was clear that that Mayor would be elected using a supplementary vote system. Londoners agreed, by a majority of 72.01%, that this was something that they wanted. Is this Committee going to overturn a democratic referendum—the democratic will of the people, we might say; in this case, the people of London—to change the voting system?

Last time we had a debate about changing the voting system in this country, the alternative vote referendum that everyone has clearly long since forgotten about, that question was put to the people, because this is a really major change. For us to be changing the voting system used in elections in this country not by referendum, not even by putting it in the Bill and debating it on Second Reading, but by slipping it in in Committee, is absolutely shocking and appalling. It is one of the lowest points of this Bill; as I have said at earlier stages, there are plenty of other things in this Bill that I disagree with, but I am deeply offended by the way in which the Government have gone about this. It is disrespectful, and it is riding roughshod over democracy.

Specifically in the case of the London referendum, every single London borough voted to elect their Mayor using a supplementary vote system. Who is this Committee—many of us are not even London MPs—to say to those people, “You voted in that referendum for that, but we are taking it away from you”? I had a little look at the breakdowns for different boroughs, because I was surprised when I saw that every London borough had voted for it—this is a diverse city—but in the lowest supporting areas, Havering and Bromley, it was still 60% and 57% voting in favour of that system, with the highest support being in Lambeth and Haringey, which had 81% and 83% respectively.

[Aaron Bell (Newcastle-under-Lyme) (Con)]

Will the hon. Lady give way?

[Cat Smith]

I will give way—I would like to hear the hon. Member’s defence of this.

[Aaron Bell]

Of course, the voters in all those boroughs were voting in favour of the principle of a Mayor and an assembly and not specifically the voting system employed. But may I put a question to the hon. Lady? At the last London Mayor election, almost 5% of voters in London saw their votes essentially not count, because of the confusion that the system engendered. That is why the Government are proposing the change.

[Cat Smith]

I have completely forgotten the hon. Gentleman’s first point, but on the second, there were a lot of spoilt ballots in London this time and that was because the ballot paper was designed with two columns, rather than one column, for the first time. I have to be honest: I have seen the ballot paper, which was shared on social media, and it was shocking. It should never have been allowed to go to print. [Interruption.] It is amazing that it got past any level of scrutiny. There is probably a lesson to be learned about how we legislate and how we make sure that checks and safeguards are in place to ensure that voters are not disenfranchised, because I do not think—

[Cat Smith]

Thank you, Mr Pritchard.

For more than 20 years, Londoners have been using the supplementary vote system to elect their Mayor without major incident. There were some issues with spoilt ballot papers at the last election—I concede that—but I think that it was very clearly because of the design of the ballot paper, as we did not see that in previous elections. Clearly, the ballot paper needs to be better designed.

I will raise again with the Minister the point about police and crime commissioner elections, which take place in England and Wales. It was a Conservative-led Government—she wishes to push her Liberal Democrat colleagues under the bus for the coalition, which is a pattern of behaviour that we have seen a fair bit—who chose the supplementary vote system for those elections, because there was a consensus, which new clause 1 is shattering, on a supplementary vote system. It is not proportional representation. It is not a radical change to the electoral system. But it is a fairer way of voters casting their vote, and I think there was a general consensus about that, which is why we saw it introduced for regional Mayors in England and police and crime commissioner elections—many of these under a Conservative Government, of course. It is why, since the year 2000, that system has been used pretty much consistently when bringing in new elections. I have counted them up: there have been 212 elections using the supplementary vote system in England and Wales since the turn of the millennium, and I think that voters are confident in using it now.

The only election that is not first past the post in my constituency in Lancashire is the election for police and crime commissioner, which uses the supplementary vote. The feedback I always get from my constituents is about how nice it is, in their words, “to be able to vote for the person who is my favourite candidate really, but then to have my vote count in relation to the people that we know the contest is actually between.” That is because the electorate are of course an intelligent electorate. People know whether their preferred candidate is likely to be in the final run-off of two, and they vote accordingly.

[Aaron Bell]

I thank the shadow Minister for giving way again. I am listening to what she is saying, and she may be interested to learn—in fact, both Opposition parties may be interested to learn—that in 2011 I actually voted for the alternative vote system, which makes me rather unusual on the Conservative side. In 2011, however, the country quite firmly did not vote for AV, and did not believe in the principle that people’s second votes should essentially count the same as their first votes. That is what the supplementary vote system means. SV is, in my opinion, far worse than AV, but I, on this side of the House, respect referendum results. I think both Opposition parties should do the same thing.

[Cat Smith]

I agree with the hon. Gentleman: we absolutely should respect a referendum result. That is why I am surprised to see those on the Government Benches riding roughshod over the 1998 Greater London Authority referendum, in which it was very clear that the supplementary vote system for Mayor of London was what people wanted—by a huge majority. I do believe in respecting referendum results, and I respect the referendum results that he referred to. I voted against AV, so we were on different sides in that argument. I personally think that there are far better voting systems than AV, but this is not a debate about different voting systems. I think it is about riding roughshod over the democratic will of Londoners in 1998 by pushing through in Committee something that has not had the scrutiny of the full House. The way in which the Government have gone about this, whereby we have not been able to take evidence as a Committee and truly scrutinise the measure, is shocking. I know fine well that Government Members will just all vote for this anyway, but I ask them to look at their consciences on this new clause, because it is overturning the democratic will of the people of London.

The voting system has been working fine. I have to question why it is a Government priority suddenly to change it. The cynical part of me, and I am not normally a cynical person, would suggest that the Government feel that they cannot win an election under a supplementary vote system and perhaps think they have a better chance under first past the post. Perhaps it is a case of “If you can’t win the game, move the goalposts,” because it looks an awful lot like that.

--- Later in debate ---

[Patrick Grady]

We have only to look at the results of the elections to this place—this is perhaps not the clause specifically to debate that—to see how well the Conservatives fare. When we SNP MPs were elected in large numbers in 2015, our parliamentary group leader at the time made the point that it did not reflect the result proportionally, but perhaps we are straying slightly. I want to come back to the election of the Mayor of London, and the results of first-past-the-post elections.

Perhaps Conservative Members—I look forward to hearing from them when they rise to speak in support of the Government—are quite comfortable with the idea that Ken Livingstone was elected on the first ballot with 39% of the vote in 2000, and with 36.8% of the vote in 2004. That is the mandate for someone to be the Mayor of a major European metropolitan city, which the Prime Minister himself has claimed is a kind of equivalent to the entire Scottish Parliament and the devolved Scottish Government. That is the equivalence that he has made between his role as Mayor of London and the entire devolution settlement in Scotland. It seems that Government Members are quite content with the possibility of someone being elected to that position on about 35% of the vote.

[Aaron Bell]

rose—

[Patrick Grady]

I look forward to the hon. Gentleman telling me why that is.

[Aaron Bell]

I was about to say that I was happy to see the hon. Gentleman returned to Parliament for Glasgow North in 2017 on 37.6% of the vote.

[Patrick Grady]

To be fair, I have already made that point. I am very happy to submit myself to the electorate under any proportional system that the Government want to introduce. The hon. Gentleman can be sure of the SNP’s support for a Bill introducing such a system; we have said that many times in this House.

The experience of preferential voting in Scotland is that results can change, and that has not always been to the SNP’s advantage. In fact, owing to the nature of Scottish politics at the moment, there is a clear trend with transfers. Where the SNP is a voter’s first preference, they cast their vote for that party. That is the very clear trend. In fact, in the ward that I mentioned, the SNP won the vote in the recent by-election, under first past the post; we got the most votes. We had an excellent candidate in Abdul Bostani. He got the most first preferences, but because of transfers, he lost out, so that ward is now represented by two Labour councillors, one Green councillor and one SNP councillor. It was a Conservative vacancy, incidentally; I say that for anyone who has not turned up to enough of the Committee sittings. That proves my point on the issue on which the hon. Member for Newcastle-under-Lyme was trying to catch me out. It proves the value of preferential voting systems.

Ultimately, it is for England’s Members to make a determination about what electoral system is used by their local authorities, but Government Members have to think very carefully about the consequences of this.