Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill

Angus Brendan MacNeil Excerpts

Monday 6th September 2010 Commons Chamber

[The Deputy Prime Minister]

The programme motion simply states that there will be five full days of debate on the Floor of the House of Commons—nothing more and nothing less. I do not think that that can be construed as a heavy-handed or intrusive approach.

[Mr Angus Brendan MacNeil (Na h-Eileanan an Iar) (SNP)]

On the date, with the benefit of hindsight does the Deputy Prime Minister think that he has blown the respect agenda to smithereens? He has managed to unite opposition to AV, the boundaries and the date—he has quite sucessfully united opposition to what he is trying to do. Will he reconsider what he plans to do on the date, and thereby have some respect for elections that will be taking place in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland?

[The Deputy Prime Minister]

Those remarks seem to suggest that in addition to the votes they will be casting in any event in local elections and devolved Assembly elections, people will not be able to take a simple yes or no decision on a simple question, and I think that that is disrespectful to them.

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[Mr Straw]

Allow me to make progress.

Every single other constitutional measure that I can recall has been considered within a time scale that allowed for proper pre-legislative scrutiny, but the man who came to office preening himself on how he was to raise the standards of our politics has brushed all that aside—so much so that the Political and Constitutional Reform Committee, to which he is answerable, denounced his approach in unusually strong terms. It said:

“The Deputy Prime Minister has accurately described the Bill as ‘fundamental to this House and to our democracy’. We regret that the Government’s timetable has denied us an adequate opportunity to scrutinise the Bill before second reading.”

Had the Select Committee had time, it might have been able to prise from the right hon. Gentleman some better explanation for clause 9, which can only be described as the Liberal Democrat protection clause.

The essence of the Bill is that arithmetic trumps all—that it trumps community loyalties, historical ties, long-established county boundaries, mountains, and, indeed, the sea. In pursuit of arithmetic, for example, the views of the people of the Isle of Wight are wholly to be ignored. It is all in the name of an arithmetical formula, except in one area of the United Kingdom—the north of Scotland. There will be two protected constituencies: Orkney and Shetland, with 37,000 voters, and the Western Isles, with 22,000 voters—a third of the standard size. Our objection is not that Orkney and Shetland and the Western Isles should have special considerations taken into account, but that they are the only areas that will be allowed to put their case about local needs and concerns.

Then we have the most bare-faced and partisan exemption of all: a new rule to allow seats that are more than 12,000 sq km in size—where this figure came from, I do not know—to exist even without the required quota of electors. Alongside that, another rule prevents any seat from exceeding 13,000 sq km. At present, only one seat on the mainland is bigger than 12,000 sq km—Ross, Skye and Lochaber, the seat of the former leader of the Liberal Democrats. Contrary to what the Deputy Prime Minister intimated, this is to protect a small seat with 24,000 voters—fewer than the average at which all other seats will be aimed. The only other seats that could conceivably be assisted by that rule are located in the Scottish highlands, and they are also Liberal Democrat-held.

[Mr MacNeil]

Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?

[Mr Straw]

If the hon. Gentleman does not mind, I need to make some progress so that others can get in.

The Deputy Prime Minister labours under the delusion that arithmetic equals fairness and that—the north of Scotland excepted, of course—human and natural factors should be cast aside. The strength of that delusion was recently spelt out by the Electoral Reform Society, which said:

“Conservative proposals”—

we now, of course, have to add Liberal Democrat ones—

“mean that most constituencies will pay less regard to what most voters think of as community and natural boundaries, and change more frequently, destabilising the link between MPs and constituents. The United States has rigorous requirements for arithmetical equality of population in congressional districts, but the worst gerrymandering in the developed world.”

[Mr MacNeil]

Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?

[Mr Straw]

If the hon. Gentleman will excuse me, no.

In contrast, Margaret Thatcher’s 1986 system recognised the need for balance, which allowed local commissioners and the commission to take account of historical and natural boundaries, and density as well as sparsity of population, and to do so with the widest public acceptability. That ability to achieve balance has also meant that long-standing problems such as the under-registration of voters has had less impact on the final outcome. The problem of under-registration goes back to the 1990 poll tax. We sought to stabilise registration levels, but that poll tax legacy remains. The right hon. Gentleman must recognise that his reliance on arithmetic above all makes the problem of under-registration so acute and so potentially unfair.

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[Mr Angus Brendan MacNeil (Na h-Eileanan an Iar) (SNP)]

The Deputy Prime Minister spoke about reform of politics and political renewal. It is therefore perhaps a shame that the SNP’s amendment to the motion was not selected, as it would have better achieved those ends than the amendment before the House. However, that is possibly another matter.

As a supporter of democracy, I was at one with the Liberals in the past in supporting the single transferable vote. However, they have now moved downmarket, sadly, and have left us in the nationalist parties alone in supporting STV. AV is not the halfway compromise that the Liberals imagine it to be. It is not halfway between first past the post and STV or even a quarter of the way; it is not a 10th of the way or a 20th of the way. At best, it might be a 50th of the way. Perhaps that is progress, but it is not much of a leap.

However, there does seem to be a leap in the paranoia growing among those on the Benches of this House, including paranoia among some Tories that although their second-preference votes might be distributed to the Liberals, the Liberals will not reciprocate in the same manner. Labour also has paranoia, about seats and boundary changes. The final paranoia that I am detecting is that if AV goes through, the Tories might collapse the Government and hold an election before AV gets assent, in order to give the Liberals a disadvantage.

However, my fear is ultimately based on the tremendous lack of respect that we are seeing. My hon. Friend the Member for Carmarthen East and Dinefwr (Jonathan Edwards) tells me that in Wales the Tories and the Liberals stopped a referendum that would have been held on the day of the Welsh elections. However, in Westminster, the Tories and the Liberals are pushing a referendum on us in Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland on the day of our national elections. That is not happening in a Welsh context alone; there will now be an asymmetrical voting day across the United Kingdom, which is a tremendous mistake.

The confusion of electoral methodology, boundaries and the date is a strategic master class in creating opposition to the Bill. Surely respect demands another day. Among the hundreds of days that the Government could have chosen for a referendum, they have chosen the one day on which votes will be taking place in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland—a master call in creating opposition. I note sadly that the Labour amendment makes no mention of the date.

As I have said, the Deputy Prime Minister spoke about political reform and letting the people decide. Why, therefore, do the Government not trust the people to decide properly? Why do the Liberals and the Tories not trust the people to discriminate between first past the post, AV and STV? I have just heard a Government Member say that he trusted the people to decide and choose the right system. Well, give them a proper choice and let them choose properly and comprehensively, because otherwise we will not be letting the people choose. Instead, we will be giving them a very narrow field of choice. Do the Government not trust the people? The rhetoric behind it all was that this programme would be greater than the Great Reform Act of 1832, but it is certainly falling down badly in the sidelines.

Finally, let me deal with the date and I shall detain the House no longer. All we ask for in Scotland is some respect for what is happening there and for Scottish dynamics. We do not want the media to be dominated by a secondary issue to the main bread-and-butter issues that will apply in Scotland. If we are to have a referendum in Scotland on the day of the election, why will the Government not consider having a referendum on giving greater powers to the Scottish Parliament? This is going to happen in Wales this coming spring, so why can we not have it in Scotland? Why can we not have either independence or greater fiscal powers under the status quo?

[Daniel Kawczynski]

The hon. Gentleman is issuing a lot of challenges to various political parties, so will he accept the challenge of taking a small bit of the mainland in order to make his seat the same size as our constituencies?

[Mr MacNeil]

I am delighted that the hon. Gentleman has raised that matter. This morning, I travelled here by ferry in a force 7 gale; the ferry could not turn and had to reverse in the Sound of Barra. Secondly, I got a plane from Benbecula to Glasgow and then another plane from Glasgow to Heathrow. If the hon. Gentleman wants to make that journey, let him do so; if he does not know the geography, I would ask him to come and visit my constituency.

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[Mr Harper]

I can confirm that our combination amendment will ensure that parish elections can take place on the planned date. As most of England will be voting on the same date, I foresee no problems with differential turnouts, and I think that Members who are concerned about that can be reassured.

I believe that, far from disrespecting the devolved Administrations—as was suggested by the hon. Member for Na h-Eileanan an Iar (Mr MacNeil), who speaks for his party on this matter—we are treating the voters of those countries with respect. We think that they are perfectly able to vote in their devolved elections and in a simple yes-no referendum on the same day. I think, if I may say so, that the hon. Gentleman underrates his fellow Scots and their capacity for decision making.

[Mr MacNeil]

Will the Minister give way?

[Mr Harper]

Very briefly.

[Mr MacNeil]

If the Minister feels that we are underrating the public, does he not also feel that we should include the single transferable vote on the ballot paper, and let the people really decide?

[Mr Harper]

I shall come to that later.

A number of Members cited the merits of different electoral systems. As my right hon. Friend the Deputy Prime Minister said, that is a matter for debate not now but during the referendum campaign. I know that Members on both sides of the House, and on both sides of the coalition, will participate vigorously in that debate.

My right hon. Friend the Member for Haltemprice and Howden (Mr Davis) and my hon. Friends the Members for Epping Forest (Mrs Laing) and for Milton Keynes South (Iain Stewart) suggested a turnout threshold. Such a system would make an abstention effectively a “no” vote. It would give people an incentive to abstain from voting, and the Government do not believe that that can be right. As for the issue of turnout and legitimacy, I should point out that in the 2005 election only three Members of Parliament received the support of more than 40% of their registered voters: my hon. Friend the Member for North Herefordshire (Bill Wiggin), the hon. Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant) and the hon. Member for Belfast West (Mr Adams), an interesting combination. Members who suggest that voting is legitimate only if turnout is above a certain level should think carefully about where the logic of that argument takes them.