Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill

Charles Walker Excerpts

Tuesday 12th October 2010 Commons Chamber

The way in which people—normal people who are not interested in the finer detail of political machinations—make up their minds is by getting glancing reactions from the 10 o’clock news. They turn on their television sets to watch “The X Factor”, but it is not quite time, so they have to watch some boring programme in which someone is talking about something. In other cases, they have read the sports pages, or their wait for a meeting is dragging on and on, so they read a bit of political coverage. Then they make up their minds relatively quickly. That is not to suggest, as some have suggested, that people are unsophisticated; far from it. Unlike us, who require five hours to churn endlessly through these issues before making up our minds and voting in the Lobbies, they make up their minds quickly. They make judgments about our character, our motives and our arguments quickly. They do not need four weeks separately for all of us to go round and round the issues. They do not need more than four minutes to make up their minds.

[Mr Charles Walker (Broxbourne) (Con)]

Does my hon. Friend agree that our constituents elect us to use our considered judgments on the big issues of the day, and if we are to have a referendum, let us do it in a way that ensures that we get it right?

[Nick Boles]

I always defer to my hon. Friend, and in particular on the question whether we are right, here and now, to deliberate the issues. I cannot say that it is my idea of fun, but it is what we are here to do, and it is right that we should do it. However, does that mean that we should therefore expect the people to go through a similar process in answering a simple question about a voting system? I do not think that we should.

It is revealing when some Opposition Members talk about the lack of consultation in the other nations of the United Kingdom. They never refer to the opinions of their people. They talk about—I quote the hon. Member for Glasgow South West (Mr Davidson)—there having been no consultation with the stakeholders and about political opinion. To me, that sounds as though we are talking about elites.