Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill

Chris Bryant Excerpts

Wednesday 16th February 2011 Commons Chamber

[Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)]

As I said yesterday—I know that I do not carry the whole House with this first sentence, but perhaps I will carry more of it later—I support the alternative vote and will be voting yes in the referendum. However, the way in which the Deputy Prime Minister has conducted this piece of legislation, or rather the way in which he has not conducted it, is steadily putting me off the idea. It is an enormous shame that he does not have the courage to be in the Chamber this evening even to represent his own view. I say to Liberal Democrat friends who would like this legislation to pass, that it would be a good idea to progress in a slightly different way.

There have been many misunderstandings about the nature of the threshold that Lord Rooker suggests should be introduced, which their lordships agreed to by a significant majority earlier today. Some think that the threshold would act in a way that other thresholds have acted elsewhere—in other words, that it would make it impossible for the Government then to bring forward the alternative vote. That is expressly not what it does and I am afraid that the Minister rather elided his interpretation of the Rooker amendment yesterday evening. It is absolutely clear. As Lord Rooker said in this afternoon’s debate in the other place, “I have said all along that if the turnout was less than 40%, the House could decide to implement AV and I would not argue with that.”

The simple point that we are making is that because this is not a fatal, kill-all threshold, but would mean that Parliament would have to think again, it puts the decision in the right and proper place. Everyone who supports the alternative vote has some version of a threshold in their mind, whether it is 1%, 5% or 10%.

[Paul Farrelly (Newcastle-under-Lyme) (Lab)]

rose—

[Mr MacNeil]

rose—

[Chris Bryant]

I will give way in a moment. Of course we do not expect there to be only 10% or 15% voting in elections and we do not expect that to be the threshold in elections later this year, but there will be a significant difference between the turnout in England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland. I say to Government Members who are concerned about how English people view the way in which the House transacts its business that if the votes of Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland end up effectively rigging the vote across the whole United Kingdom because they are having other, substantial, national elections on the same day, I think that will bring the decision into disrepute, and that is a problem.

[Paul Farrelly]

Just before the Minister summarily sat down, he said that if there were a clear decision, it would be wrong to thwart it in this way, but he did not define what he meant by a clear decision. Will my hon. Friend ask the Minister to give the House a definition?

[Chris Bryant]

I am afraid that I have been asking the Minister to provide clear definitions and clarity for some time but we certainly did not get much of that yesterday. My point is fairly simple. The amendment that has come from their lordships would not kill off the decision that might come through if fewer than 40% of voters voted in the referendum in May, it simply means that Parliament would have to take cognisance of the decision, so it would be an advisory referendum rather than an implementing referendum.

[Mr David Winnick (Walsall North) (Lab)]

Is it not the case that the amendment was originally carried by one vote in the Lords and was today carried by a majority of 62, including 27 Conservatives? Does not that show the strength of feeling in the Lords about the necessity for this modification in the Bill?

[Chris Bryant]

I believe my hon. Friend was in the Chamber yesterday when we had an interesting moment. The Minister effectively advanced his own threshold argument, which was that winning by only one vote in the House of Lords somehow did not really matter. I think their lordships listened to what he said and decided that they would introduce a threshold of their own—a 60-vote majority—which they surpassed quite easily. I am grateful to the Minister for helping us win more significantly in the House of Lords earlier today. I hope that his contribution this evening will do that again.

[Ian Murray (Edinburgh South) (Lab)]

One of the key arguments being made is that AV would mean that all Members of the House would have 50% of the vote, or close to it, and therefore have legitimacy. Does it not follow that if there is a miserly turnout in the referendum, it will not have legitimacy and the matter should come back to the House for us to debate whether the result should stand?

[Chris Bryant]

It is a particular irony for those who advocate the alternative vote, as I do, which in the majority of situations will mean that an MP will have secured 50% of the vote—

[Sir Alan Beith (Berwick-upon-Tweed) (LD)]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Mr MacNeil]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Chris Bryant]

I will in a moment. I am still dealing with this question. I know that the hon. Member for Na h-Eileanan an Iar (Mr MacNeil) is going to make a silly point, and I will let him make it in a couple of moments.

It is suggested that we are advancing a system that guarantees that the vast majority of MPs will have 50% of the vote—some of us already achieve that—but then it is said that that provision should be delivered on perhaps a 30% or 35% vote.

[Sir Alan Beith]

rose—

[Dan Rogerson (North Cornwall) (LD)]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Chris Bryant]

I will give way to the right hon. Member for Berwick-upon-Tweed (Sir Alan Beith) first, because he asked first.

[Sir Alan Beith]

I am grateful. If the hon. Gentleman loses the vote in the Commons tonight, does he think the unelected House is then morally entitled to defy the expressed will of this House?

[Chris Bryant]

As the right hon. Gentleman knows, I have advocated an elected House of Lords for a very long time, and that is still my position. However, many people, including himself when he was on the Opposition Benches, have argued that the sagacity and wisdom of people down the other end of the building should sometimes be listened to. Whatever system we end up with for the two Chambers, I would simply say that as in most other countries in Europe that have a parliamentary system, there will be a second Chamber with a particular concern for constitutional matters.

If the Bill had made progress as the result of pre-legislative scrutiny, with a Joint Committee considering all of its proposals, or for that matter if there had been two separate Bills, one on the AV referendum and another on parliamentary constituencies, I would agree wholeheartedly with the right hon. Gentleman. However, I believe that the Government have abused every single constitutional convention in driving the Bill forward, so I am afraid I am not with him on this occasion.

[Mr MacNeil]

rose—

[Chris Bryant]

And now for the hon. Gentleman.

[Mr MacNeil]

Surely if a threshold is in place, it is an incentive not to participate. I hope that the Labour Front Benchers do not want to create such an incentive. Surely it is those who care who will vote. Those who are happy either way will probably not vote and will accept whatever those who care deliver. If the threshold that the hon. Gentleman wants were not reached, would that not invalidate both first past the post and AV, not just one of them?

[Chris Bryant]

I knew the hon. Gentleman was going to make a silly point, because he made the same silly point earlier. We have to have elections to this House, and they will either be under the first-past-the-post system or, if the referendum question is carried, under AV. I therefore do not accept his argument. I also point out to him that I believe there will be very different turnouts in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland from that in England. That is why I have never supported holding the referendum on the same day as other elections there.

[Kevin Brennan]

To return to the amendment in lieu that the Minister has proposed, does my hon. Friend agree that it effectively constitutes a direct insult to the other House, first because of its puerile nature and the fact that it is totally unrelated to the amendments from the other place, and secondly because of the Minister’s cursory explanation of it, which gave the game away?

[Chris Bryant]

My hon. Friend is, as always, spot on, and I will come to the Government amendment in lieu after I have made one significant point. Implementing referendums is fundamentally dangerous. All too often in other democracies, such referendums have been a way of circumventing the process of parliamentary democracy. That is a particularly dangerous way of doing business under coalition Governments. I do not believe that implementing referendums is a good idea, except for when there is a settled constitutional view that has been established on the basis of consensus, which is certainly not the situation with the AV referendum.

Everybody has a threshold in their own mind, but the truth is that the Government are proceeding as they are because they know perfectly well that if they were to introduce a stand-alone Bill to introduce the alternative vote, it would not be carried in the House or in the House of Lords. That is the profound danger with the way in which the Government are trying to proceed.

[Mr Jack Straw (Blackburn) (Lab)]

I apologise that I was not here at the commencement of these proceedings—I got caught short in the gymnasium.

I put it to my hon. Friend that it scarcely lies in the mouths of the Conservatives to challenge the authority of the other place when they were happy to see that authority used to the greatest extent on these provisions just before the election when they vetoed their inclusion from the Constitutional Reform and Governance Act 2010.

[Chris Bryant]

My right hon. Friend is absolutely right. In addition, the Liberal Democrats and the Conservatives so respect the House of Lords that they have decided to pack it with pliant Members so that they can start getting better results in votes. I praise those Members of the House of Lords, including Baroness Trumpington, who has never voted against the Conservative Whip, and who is notwithstanding a very splendid woman, who today decided to vote for the amendment in the name of Lord Rooker.

I support the alternative vote, but to me it is an even more important principle that the views of the British people, completely and definitively established, are enacted. That is why Lord Rooker’s threshold is appropriate.

Finally, the Minister’s amendment in lieu has absolutely no value. It would mean merely that the process that is already adopted by the Electoral Commission would be implemented. He knows that it is a chimera—the smile without the Cheshire cat.

[Mr Cash]

I entirely endorse the final remarks of the hon. Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant)—the Government amendment in lieu is a load of rubbish.

It is important to get across what is really going on here. In the context of the referendum, the Conservative party is being led like a lamb to the slaughter. The reality is that the referendum is entirely to do with Liberal party aspirations as expressed in the coalition agreement. I have here an extract from the right hon. Member for Deauville—[Laughter.] I meant the right hon. Member for Yeovil (Mr Laws), who might as well have come from Deauville. He quotes the Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change, the right hon. Member for Eastleigh (Chris Huhne), as saying:

“Our historic mission is to create a British Liberal party whose influence will be embedded in our politics through a reformed voting system – a Liberal party capable of dealing with both other parties.”

The reality, therefore, is that what lies at the heart of this debate is not the rubbish that we have heard from the Minister on the Electoral Commission, but the glue that holds the coalition together.

I pay tribute to the noble Lord Rooker and the other Lords and Ladies who made such magnificent speeches this morning, which I had the privilege to witness. They are right that the Bill provides for a binding referendum, and that the essence of the argument is that the Bill is a constitutional issue, because it proposes to change our constitution in a fundamental way for the first time.

I believe that 40% is a reasonable test. It is accepted by all the constitutional authorities—including, ironically, Vernon Bogdanor, who was the Prime Minister’s own tutor. This threshold of 40%, which has come down to us in an amendment from the House of Lords, is reasonable and fair with respect to the electorate as a whole. We are being asked to reject that provision. I am no longer going down the route of my original proposal, which one of their Lordships referred to as “the fatal amendment”. I propose, for all the reasons that have been so ably put forward this evening, to follow what the House of Lords said.

There is no reference to thresholds in this coalition agreement—none whatever. None of the political parties expressed any genuine manifesto commitment to the alternative vote and no commitment whatever to the threshold. Given that the Bill purports to provide for a fair electoral system with preference votes, one would have thought that its proponents would at least have the decency and common sense to give the electorate a fair deal—[Interruption.] Yes, and the courage, as one of my hon. Friends says. I thought that the Liberal Democrats believed in fairness and constitutional propriety, but I was mightily mistaken.