Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill

Iain Stewart Excerpts

Tuesday 12th October 2010 Commons Chamber

[Mr MacNeil]

Maybe not happy hours, just hours.

Tom Aitchison, the convenor of the interim electoral management board for Scotland, has expressed sensible concerns about holding the UK’s alternative vote referendum on the same day as the Scottish Parliament poll. The proposal is an example of bad practice, and perhaps a slippery slope. In the United States, referendums are often used as wedge issues—some would allege that the Republican strategist Karl Rove uses them for exactly that purpose. We do not want our democracies hijacked by side issues on the day of a main vote that has been expected for years.

[Iain Stewart (Milton Keynes South) (Con)]

If I recall the provisions of the Scotland Act 1998 correctly, the Scottish Parliament has the ability to vary the date of its election. If there is concern about having the polls on the same day, surely it could move the election a few weeks either side.

[Mr MacNeil]

I hear the hon. Gentleman’s accent. I have heard about the respect agenda, but I smell cultural imperialism in its worst form.

The UK’s media are pretty poor at dealing with complexities across the UK, and we are concerned that the important issues that will rightly come before the Scottish people will be sidelined by an “X Factor” media dealing with the simpler issue of the referendum. It happens in the US—it is the big ticket election, which affects all viewers, listeners, readers and dare I say media consumers, that counts, regardless of the importance of the issues being debated. However, is daily health and education policy not more important than the type of electoral system that is employed every four to five years? That is not to say that the electoral system is unimportant, but surely it is further down the hierarchy of needs and importance.