Electoral Reform (Proportional Representation and Reduction of Voting Age)

John Penrose Excerpts

Wednesday 20th July 2016 Commons Chamber

[John Penrose (Weston-super-Mare) (Con)]

As we have heard, this Bill would do two things. Reducing the voting age has been repeatedly discussed and rejected by sizeable margins in the Commons in the past 12 months. It was discussed, for example, in multiple stages of both the Cities and Local Government Devolution Bill and the European Union Referendum Bill, so I will not rehash all the same arguments here.

The proposed Bill would also change the voting system. Although I acknowledge and respect the energetic commitment and zeal of the hon. Member for Brighton, Pavilion (Caroline Lucas) for this particular cause, I fear that this Bill may harm our democracy rather than help it—the exact opposite of what she intends to achieve—because we held a referendum on whether to change our voting system in 2011 and, collectively, we voted against change. We decided to keep our tried and trusted first past-the-post system by a hefty margin of more than two to one. Therefore, a proposed Bill that claims to be about improving our democracy starts with a proposal to ignore a very clear democratic decision. The people have spoken, and, by a majority of more than 6 million, they have decided that they want none of this. Some would argue—in fact the hon. Lady did—that the 2011 referendum result should not count; that it asked the wrong question about the alternative vote system, which is not technically a proportional system at all; and that if only they could be allowed to rerun the poll with a slightly different question somehow a completely different result could be achieved.

[Mr John Spellar (Warley) (Lab)]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Mr Speaker]

Order. There is no concept of giving way in respect of exchanges on ten-minute rule motions, a factor of which the right hon. Gentleman with his long experience ought to be aware.

[John Penrose]

I am happy to pick the matter up with the right hon. Gentleman in the Tea Room afterwards.

Let us ignore, for the moment, the unlikelihood of a 6 million vote majority being overturned by a small change in the question, and just consider for a second the dozens and dozens of different forms of proportional and alternative voting systems. It does not matter whether we are talking about open lists, zipped lists, the D’Hondt method, supplementary votes or transferrable votes, every different version has its own passionate and committed band of dedicated enthusiasts. Some of them are highly reputable organisations and others are lonely obsessives blogging furiously in the privacy of their parents’ spare bedrooms. No matter who they are, it is simply not possible to argue that we should ignore the AV referendum result just because it did not propose precisely their preferred flavour of new voting system. That fundamentally misses the point. Not only did voters reject changing our tried and trusted first-past-the-post system, but they will take a very dim view indeed of the prospect of many further referendums in future as dozens of other organisations queue up to argue that the last poll did not propose precisely their particular favourite voting system and to demand yet another rerun with a slightly different question.

Even worse, this Bill comes at a time when a large proportion of the population is far more concerned about the much more recent EU referendum where there was a narrower—although still decisive—majority verdict. I am not alone in getting hundreds of emails from people who do not like the result of the EU vote and are loudly demanding a rerun, a vote in Parliament, a lawsuit, anything in fact, to change the result. By telling people they can ignore the results of the even more decisive AV referendum in 2011, this Bill would implicitly encourage people to believe that they can ignore the result of the EU referendum too, telling them, in effect, that if they stick their fingers in their ears and sing Beethoven’s “Ode to Joy” loudly enough, Brexit may not actually mean Brexit after all.

Our democracy is already pretty fragile, with trust in politics and politicians, and election turnout, already worryingly low. I cannot think of anything more calculated to stoke the fires of anti-political anger than acting as if the will of the people, clearly expressed in not just one but two separate referendums on different issues, might not be democratically binding or sovereign after all.

So please, Mr Speaker, enough already. This Bill ignores the repeatedly expressed democratic will of Parliament, which has already rejected lowering the voting age many times over the past year, and it ignores a thumping referendum verdict against changing the voting system in 2011 as well. We are about to abolish an entire layer of proportionately elected representatives when we get rid of MEPs as we leave the EU. Now is not the time to replace them with something else. The people have spoken and even though I understand and respect the fact that the answer is not to the hon. Lady’s liking, I urge her please to respect its democratic power and to leave the issue alone for a long, long time.

Question put (Standing Order No. 23).