Proportional Representation

Debate between Jonathan Reynolds and David Drew

Monday 30th October 2017 Westminster Hall

[Jonathan Reynolds]

It is excellent if we view this simply as a partisan issue where the only thing that matters is our side winning, but as democrats we have to look at this from the point of view of what the public put forward, and we have to respond to that public demand. If we are not doing that, we have to ask ourselves what the purpose of elections is to begin with. It cannot just be about maximising individual party advantage and finding a system that gets us to that point. That is not good enough, and it is not what democratic systems are based on.

I will conclude, because we have such a strong turnout in the Chamber. I just want to go through some of the commonly held views, such as those shown in the points made by my right hon. Friend the Member for Warley (John Spellar) and the hon. Member for St Austell and Newquay. It is true that lists are suboptimal—there is no doubt about that—but what I find hypocritical is the fact that many of the people who cite lists as an example of undue party advantage know full well that first past the post is open to manipulation. It has always been the case in every party represented here that favoured sons and daughters have been parachuted into constituencies or selection processes have been manipulated. It is simply not true that that can be transferred to any system that has a list involved.

With regard to minority parties, I think that we should teach better history in schools. As the hon. Member for St Austell and Newquay was speaking, I thought, “Well, right now things are dependent on the DUP.” We had the Conservative-Lib Dem coalition before that. John Major was dependent on the Ulster Unionists. We had the Callaghan Government’s Lib-Lab pact. We had minority Governments and coalitions before the war. We had the situation with the Irish nationalists. The history of this country is not one of first past the post delivering clear results. In fact, we have had a situation quite recently in which a proportional system has delivered a majority Government in Scotland while first past the post has delivered a hung Parliament in the United Kingdom, so we need to look more closely at the evidence.

[Dr David Drew (Stroud) (Lab/Co-op)]

Our party once stood on a manifesto of proportional representation in the 1920s. We invested a lot of time and effort in the Plant report, which subsequently was taken up by Jenkins. That was never followed through by the Labour party, which is very sad, because Jenkins gave us a way forward. Does my hon. Friend agree?

[Jonathan Reynolds]

I absolutely agree. Labour could have seized the initiative many times in our history. Many times we have come close, but we have never followed it through. We must change that now. As has already been said in this debate, fundamentally we have an electoral system designed for two-party politics, which is no longer the case in this country. We will not go back to that. We saw a big increase in the vote share for the two big parties at the election, but that was a response to each other. When I talk to people, I do not find that all of a sudden we have stopped having a plurality of political views in this country and that everyone is happy simply voting Conservative or Labour.

With regard to the AV referendum, AV is not proportional representation. I and many people here voted for it simply because we knew that people such as my right hon. Friend the Member for Warley would cite the result as an endorsement of first past the post. The referendum was really about Nick Clegg and dissatisfaction with the decisions that led to the formation of the Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition Government, but that cannot be the end of the debate. It would simply cheat people and ignore serious issues if we did not continue the discussion.

I will finish with the point that the hon. Member for St Austell and Newquay often makes, which is that the result of the AV referendum shows that people do not want it, they are not asking us for it, and it is simply a political obsession. I ask everyone here today: when they are out in their constituencies or talking to anyone about what they do, how many people say, “You know what? I think British politics is spot on. There is nothing we should change. I am satisfied with British politics. Get back there and continue”? I do not think that is true. I think there is alienation and a huge amount of concern about how we are reducing our political culture so that it is no longer capable of solving the problems this country faces. There is no magic wand that we can wave to change everything, but if we want a better politics we have to start reflecting on how the people vote and what they want in the composition of our Parliament. That is why we must change to a system of fair votes.