Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill

Kevin Brennan Excerpts

Wednesday 16th February 2011 Commons Chamber

[The Parliamentary Secretary, Cabinet Office (Mr Mark Harper)]

I beg to move that this House insists on its disagreement with the Lords in their amendments 1 and 8, but proposes amendment (a) in lieu.

Yesterday the House debated whether to oppose including in the Bill Lord Rooker’s amendments specifying that if less than 40% of the electorate vote in the referendum the result should not be binding. We have accepted an amendment in lieu. We do not accept that there should be a threshold in the referendum, and the amendment does not propose one. It simply states that the Electoral Commission must publish information about the turnout. If we were simply to oppose Lord Rooker’s threshold amendment again without this amendment, and were their Lordships to reject our position, the rules on double insistence would result in the loss of the Bill. We have tabled our amendment to avoid that eventuality.

I explained in some detail yesterday why the Government disagreed with their lordships’ proposal, both on principle and on the basis of the practical difficulties identified by both the Government and the Electoral Commission in giving it effect. I said then that I considered those arguments compelling, and the House agreed. When the motion to disagree was voted on, it was carried by 317 votes to 247, a majority of 70. That was on the back of a conclusive rejection of the proposals for a threshold made by my hon. Friend the Member for Stone (Mr Cash) on Report. I think that we made our view clear, and by a clear margin.

[Kevin Brennan (Cardiff West) (Lab)]

I understand the Minister’s point about the technical reasons for the Government’s amendment, but does he not owe it to the House to explain what he considers to be the benefits of the amendment if we are to vote on it?

[Mr Harper]

If the hon. Gentleman will allow me, I will give the details as I proceed with my speech. If he does not think that I have done so satisfactorily, he can intervene again. I should say at this point that, although I shall attempt to be generous in giving way, I also want to ensure that other Members have an opportunity to contribute to the debate, so I may not be quite as generous as I was yesterday.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Harper]

The hon. Gentleman makes a good point, because the threshold sets up an incentive for one side to campaign for people to stay at home. As democrats, we should all be arguing for people to turn out to vote, be it yes or no. That should apply no matter what side of the argument we are on, and Government Members have been very frank about the fact that we will be campaigning on different sides.

[Kevin Brennan]

Will the Minister give way?

[Mr Harper]

I have already given way to the hon. Gentleman.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Harper]

Our system does not have a minimum turnout threshold for elections and we do not have a tradition of thresholds for the 10 referendums that have been held in this country. Only one of those referendums had a turnout threshold and its effect was to thwart the clearly expressed will of the people. It may have been something I agreed with, but it meant that that issue festered for another decade.

[Kevin Brennan]

rose—

[Mr Harper]

I have already given way to the hon. Gentleman and I am going to make some progress.

There are some perverse mathematical effects of such a barrier. As I said yesterday, this Lords amendment provides that if 39% of the electorate turned out the result would not be binding, even if 75% of those voting were in favour of change, whereas if 41% of people turned out the result would be binding, even if far fewer people actually voted in favour of the proposal. In the first scenario, 30% of the electorate might have voted for change but be denied it, whereas in the second only 21% might need to vote for AV to see it implemented. Why should that be the case? I have heard no arguments, either in this House or in the other place, to explain how that would be fair.

--- Later in debate ---

[Kevin Brennan]

Will the Minister give way?

[Mr Harper]

I am not going to give way to the hon. Gentleman.

I know that some Members favour this Lords amendment because this referendum is binding, but the Government have made it very clear that we want to offer the people the chance to make a decision. If they make that decision, it would not be right for the matter to come back to this House and for us to say, “We have heard what you said and we are going to ignore it.” That would not be right, however much we might not like what the people have told us. We accept that when we stand for election and we should accept it in a referendum.

[Kevin Brennan]

rose—

[Mr Harper]

I am not going to give way.

The key arguments against the threshold remain as compelling as ever. I have addressed some of the points made by their lordships during their debate today. Although they are entitled to ask us to consider the matter again, I do not believe that the points they raised change the balance of argument.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr James Gray (North Wiltshire) (Con)]

rose—

[Kevin Brennan]

rose—

[Mr Harper]

I am just going to deal with the point the hon. Gentleman raised earlier. I am asking hon. Members on both sides of the House to disagree with amendments 1 and 8. In their place, we have proposed an amendment in lieu, which provides:

“Following the referendum, the Electoral Commission must—

(a) publish the most accurate estimate that it is reasonably possible to make of the turnout in each of England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland”.

Information on turnout is useful and important; a turnout threshold is not.

--- Later in debate ---

[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.

--- Later in debate ---

The question that I originally asked those on the Labour Front Bench was about the no figure at which they thought there was legitimacy in the number of those who had voted. I am glad that the Labour Front-Bench team changed its view on that. I am grateful to the noble Lord Rooker for his amendment. I am grateful to those Conservatives, many of whom I have served with and disagreed with over the past 30 years, who stood up and were prepared to be counted. It is appalling that the constitution of Britain is held in the hands of so few people, determined by a golden image, the Liberal-Conservative coalition agreement. The measure does not even reflect what was contained in that agreement, yet we are meddling with our constitution. I urge the House to accept what the Lords have said in their reasoned thoughts.

[Kevin Brennan]

Like my hon. Friend the Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant), I support AV and will vote yes in the referendum.

Hon. Members might wonder about the Minister’s desperate desire to sit down without explaining the amendment that he is asking us to send back to the House of Lords. He knows that in the other place Members rightly think that this House has not properly considered the matter, not least because he hogged all the time yesterday when he gave us an hour for debate. Now we have a mere hour to do the same, and many hon. Members want the opportunity to speak. We still have not considered the matter fully and had a full and proper debate in the House.

[Mr Straw]

Picking up the point made by the hon. Member for Stone (Mr Cash), does my hon. Friend accept that the coalition agreement, or the needs of the Liberal Democrats, has undermined the traditional relationship between this place and the other place? In every previous example that I can think of when we were in government, there would have been a compromise in such a situation. That was the case scores of times, but Ministers lack any authority to grant a compromise.

[Kevin Brennan]

My right hon. Friend is right. I shall come to that point.

The Minister is still trying to obfuscate over the threshold and suggest that in some way it would negate the proposals in the Bill. What is unusual about the proposed referendum is that the Government are making it binding. Normally under our constitution, referendums have been advisory to Parliament, not binding in their outcome, and that includes the devolution referendums that were mentioned. The difference in threshold in the Scotland and Wales Bill back in 1979 was that it required 40% of those voting to vote in a certain way.

All the amendment does is say that if 40% of people fail to vote in total in the referendum, Parliament should reconsider the matter. That is an entirely different and reasonable position and in keeping with the traditions of our constitution that referendums are advisory and not binding, particularly when turnout is so low.

The amendment that we are sending down to the House of Lords is an insult to the other place. The Minister’s puerile explanation of it and the cursory way he dealt with the amendment that he is now asking us to vote for was a complete insult to our intelligence and that of the public.

I am afraid that when one lifts a stone in this place, procedurally what one sees underneath is sometimes quite unpleasant. Constitutionally, the Minister had to table an amendment, but instead of putting down a serious amendment that attempted to meet the House of Lords somewhere along the line of compromise, he tabled the parliamentary equivalent of a colouring-in book; he had to fill it in with something and so produced this puerile and meaningless amendment. It is an insult to the other place and to our intelligence. They sit there on the Front Bench, hairy man and smooth man, abusing our constitution. The Government should try to meet the other place somewhere on the spectrum of compromise. That would have been the reasonable thing to do and in line with our constitution.

As someone who will vote yes to AV in the forthcoming referendum and encourage as many people as possible to vote, I think that the idea that this House should not even have the constitutional right to look at the outcome of the referendum if only a very small number of people vote is an insult to democracy.

[Mrs Laing]

The arguments of Lord Lamont and his colleagues in the other place are absolutely right, as was everything the right hon. Member for Manchester, Gorton (Sir Gerald Kaufman) said this evening; I would repeat them in my remarks, but time will not permit me to do so. Sadly, those two rights are incompatible, because the choice before this House this evening is no longer about AV referendums and thresholds. I hate AV and do not want this £100 million referendum. I have always been in favour of a threshold and have said so many times in this House, but that is not the choice before us.

Sadly, the choice before us is between a Labour Government who ruined this country’s economy over 13 years and a coalition Government between the Conservatives and the Liberals that will give the country the stability it needs to recover from the dire economic situation. This referendum on a simple majority, which is stated in the coalition agreement, is a high price to pay for that stability. I, for one, agree to pay it with a very heavy heart.