Proportional Representation

Lee Rowley Excerpts

Monday 30th October 2017 Westminster Hall

[Caroline Lucas (Brighton, Pavilion) (Green)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Mr Gray.

If democracy is about fairly representing the views of the people, we are failing with first past the post. As a country, we pride ourselves on our strong commitment to democracy, yet the vast majority of votes stack up and simply do not make an impact on the overall result. No fewer than 68% of votes cast in June’s general election were, in effect, wasted—they made no difference at all to the outcome.

Yes, I have a vested interest. Some 1 million people voted Green in 2015. Under a proportional system, those votes would have translated into people being elected to fight for Green politics; it could have given us more than 20 MPs. However, I am also deeply worried about what our outdated, dysfunctional electoral system is doing to the legitimacy of our governance system—a system that not only fails the political parties and fails to deliver effective government, but fails the citizens of this country.

Some 33% of people do not think that voting for their preferred party will make a difference, and 44% do not feel that the UK Parliament is capable of understanding and effectively representing their concerns. That is a tragedy, and it is also a bit of an irony. We may well be on the path to leaving the EU, but all those who were promised that they would be given back control simply will not have it without meaningful electoral reform. PR would not just bring much-needed fairness, but go a considerable way towards tackling some of the reasons that people do not bother voting at all. In these times of voter volatility and diversity, it would be a system worthy of the name democracy.

The current unrepresentative voting system is doing long-term, pervasive damage, which manifests itself in phenomena such as the widespread lack of trust and faith in public servants, and the growth of what some have coined, with Orwellian overtones, “post-truth politics.” Far too many of our constituents are disillusioned, disaffected and disengaged. Continuing to deny them a voice in decisions that affect us all only perpetuates that problem, yet that is exactly what is happening under first past the post—a system in which votes are not all equal. Unless someone lives in one of the small number of heavily targeted marginal seats, their vote simply does not count.

[Lee Rowley (North East Derbyshire) (Con)]

Is the hon. Lady not an example of how that is not the case? In her own constituency her party won less than 3% of the vote 20 years ago, but in the most recent general election it won 50%. Large numbers of votes can be moved in a relatively short time.

[Caroline Lucas]

The hon. Gentleman will forgive me if I do not agree that that felt like a relatively short time; it felt like a very long time. As I said, under PR, 1 million votes would have given the Greens more than 20 MPs in 2015. That is the bottom line. Yes, we occasionally find a way of bucking the system, but that does not give confidence to our constituents up and down the country, who simply want to know that their votes count. That does not seem a lot to ask. Interestingly, it has been estimated that between 20% and 30% of people voted tactically at the last election. In other words, people are trying the best they can to fix the system themselves, but they should not have to try to game the system; we should change it.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lee Rowley (North East Derbyshire) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Gray. I am a relatively new Member and I come from a safe seat—it just happens to be a seat perceived to have been a safe Labour seat until I managed to gain it with the help of everyone who supported me in June. I accept that there are heartfelt and clear examples of why electoral systems are not perfect, and some of those have been outlined already. I recognise that many on the Opposition Benches have clear views about this.

I think we can all agree on the first point: no process is perfect. We will never find an electoral system that both reflects an absolute representation of those who have voted, and that ensures—to use the eponymous phrase—strong and stable government to the greatest extent possible. If we therefore start from the perspective that no system is perfect, we are then into a discussion about the least worst option, or a system that is not as bad as it possibly could be.

My problem with PR is that it prioritises purity over practicality. It prioritises absolute representation over, in many cases, the general ability of a Government to function. If we extend the logical notion of purity, where does that end? If within a Parliament of 650 Members we had to represent the absolute number of votes cast, we would get ourselves into some difficult places with minor parties. If we were being pure about representation, those minor parties would have as much right to be in that Parliament as we would, as Members of parties represented here today.

We can extend that further into slightly more esoteric views. Should we represent those who choose not to vote? Should we represent those who are too young to vote? If there was to be a true reflection and representation of not just the electorate but society as a whole, a much wider group of people would need to be represented. That is where we get into a difficult place and illogical contortions about the arguments of those who propose PR.

I will quickly expand on the arguments against PR. We would end up with more or less permanent coalitions. We would end up with a licence to horse-trade between parties rather than with voters, and there would be the potential for greater instability. Members including the hon. Member for Stalybridge and Hyde (Jonathan Reynolds) have highlighted clear examples over the past 50 years where the British electoral system has not thrown up a strong Government, but there are more examples in the past 70 years of where it has. In 15 or so of the 20 elections we have had since 1945, we have had a majoritarian Government; in the other five we have not, but PR would pretty much guarantee that we never got a majoritarian single-party Government. It is likely that we would have larger constituencies, even if we retained the constituency link, and that would tend to mean Members starting to talk more to their own supporters in that larger constituency rather than to everybody, and then starting to appeal to narrow party bases, which I think most people in the Chamber would not support.

I will give a final example of where PR is working at the moment. Only last month, on 23 September, New Zealand held its eighth general election under a proportional representation system. To those who are pure about wanting to ensure that the representation in a Parliament is absolute, I worry about where we would head when I see the example of New Zealand.

Our friends in New Zealand made some clear choices. They supported the National party with 44% of the vote—the highest number of votes it has ever received in a general election—yet it lost power to a party that took 10 fewer seats and received 200,000 fewer votes, and that does not have a formal coalition but only a confidence and supply deal. The gentleman who made that decision, Mr Winston Peters of New Zealand First, lost his seat on the constituency side of the election. His party commanded only 7% of the vote, and for 20 days he refused to tell anybody who in his party was making a decision about which party he was to go into coalition with. Therefore, I hope that all those people who stand on the other side of the and arguement that PR is necessarily more transparent, necessarily more representative and necessarily an improvement on first past the post say reflect on the New Zealand example. It demonstrates that no system is perfect and that PR has huge problems.

[Tonia Antoniazzi (Gower) (Lab)]

My brother and his family live in New Zealand and have done so for many years. They are happy with the PR system, instead of first past the post, which has given the country hope and a future. Does the hon. Gentleman agree that it is giving a little bit of something different?

[Lee Rowley]

I certainly know that what it has given differently to New Zealand is eight consecutive elections with no clear winner, whereas before the 1996 election there were clear winners in seven out of eight elections.

I accept the arguments made by many people so far—and those I am sure will come—with regard to PR. I understand why PR has some merit and some benefits, but on balance I am simply not convinced that changing our electoral system from first past the post to PR would be supported by the majority of people out there in the country or be good for our Parliament. Before I sit down, I ask this question: numerous Members have stood up and talked about how PR is more democratic and fair. More democratic to whom, and more fair to whom? I have seen no examples and nothing in the debate that convinces me—I certainly see nothing in the New Zealand example—that it is either fair or more democratic than the first-past-the-post-system.