Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill

Lord Alderdice Excerpts

Monday 7th February 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Howarth of Newport]

My Lords, this is one of the most important issues before us on Report on Part 1 of the Bill. The amendment tabled by my noble friend Lord Rooker is eminently sensible. Surely we should all be able to agree that, where major constitutional change is concerned, there should be a search for consensus. Major constitutional change should not be made on a small participation in the vote.

I fear that turnout at the referendum will be low, partly because the question of whether we should switch from first past the post to the alternative vote system of elections is fairly obscure and technical, and partly—this is a very important factor—because this legislation, proposing as it does such important changes to our constitution, has not, as convention and normal practice require, been the subject of public consultation by way of a Green Paper or pre-legislative scrutiny. That means that there has not been an extensive debate, other than in your Lordships’ House, where the extent of the debate has been well justified in these extraordinary circumstances. In the time that will be available between this Bill reaching the statute book and the day that the Government have appointed for the referendum, 5 May, there will be very little possibility of the Electoral Commission explaining to, informing and, indeed, educating the people of this country about the choice that it will fall to them to make. Those are significant reasons why we should insist that there should be a substantial turnout if the result of this referendum is to be binding, and I think that a minimum turnout of 40 per cent, as proposed by my noble friend Lord Rooker, is well judged.

I think that there should always be a high hurdle in a referendum. It would be intensely undesirable if Governments got it into their heads that referendums were a readily available, convenient way of introducing a change that they happened to think was desirable. I very much heed the advice of the Constitution Select Committee of your Lordships’ House. In its report on referendums, it has made it very clear that it considers referendums to be in principle undesirable and inconsistent with the principle of parliamentary government. Although the committee concedes that referendums may be appropriate on significant constitutional issues, I am sure that the tenor of its recommendations is that we should not automatically reach for referendums as a convenient device for the Government of the day; rather, it should be rare and difficult for a proposition to be put to a referendum.

I take the view that, where there is to be a referendum, it should be advisory rather than mandatory. Again, my noble friend Lord Rooker has proposed to the House a very sensible compromise: if there is a majority on a genuinely substantial turnout, we accept that this referendum will be mandatory but, if the turnout is less than 40 per cent, the question of where we go from there will come back to Ministers and to Parliament. That all seems very sensible. Surely, when we are developing constitutional change, we should do all we can not only to achieve consensus between the parties in Parliament but to achieve a substantial consensus in the country. Therefore, I support the amendment.

[Lord Alderdice]

My Lords, I think it is only right for me to pay tribute to the noble Lord, Lord Rooker, who was regarded with much affection during his time as a Minister in Northern Ireland. However, that also leads me to my questions about his amendment. He was famed for his plain speaking and uncluttered thinking, but sometimes the simple response to a complex issue may not be the right one, and I think that that is the case with this amendment.

Two of the amendment’s components trouble me. The first is the notion that it should be a non-binding referendum; in other words, we say, “This is so important that we must hear what the people have to say. But if we do not like what they have to say because of the numbers who turn out to vote, the Government will then do something different from what the people have said”. I do not think that it is a very advisable to ask the people what they think but then for the Government to decide whether they will follow through on that. However, it goes further than that. The noble Lord, Lord Rooker, will be very familiar with the fact that the only elections in Northern Ireland which are not held on a proportionate basis of some kind—in fact, all the rest are held on the STV system—is the election to the House of Commons at Westminster. I could very easily see a situation where the turnout in Northern Ireland was much higher than in other parts of the United Kingdom—that is not unusual—and where there was overwhelming support for moving away from the first past the post system, as it is not used for any other elections and no one in Northern Ireland seriously proposes going back to it.

Of course they would rather have STV but that is not on the agenda at the moment. Northern Ireland could vote overwhelmingly for a move away from first past the post and the Government could say that the rest of the UK have not voted in such numbers—although the outcome is still clear—and have the freedom to ignore the situation or to espouse it. If this is what the people want, maybe we should move away from the first-past-the-post system in Northern Ireland—and perhaps in other parts of the UK—and argument could then begin to emerge that the Government had the freedom to bring forward different electoral systems for the one Parliament. That would not be a change because it is already the situation in our elections to the European Parliament. It would not help to bind things together in the United Kingdom if we had different forms of elections to the House of Commons.

I am seeking to show that what appears a simple, straightforward, elegant way of addressing a potential problem in fact opens up a series of other matters which have not been referred to in today’s debate. I give way to the noble Lord, Lord Reid, who is also a much distinguished servant of Northern Ireland.

[Lord Reid of Cardowan]

I thank the noble Lord for that. His argument would carry immense weight if not for the simple fact that the circumstances—historically, socially and constitutionally—in Northern Ireland are unique in the United Kingdom. Nowhere else has a referendum been held inside and outside the United Kingdom at the same time, as was the case with the Good Friday agreement; nowhere else is there a Chamber where automatically all of the parties must share a percentage; nowhere else are there constitutional arrangements which stand completely at odds with every other part of the United Kingdom, for very good reasons. Therefore, the arguments the noble Lord has made very eloquently fall on the simple point that Northern Ireland is already unique, and anything that added to that uniqueness would be marginal compared to the differences that already exist.

[Lord Alderdice]

I am grateful to the noble Lord for his intervention. However, I am sure he will not go back to Scotland to argue that Scotland is not unique in its history, culture and background.

The point is not the uniqueness of the situation in Northern Ireland but the importance of holding together a single system for election to the House of Commons so that various procedures do not enter into it which have the untoward effect of differentiating representation in the House of Commons. We need something which binds our United Kingdom together. That is why the simple and, on the face of it, not unreasonable proposition from the noble Lord opens up all kinds of other boxes. That is not his intention but it is a real possibility, and that is why I oppose the amendment.

[Lord Hodgson of Astley Abbotts]

Like my noble friend Lord Blackwell, I have been a loyal supporter of the Government throughout this Bill. However, like him, the amendment gives me cause for concern and I feel there is a lot in what the noble Lord, Lord Rooker, has said. I share my noble friend’s views about the danger of a precedent being created in this way without any threshold.

The noble Lord, Lord Alderdice, argued persuasively that we may not like what the people have said. However, as I understand it, under the amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Rooker, 60 per cent of the people will have said nothing. They will not have said that they are in favour of it; they will just have stayed away. That is hardly an argument for there being the high-level consensus for the change that it is proposed to bring in.

Even with the noble Lord’s amendment, we could have a binding referendum with one in five people voting in favour of it, which seems a perfectly satisfactory threshold. My concern is more about different results from different parts of the United Kingdom, to which he refers. We may have different turnouts in different parts of the United Kingdom because of the nature of the elections that are taking place on the day. We may have low turnouts in one place and high turnouts in another, and large parts of the United Kingdom may feel that they have had a system foisted upon them in circumstances where they have voted against it and there is not the level of consensus required.

For me, the danger of having no minimum to which we can point as giving a level of participation across the country represents a grave danger to the unity of the kingdom, because all parts of the kingdom may not feel that they have been treated fairly.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Rooker]

My Lords, I did not expect words that I used as a Minister from that Box to be thrown back at me during this debate. Given that it has been a bit of a rush since we finished Committee, I would have thought, to be honest, that the Minister’s advisers would have been better getting ready the package of concessions that we have been promised than trawling through my old speeches—which, I would add, were on regional referendums. This is different.

The other thing that I want to make absolutely clear is that this is not a threshold in the normal use of the word. This is not what the House of Commons voted on, or against. It is not the threshold. If it is not 40 per cent, it does not stop it going ahead. I do not wish to do that, but with all the arguments and permutations that one can think of, one can imagine lots of reasonable cases to be made to proceed accordingly after the result. All I am saying is that, given the binding nature of this, as others have said, and not knowing what is going to happen in only the second-ever national referendum, and on a key issue of changing the voting system—not like elections, where Governments come and go, as someone said—it just gives Parliament an opportunity to think again, and Parliament would be well advised to take the will of the voters. I do not argue with that at all, but I simply say that the Bill is too black or white, all or nothing.

By the way, I do not claim any credit for this amendment. I wrestled last week with how I could bring back the issue of a consultative indicative—which failed in a vote on, I think, 6 December—and deal with the idea of thresholds, which I am intrinsically against for the reasons that many noble Lords have explained. Nevertheless, we have to have this as a back-up. I was wrestling with this with a very bright young person in the back of a taxi when the solution was offered to me: join the two together—make it indicative only if the voter turnout is different. We can still proceed accordingly; we can still have the referendum, still have the result, still make the change to AV, whatever the voter outcome. I am just saying that if the voter turnout is less than 40 per cent, Parliament could say, “Hang on, we had better think about this again”.

We have come a long way since those who originally proposed the alternative vote—the Electoral Reform Society and company—actually said, “It is so small a change, you do not need a referendum”. That has been their case virtually all along—that we did not need a referendum on this. I do not support the AV system in the Bill anyway, but that is not the issue. I have back-up amendments, in response to the noble Lord, Lord Alderdice, because I genuinely think that you have to get a yes vote in the four countries of the UK. That is not implied in this amendment; it is there in Amendment 11A.

I accept that there is clarity and certainty in the way in which the Bill is drafted. There is too much clarity and certainty when we are dealing with an electorate of well over 40 million. It is true that on election day, as has been said—I have not yet checked the figure— 84 per cent of people are eligible to go to the polls. When you have, among the 16 per cent who are not, a massive block here in the capital city—it is not as though they are spread out all over the country—we will end up with a massive block that will get the chance to vote only in the AV referendum.

I am simply saying that this gives us an opportunity. It does not wreck the Bill—I repeat this for those who will deliberately misunderstand and misreport what we say—it does not wreck the idea of the AV referendum, it does not stop the outcome. Whatever the outcome of the election, it can still proceed if there is a yes vote. All I am saying is this; let us give ourselves, as a Parliament, the opportunity to have a rethink.

My final point is that I know that it looks simple. It is a few words—and Amendment 10B should attach to this to give discretion in Clause 8—but the general will is there. Everyone understands what we mean. If this were carried, parliamentary draftsmen would knock the other clauses into shape tomorrow to make it work. I can give noble Lords a classic example of that. The next two amendments after this—

[Lord Alderdice]

I am grateful to the noble Lord for giving way. It seems to me, and I am grateful to him for it, that in his remarks about subsequent amendments on the four separate parts of the United Kingdom, which would introduce a whole load of complexities such as vetoes, and on the question of the simplicity having to be addressed overnight by parliamentary draftsmen, he has said in effect that what I said is correct: that this is not as simple as it appears and that all sorts of complexities are introduced by opening this particular box. Therefore, I think it would be best for him to withdraw this amendment.

[Lord Rooker]

I said that they were a back-up. I do not speak for anyone else. If this amendment were carried, virtually half the rest of the amendments to Clause 1 probably would not even be moved—I certainly would not move mine. I am simply saying, “Let’s give ourselves a chance to think again”. If we are not prepared to do that and the House is prepared to rollercoaster on to a binding referendum in which we do not know what the result is going to be and it could be carried by a majority of one on a small percentage, then I will say, “Hang on a minute, I think I want to build some more checks into this”. However, those amendments are a back-up. If this amendment were carried, more of my amendments would disappear, so the noble Lord’s point carries no weight at all.

It is in the House’s own interest to take the opportunity to give us the chance to think again. This amendment would not destroy the Bill or the referendum and would not stop the outcome being implemented, whatever the result. I think that we should test the opinion of the House.