Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill

Lord Bach Excerpts

Wednesday 15th December 2010 Lords Chamber

[Lord Lawson of Blaby]

As the noble Lord, Lord Elystan-Morgan, said that I was going to intervene in this debate, I had better do so; indeed, I had intended to do so. It is the first time that I have intervened in Committee on the Bill and I shall try not to detain noble Lords for too long. I do not need to, because the noble Lord, Lord Elystan-Morgan, made a number of important points with which I agree but, in particular, my noble friend Lord Lamont made all the main points very convincingly.

I just add one or two points to that. First, this is not merely a constitutional matter; it is a constitutional matter of great importance. If there is a low turnout, it may well be that that is because too many people are puzzled by exactly what the implication is of a change from first past the post to the alternative vote, so they do not feel able to cast their vote. For that reason, you might get a very low turnout. In fact, the alternative vote system is generally agreed to be a totally capricious system. Every inquiry that has looked into it, such as the Jenkins commission, found it to be totally capricious. It could produce extraordinary results.

Seeing the noble Lord, Lord Bach, in his place—I am very glad to do so—I give an example from the constituency of Blaby, which I had the honour of representing for 18 years and five general elections. I mention the noble Lord, Lord Bach, because he was one of my most distinguished constituents. Not only that, if I remember rightly—he will correct me if I am wrong—he was chairman of the constituency Labour Party.

[Lord Bach]

I still am.

[Lord Lawson of Blaby]

The noble Lord is a glutton for punishment. As the noble Lord, Lord Bach, will confirm, a characteristic of the constituency of Blaby was that it was always clear that the Conservative candidate—and I was fortunate enough to be the Conservative candidate for all those years—would come first past the post by a huge majority. However, two things were uncertain. The first was whether it would be an overall majority or fall short of an overall majority. In the five elections I fought, I had an overall majority in three of them and failed to get an overall majority in the other two. It was also uncertain as to which candidate would come second—whether it would be Labour second and the Liberal Democrat third, or the Liberal Democrat second and Labour third. In fact, on three occasions the Liberal Democrat came second and Labour third, and on the other two occasions it was the other way round, with Labour second and the Liberal Democrat third.

However, under the alternative vote system, which of the two came second and which of the two came third would have determined the result of the election. If the Liberal Democrat came third, it is a reasonable presumption that the second preferences would have been divided equally between myself and the Labour candidate and therefore they would not have affected the result; I would still have been elected. If, however, Labour came third, it is a reasonable presumption that the Labour voters would have given their second preference to the Liberal Democrat rather than to me—regrettable though that judgment might have been—in which case the Liberal Democrat would have been elected. Therefore the decision as to who was elected depended on who came second and who came third. It is an absurd, totally capricious system.

Furthermore, under the alternative vote system, if I had wished to maximise my chances of being elected, which is a reasonable ambition, I would have privately told all my closest supporters to vote Labour because that would reduce the risk of Labour coming third. I did not do that because we did not have the alternative vote. It is a ludicrous and capricious system which encourages insincere voting.

If we are going to introduce something like that—if we do make that move—there is a risk that when the public tumble to what is happening they will be extremely dissatisfied with it and there will be a serious loss of faith in our democratic system. It is important that that does not happen by inadvertence, as it were, because of a small poll. We will want as many people as possible to have bought into the change to reduce the risk of them becoming disaffected with our democratic system. We have problems of disaffection with our democratic system as it is; we do not want to maximise that. So we must have a threshold. As my noble friend Lord Lamont and others have said, every country has some kind of special supermajority or threshold requirement whenever it is making a constitutional change.

The question then arises of what kind of threshold it should be. Should it be as with the Cunningham amendment—I shall come briefly on to that—of January 1978, I think it was, in the Scotland and Wales Acts where the majority has to be X per cent—in that case the winning side had to get 40 per cent—or should it be a turnout threshold? I confess that I think that the Cunningham amendment was a better system; a threshold on overall turnout is not as satisfactory. However, I take the point of my noble friend Lord Lamont that it is arguable that to have a threshold for the winning score would be in conflict with the coalition agreement, whereas we have established that that is not the case with a threshold for turnout.

I confess within this private space that I do not regard the coalition agreement as holy writ and, although I am not the greatest constitutional expert, I do not believe that it is even protected by the Salisbury convention. Nevertheless it is right that we should have some regard for it on this side of the Committee. For that reason I am prepared to support the idea of an amendment introducing a threshold for turnout. I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Elystan-Morgan, that 25 per cent is ridiculously small and that it should be somewhere in the order of 40 per cent or 50 per cent.