Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill

Lord Bach Excerpts

Monday 20th December 2010 Lords Chamber

[Lord Lipsey]

When we table amendments from this side of the House we do not consider their partisan impact; we merely consider their impact on the constitution of this country. I am sure that if my noble friend’s amendment meets that test, it will be given proper and due consideration by the House.

In moving this amendment I give the Government and the House an opportunity to say that each of the two propositions—the AV proposition and the number of MPs/seats proposition—should have separate consideration. They should be taken on their constitutional merits as a whole and treated in that way. I deeply regret, and what is more I believe that the Government will have reason deeply to regret, that the reality of the way in which they have chosen to proceed will make consideration of the issues on their merits more difficult for the House.

[Lord Bach]

I will speak to both amendments. The first is in the name of my noble friend Lord Lipsey, who has moved it so ably, and the second is in my name and that of my noble and learned friend Lord Falconer of Thoroton. Clause 8(1)(b) is an astonishing paragraph of this Bill. It is very remarkable. It was overlooked in debates in the other place, which perhaps makes it all the more important that we debate it properly in this House and in this Committee.

Clause 8 informs the Minister what to do following the result of the referendum being announced. If more votes in the referendum are cast in favour of the answer yes than in favour of the answer no, the Minister must make an order that brings into force provisions to change our voting system for elections to the House of Commons from first past the post to this type of alternative vote system. However, that is not the end of it. An affirmative result in the referendum is not sufficient according to the Bill. The changes in the boundaries detailed in Part 2 of the Bill, particularly in Clause 10, must also have taken place before the alternative vote system can take effect.

In Committee last Monday the Committee was delighted to hear the noble Lord, Lord McNally, tell the House that he and the Leader of the House, the noble Lord, Lord Strathclyde, were joined at the hip on this Bill. I wondered what it is that joins them at the hip on this Bill. I now believe it sincerely to be Clause 8(1)(b) that joins them thus. It has been clear from the introduction of this Bill that this clause is the glue that holds the Government together. Part 1 of the Bill, as was said at Second Reading, is clearly and plainly the Liberal Democrat part of the deal. However AV may have been described by their leader in the past, the Liberal Democrats have decided that it is worth the candle and that it is best not to go searching for some sort of proportional representation, or certainly not at the moment.

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[Lord Deben]

My Lords, I wonder whether it is possible for us to imagine the state of mind of those on the other side who, having suggested AV, now consider this to be evidence of a plot. They themselves recognised that we should have a system whereby constituencies should be at least more or less the same size, which was why they stopped—it was they who did it—keeping a special factor to enable people in dispersed constituencies to have fewer Members of Parliament. It was a Labour decision to stop that. They now come to the House and argue that both things are unacceptable. Surely being fair is a Conservative concept. Should we not have constituencies of the same size? That seems to be a very Conservative principle.

Is it not also a Conservative principle to suggest that the public might make their own choices in these circumstances? It happens to be a Conservative principle with which I disagree. I do not believe in referenda and I never have believed in them. However, it is very curious that noble Lords opposite suggest there is something intrinsically un-Conservative in having a referendum. I do not understand that at all. There is something deeply wrong in referenda, but that does not mean that people who believe in them could not be Conservative.

Why are Labour Members making such a fuss about this matter? Could it possibly be that they are seeking with some real difficulty to find reasons why they should spend as much time as possible discussing these matters? I do not want to help them in that, so I will finish by saying one simple thing. I came to this House expecting and finding that there was, in many cases, a degree of quality in debate unfound in my 35 years in the House of Commons. I am very sad to find that during these recent Bills, those who have experience of the House of Commons and those who have been press-ganged into the little battle have used all the techniques which brought and bring the other House into such disrepute. I am very sorry that yet again on this Bill we have lowered ourselves to doing the kinds of things which are done elsewhere. It is a pity that we cannot look back on our traditions, even for someone as newly hatched as myself, and raise the standards again.

[Lord Bach]

Perhaps the noble Lord can help me. It is really just information that I seek. He says that it was the Labour Government who changed the rules to make it not possible for more rural seats to have a smaller electorate. I should be grateful if he could give us chapter and verse on that. As I understand them, the rules we work under now were passed under a Conservative Government in 1986 of which I think he was almost certainly a distinguished and leading member. We actually believe that those rules are well worth preserving.

[Lord Deben]

Perhaps I may reply to that. The change to the sparsity rules, continued in the 1986 arrangements, was brought in by the Labour Government, who argued that it was unfair that some constituents, because there was a smaller number of them in a constituency, would have a bigger vote than other constituents. All that is happening in this Bill is that we are repeating to the Labour Party something which it has long forgotten.

[Lord Bach]

The noble Lord must have been very upset in the mid-1980s, when he played a prominent role in the then Conservative Government, who just followed what Labour had done.

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[Lord Rooker]

I shall make a brief response to the noble Lord, Lord Deben. I was not intending to speak in this debate but I have three points to make, one of which he will not know. Until two years ago, I had served as a Minister for eight years on the Front Bench here, having come from the other place. I am on record in several places as saying—and I repeat it, although I know that it annoys people down the other end when I say it—that I was under greater scrutiny in my eight years here as a Minister than I ever was in the other place. I am quite happy to say that. It was because of the nature of the way this place works, whether Question Time, Select Committees, or the Floor of the House. There is no doubt about it. I speak only from my own experience. It takes a while to get used to this place, and it can be irritating.

My other two brief points are these. I have been here on this Bill virtually every day, missing only a couple of hours one day, because I just happen to be interested. I do not agree with everything that is happening, as I will make clear in a moment. I have taken several Bills through this House, and in no Committee stage in which I was involved was I aware of ever being forced to say, or of agreeing to say, to the House, “I will take it away and think about it”; or of saying, “I will take that part of this argument away, think about it, and then promise to come back on Report”. If you cannot make a change of rule, you come back openly, having looked at it in the department. Not once, as far as I know, in these debates in six days has any Minister ever said, “A good idea, or maybe a good idea, and we will take that away. There might be something we can do. It does not wreck the Bill, and it may add to things”.

Not once has that happened, and that is fairly unique, in my experience, I say in all humility.

[Lord Bach]

There was one occasion, probably in the two hours that the noble Lord was not here, when the noble Lord, Lord McNally, promised to take one item away, but the point that my noble friend makes is a good one.

[Lord Rooker]

I stand corrected then. I apologise to the noble Lord, Lord McNally, for that. As I say, I was here for all but two hours.

The other point is that there was talk about the previous elections and, to be honest, on this issue concerning equality of constituencies I agree 100 per cent with the noble Lord, Lord Deben. There is nothing between us. If you are going to have one person one vote in a constituency-based system, you have to have the constituencies as near as damn it the same size. This was argued out years ago in the 1970s. I can remember there was an argument at a boundary inquiry. I even remember the late Denis Howell lecturing us and saying, “Look, we might argue for smaller seats in the inner areas because our workload is greater, there is deprivation and there are all the other issues. On the other hand, you have to balance that against the massive distances that country members have to travel. It is different”. What is important is the number people who are voting for one parliament.

Frankly, if you look at the history and take the trouble to read or listen to John Curtice, you will see that Labour lost the 2005 election. I know the arithmetic says we came back with a majority of 66 but, if you look at all the facts and stats that came out, the writing was on the wall then simply because of the way the electoral system worked, the shape of the constituencies, and the slowness of the boundary inquiries. For that reason—it is also why I have no amendments to table to the second half of the Bill—I do not think there should be more than 500 Members of the other place. However, as I do not want to upset anybody by tabling such an amendment, this is my only opportunity to say so.

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[Lord Wallace of Tankerness]

I am sure that they are very similar to the criteria which the previous Labour Government adopted when they gave Orkney and Shetland separate seats in the Scottish Parliament, and did so for similar reasons. His having been a member of that Government, I am sure that the noble Lord will be well aware of those criteria. However, I have no doubt that we will come back to this.

I shall conclude where we came in by indicating that Amendments 45 and 46A would separate the two issues. The first amendment moved by the noble Lord would do this by removing the stipulation that the alternative vote provisions are brought in only after the draft Order in Council is laid, and the second amendment would do this by removing the provision that requires the alternative vote provisions to be brought into force on the same day. It does not actually break the linkage as it would leave the requirement that the order bringing the boundaries provisions into force must have been laid first, although that would not necessarily be on the same day. It may be the intention of the noble Lord, Lord Bach, to put the amendments together.

[Lord Bach]

Why is there a linkage at all between these two sides if it is not part of a political deal?

[Lord Wallace of Tankerness]

I have indicated that the coalition programme for government makes a clear commitment to both issues, and it is the Government’s view that the issues are linked, particularly in terms of how the House of Commons will be shaped when it is reconstituted after the election in 2015. As my noble friend Lord McNally has said on many occasions, the linkage is fair votes and fair boundaries. The Government are committed to both provisions if a yes vote is carried in the referendum. The Government therefore wish to see both provisions, if the yes vote is carried, to come into effect in time for the next general election. On that basis, I invite the noble Lord to withdraw his amendment.

[Lord Wallace of Tankerness]

My Lords, I hesitate to say because, although I am only seven or eight months into office, one of the cardinal rules for a law officer is not to expose what your advice to the Government is. Indeed, you do not even disclose whether advice has been given. However, I will reflect on what the noble Lord, Lord Soley, has said and not necessarily answer his question about advice but perhaps revisit the advice that was given to the House by the Clerks when the particular issue of hybridity was looked at.

[Lord Bach]

On another subject, which I asked the noble Lord about in my contribution, does he agree that even if, by way of exaggeration as an example, 99 per cent of the population were to vote in favour of changing the Westminster voting system to this type of AV, that change would not come about if the boundary changes were not made? How can he seek to justify that?

[Lord Wallace of Tankerness]

I will not justify that particular point, but I will draw the noble Lord’s attention to the fact that the Boundary Commission report is due, as I have already said on two or three occasions during these exchanges, on 1 October 2013. There will be time to debate the fixed-term Parliament Bill, but the assumption is that the next general election will be held on the first Thursday in May 2015. Therefore there will be ample time for both orders to be laid and implemented together, assuming of course that there is a yes vote. If it is a no vote, no time is attached to bringing forward an order to repeal the relevant sections of the Bill, or the Act as it will be by then.

I reiterate that if the Boundary Commission report is brought forward by 1 October 2013, there will be ample time. Obviously this is also important for electoral administrators and the political parties, and it would ensure that the next general election would be fought both within the boundaries that would then be implemented by order and under the alternative vote system.

[Lord Bach]

If the constituency changes do not go ahead for any reason, AV cannot take place. However, if 99 per cent of the people have voted for AV, is that not unfair?

[Lord Wallace of Tankerness]

Ninety-nine per cent of the people voting for AV, much as I would like to see that, is hypothetical. It is also purely hypothetical that the boundary changes will not go ahead either.