Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill

Lord Campbell-Savours Excerpts

Wednesday 8th December 2010 Lords Chamber

Moved by

[Lord Campbell-Savours]

22: Clause 1, page 1, line 10, leave out “the” and insert “an”

[Lord Campbell-Savours]

My Lords, I shall also speak to Amendment 25. In moving this amendment, I need to step back, without in any way wishing to delay the House, to remind the House and those unable to be present last week that the central argument in the case for many of us is that the Government have picked the wrong system in the referendum question. The noble Lord, Lord Rooker, and I both support electoral reform, but we oppose the multioptional preferential voting system as set out in the legislation. The problem is that the Government failed to do their homework when deciding upon a system. They had three systems from which they could select. First is the classic AV federal system that is operated in Australia. Secondly, there is the multioptional preferential system—the one that they have selected in the Bill. Thirdly, there is the supplementary vote, otherwise known as the London alternative vote.

The Government picked the system in a rush against a background of frantic coalition negotiations. As the noble Lord, Lord Strathclyde, said in his speech the day before yesterday, it seems that they had in mind when they selected the scheme the fact that the Labour Government had picked a similar scheme when we presented our Bill earlier this year.

My view, and that of many of my colleagues, is that the system that has been selected is nonsense and riddled with flaws. That is why I argue for an inquiry in Amendment 22. I am convinced that whenever more than two or three are gathered together to consider AV systems, they invariably end up with the supplementary vote or London AV, which is the basis for Amendment 25. This amendment would modify the question in Clause 1 where it states:

“At present, the UK uses the ‘first past the post’ system to elect MPs to the House of Commons. Should the ‘alternative vote’ system be used instead?”.

I simply delete the word “the” alternative vote, and change it to read “an” alternative vote system.

Amendment 25 would enable Parliament to select an alternative voting system out of the three variants of AV available, to which I have referred. The Bill preselects an AV system which many of us reject, as indeed an overwhelming majority of the House would probably do on a free vote. An affirmative vote in a referendum would lead to an inquiry being established to recommend an electoral system to the House, and that inquiry would be able to select from the three systems. It deals with the distinction alluded to by the noble Lord, Lord Forsyth, on Second Reading on 15 November—at col. 569 of Hansard—when he drew a distinction between pre-legislative referendums procedure as proposed by the Labour Government during the Scots and Welsh referendums: in other words, a referendum decision first and legislative detail after; as against the post-legislative referendum as set out in the Bill, which means legislative detail first followed by a referendum.

The question is simple: why cannot we have a referendum that simply seeks approval for the introduction of an AV system in principle? Parliament could then carry out a timetabled inquiry—perhaps even an independent commission of inquiry—to do the work. The Government could then introduce an order following a debate in Parliament, and at least then the merits of the various forms of AV would be debated. We would then have a system that might prove more acceptable to the voting public. My amendment would secure that pre-legislative referendum, which clearly preoccupies the noble Lord, Lord Forsyth, and many of his colleagues on those Benches. It would mean that the building block of an electoral system, which I want to see in place—the supplementary vote, or London AV as it is otherwise known—would be on the agenda for consideration in an inquiry.

Amendment 25—the second of my amendments in this block—is the supplementary vote amendment. This would substitute the alternative vote proposal in the Bill in the referendum question with the supplementary vote, which is a tried and tested system in the United Kingdom. It is a variant of the alternative vote. The system has been the subject of substantial international debate among academics who specialise in electoral systems. It has been the subject of critical and supportive review in both its theory and its practice by academics in the United Kingdom, the United States of America, Holland, Australia and Belgium. It is the system which supporters of AV have consistently sought to rubbish, as it exposes the flaws in AV. It is simpler to use, is more easily understood by the electors and is invariably supported when subjected to rigorous debate. It is opposed by the Liberal Democrat element in the coalition because Liberal Democrats, and only they, believe that it would not deliver for them the windfall gains which they believe are available to them under the optional preferential system of the Bill.

The supplementary vote is the system that is used to elect the United Kingdom's 13 elected mayors, including Boris Johnson. The coalition hopes to create a further 12 directly elected mayors—which many of us support—presumably under the same, successful system which is now being used and supported by millions of voters in more than 30 mayoral election contests nationally in London, Bedford, Doncaster, Hartlepool, Hackney, Lewisham, Newham, Tower Hamlets, Mansfield, Middlesbrough, Northside, Torbay and Watford.

It is curious to note that when a noticeable number of advocates in the United Kingdom of AV or even full proportional representation are commenting on electoral systems, they studiously avoid reference to the supplementary vote. It is the system that the Government adopted when they were forced to choose between AV and SV in 1998. How does it work? With the supplementary vote, there are two columns on the ballot paper: one for the first choice and one for the second. Voters can mark an X in each column if they so wish. All the first preferences are counted. If a candidate has more than 50 per cent of the votes, they are elected. If no candidate receives 50 per cent, the top two remain and the rest are eliminated. The second preference votes of the eliminated are added to the votes of the top two candidates and counted. The candidate with most first and second preferences is the winner: simple and fair. I say to the Conservative end of the coalition that when we first presented that in 1989—it is 21 years since it was first presented in Parliament—there was support on their Benches in the Commons for that system.

I have been promoting the supplementary vote since 1989. It arose after a dinner in the Commons where there had been argument over a number of weeks about proportional representation and a system that would be acceptable to Parliament. At the end of the conversation at the last dinner, I announced to my colleagues that I would go away to research a new system, drawing on the experience of others in different parts of the world, which I believed would be favourably treated if it was fairly debated in Westminster. I spent nine months researching that system. I brought in Professor Patrick Dunleavy from the London School of Economics, who gave the work academic substance by testing the system using a whole series of electoral scenarios and subjecting it to the rigour of academic examination under his close supervision. We named the new system “supplementary” over a dinner in my constituency, and followed it up with a number of articles in the press and other journals in 1990. It has been the subject of a large number of reviews over all those years.

Soon after, the Labour Party established the Plant commission, which examined electoral systems including AV over four months, again in great detail. It produced the Plant report. The Plant commission, while not completely rejecting AV, came down in favour of a single-member constituency system in recognition of the desire of MPs of all parties in the Commons to retain single-member constituencies. In its comprehensive canter around the course of electoral systems, it came down strongly in favour of the supplementary vote with the following words:

“While other systems provide scope for variation from time to time, according to fashion or political whim, SV is relatively immutable; although it could be abolished (or turned into AV), there is little scope for altering the formula by which it operates. Hence, it is more likely to be durable in an unchanged form, and therefore to acquire legitimacy.

Secondly:

“Although it does not entail ‘proportional representation’ (in the sense of a direct link between votes cast nationally or regionally for a party, and the number of seats allocated to that party), it is possible that it would go some way to limit the imbalance between votes and seats that has characterised many election results ... While it would reduce the likelihood of any one party gaining an overall majority on the basis of much less than an overall majority of votes, it would not make single-party overall majorities impossible. Landslide victories, firmly establishing a major party in government without minor party support, would still be possible … In sum, the Supplementary Vote appears to have the advantages that it is a reform which, although possibly far reaching in its consequences, would nevertheless be practical, straightforward, comparatively modest, and would generally be perceived to be fair. However, it emerged that, while there was a clear majority in favour of some form of change from the present system, there was also a clear majority in favour of a single-member constituency majoritarian system. Both the Alternative Vote and the Supplementary Vote would represent a change retaining these features. Between the two, there was, though, a clear preference for the Supplementary Vote; and, accordingly, this is the majority recommendation of the Working Party”.

However, what should be of interest to the Liberal Democrats is the comments of the minority on Plant who favoured first past the post. Its view was that:

“The Supplementary Vote would be likely to increase the representation of the Liberal Democrats in the House of Commons—and so be more likely to produce hung parliaments and thus the possibility of coalition or minority government”.

That is why I simply cannot understand the scale of their opposition. In some ways, I hope that that comment deals with remarks of the noble Lord, Lord Rennard, at our team meeting the other week in Room 3A when he put it to the meeting that it was some sort of Labour Party stitch-up. It was never a Labour Party stitch-up; it was a very neutrally-based system.

The problem with the whole AV/SV debate is that the benefits of SV are often attributed by proponents of AV to the alternative vote, more often than not out of ignorance or a failure to subject both systems to detailed examination. Even the House of Lords Constitution Committee in its report on the Bill likened the system to AV when it stated in paragraph 14:

“This voting system”—

AV—

“is not currently used for any other public election in the United Kingdom, although a similar system, the Supplementary Vote, is used for mayoral elections in London and elsewhere”.

It is similar, but it is very different in operation and in how the votes are counted. For a start, under SV, bottom-placed candidates’ additional preferences do not have priority over the additional preferences cast for other candidates other than those cast for the top two. This avoids results where extremes, such as the BNP, can determine the results of elections, which can happen under the AV system in the Bill.

Also under SV, third and fourth-placed candidates cannot leapfrog into first place, undermining the credibility of election results. I understand that leapfrogging is the reason why the Liberal Democrats support AV—because it does precisely that—but that is a two-edged sword. They may wish to consider what would happen if there was an election tomorrow under the AV system in the Bill. They should remember that they are part of a coalition that is having to take some very unpopular and difficult decisions. As Plant put it:

“The main disadvantages of AV are as follows … it is possible for low ranked candidates actually to break through and be elected so that the most weakly preferred candidate could gain a majority … Following from the fact that the winning candidate has to get”

—at that stage he thought that was the case—

“50 per cent of the vote plus one might seem to be a less compelling principle, if that absolute majority involves weak preferences being counted”.

However, that was under the Australian system, which we are not even considering. Only under the Australian system do you have to get more than 50 per cent of the vote.

The other day I referred to the work of Professor Rawlings and Professor Thrasher at length, and I do not want to repeat what I said, except to say that, following their research into voting behaviour in Queensland, Australia, which uses the same optional preference AV system as proposed in the Bill, they concluded that,

“the most likely scenario over time is that many voters will treat an AV election just like ‘first past the post’, and not cast multiple preferences. Incredibly, under this very same AV system, in Queensland in 2009, fully 63 per cent of those who turned out in the state elections voted for just one candidate”.

Their comments on the operation of optional preferential AV completely undermine the justification for AV in this Bill whereby you give the electorate the opportunity to cast multiple preferences.

Rawlings and Thrasher argue that not everyone uses their additional preferences, whereas under SV they are more likely to do so. On 10 November 2010, in an article, they stated:

“At the three London mayoral elections in 2000, 2004 and 2008”,

under SV only, 20 per cent of,

“voters either voted just once or cast both their available votes for a single party candidate”.

In other words, 80 per cent voted for more. I would add that the complication in that early SV election arose from the way in which the question was tabled on the ballot paper.

I argue that SV is simple, easily understood, well tried, internationally recognised, more likely to lead to the casting of additional preference votes and easy to count. I have not even dealt with the problems that arise over counting—perhaps I can do that on Report. In replying to this debate, perhaps the Minister will take the opportunity to tell us whether it is proposed under their system to count the votes manually or electronically, which is significant. Unless they are counted electronically it will not be possible to work out how effective this system is. That view is expressed by returning officers in Scotland, with whom our people have spoken over the past few days. It reduces the influence of the extremes. Finally, it concentrates the mind of the voter on the need not to waste votes. I beg to move.

[Lord Rooker]

I support my noble friend in this amendment. I do not want to repeat what I have said in previous debates, but we are given an opportunity here to deploy once again—certainly, it will be deployed if and when a referendum takes place—the fact that the proposal in the Bill is fraught with difficulties. What is more, untruths are told about it. It will be the case that every time someone appears on a platform or a television station and says, “Oh, they have got to get more than 50 per cent to win”, someone will pop up and say, “Not true”. It is not true under the system in this Bill that every MP will be elected with more than 50 per cent of the votes. It cannot happen with an open system. It is impossible. Every time it is said, whether by the Deputy Prime Minister or anyone else, it is not the case. The public are being misled.

We have to look at which system of AV is being used. I know that it is the case—it was the case with the previous Cabinet and will be with this one—that there has been no proper discussion in the Government. There has been no seminar in the Cabinet Room for Cabinet Ministers to say, “There are three ways of doing AV. Which one do you want in the Bill?”. There has been no discussion at all. That is why we have a Bill based on ignorance. I am not saying that people are personally ignorant; I am saying that there is ignorance of the system.

It would not be so bad if the Government were offering up the system and telling the whole truth about it or if they said, “Well, this is the system we have got. It is not perfect, but none of them is. Most MPs will be elected with more than 50 per cent of the vote, but some of them won’t be. So we won’t make the claim that they all will be”. But the Government are not saying that, because they cannot say it under this system. They must know that by now because their advisers must have told them about it. As I have said, there is ignorance and lack of party discussion. It was the same with the last lot—no one was ever consulted and it just turned up in the Bill earlier in the year. Part of the reason why there has been no discussion is that there are never any discussions because the Government never meet. The public think that they do, of course, but they do not. That is a difficulty and it is where the Government face a problem.

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[Lord Greaves]

This is the first time that I have spoken on the Bill. I apologise that I did not speak at Second Reading and I do not expect to speak very often in Committee, which will please my noble friends.

I rise to speak because the debate is about the supplementary vote, which I consider to be an awful voting system. I want to explain why. Before I do, however, in response to the intervention of the noble Lord, Lord Lamont, I should explain that it is not possible under AV for a candidate who gets no first preference votes to be elected. It is possible, but highly unlikely, under STV in a multimember seat; it is not possible under AV. That is a red herring.

I normally expect the noble Lord, Lord Campbell-Savours, to speak a great deal of sense and to put forward sensible proposals, even when I am not allowed to support them. Nevertheless, I am astonished that he thinks that the supplementary vote is a good system. However, as he said, he was in at the genesis of the system, which was put together at a dinner party when people were talking around the table. It was something like that, anyway; it is a nice story. The noble Lord also said that it is tried and tested—as, indeed, it is—and that many people seek to rubbish it. That may be because it is a rubbish system. It is inefficient—I shall explain why in a moment—and it results in people being cheated. They think that they are voting and expect their vote to be counted, but it is not counted.

As the noble Lord said, the system is used in 12 mayoral elections for councils and for the election of the Mayor of London, so there is, indeed, a great deal of experience. However, on the evidence that we have, it is not particularly beneficial to any of the political parties. It often seems beneficial to candidates of weird and wonderful varieties but, at the moment, of the 12 mayors, three are Labour, two are Conservative, two are Liberal Democrat, four are independent and one is an English Democrat. People ought to at least ask questions about any system that allows the election of an English Democrat, as the argument of the noble Lord, Lord Campbell-Savours, against AV included the suggestion that that system might lead to influence for BNP voters.

[Lord Campbell-Savours]

On that point, will the noble Lord confirm that in the cases that he referred to the successful candidates would all have been elected under first past the post as well?

[Lord Greaves]

They would, yes. However, whether they would have stood and whether it would have resulted in their election is a different matter altogether. It may be that the problem is with elected mayors and not with the system used to elect them. However, we will have that discussion under the localism Bill when we come to it. Indeed, at least five of the existing elected mayors were elected with over 50 per cent of first preferences, so whatever electoral system you have makes no difference whatsoever.

I think that you have to look at the outcomes, but my objections and, I think, those of the Liberal Democrats to the supplementary vote are not based on whether it is good for Liberal Democrats. The noble Lord was seductive in trying to find an electoral system that would be best for us, but that is not how we look at election systems. It is certainly not how I look at election systems. We look at election systems as a matter of principle.

[Lord Greaves]

That is certainly how I look at election systems. We have here a system that is bad in principle but also shown in practice to be defective. I shall refer to three or four actual elections to explain what happened.

At the last ordinary election in Bedford—we have had a by-election since then—the total number of votes cast was 43,525. The top two candidates, who, under the supplementary vote system, as the noble Lord accurately described, go through to the final round, got 26,676. That means that the first preferences of other candidates amounted to 16,849. Of those, only 6,335 transferred to one of the two candidates who remained in the final round. Therefore, of the second preference votes, 10,514 could not transfer—62.4 per cent of the second votes did not transfer. Some of them may have been spoiled, but I cannot get that information. Nearly a quarter of the total—24.2 per cent—voted for candidates in the second column, for their second preference, but their second preference was thrown away without being counted. I believe that those voters were being cheated of what the system pretends that they can do, which is to cast a first preference and then cast a second preference.

[Lord Campbell-Savours]

On that matter, again, if the noble Lord is comparing the system with AV and alluding to what he might regard as wasted votes, or unused votes, is it not true that under the system in the Bill a bottom-placed candidate could take a top-placed candidate over the 50 per cent limit? Therefore, every additional preference for all the other candidates would be unused under the Government’s proposed system. You would have a whole ballot paper wiped out on the basis of the simple transfer of the bottom eliminated candidate taking the first-placed candidate over 50 per cent. That is an outrageous waste of votes. If the noble Lord’s case is based on wasted votes, there are far more votes wasted under AV when you start doing research into election results.

[Lord Greaves]

I do not want to talk about AV; I want to talk about the supplementary vote. However, the main votes wasted under AV are where people do not express any further preferences and therefore that vote is not transferable, but that is their decision. It is their decision not to express a further preference after they have decided whom they want to vote for down to however far they vote. Under this system, people very clearly express a preference and that preference is discarded. In Bedford in 2007, as I said, it was a quarter of the vote.

In Mansfield in 2007, where the two top candidates got a much larger proportion of the total vote, it was still the case that, of those eliminated on the second count, 2,350 transferred and 3,853 did not transfer. Of those, 1,199 were void as unmarked or for reasons of uncertainty. It may be, of course, that people did not want to express a second preference, but one of the problems of the supplementary vote is that it leads to a much higher proportion of votes being void because they are not filled in accurately. For example, there are many people who vote for the same candidate in both columns. It is perfectly easy to do that, but you cannot do it under the alternative vote system, only under the supplementary vote system. It is clear that that is what people did.

[Lord Campbell-Savours]

My Lords—

[Lord Greaves]

The noble Lord will have plenty of opportunities to respond. However, I will give way.

[Lord Campbell-Savours]

I just want to correct the noble Lord. The reason why that happened in the first mayoral elections in London was that the civil servants meddled with the drafting of the ballot paper that some of us had proposed to the Government. Thanks to that meddling, people ended up misunderstanding how to use their votes in the first London elections. Following that mistake, there was an argument in the House of Commons and the ballot paper was corrected. In the subsequent elections, the problem did not arise.

[Lord Greaves]

The problem did not arise to the same extent. I do not have the figures for the London mayoral elections, although those are available—for most counts, no figures are issued to show exactly why people’s votes were rejected.

In the 2007 Mansfield mayoral elections, 892 votes were rejected at the first count. At 3 per cent of the total, that is significantly higher than the normal number of rejected ballot papers in an election. Of those 892 ballot papers, 483 were rejected because the person had voted for more than one candidate in the first column. Such errors are to be expected when people are told only, “You’ve got two votes—you vote for one person as your first preference and one person as your second preference”. It is not surprising that a significant number of people vote twice in the first column. Only an inefficient voting system encourages people to make mistakes like that.

[Lord Campbell-Savours]

Can I come back on the noble Lord again?

[A noble Lord]

Oh no.

[Lord Campbell-Savours]

These points should be answered because this is a debate on the technical working of the system. Research into AV in Australia found that the requirement to number the candidates meant that people simply numbered “1”, “2”, “3”, “4”, “5”, “6”, “7” and so on down the ballot paper, without even thinking of the candidates involved. That is how people thought that they had to use the system, so there are equally problems with AV over how people understand the ballot paper.

[Lord Greaves]

I am talking about the supplementary vote and trying to point out why that is a bad system. However, in any long ballot paper with lots of candidates, people near the top of the ballot paper always do better than people near the bottom. That happens with multiseat elections under the first-past-the-post system, for example. If noble Lords have ideas on how to counter that issue—there are several ideas around—perhaps they can put them forward, but that is not what we are talking about today.

In the 2010 Watford mayoral election—which was won by a Liberal Democrat, so I am not making a party-political point about rejected votes, which might have been against the Liberal Democrat candidate—the number of eliminated ballot papers was 12,202. Of those, the number of valid ballot papers was only 5,381, which is less than half.

The most ludicrous example of all comes from the most recent mayoral election in Torbay in 2005—I do not think that there has been another election since—where the 14 candidates, which I agree is an extreme example, included a Conservative, a Liberal Democrat, a Labour candidate and 11 independents. The Conservative was elected on the second count after the first preferences were added to those few second preferences that transferred to the top two candidates, with a grand total of 28.9 per cent of the vote. Surely that is not a particularly efficient electoral system. The 9,094 first-preference votes for the top two candidates—who were Conservative and Liberal Democrat—accounted for 37.6 per cent of the vote. The other candidates got 15,076 first-preference votes, which is 62.4 per cent of the vote, but only 3,199 of those 15,000-odd votes—that is, 21 per cent—could be transferred. Almost half—49 per cent—of all second preferences votes did not count because they were not transferred, although they accounted for nearly 79 per cent of second preferences. I am not complaining about the fact that the Conservative was elected—the Conservative might have been elected under AV—but what a hopeless voting system to end up with a result like that.

The supplementary vote results in people being cheated out of their second preferences. SV is an inefficient and unnecessary system that was invented for party-political reasons by the Labour Party, which imposed it on the mayoral elections. The supplementary vote is a very bad system that should be rejected.

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[Lord Strathclyde]

I like to think that I have made an authoritative statement from the Dispatch Box as to what the Government believe to be the case. However, as the noble Lord knows, we will not be controlling the campaign—different people will make their different views known as to the merits or demerits of AV. However, the noble Lord is right. I have agreed with him, and I thank him for his earlier words about this case.

[Lord Campbell-Savours]

I am sorry to come back at this stage, but the noble Lord, Lord Strathclyde, is sitting next to the noble Lord, Lord McNally, so we really need to have this sorted out. During the course of an interview on Monday 15 November on the Radio 4 “Today” programme, the noble Lord, Lord McNally, was asked a question, to which he replied:

“This reform will mean you will go to Parliament with at least half of your constituents having consciously voted for you”.

Now, that is why my noble friend intervened. It is really important that this is sorted out if Ministers from now on are to go on television and admit that. I would make the same point to the very articulate Mr Barclay, I think, who is part of the AV campaign, who also goes on television and repeats this 50-plus per cent argument. Can we be sure now that that is really at an end?

[Lord Strathclyde]

Those who are in favour of the system will no doubt be responsible for what they say during the course of the campaign, but that is not part of the debate that we need to have now. However, I can assure the noble Lord that the Electoral Commission—

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[Lord Strathclyde]

My Lords, the circumstance is when most people who vote express only a first preference and do not then list any further preferences.

The Electoral Commission will be providing this kind of information, and voters will know what they are voting for in the referendum. If they choose AV, it will, I assume, be because they want to express more than one preference at an election, because if they do not, they may as well vote for what we have currently got. So I do not think that there is really any need to worry about voters not exercising this right, if that is the very system that they voted for in the first place. Just as we are not convinced that voters should be made to express a preference for all candidates, we are not persuaded that the Bill should limit the number of preferences that a voter may express at an election. Therefore, we do not agree that the supplementary vote system is the appropriate alternative vote system to present.

I have set out our reasoning and I do not want to go on about arguments that I have already made, but I assume that this is the same reasoning that was behind the previous Government’s proposals for a referendum on this same type of alternative vote system. I know that we have spent some time on this amendment, but it was worth while doing so and I hope that the noble Lord will withdraw his amendment.

[Lord Campbell-Savours]

My Lords, I shall briefly comment on the interventions. I say to my noble friend Lord Rooker that we have travelled down exactly that route—from first past the post, through an AV variant to an additional member system. I say to the noble Lord, Lord Greaves, that I dispute the figures he used during his intervention and I shall trawl over them. He is perhaps unaware of the failure to use additional preferences, which goes to the heart of the argument over the AV system that he supports. During the debate on whether this clause should stand part of the Bill, I hope to produce evidence of what happened in Scotland on these very matters.

My noble friend Lord Howarth of Newport is absolutely right to identify the TV campaign as being critical to what is going to happen. I can envisage circumstances in which advocates of this AV system are demolished in argument in front of the nation on news bulletins, on “Newsnight” and so on. We will see slowly dripping away any residual support that there is for this system. I say to the Government that they might be looking forward to that prospect, but on that basis the Liberal Democrats should certainly not be looking forward to it.

I again thank my noble and learned friend Lord Falconer for his clear, lawyer’s explanation of my system, and I apologise to the House for intervening repeatedly. However, I did so because it is important in advance of the referendum that we strike down some of the myths that have been used throughout this whole debate. I understand the reservations of the noble Lord, Lord Strathclyde, on the wording of the amendment and the question of “an” alternative vote system, and I might well return at Report with another amendment precisely to deal with that matter.

Finally, I say this to the Government because I really think that Conservative Back-Benchers, Conservative members of the coalition, should carefully consider what they are doing. In my mind, the question to ask is whether they, as Conservative Members of Parliament, Members of the House, are prepared, for the sake of a possible five-year survival of a coalition, to take the immense risk of allowing a referendum result which could completely transform the British electoral system, could cause huge damage and undermine the whole credibility of parliamentary elections in the United Kingdom. Maybe it is that they are confident that the referendum will be lost, but are they really prepared to take that risk? I say to Conservative noble Lords: be very careful, you are playing with fire.

I beg leave to withdraw my amendment.

Amendment 22 withdrawn.

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Debate on whether Clause 1, as amended, should stand part of the Bill.

[Lord Campbell-Savours]

My Lords, this clause, establishing the referendum, sets the question. This is probably my last intervention on this part of the Bill. Although I believe in electoral reform and the need for a referendum, I do not believe in this referendum because it sets the wrong question. The Bill seeks approval for a system that I believe is a nonsense.

Now, I almost want to act as a sweep and to place on record a summary of my objections to this referendum and the question being asked. I believe that the core of my objections will surface during the television campaign against the referendum question. I object on the basis that this may well be our last opportunity for a generation to put electoral reform on the agenda. If the public say no, it will be almost impossible to resurrect the electoral reform debate, so we have to get the system right.

The opponents of electoral reform will sell AV as the product of a panic-driven stitch-up between the Liberal Democrats and Conservatives in the coalition, the intention being to create a coalition. That will not fool the public. The Conservative acceptance of AV as part of the coalition deal will be seen as a cynical ploy when it comes out during the TV campaign that almost the entire Conservative Party, both inside and outside Parliament, is opposed to the AV system on offer and, to some extent, proportional representation altogether.

The coalition is taking the issue of electoral reform to the electorate at a time when there is great political and economic uncertainty. Divisions within the coalition, which will deepen, will inevitably lead to calls for strong governance. Curiously, I believe that coalitions, which I actually favour, are capable of strong government, but coalitions built on the shifting sands of economic uncertainty and the consequential public expenditure reductions are bound to lead to division and the public will inevitably identify division within the coalition with coalition Governments and, sadly, with electoral reform. This is the wrong time to be asking this question, particularly in a referendum that proposes such a controversial system.

The Liberal Democrats, in particular, will have major difficulties in the campaign in squaring their historic position. How do they answer the question: “Do you really believe in the system on offer?”. The answer has to be no. If they answer that this is the best on offer, the public will simply turn away. The truth is that the only people who have advocated this system are members of the Labour Party and, even in the Labour Party, they are a minority. Furthermore, we are opposed to this Bill because of the stitch-up on seats, which many Members find objectionable.

Then we have the false prospectus. Many people believe that they are being offered the full Australian classic AV system, but that is not so. They are getting what is being called “a miserable little compromise”. We then have those who, either through ignorance or recognition of the inherent weaknesses in multioptional, preferential AV, use arguments to support AV and to justify the system such as, “It works like the London mayoral voting system”. That is just a dishonest argument, but we shall hear it in the campaign. It will be fed on the doorstep by proponents of this AV system. They will say that it is like the system used in the London mayoral election. I regard that as fundamentally dishonest.

I also have a fundamental objection to a system that gives equal weight to voters’ least favoured preferences and the first preference votes of other voters. How can the seventh preference of a voter in a seven-candidate election be as valid as the first preference of another voter? It is a nonsense.

Equally, I deplore the myth being peddled that AV avoids tactical voting. That is simply untrue. Under the heading, “Factors determining the results in an AV election”, the Constitution Society stated in its brief on AV:

“In order to maximise the chances of a preferred candidate, a voter must rank the other candidates in an optimum order, taking account of past results and polling information. (This is a potentially complex exercise which most voters will not attempt themselves: in Australia, the Party organisations publish lists instructing their supporters how to rank the candidates for maximum advantage.)”.

In other words, AV provides for tactical voting. I have had some interesting conversations over this past weekend with people in Scotland. I can tell the Committee that the Labour Party, my own party, used tactical voting techniques—and we say it openly in Scotland—during the local authority elections in Scotland. It accepts it as part of the new arrangements that exist while that system is in operation.

Then we have leapfrogging. Under the AV system proposed, third-placed and fourth-placed candidates on the first count can break through and win seats on subsequent counts. This is particularly likely to happen in places such as Scotland, where you have a number of parties seriously contesting what could turn out to be tightly fought marginal parliamentary constituencies. I object most strongly to a system where the sequence in which candidates are eliminated can disproportionately influence who wins an election. Let us take the example of a seat where the top candidate on the first count wins 45 per cent or 46 per cent of the vote. If the bottom candidate, the BNP, wins, say, 8 per cent or 10 per cent of the vote on the first count and 50 per cent of the BNP second preferences transfer to the top candidate, the top candidate wins. The BNP will have determined the result because, following elimination of the bottom candidate and the transfer of eliminated candidates’ second preferences, the top candidate has more than 50 per cent and wins. What is most significant about that kind of result, in that count, is that all other additional preferences for all other candidates are ignored, which is the point that I was making earlier to the noble Lord, Lord Greaves.

[Lord Greaves]

Does the noble Lord not agree that all single-member constituency contests are majoritarian contests because the final result is a contest between the person who wins and either one other candidate or a number of other candidates? Therefore, in a majoritarian contest in a single-member seat, at the final count there are always people who have voted for the successful candidate and people who have voted for an unsuccessful candidate or candidates. That is inherent in a single-member majoritarian system. The important thing is that those votes remain in the system at the end, unlike in the supplementary vote system, which the noble Lord espouses, where votes are simply cast aside and not even included in the final count.

[Lord Campbell-Savours]

The noble Lord is asking me to reopen the debate that we had on the Floor in a series of interventions, when I answered that point specifically. Before Report, we might be able to do more work on this; we might be able to show that there is a greater loss under the AV system. Perhaps he could ask his researcher to have a look at some of the results in Scotland that I am going to refer to.

[Lord Greaves]

Does the noble Lord accept that I do all my own research, as I am a poor, pauper Peer?

[Lord Campbell-Savours]

Forgive me.

We then have this major problem of the electorate’s understanding of the proposed system. The Constitution Society in its briefing for the All-Party Parliamentary Group on the Constitution drew attention to a series of YouGov polls on the issues set out in the Bill. The poll commissioned at the end of August this year interviewed 2,548 respondents. One-third claimed that they knew how AV worked, one-third claimed that they had heard of it but did not know how it worked and one-third claimed that they had never heard of it. The response of supporters of the proposed AV system is that a public information campaign should help public understanding of the system. That is the view, I understand, of the Electoral Commission. However, noble Lords then have to consider the impact of such information campaigns. My noble friend Lord Rooker drew attention to this issue the other day to some extent, but perhaps I can add a little more information. Under the YouGov poll question,

“How would you vote in a referendum on AV? (Before and after being given information)”,

this is the response under paragraph 2.5.3 of the report:

“Before being exposed to information, responses were evenly balanced between ‘Yes’ (32 per cent) and ‘no’ (33 per cent). After receiving factual information, the ‘no’ vote increased to 38 per cent suggesting that exposure to information about AV tends to convince undecided voters against it”.

That is a precarious basis on which to hold a public information campaign or, indeed, to hold a referendum.

I now turn to other extremely important issues. The first is the 50 per cent myth, which I hope we may have destroyed during our earlier debate today. Let us note how the Constitution Society sees it. In its alternative voting briefing paper, it said:

“Nor, in the ‘optional preference’ proposed for the UK, does the winning candidate necessarily have an outright majority of the total vote (ie of the total number of people who voted). In Australia, where the AV system is used for House of Representatives elections, voting is compulsory and voters are thus required to allocate a preference to every candidate on the ballot. As a consequence, the winning candidate does always achieve an outright majority of the total”.

Then we have Rallings and Thrasher, professors at the University of Plymouth, who say:

“Proponents of AV often claim that the need for successful candidates to be able to show local majority support is one of the system’s main attractions. Yet our Table above”—

that is a part of a wider briefing from Rallings and Thrasher—

“would also mean, given the limited vote transfers between parties, that more than 4 out of every 10 MPs would still be elected with the endorsement of less than 50 per cent of the voters in their constituency. The claim that AV will guarantee local majority support can only be validated if every voter is compelled or chooses to cast a full range of preferences. There seems little prospect of that happening in a general election conducted under AV in the UK”.

Professor Patrick Dunleavy, whose work on electoral systems is internationally acclaimed, treats as risible the suggestion that you need 50 per cent to win. He is not a great supporter of AV; he sees it as a compromise system that to some extent has to be supported. But he, like me, is a supporter of electoral reform, in that both of us support AMS-based systems.

However, the real evidence on this came to me by a curious route, following the intervention of the noble Lord, Lord Rennard, and I will quote him because I want to take on this question of Scotland. He said:

“In particular, Scotland operates STV when all its council elections are due but the alternative vote when it has a council by-election”.—[Official Report, 30/11/10; col. 1402.]

Here we have STV operating in Scotland, apart from in by-elections, when the system automatically switches to AV, because we are talking about single-member wards. The noble Lord goes on to suggest that we pray in aid the information gleaned from the Scottish experience. I have done precisely that. With the help of Mr Paul White, a researcher whose expertise on these matters—in particular his statistical analysis—has been of great benefit to me, I tracked down all 32 AV by-elections in Scotland since the system’s introduction. I want to place the 32 by-elections on the record, because this is relevant to the campaign that is to take place. Eight of them were won with less than 50 per cent of the vote. In Aberdeen City, Midstocket/Rosemount, it was 43 per cent; in Elgin City ward in Moray, it was 42 per cent; in Lerwick South, Shetland, it was 44 per cent; in Abbey ward, Dumfries and Galloway, it was 48 per cent; in Aboyne, Upper Deeside and Donside, Aberdeenshire, it was 43 per cent; in Bannockburn, Stirling, it was 45 per cent; in Coatbridge North and Glenboig, North Lanarkshire, it was 42 per cent; and in Forres, in Moray, it was 44 per cent. There is the evidence of an AV system in operation where members are elected with less than 50 per cent of the poll.

[Lord Rennard]

Can the noble Lord calculate from those figures how many of those by-elections would have been won by a candidate with less than 50 per cent of the vote in the event of the first-past-the-post system being used? He has clearly demonstrated that, in three-quarters of those cases or thereabouts, the candidate elected had to have 50 per cent of the vote. How many cases would have been won by someone with less than 50 per cent had first past the post been retained?

[Lord Campbell-Savours]

That is not the question. We are dealing here with those who argue that a candidate should need 50 per cent of the poll to win, so do not switch the question to another area. I am only addressing what happens. There are problems with first past the post, which is why I am in favour of electoral reform. I am trying to place on record material to show that those who argue that we need a majority of the electorate to win are simply wrong.

The second important issue is the incidence of the use of additional preferences, which is the principal argument used to justify AV. Last week, I referred to the work of Rallings and Thrasher on results in Queensland, Australia. Colleagues may recall that in the 2009 state elections, 63 per cent of all those who voted “plumped”, or voted for, only one candidate. In some areas, as many as three-quarters of all those voting voted for only one candidate. The question is: what would happen in the United Kingdom?

Again following the reference of the noble Lord, Lord Rennard, I enlisted the help of Professor John Curtice of the University of Strathclyde. Let me make it clear that I am not reflecting his views—I do not know what he believes in—as I simply asked him for statistical information to be provided. Professor Curtice has given me factual data. I tracked down the six by-election results in Scotland that provide data that indicate the usage of additional preferences under AV. Such data can be secured only where votes are counted electronically, which is why I asked the noble Lord, Lord Strathclyde, whether the counts would be based on an electronic or a manual basis. Remember that we are dealing here with AV. However, the noble and learned Lord, Lord Wallace, is shaking his head. Perhaps I have misunderstood something.

[The Advocate-General for Scotland (Lord Wallace of Tankerness)]

I am not entirely sure why the count had to be electronic to get the information on where the transfers went.

[Lord Campbell-Savours]

To be frank, I do not understand that either. However, I asked that question and I understand that it is because of the way that votes are counted manually. One returning officer in a seat in Scotland told us that he had different buckets into which he placed different votes and, as the tellers went from count to count, they moved the votes from one bucket to another. Perhaps that has something to do with how they count the additional preferences. As I said, I have not been able to trace that information up to now.

As I said, remember that we are dealing with what are normally STV local authority arrangements where there are by-elections in individual seats. Let me take six seats that were up for single-member election. In Glasgow Ballieston, of those who voted: 100 per cent —obviously—used their first preference vote; 51 per cent did not use their second preference vote; 68 per cent did not use their third preference vote; 84 per cent did not use their fourth preference vote; 91 per cent did not use their fifth preference vote; 92 per cent did not use their sixth preference; and 93 per cent did not use their seventh preference. At another Glasgow Ballieston by-election, of those who voted: 47 per cent did not use their second preference vote; 74 per cent did not use their third preference vote; 83 per cent did not use their fourth preference vote; 92 per cent did not use their fifth preference vote; 93 per cent did not use their sixth preference vote; 94 per cent did not use their seventh preference vote; 94 per cent did not use their eighth preference vote; and 95 per cent did not use their ninth preference. What a system. People are not using their additional preferences.

[Lord Phillips of Sudbury]

I am slightly perplexed by that argument, which seems to point in the direction of second and further preferences being purposive. One of the noble Lord’s earlier arguments was that they were inconsequential.

[Lord Campbell-Savours]

Sorry, I missed what the noble Lord said.

[Lord Phillips of Sudbury]

The argument that the noble Lord is advancing suggests that the use of second and further preferences is purposive—that is, the voters are exercising a real choice. If voters are indifferent to some candidates, they may not use their other preferences at all. That is surely right and good, but it works against his earlier argument.

[Lord Campbell-Savours]

The noble Lord is correct and has hit the point right on the head. Voters often use their second preferences. That is why we go back to the supplementary vote. Under the supplementary vote system, all the second preferences for all the other candidates are transferred to the top two, whereas under the AV system, that is not the case.

[Lord Greaves]

The noble Lord is now going back to the supplementary vote. The whole purport of what I said earlier about the supplementary vote is that not all the second preferences of those who voted for other candidates are transferred to the top two candidates. I provided a number of statistics showing that usually a clear majority—sometimes an overwhelming majority—of such votes are not transferred to the top two. That is what is wrong with the supplementary vote. If, in exercising their preferences under the alternative vote, people choose at any stage not to choose between remaining candidates, that is entirely their right. However, if people exercise their right to record a second preference, all such votes should remain in the count to the very end.

[Lord Campbell-Savours]

However, we are measuring the efficacy of the system. We want the system to work. We want it to make a difference in results. If we are to change to a system in which people simply do not use their additional preferences, why change the system? The advantage of the supplementary vote is that people would use their second preferences. That is what has happened in the mayoral elections, as the noble Lord will know from having seen the data.

In the by-election for the Doon Valley ward of East Ayrshire Council, 52 per cent did not use their second preference vote, 68 per cent did not use their third preference vote, 77 per cent did not use their fourth preference vote and 81 per cent did not use their fifth.

[Lord Foulkes of Cumnock]

I hope that my noble friend is not casting any aspersions on the good people of Doon Valley, whom I represented for 26 years in the other place. They are the salt of the earth—good mining stock—and people whom he would be proud to know as friends. Indeed, many of them I know as friends. I am sure that he does not mean in any way to disparage them.

[Lord Campbell-Savours]

I am sure that they are the crème de la crème and the very best, but I am just trying to help them. I want to see a system in operation that works and that does not result in people wasting their votes.

The interesting thing about all these results is shown in my final example. In the by-election for the ward of Drumchapel/Anniesland, 38 per cent did not use their second preferences, 51 per cent did not use their third preferences, 62 per cent did not use their fourth preferences and 68 per cent did not use their fifth preferences. All of that comes from the beginning of the use of AV in the United Kingdom, in Scotland.

On top of that, as we find in Australia, once the parties begin to devise strategies for “plumping”, people stop using their preferences altogether and treat the election as a first-past-the-post election. In effect, that means that there is no major change to the system, apart from when people deliberately set out to remove particular Members of Parliament. Those are the circumstances in which there may well be freak results.

[Lord McFall of Alcluith]

We who have campaigned in such elections, including in another one in East Ayrshire in my former constituency that produced similar statistics, along with all the parties who are represented in this House—and some that are not—know that that is exactly what happens. Before we impose this system more extensively and more widely as the only choice in the referendum paper, we should think carefully about the electorate’s experience of the system. I have to say to my noble friend that there is no party represented in this House that does not do exactly what he has identified—I include in that those who are the most active proponents of some form of proportionality.

[Lord Campbell-Savours]

My noble friend referred to an election in his former constituency, for which I have the results here. Was that the election in Ballochmyle in East Ayrshire?

[Lord McFall of Alcluith]

No.

[Lord Campbell-Savours]

Being a Welshman, I do not know how to pronounce these names. However, 43 per cent of second preferences, 63 per cent of third preferences, 74 per cent of fourth preferences and 77 per cent of fifth preferences were not used. That is before we get into the big “plumping” campaigns that will be imported from Australia. The results indicate massive abstentions on additional preferences. What are the implications of AV for general elections?

[Lord Greaves]

Will the noble Lord tell us to what extent he is cherry-picking the results? Would the same sort of figures be produced if he took all 35 council by-elections in Scotland into account?

[Lord Campbell-Savours]

When I asked Professor Curtice for all the results that could be identified, he said that, because of the distinction between manual and electronic counting, we can identify only six results that provide us with the data. If I can secure any more, I will make sure that I make them available to the noble Lord.

The candidates who will be most under threat at the next election under AV will be the Conservatives. Let there be no doubt at all about that. The Conservatives will probably run a fairly straight-forward campaign as they normally do, but the Liberal Democrats will not. In council leaflets being put out by focus groups in parts of the United Kingdom, we are already seeing derogatory references to people in the coalition and to its policies. That is only the start. By the time that we get to the elections next year, we will see some pretty scurrilous literature coming out of the Liberal Democrats about what is going on nationally within the coalition. The Liberal Democrats will put out leaflets claiming credit for the more progressive coalition policies and advising electors to vote tactically, which they will.

The Liberal Democrats election guru—I see the noble Lord, Lord Rennard in his place—cannot stand up now and deny that they will use the AV system tactically in the way that I am suggesting, despite the fact that advocates of the AV component in the Bill say that people will not vote tactically when it is clear that they will be advised to do so. The Liberal Democrats objective will be to unseat Conservatives wherever possible by advising the electorate to use their additional preferences on outsider no-hope candidates. In seats where Labour has been marginalised, they will desperately set out to woo Labour additional preferences by disassociating themselves from their coalition partners. All I can do is warn the Conservatives in advance to watch their backs. I cannot understand why Conservative Peers are tolerating this nonsense. Liberal Democrat campaigns are unlikely to work—

[Lord Greaves]

I promise that this is the last time that I will intervene—I am just getting the noble Lord back for his previous interventions on me—but I am not at all sure what right and wrongs of a particular electoral system have to do with all this tittle-tattle about political campaigning at local level.

[Lord Campbell-Savours]

I think that there is a direct connection because the coalition is comprised of two elements, one of which—the Conservative element—is almost completely hostile to the AV system. All that I am pointing out in advance is the danger of allowing this system to slip through on the back of a referendum. I do not think that the referendum will be won, but it may be won and the Conservatives will have it historically around their necks.

I remind the House and colleagues that the three dirtiest campaigns that I have witnessed in my political life were in the Chester-le-Street by-election, the Manchester Exchange by-election and the Bermondsey by-election. It may well be that many Members here today worked in those campaigns. Those three by-elections had one thing in common: the Liberals were in contention, believed that they could win and were absolutely determined to do so. The Lib Dems believe that they can break through on the back of—

[Lord Rennard]

We seem to be drifting from the referendum. Has the noble Lord forgotten the recent example in Oldham East and Saddleworth in the general election?

[Lord Campbell-Savours]

That is not something that I condone, but it is insignificant compared to what happened and to what we picked up on the doorstep during the course of the three campaigns to which I referred. I remember the Bermondsey campaign, which was utterly appalling. The Liberal Democrats believe that they can break through on the back of AV, and they will ruthlessly use this system. I warn the Conservative element in this coalition that this will backfire.

[Lord Lipsey]

It is very tempting for me to think that, having heard the formidable argument put forward by my noble friend Lord Campbell-Savours, it is necessary to reply to each of the points he made because as a supporter of AV, I could, and would, readily do so. I think I have some sense that the House would prefer to proceed a little more rapidly than that would imply, and therefore I will resist that temptation and keep my remarks as brief as they can be in view of the substance that I need to impart.

I noticed that during my noble friend Lord Campbell-Savours’s speech, the Lord Speaker deserted our proceedings. I can only think that she was so convinced by my noble friend’s arguments that she realised that she was not a legitimate Speaker of this House. She was elected by AV, a system which my noble friend was destroying, and perhaps because she had not heard me put the counter-case, she felt it necessary to desert her seat. However, I can assure her that she was legitimately chosen by a proper AV system, as are the leaders of the political party of which I am a member, and it is a very good system too.

When debating between SV and AV, as opposed to between first past the post and AV, I sometimes feel that I am back watching television some years ago and watching the Tooting Popular Liberation Front fighting it out with the Popular Front for the Liberation of Tooting. As I am Lord Lipsey of Tooting Bec, I particularly enjoy that contest. My noble friend Lord Campbell-Savours and I agree on one thing. It is more important than the things on which we disagree—SV against AV. We are both electoral reformers and therefore hope to see electoral reform emerge eventually from this Bill.

There is at least as formidable a case to be made against SV as my noble friend made against AV. Let us take a point on which the House has spent much too long this afternoon; that is, whether AV requires someone to get 50 per cent or more of the vote. Without going into detail, quite apparently, SV leads to people being elected with a much lower share of the eventual vote than does AV. This can be very serious in four-party marginals, particularly in Scotland. SV simply does not allow the same breadth of choice and the same degree of voter choice as AV. That is just one example of the many points that could be levied against SV.

I shall go through some of the arguments put by my noble friend. He said that this was a panic creation by the coalition. Clearly, it was stitched together in order to create the coalition, but there is nothing panicky about AV. My party has stood for it for quite a while. The Leader of the Labour Party, Ed Miliband, favours it. If noble Lords care to look, there is a long list of signatures of very distinguished members of my party who favour AV. Whatever the circumstances that have brought it on to the stage now—I would much rather that it had come on to the stage as the result of a Labour victory in the general election and a Bill containing this clause was being put forward by a Labour Government—I do not think that they are sufficient reason to be against it today. It is not a newly forged system, as noble Lords opposite have pointed out. It has been about for about 100 years and quite often nearly came about.

Moreover, it has been closely examined in recent times by the Jenkins commission, of which I was a member. AV formed part of what was recommended by Jenkins. SV did not. AV maximises voter choice whereas SV gives a relatively limited voter choice. I regard the issue of lower preferences being of lesser importance as being completely without foundation. I would greatly prefer, for example, a Green candidate to a candidate from the British National Party. That is quite low on my list of preferences. If I am wholly honest, once upon a time I did not terribly care whether I voted Lib Dem or Labour, but I always voted Labour, of course. That seemed to me to be a much less important choice. However, at the next general election, as a result of this coalition, I daresay I will approach that question in a different frame of mind.

I would not claim that AV eliminates tactical voting altogether. Of course, it does not. But it eliminates the most difficult choice for a voter; namely, what will a person do with his single vote if it is a first-past-the- post-system? Will he put first the party that he really prefers or will he put first the party that he would prefer to the third party for which he might vote? That becomes vastly more important between SV and AV in four-member seats.

We will have a long referendum campaign. Whatever system comes out of this Bill and is the system debated in the referendum, I very much hope that all electoral reformers will choose eventually to rally behind it, although having heard my noble friend Lord Campbell-Savours, it may be that that is an overoptimistic prediction. It is certainly true that the great majority of electoral reformers, including the electoral reformers in the Electoral Reform Society, which historically is almost keener on STV than the Liberal Democrats, have chosen to back this system.

Let us have the debate. This clause will enable it to be put before the people in the referendum, particularly if, in the course of further amendment of the Bill, we make sure that that referendum does not take place, as the coalition proposes, on 5 May 2011.