Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill

Lord Campbell-Savours Excerpts

Wednesday 26th January 2011 Lords Chamber

[The Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster (Lord Strathclyde)]

My Lords, I, too, am delighted that the noble Baroness, Lady McDonagh, spoke to her amendment because my officials were confused as to the intention behind it. Now we are much clearer that it was so as to have a good discussion about the purposes underlying the Bill, the case for a written constitution, more referendums, and so on and so forth, and to say in particular that this part of the Bill is somehow to do with this aching desire by the Conservative Party to fix the electoral system so as to make life more difficult for the Labour Party. The noble Baroness will not believe it but I can assure her it has nothing to do with that whatever.

The proposition under this part of the Bill is the simplest one could possibly imagine. First, it is to reduce the number of Members of Parliament from 650 to 600—nothing hugely exceptional in that. It is a drop of 7 per cent which is, I believe, popular with people and should be done. Secondly, it is to make constituencies across the country more or less of equal size. One day noble Lords opposite are going to argue why they should be of unequal size in terms of numbers of voters and perhaps even bring forward legislation to that effect if they ever get back into Government. I look forward to that.

[Lord Campbell-Savours]

If you have a cap at 600 and the electorate rises in the way that my noble friend is saying, does that mean that the national quota for each constituency will then have to be changed and will also rise every five years? Is that really the Government’s position?

[Lord Strathclyde]

There is a remorseless logic to that fact. To return to the noble Baroness’s speech, I did not follow this thing about the written constitution. We have a constitution and we are not operating unconstitutionally. If we wrote down our constitution and it did not have a provision for this, it would not make any difference. It would only make a difference if it had the provision that you cannot change the number of seats unless you have a referendum. I could not work out whether the noble Baroness, with all her experience, was saying that there should be a written constitution and that if there were a written constitution, it would be unconstitutional to change the number of seats in the House of Commons without a referendum, but I think that is what she was saying. I am sorry the noble Lord, Lord Bach, sat down so quickly because he might have told us if that was official Labour Party policy, which would be most interesting and intriguing.

I would not rely on Irish referendums, much as I have the highest possible respect for the people of Ireland. Whenever they have a referendum and they get the wrong answer, they are told to do it again. So I am not a great fan of that. Incidentally, the fact that the Labour Party, which now thinks we should have referendums on changing the constitution, promised one on Lisbon and then did not provide it must be for ever a reminder. So if that is what it is all about, I am not very keen on it. There was a nice anecdote about the 1980s. The historians will argue about 1983 and all that. What must also be true is that the Labour Party split. My noble friend sitting next to me, part of our coalition partnership, laid out all these figures about Labour and Conservative. How many MPs did it take to vote for a Liberal Democrat, or whatever they were then? I cannot remember. They were not Liberal Democrats then but SDP and Liberals. So that is a factor and I think it laid the seeds for the coalition today.

So we are not minded to accept the amendment. It is all very interesting but our minds are set on the provisions in the Bill. I therefore hope that the noble Baroness will withdraw her amendment.

Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill

Lord Campbell-Savours Excerpts

Tuesday 25th January 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Wallace of Tankerness]

Obviously the noble Lord is right to the extent that differential turnout has an effect on the value of votes, but the Bill at least gets everyone to the same starting point. The argument that seems to be coming from the noble Lord is that somehow or other you can have an equal starting point that would then be compounded by differential turnout, making the situation even worse. That is what I find unacceptable.

[Lord Campbell-Savours]

Why is it not right in terms of constituency sizes but right in terms of London elections—in Westminster in particular? The Minister was here last night when I read those statistics out for Westminster that showed a huge differential between wards in central London. Why is it all right for one and not for the other?

[Lord Wallace of Tankerness]

I was here last night and I heard those interminable statistics. The point is that this is not what we are debating at the moment; we are debating parliamentary constituencies. I have enunciated a principle that the Government consider important for this part of the Bill, and one that we believe would be seriously undermined by the proposal that is implicit in the amendment.

In addition, as the noble Lord, Lord Lipsey, acknowledged in response to a question from the noble Lord, Lord Howarth, this also overrules rule 1, and the Committee has debated at considerable length the question of the size of the House of Commons and the fact that the Government’s position is that there should be a House of 600.

The current situation is that there is no hierarchy of rules and there is a flexibility to move away from the aspiration, which is there in the current rules, that the Boundary Commission should go as close to the quota as possible. It was clear from the exchanges that took place in the debate that in fact there is that flexibility to move away that has led to the kind of wide variation that I have just illustrated with the difference between Manchester Central and Glasgow North, and indeed has led to a steady increment over many years, almost invariably in an upward direction, in the number of seats.

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[Lord Soley]

I support Amendment 75ZB on the River Thames. It is a pleasure to follow the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Butler-Sloss, because she has put her finger on the problem again, just as she did in the debate on the Isle of Wight. If the Government are really concerned to do the equal voting bit, they need to face up to the fact that the way to do that is to go down the road of PR and get rid of the constituency link. I personally would strongly oppose that, but that is the way in which you equalise votes. In doing that, you destroy the constituency link, which has always been the centrepiece of British parliamentary democracy.

I remember being followed around by a Dutch television team in two general elections. Each time they expressed amazement that an MP had to stand on corners and go out into the constituency to campaign for votes in the local area. Their own MPs, because they were on a list system, could talk about general issues and not relate them to constituencies in the same way. It is a major difference. Now that the Government have accepted—although they might reverse it in the House of Commons—the Isle of Wight example, we should recognise that we need, as the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Butler-Sloss, said, some flexibility in these other areas.

[Lord Campbell-Savours]

Would my noble friend accept that AV+ is not as strong as a constituency link?

[Lord Soley]

Absolutely. I am no great expert on voting systems, but my understanding is that certain PR systems inevitably destroy the constituency link. I think that the list system is one of those. It is true that AV+ and one or two others allow for the constituency link to be kept, so it need not be ruled out. However, if you are going down the way of full equalisation of votes—that is, a full PR system—it is hard to maintain the constituency link. The acceptance of the Isle of Wight as an exception is a recognition of the importance of community.

All that my noble friend Lord Harris said about London is true. I have spent an awful lot of my life in London—I spent some time in the Mersey area when, for reasons that were beyond me at age five, I was taken from the bombings in London and moved to Liverpool, where I thought that they were trying to get me the second time round because they had missed the first time—and I agree that the Thames presents an interesting issue. I do not wish to dwell on the issue, but my noble friend Lady Hayter made the important point about the powerful impact of such factors on people’s lives. The south and north of the river are very different.

However, I do not entirely disagree with the noble Lord, Lord Cavendish, when he says that rivers can unite. I do not know whether this was just an experiment, but there was an interesting attempt in the early 1980s—by, I think, a group of companies connected with the river, including, if I remember rightly, Thames Water—to form a group of riparian MPs comprising those of us whose constituencies fronted on to the water. It was felt that the river’s importance was not truly recognised. I was enthusiastic about that, but I have to tell the noble Lord and others that the attempt failed. That was a great pity. In my case—I was representing Hammersmith at the time—the group ended up dealing with all the house-boat people. I distinctly remember having meetings on house-boats near Cheyne Walk. I do not know whether my noble friend was there at the time, but this would have been in the early 1980s so I guess probably not.

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[Baroness Oppenheim-Barnes]

I do not want to ruffle these apparently cathartic and calming waters, but the speeches that I have heard from noble Lords opposite would, each in turn, make ideal personal representations to the Boundary Commission when the Boundary Commission is sitting, when it is appropriate for noble Lords to make such representations. Even though they are unelected and unrepresentative, under existing law the noble Lords would still have a right to give their views to the Boundary Commission. In my experience of at least four Boundary Commission reviews in my constituency, everybody was widely consulted, everybody was able to put forward their views and often those views were listened to. Noble Lords opposite have also made the point that there is something undemocratic about imposing this legislation on the Boundary Commission. I remind them, briefly, that 10,726,614 people voted Conservative at the last election for this legislation, some 6,836,824 voted Liberal and less than half that amount—if we put those two figures together—voted for something that is not in the Bill. Therefore, as far as I am concerned—no, I will not give way—the case is made.

[Lord Campbell-Savours]

Does the noble Baroness believe that noble Lords should be allowed to give oral evidence to these inquiries? That seems to be the thrust of what she is saying. Does she believe that they should be allowed to give that evidence in oral form?

[Baroness Oppenheim-Barnes]

Are they unable to write or read or spell?

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[Lord Wallace of Tankerness]

I make two points in response. Yes, there is a quota, but, first, in making recommendations, the Boundary Commission may have regard to local ties. As I indicated yesterday, the Government are minded to look again before Report at the question of wards, which, perhaps more than any other electoral area, best reflect local ties.

Secondly, as I indicated in my opening remarks, there are a number of different communities within one given constituency. Members of Parliaments of all parties seek to represent as best as they can different interests in different communities within their constituencies.

[Lord Campbell-Savours]

Does the Minister have a view on whether when taking decisions the commission should have in mind the marginality of constituencies?

[Lord Wallace of Tankerness]

If the noble Lord is saying that the Boundary Commission should have regard to the political makeup of a particular constituency, I can tell him that I am aware of no statutory basis for doing that. I would be very surprised if that was a function. Indeed, the way in which political parties presently dress up political considerations in all sorts of different guises when they give evidence to inquiries suggests very strongly that the Boundary Commission would not do that.

Our reservations about the amendment are nothing to do with the rights and wrongs of past and future representation in the areas concerned, but this is not the right place to deal with such specific exceptions. Where the situations described arise, they can be dealt with under the provisions presently in the Bill. If local circumstances argued strongly for a avoiding a cross-river constituency, the Boundary Commission’s detailed consideration of specific elements of the case would produce the most effective result, where local specifics of geography and the importance of community structure in each riverside area would be balanced with the need for electors in all parts of this United Kingdom to have equal-value votes. That is the best way of achieving balance between equality of constituency size and having proper regard for community in design of our future constituencies. I therefore urge the noble Baroness to withdraw her amendment.

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[Baroness D'Souza]

My Lords, I listened with concern to what the noble Baroness said at the beginning of her speech. I think I made it clear yesterday that many Cross-Benchers—and I can speak only for the Cross-Benchers—are deeply concerned about the Bill and feel strongly that many elements in it undoubtedly could and should be improved. The point I was trying to make was that the conventions of the House suggest that these concerns should be brought to a head by means of an amendment, which is then called and divided on. Many Cross-Benchers would undoubtedly support such an amendment. The concern for a long time has been that no amendments have been brought forward and that the talk has gone on for far longer than is necessary to convince the Cross-Benchers that an amendment should be supported.

[Lord Campbell-Savours]

My Lords, when I came into this House I was told that it was not a tradition to divide the House too often in Committee and the general view was that we should concentrate our efforts for divisions on Report. I hope that noble Lords on the Cross Benches who have told us privately that they feel sensitive about areas of the Bill will join us in the Lobbies when amendments are moved in the next few weeks or months.

I wish to speak to the amendment tabled by my noble friend Lord Liddle as an amendment to the amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Teverson.

I would dearly love six parliamentary constituencies in the county of Cumbria but I recognise that there are problems. I want to go into this in some detail because, although we have each personalised areas in the debate, there are principles involved when dealing with boundaries in Cumbria that apply more widely.

Over the years, Cumbria has made a great contribution to British politics. We have provided a large number of Secretaries of State—Edward Short, now the noble Lord, Lord Glenamara; the noble Lords, Lord Cunningham, Lord Jopling and Lord Hutton; Lord Peart, my predecessor; and Lord Whitelaw—all of whom have been members of the Cabinet. We have provided many junior Ministers—the noble Lords, Lord Henley, Lord Inglewood, Lord Brett, Lord Judd, Lord Dubs and Lord Cavendish, who intervened in the debate today, and a number of other Peers have strong connections with the county.

My noble friend Lord Liddle took us on a quiet canter around the county and explained the interesting characteristics of many of the communities which it comprises. He stressed the very strong local loyalties and community identities that are often incomprehensible to people coming from outside the county. Noble Lords should remember that we are talking primarily about the Lake District and the communities that surround it. These are historic places with a long history of community involvement and identity.

I talk this evening about what I can describe only as a sensitive issue because I was MP for Workington for 21 years. I often say to people who write to me or even stop me in the street when I am in the constituency that I have had my time and I try not to interfere, as do many of us former MPs. We do not interfere in our former constituencies. Therefore, it is with great sensitivity that I venture into the numbers. We are now in the numbers game because this Bill is about numbers not communities. I will take the county as a whole and explain the problem and the possible solution, and how the Bill may well offend lots of people within the county.

At the moment, there are six parliamentary constituencies. Broadly, without going into the actual detail, Barrow has 68,000 electors, Carlisle 65,000, Copeland 63,000, Penrith and the Border 64,000, Westmorland and Lonsdale 67,000, and Workington 59,000, within a few hundred. That makes a total of approximately 390,000 electors across six constituencies in the county. That is an average of approximately 65,000 per seat.

Those who know the detail in the Bill will know exactly where I am going. It means that every seat in the county falls under the requirement in the Bill for 76,000. The actual figure is 64,972 people per constituency. Subject to the 5 per cent leeway or 76,000, we are 14 per cent under the 76,000 target in every seat, so unless there are major changes in the way in which this legislation is implemented, there will be major changes within the county of Cumbria. We will lose a seat.

How do we proceed? On the basis of the 76,000, we can cross boundaries and to some extent destroy the identity that Cumbria has tried to build up over the past decades of being a county with our various district authorities and MPs who do not cross the boundary. That is one way of proceeding. We can cross county boundaries and compromise that principle, or we can settle on five seats, which I will come back to later.

On the basis of the 76,000 target, if we crossed county boundaries and kept strictly to the target, a part of the county—that is to say, 11,000 votes—would have to go into a neighbouring county, which in itself may create difficulties. On the basis of 72,000, which is the 5 per cent leeway deducted from the 76,000 target, crossing county boundaries would mean that 35,000 voters in Cumbria would have to go into another county, which brings us to the amendment that was moved last night when I referred to the problems that might arise in Kendal or possibly in Penrith.

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[Lord Knight of Weymouth]

My Lords, I am delighted and slightly stunned to have stimulated such debate on day 13 of this Committee that I managed to get four interventions on the trot without being able to respond to them—and here comes another.

[Lord Campbell-Savours]

The reason why my noble friend is getting interventions is that this is precisely an issue that would arise at any public inquiry on boundaries: the dilemma of whether you export votes to another county or confine your constituencies within your county boundaries. What has just happened is very interesting. Everyone suddenly is alight; and it is only because this is the central issue in our inquiries today.

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[Lord Strathclyde]

My example answered the question of the noble Lord, Lord Knight. The noble Lord, Lord Maxton, raises a perfectly valid point but it is not for us to decide where the constituency will be drawn. It will be the Boundary Commission that takes into account all the criteria that it has.

[Lord Campbell-Savours]

This comes back to the Boundary Commission, which some of us do not trust to take the right decisions. Tony Cunningham, my successor in my former constituency, asked the Boundary Commission why it had put Keswick into the Copeland constituency—the nuclear industry-based constituency. He was told that it was because Keswick and Whitehaven are strongly linked. That was a myth. I have lived in Keswick for most of my life. There is no connection whatever to Whitehaven, yet the Boundary Commission took that decision. How can we trust people to understand what real links exist unless we have those local inquiries that we are all arguing for?

[Lord Strathclyde]

The noble Lord’s words spoke for themselves when he said, “I don’t trust the Boundary Commission to come up with the right answer”. Most of us do trust, and want to trust, the Boundary Commission.

The noble Lord, Lord Campbell-Savours, said in his main speech that we must beware of destroying political balance in Cumbria, but the Boundary Commission is deliberately blind to such questions. That should continue to be the case. It is not the Boundary Commission’s responsibility to create marginality or safe seats. It has to look at the criteria laid out in the legislation and come to its own conclusions. It is for all those reasons that we fundamentally disagree with the amendments.

The noble Lord, Lord Liddle, mentioned Cumbria. There are geographical circumstances in Cumbria that the Boundary Commission would want to take into account. However, the whole of Cumbria would fit into Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross, let alone the largest existing constituency. Although the noble Lord put the case for Cumbria eloquently, it does not compare. What about Workington, which has an electorate of 59,000? The Bill allows geography to be considered within the 10 per cent range allowed between the smallest and largest constituencies. Is it really fair—this is the point that Bill is trying to deal with—that three electors in Workington have the same say as four in, for instance, East Ham? I do not think so. That is what the Bill is trying to correct.

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[Lord Strathclyde]

I assure the noble Baroness that I am not trying to upset anyone, either in Cornwall or in Devon. I am trying to make the case for a fairer system of distributing the number of electors across the country. That is what the Bill provides.

[Lord Campbell-Savours]

I keep going on about the question of marginality, although I do not see it in a political context, as the noble Lord does. Does he think that the review that will be carried out under the new law if the Bill goes through will be successful if its effect is to create far more safe seats nationally? Would he regard that as a successful conclusion after the next general election?

[Lord Strathclyde]

My Lords, there is no evidence to suggest that that would be the likely result. The review might result in more marginal constituencies: I have not the faintest idea. The people who decide whether a seat is safe or marginal are the electors in that constituency, not the Boundary Commission.

Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill

Lord Campbell-Savours Excerpts

Monday 17th January 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Soley]

My noble friend is quite right. I am waiting for that point to be answered, but, then again, there are a number of points that are not answered.

[Lord Campbell-Savours]

Perhaps I may marginally disagree with what my noble friend has just said. He said that a Labour Government would have to have in mind the way in which we have been treated. The reality is that a Labour Government would not do it, because we think that it is wrong and unprincipled. The noble Lord, Lord Strathclyde, should understand that, and that is what is making us very angry.

[Lord Soley]

My noble friend is right, although I thought that I said “any future Government”, not particularly a Labour Government. Any future Government could come in and simply say, “We are going to change the size”. That goes back to the previous amendment, on which I do not want to dwell but where I quoted from Andrew Tyrie’s booklet produced for the Conservative Party and referred to things that were said by other members of the Conservative Party in the intervening period; that is, that the figure of 120 over 10 years was too many, too fast, but that 60 over five years was manageable. My noble friend intervened with a question, but the real question is: should this Government win the next election, will they then go for the other 10 per cent? It is in the booklet; it is not a secret. There was considerable discussion of that figure. The Deputy Prime Minister said that he wanted the House to be reduced by 150. It is legitimate to ask whether the Government think that it is wise even from their point of view to have a system where the Government of the day get elected, look at the size of the House of Commons and say, “Well, we could have done better if we had this number” and then legislated accordingly. If in five years they are here, fighting such a proposal late into the night, they will not be feeling as they are feeling now and going around saying, “Oh, this is a filibuster. We don’t like it”. They will say, “This is an abuse of the constitution”. Every one of them will be doing it, the Liberals more than anyone else. This is where the Liberals say one thing in one place and another in another place.

[Lord Soley]

I thought that the noble Lord was agreeing with me, but I might be wrong. Let us make no bones about it: if we are going to lay out the welcome mat to any future Government, not just a Labour Government, to be able to legislate on the size of Parliament, we are breaking one of the principles that we all observe when we check international elections. We are going against what is said in the European Union, the United Nations and the Commonwealth about checking elections. We all look at that as international observers for those bodies, yet here, all of a sudden, we are saying, “No, it’s all right for the Government to legislate for the size of Parliament. It doesn’t matter at all”. Of course it matters.

This Government might think that cutting the number MPs will be popular. Up to a point, they are right, but the problem is that they are playing the role of the overly powerful Government. It is not just the Public Bodies Bill and powers which they have taken which are over the top—Henry VIII powers are used in so much legislation now. I would be the first to concede that Henry VIII powers were taken to some extent under the Labour Government, but it is happening much more now—the Public Bodies Bill is virtually a Henry VIII Bill. But it is not just that; it is also putting enough new Members in this House so that the two political parties which form the Government, the Liberal Democrats and the Conservatives, have a near-majority over the other political party. In other words, we are in danger of breaching that constitutional principle which we have all followed for years: that no political party should have a majority over the others here. I understand fully that the Government do not have a majority over the Cross Benches and the Labour Party jointly, but they certainly come very close to having a majority over the Labour Party. That differs greatly from what happened previously.

[Lord Campbell-Savours]

They have it.

[Lord Soley]

My figures may be slightly dated, but, either way, it is profoundly dangerous. I will end on this note—

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[Lord Davies of Stamford]

I disagree with the noble Lord. I am quite surprised to hear him advance that position, because I know him well and believe him to be a man who believes not only that we should be guided by the political wisdom of the past, by history and by tradition but that we should not ignore that past and should be very cautious in doing violence to the traditions that have served us so well in British parliamentary democracy for so long. I know that there are many other contexts in which the noble Lord would be entirely with me.

We have heard figures given this evening—I do not remember them entirely—for the way in which numbers in the House of Commons have varied during the past 100 years. That has been a reflection of the Boundary Commission’s decisions, not of decisions taken by the House of Commons or this House to go for a specific number. Those variations have been a consequence of decisions made by the Boundary Commission when it has conducted its responsibilities, as it regularly does every decade or so, to look again parliamentary boundaries in this country.

[Lord Campbell-Savours]

There is another example. The Liberal Democrats will remember it very well; we had arguments about it in the last Parliament. It is the Electoral Commission. There were many times when the Liberal Democrats objected to our objections to aspects of Electoral Commission reports and recommendations, so there is a tradition of accepting independent body judgments when it comes to issues of elections and boundaries.

[Lord Davies of Stamford]

I am grateful for my noble friend’s support. That, indeed, is the right answer to the noble Lord, Lord Renton. In practice we have accepted these decisions. Part of the consensus on which British politics has been based is that we do not interfere with the Boundary Commission. We let it get on with its job, and we respect its decisions and its independence. It is deeply conscious of its responsibility in the light of the trust placed in it by Parliament and the public. When it has concluded its work, we accept the umpire’s decision. That is in the best British tradition, if I may say so.

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[Lord Strathclyde]

The noble Baroness is right. If there is such an example, I shall find it and let her know.

[Lord Campbell-Savours]

Perhaps I may advise the House that it was nearly 180 years ago. After that date, it was always targets that were set. It was never caps.

[Lord Strathclyde]

My Lords, surely, the issue is not about the overall numbers; it is about how those seats are distributed. That will continue to be done by the independent Boundary Commission under the instructions under this Bill to aim at an average of around 75,000 over the country.

Peers

Lord Campbell-Savours Excerpts

Tuesday 21st December 2010 Lords Chamber

[Lord Strathclyde]

My Lords, I am sure that the noble Lord deserved exactly what he got. The noble Lord tempts me. This is slightly beyond the scope of the Question. There is a statutory limit to the number of Ministers. I regret that there are Ministers who are unpaid in your Lordships' House but they are all volunteers. They all signed up and knew what they were getting when they started. It is a great honour and a privilege to serve Her Majesty's Government in this House.

[Lord Campbell-Savours]

When the next crop of Peers is finally in, what will be the proportion of Peers on each of the Benches?

[Lord Strathclyde]

My Lords, appointments are entirely in the hands of the Prime Minister, but the coalition agreement indicated that, pending long-term reform of the House, we would gradually move towards appointments made more in proportion to the political parties in the House of Commons.

Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill

Lord Campbell-Savours Excerpts

Monday 20th December 2010 Lords Chamber

[Lord Roberts of Llandudno]

My experience in Wales is that, as we have argued time after time, a referendum held on the day of local elections in England and elections for the Assembly in Wales, for Parliament in Scotland or for the Assembly in Northern Ireland would naturally have a greater turnout. Therefore you would not need a threshold. In the autumn, however, you might say that only 25 per cent have voted, as they might, and then we need a threshold. This seems to me to be just an argument to try by any means whatever to destroy any hope of a change in our electoral system in the United Kingdom.

[Lord Campbell-Savours]

My Lords, I see that a number of new Members are attending our debate today, and I draw attention in particular to the noble Lord, Lord Tebbit, being in his place. While he has been away—no doubt he has been in the House, but has not been attending our debates—statements have been made that should be drawn to his attention, because they might make him as angry as they made me. A statement made last week in the House was the subject of much discussion but the newspapers and media outside the House have not picked up on it. I refer to my intervention to the noble Lord, Lord Strathclyde, which has caused a lot of concern, certainly among those who heard it. I asked him:

“What happens if only 13 per cent of the registered electorate vote in favour of the change in the referendum question? Will that 13 per cent, which is one in eight people in the country, be taken as the basis on which we can make this huge constitutional change?”.

He replied:

“My Lords, under the terms of the Bill, yes”.—[Official Report, 15/12/10; col. 717.]

I do not believe that Conservative Members of this House realise what is going on. They are not attending this debate and they very rarely speak, apart from two former Lord Chancellors. I do not believe that Conservative Members really know what is happening.

[Lord Falconer of Thoroton]

Although my noble friend may not realise it, I was, in fact, a Labour Lord Chancellor, not a Conservative one.

[Lord Campbell-Savours]

My Lords, forgive me; I did not mean that. I meant two former Chancellors of the Exchequer and the noble Lord, Lord Hamilton. The reality is that people do not know what is going on.

[Lord Roberts of Llandudno]

The noble Lord speaks of massive constitutional changes. Was not the decision to remain in Europe a massive constitutional change? There was no threshold.

[Lord Campbell-Savours]

We provided a referendum on that and the public took a decision. What I am basically saying is that we need far more—

[Lord Foulkes of Cumnock]

Is it not ironic that we joined the European Union without a referendum, but that the referendum was on whether we should stay in? The major change took place without a referendum, but the referendum actually backed the status quo.

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[Lord Campbell-Savours]

Those were two very useful interventions and I agree with them both. The reality is that this is an extraordinary Bill. It is the first time in my 30 years in Westminster that we are considering a Bill when we know that the Government—the Conservative element in the Government—are by an overwhelming majority opposed to the provisions in the Bill. I bet that if we were to have a free vote in the House of Lords, no more than a dozen Conservative Members would vote in favour of the referendum provision. In other words, this is a totally artificial debate. The Liberals are opposed because they have always been opposed. The Conservatives are opposed because they do not like AV at all and do not want any change from first past the post. To be frank, those on my own Benches are relatively divided on the issue.

[Lord Grocott]

Just for statistical reference, my estimate is that 70 per cent of those on the Labour Benches are in favour of first past the post.

[Lord Campbell-Savours]

I would call that relatively divided. The point is that this is a totally artificial debate. It would be really worrying if the turnout were to be only 13 per cent of the electorate. That was the figure that I picked, but if the overall turnout were to be as low as 18 or 19 per cent—as it was in some wards in Manchester that I checked on last week—you could find that approval in some parts of the country was as low as 10 per cent, representing only one in 10 voters.

My noble friend has come forward with the politically reasonable suggestion that there will obviously be varying decisions in the various parts of the country. She is saying that there must be a majority in every part of the kingdom, but I would add the requirement for a threshold set on approval of the question, which we shall no doubt come to on Report.

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[Lord Tebbit]

My Lords, first, I should express my gratitude to the noble Lord, Lord Campbell-Savours. I am quite touched at the thought that he noticed that I had not been present in your Lordships’ House very much recently. I am not sure whether he is pleased or less pleased about that but it was very nice of him to have noticed.

Turning to the amendment, I confess that, as an integrationist rather than a devolutionist, I rather take the view that this is not the best way to go about tipping out of its dish this rather unpleasant dog’s dinner of a proposal. I should prefer to do it cleanly, neatly and properly by imposing a 40 per cent turnout requirement. Therefore, I am afraid that I cannot support the noble Baroness on this, much though I have been tempted to do so.

We have heard, of course, that there was no threshold requirement on the referendum on our continuing membership of the European Union. If I may say so, having voted yes in that referendum, I did not realise how wrong I was until some years later. What a pity there was no requirement for a higher turnout.

I really regret I cannot support the noble Baroness but certainly, if and when we come to vote on a proposal to put in a 40 per cent floor requirement, then I will, indeed, be in favour of tipping the dinner out of the dog’s bowl.

[Lord Campbell-Savours]

Would the noble Lord consider an approval threshold whereby a certain proportion of the registered national electorate should vote in favour of this huge constitutional change?

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Grocott]

If my noble friend is right—and he has been right on far more things over the years than he has been wrong—we really are wasting our time on this Committee stage. It has felt like that from this side of the Chamber throughout. It is unlike pretty well any other Committee stage I can think of, when the normal response from a Minister to anything other than a completely ludicrous amendment would be to say, “Well, we don’t really like this amendment much, but there is something in it worth considering, so I am quite happy to discuss it”.

[Lord Campbell-Savours]

Is not one advantage of the threshold to which my noble friend Lord Rooker refers the fact that you could then permit a very low turnout? You do not need a high turnout if you set an approval turnout, as my noble friend’s amendment would have provided for. I cannot understand why the Government agreed this between the two parties. It would have been far easier to secure a low turnout with a 20 per cent approval threshold, for example, which would have pleased us all. Why did they not agree that?

[Lord Grocott]

There are fruitful lines of discussion here for Report stage, and if they can lead to unanimity across the Chamber—which is what I sense we are moving towards—let us look forward to that day.

Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill

Lord Campbell-Savours Excerpts

Wednesday 15th December 2010 Lords Chamber

[Lord Campbell-Savours]

I am sorry to trouble my noble friend, but that is an incredibly low figure. Perhaps she will correct me, but if a majority of people on a 25 per cent poll voted, it would mean that only one in eight persons had actually voted for a change in the electoral system. Is that what my noble friend’s amendment means?

[Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town]

My noble friend is right: it is extremely modest. As he knows, I am a very modest person, asking for very modest amendments to the Minister’s very simple Bill. Other amendments have been tabled in the names of other noble Lords on both this side of the House and on the Cross Benches which are perhaps a little less modest than mine. The amendment is offered in the same spirit of generosity as when I did not divide the House on the issue of voting at the age of 16 and 17. I did not want to embarrass part of the coalition. It is tabled as a modest amendment to make it all the easier for the Government to accept it.

[Lord Campbell-Savours]

Does my noble friend recognise that, in the event that one in eight people vote to approve the question asked in the referendum, it would be extremely difficult for those of us in favour of electoral reform to justify a change in the electoral system ourselves? We would be placed in an utterly impossible position with such a low turnout and small number of votes cast in favour of the question.

[Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town]

I accept that the amendment is exceptionally modest. My fear is that, without even this as a backstop, we could risk having an even lower turnout and then be faced with what we do at that stage. Because this is an automatic trigger, it is not a referendum to advise the Government or Parliament about what they should do, but would automatically lead to that change. It is essential for there to be a threshold. Otherwise, we could be facing a low turnout and having to decide what to do about it. I am someone well used to dealing with risk management.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Lord Geddes)]

My Lords, it may assist the Committee if I intervene at this point. I acknowledge that of course it is absolutely the prerogative of any noble Lord to degroup any amendment from an existing group. As I heard the noble Baroness, Lady Hayter, her wish was to degroup only Amendment 44. Therefore, to the best of my knowledge, Amendments 44A, 44B and 45A are still grouped with Amendment 43. I hope that that is of assistance to the Committee.

[Lord Campbell-Savours]

I want to intervene only briefly, because I want to speak later on the whole question of thresholds in the Bill. I just want to clarify the position as set out by the noble Lord, Lord Tyler. I fear that he misrepresented exactly what happened in the Commons. I have the Hansard here. My honourable friend Chris Bryant said:

“My hon. Friend is absolutely right that there is no fixed determined policy that we are completely and utterly in all cases implacably opposed to thresholds … I was actually trying not to suggest a threshold … I am not convinced by the arguments that are being advanced in favour of thresholds. I personally will be voting yes in the referendum. I do not believe that there should be a referendum, but there is a legitimate argument that others might want to consider about whether the fact that we are combining the polls will produce differential turnout in different parts of the country that might make a necessity of a threshold”.—[Official Report, Commons, 2/11/10; cols. 247-8.]

In other words, he took that position on thresholds because he was concerned about differential turnouts. If we did not have the problem of the referendum being on the same day as different elections within the United Kingdom, his position on thresholds would have been completely different. It was most unfair of the noble Lord, Lord Tyler, to present his case in the way that he did.

[Lord Tyler]

My Lords, we can all cite from what was an extensive speech, but the judgment concerned stated:

“I do not agree with the hon. Gentleman about thresholds in referendums because, broadly, they are not a good idea”.—[Official Report, Commons, 2/11/10; col. 246.]

That is absolutely clear. The clarity of that statement is endorsed by the fact that not only were 549 votes cast against the amendment against 31 for, but the vast majority of the honourable gentleman’s colleagues voted that way. I think that he was very persuasive; I think that it would be doing him a disservice to interpret it in any other way.

[Lord Campbell-Savours]

I have read the Hansard of the whole of that debate. It is clear that the decision that my honourable friend took was on the basis that there was a possibility of differential turnout arising from the arrangement whereby the referendum takes place on the same day as a number of other elections throughout the United Kingdom.

[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.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Strathclyde]

My Lords, that just goes to show what happens when you have unwhipped votes. I am sure that my noble friend Lord Lawson knew which way he was going to vote on that day and rightly so. That is all part of the fabric of history that has brought us to this point. My point of principle remains that if people want to vote they need to know that, if there is a majority, they are going to get what they voted for.

[Lord Campbell-Savours]

What happens if only 13 per cent of the registered electorate vote in favour of the change in the referendum question? Will that 13 per cent, which is one in eight people in the country, be taken as the basis on which we can make this huge constitutional change?

[Lord Strathclyde]

My Lords, under the terms of the Bill, yes. But is that likely to happen? The noble and learned Lord got his calculator out—

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Strathclyde]

It is obvious that if there is a threshold on turnout and you encourage people not to vote, the threshold is not reached.

[Lord Campbell-Savours]

My Lords—

[Lord Tyler]

My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Campbell-Savours, seems to have shouted, got up and sat down. The issue here is simple arithmetic. Suppose that the amendment in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Grocott, went through and 45 per cent of the registered electorate voted yes while 4 per cent—I do not think that it will quite so dramatic, but who knows?—voted no. The noes would win because only 49 per cent of the electorate would have turned out. I am very sorry to have to disagree with my noble friend Lord Lawson, but my noble friend the Leader of the House is right: if you do not vote, it is a no vote.

Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill

Lord Campbell-Savours Excerpts

Wednesday 8th December 2010 Lords Chamber

[Lord Grocott]

My Lords, I was rudely interrupted by the usual channels, who adjourned the House just as I was on the point of delivering my remarks. I shall try to pick up the morale of the whole debate by opening out this time. We are debating whether Clause 1 should stand part of the Bill. What I really want to say, perhaps more than anything else, is that any observer watching the debate on this clause so far would have noticed one thing above all else—that there was absolutely no real detectable enthusiasm whatever for having a referendum: and if we did have a referendum, there was certainly no enthusiasm for the choice of having the alternative vote.

We are having a debate about a flagship Bill of this Government. It is more than a flagship Bill; it is a major constitutional Bill. Indeed, as Nick Clegg has said, it is part of the most ambitious programme of constitutional reform since 1832. Three members of his party at the moment want to be part of this great constitutional Bill, the greatest since the Great Reform Act. I am absolutely certain that if my Government had brought forward a great constitutional Bill, not only would a fair number of people have wanted to take part in the debates, they would do so enthusiastically. It does not happen very often—we have the statistics and it happens only once every 170 years, or however many years it has been since the last huge reform, according to Nick Clegg. That has been noticeably absent. The overwhelming majority of the speakers have either been very strongly in favour of first past the post, as I am, or else they have been people like my noble friends Lord Campbell-Savours and Lord Rooker who, while not being supporters of first past the post, have given so many good reasons why the option that is being delivered to the electorate is a very bad one. That is something that any neutral observer would have to report on. I do not know whether that will change during the passage of the Bill, but I doubt it.

I have to say that I was slightly fearful of contributing a lot to this debate, because I acknowledge that I am one of life’s anoraks when it comes to looking at electoral systems, and I really do not want to be labelled as an anorak, although I have not got past first base on being an anorak. Another thing was really noticeable in, for example, the exchanges between my noble and very good friend Lord Campbell-Savours and the noble Lord, Lord Greaves. It scrambled my brain, and I do not know what it would have done to the electorate in the course of a referendum. That is one of the many, many reasons why this is a bad Bill and this clause is a bad clause. Although the debate is important and significant, it has been in some parts almost unintelligible, certainly incredibly detailed. Now, if that is the case when we are discussing it among people who acknowledge that we are in a tiny minority of the electorate who are actually very interested in these things, how on earth will that be a substantial debate in the country? You can just imagine the near impossibility of getting some of these arguments over to the electorate. Of course I am not saying that it is because the electorate are dim, of course I am not saying that. I am saying that it is of no great concern to people, and if it is of no great concern to you, you do not apply yourself to the arguments. That is what I confidently expect will happen as and when this referendum takes place.

We all know that we have the authority of the Electoral Commission in its report, which is in a pile of documents in my office. I am sure that Members on the Front Benches will have read it cover to cover. The report states clearly that the public simply do not understand AV. Noble Lords may check it. If any of the proponents of AV are happy, as my noble friend Lord Snape has said, to go down any road that they are familiar with in any part of Britain, in any constituency, they should ask the public what they make of AV, let alone the single transferable vote or whatever else is on the menu.

[Lord Campbell-Savours]

On that question of understanding, when I asked MPs how AV worked, the great majority did not know or gave a completely wrong explanation. So if MPs do not understand it, how can we expect the great British public to understand it?

[Lord Grocott]

As we know, my noble friend is a reformer who supports change, and he is honest enough to acknowledge just that. The debate that we are having—the subject that we proposing to spend a large sum of money on and put to the public—is basically of interest to only one or two university departments. I am pleased to see the noble Lord, Lord Norton, who is sound on a lot these issues, in his place. If I was the parent of a university-age son or daughter who was thinking of taking politics, I would say, “Go to the University of Hull”.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Grocott]

My noble friend Lord Campbell-Savours asked which AV system, but no doubt there is a specialist MA course on that. Does that not give us some of the answers? A few university departments quite properly consider these things, as well as one or two writers for the Guardian newspaper, which seems to think that this is the way that you can solve most of life’s ills, and I assume that these debates take place at branch meetings of the Liberal Democrat party. They must be a lot of fun. I am sorry that I missed them.

[Lord Campbell-Savours]

They do not meet any more.

[Lord Grocott]

We are spending millions of pounds on dealing with, as far as the public are concerned, a non-existent problem. That is one of several reasons why I am not sure it is worth proceeding with the Bill, let alone endorsing Clause 1.

On the Government’s defence of the Bill, I should make one or two observations that are fair. Perhaps the most serious is that there has been no attempt, so far as I can see, even to address the issue that Nick Clegg raised: that this is part of a great reforming programme. There has been no attempt to relate what we are doing in this Bill to what is happening on any other constitutional reform measure. This is particularly true when considering electoral systems.

You would not think that somewhere down the track—I hope, or expect, a long way down the track—a Bill will come forward about Lords reform. We are already told that the electoral system to be used is proportional representation. What form of proportional representation? I really do not know. There are far more forms of it than there are of AV. I did not know about all the alternatives to AV until my noble friend Lord Campbell-Savours got cracking on it. He will be a joy to listen to when we discuss the various forms of proportional representation in detail. Whenever I have had a debate with proponents of proportional representation—I have had several—and whenever I thought I was close to winning the case for first past the post, their rejoinder was always the same: “Oh, it’s not that kind of proportional representation that we are in favour of. It is some other kind”. So those private debates and discussions go on.

I would really like to know from Members on the Front Bench opposite, before we proceed any further with the Bill, how many different electoral systems they think it is proper for the United Kingdom—a country of 60 million people—to have. We already have five different systems.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Grocott]

I think that is a very honourable and honest thing to say. I was not so much referring to what he had said so much as to the debate between the two of them. I do wish that the noble Lord, Lord Greaves, with his characteristic honesty on these matters, would gently, while we are debating things over here, move forward and whisper in the ear of the noble Lord, Lord McNally, who constructs his near total defence of the AV system on the idea that it guarantees that MPs would have majority support. I do not know who is right. Is there another division among the Liberal Democrats on this particular issue? Perhaps the noble Lord, Lord McNally, could address that. I do not know whether he is responding to this debate or not. He is not. He looks relieved as he says not.

[Lord Campbell-Savours]

I was listening to a “News at Ten” bulletin the other day and there was a discussion about AV. Again the newscaster referred to it requiring more than 50 per cent. We have to get the story out to a lot of people that the 50 per cent issue does not arise under AV. The national media still keep peddling this story.

[Lord Grocott]

I am not surprised. During the time in office of the previous Labour Government, the national media frequently said that Labour had a majority in the House of Lords. They do not know the difference between “majority” and “largest party”: we are used to that. My concern about the constant reference to a majority is more fundamental. I simply report to the House that I was not as clever as some of my friends who ensured that they represented seats in the Commons where there was majority support in election after election. I had that luxury on only one of the four occasions when I managed to convince the electorate that I should be their Member under the first past the post system. I cannot remember the figures. They were about 42, 44 or 46 per cent: then in the end—bingo—it was more than 50 per cent. I did not think that it was of any great significance until I started reading some of the debates in the run-up to this one.

I assure the House—and if any noble Lord wishes to intervene, they are welcome to do so—that I do not know whether I had 50 per cent of the vote. I had to check it because I am now a fully paid-up member of the anorak society and had to know the facts about my own electoral history. It does not make a shred of difference. First, your voters do not know whether you have a majority. If I did not know, I am sure that they did not. It does not make a scrap of difference to your work as a Member of Parliament. The notion that it is vital for Lib Dem, Conservative or Labour voters in constituency A, B or C to have a Member of Parliament of their party is wrong, because 99.9 per cent—and that is a low estimate—of the people who come to you when you are a Member of Parliament do so irrespective of your party or theirs. They come to you with exactly the same range of issues whether you have a majority or not.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Tyler]

The noble Lord is simply taking a question that I have not posed and which I do not intend to claim. All I am saying is that the present system discourages people in large tranches of the country from thinking that their vote will make a difference and, therefore, they do not bother to register or to vote. That is a fact. No one can deny it.

[Lord Campbell-Savours]

Let me hit the flaw in the noble Lord’s argument. He is presuming that the remotest preference cast by an elector, which might be the sixth, seventh, eighth or ninth preference, should be given the same value within the electoral system as the first preference. That argument is ludicrous. His whole case is based on that and that is why he is wrong.

[Lord Tyler]

That is what happens under the present system. The present system is totally inadequate in that respect because you have to plump. In answer to the noble Lord, Lord Rooker, who undoubtedly understands the point I am making, I say that under the present system many people in this country feel that they are forced to vote in a very artificial way because their first preference is not likely to win. I am arguing that in many parts of the country people do not bother to register or to vote at all because they think that their first preference is not likely to win. The safer the seat—

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Foulkes of Cumnock]

On one of the noble Lord’s examples, trade unions, there was recently an election in the Unite trade union for the general secretary. There was a huge campaign around the country, which was very hotly contested between two very different front-running candidates. Does the noble Lord know what the turnout was? It was less than 20 per cent. Surely, that is one of many examples which fully undermines his case.

[Lord Campbell-Savours]

Indeed, if the noble Lord looks at the Scottish results to which I referred, he will see that the average turnout was just over 25 per cent under the system he is advocating.

[Lord Tyler]

As was pointed out only a few minutes ago, the noble Lord was very selective in the ones that he quoted, and 25 per cent is not a bad turnout in a local election. I would argue that AV is not perfect and I have never said it is perfect, but I believe it has real advantages in terms of the relationship between the elected Member and his or her constituency. In that respect, in many ways it has advantages over a pure proportional representation system. Incidentally, my noble friend Lord Hamilton was utterly wrong in describing anything in the Bill now as a proportional system. It is not. Some of us might think that in due course there may be a proportional system, but this is not a proportional system and I would never claim that it is. If his opposition to AV is based on that, I am afraid he is deluded.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Strathclyde]

I have explained all the reasons, not the least of which is that the House of Commons united around this particular system, which I am very happy to support.

[Lord Campbell-Savours]

When these matters were being considered in the coalition talks, there must have been a point at which a decision was taken to proceed with AV. Were all three AV variants on the table? Were they all considered? Was there a discussion about each of the various systems? The proposal in the Bill derives from the coalition agreement, so there must have been, at some stage, some discussion about the detail. Did those discussions take place on the basis that I am referring to?

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Tyler]

Can my noble friend tell the House whether the Government took cognisance of the fact that the previous Government, having obviously gone through a very similar thought process, decided on precisely this form of AV for the Constitutional Reform and Governance Act and then repeated the proposal in the general election?

[Lord Campbell-Savours]

As the noble Lord is aware, it was a Conservative Member of Parliament, Mr Christopher Chope, who moved what was in effect the supplementary vote amendment in the House of Commons. He had support from Members on his own Benches, but it is a pity that he did not drive them into the Division Lobbies.

[Lord Strathclyde]

My noble friend Lord Tyler makes a great point. Six months ago, that was the view of the Labour Party. That is the view that we have taken as well, for the reasons that I laid out. The system that we propose gives the widest possible choice to voters. That is why it is a good idea.

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.

--- Later in debate ---

[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.

--- Later in debate ---

[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—

--- Later in debate ---

[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.

--- Later in debate ---

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.

Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill

Lord Campbell-Savours Excerpts

Monday 6th December 2010 Lords Chamber

[Lord Rooker]

My Lords, when I first tabled this little group of amendments, I included one that was along the lines of a side-title to it: “the people’s choice”. That is what this group is about. At the moment, nobody has asked the people. Nobody has asked anybody whether they want to change the voting system. This group of amendments splits the question into two parts. It is fairly self-explanatory, although it is not as easy to see when they are split up on the Marshalled List. The first question is in Amendment 21 and would ask people:

“Do you wish to change the voting system?”.

People are not being asked this. It was implied by Amendment 16. People were not asked whether they wanted change; it said that it had been agreed to change the voting system. I want to ask people whether they want to do so.

The second part, if there are yes and no answers to that first question, is in Amendment 27:

“If a majority vote for a change in the voting system, which of the alternatives”—

I call them families—

“would you prefer?”.

There are four there; it is a little package. I will not labour the point. I did not invent this. It is a replica, although not exactly, of what happened in New Zealand nearly 20 years ago. New Zealand had first past the post, a very modern democracy and votes for women 30 years before this country did, so we should not lecture anyone there about democracy and parliamentary systems. It had first past the post and there was pressure for change. I shall not deploy all the documentation and so on but a referendum was held in New Zealand in two parts. The people were asked, first, “Do you wish to change the system? Yes or no?”, and then below that on the paper was the second question, “If the yes vote wins, which one of the following do you want?”. The options given were in families—I use that term because of the debates that we have had—rather than in detail. Parliament took it away, worked on it to make it a practical reality and then a year later, in 1993, there was a second binding referendum between first past the post and the alternative, which won the vote and was turned into a practical system. It worked. I do not know how many times it has been used—probably at least four or five—but in New Zealand the people were asked before a change was made.

[Lord Campbell-Savours]

Perhaps I may ask my noble friend what the turnout was in the referendum. Is there anything that we can learn from that level of turnout?

[Lord Rooker]

I regret to say that I have not brought my New Zealand file with me. I could not get away from the Chamber and my file is across the road, so I do not know. It was a hot issue and I have copies of the information that at the time was distributed to people by the equivalent of the Electoral Commission to explain the systems and what was going on, together with copies of the ballot papers.

I am not going to spend this debate deploying the whys and wherefores of the system. The principle is clear: first, we should ask the people, “Do you want to change the system?”. I can make the case for that but the change, when it occurs, has to be cemented, and that is my anxiety about what is being proposed. This is not intended to be a cemented change, because it is clear that, assuming it is carried, the Liberal Democrats will come back later for a move to PR. Were I in favour of PR, I would go straight to PR, but that is not the point that I am making here.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Foulkes of Cumnock]

I was sitting here confidently waiting for either the noble Lord, Lord Phillips, or the redoubtable noble Lord, Lord Rennard, the bravest of the Liberal Democrats, to get up and intervene, but since no one has, I shall say just a few words.

We are now down to the anoraks, the loyalists and the payroll vote. I am two out of three, by the way. I always hesitate to disagree with my noble friend Lord Rooker, because, just as he said that the noble Lord, Lord Skidelsky, fills him with awe, my noble friend fills many of us here with awe. He was one of the most effective Labour Ministers and he is an even more effective Back-Bencher and debater, so it is always with some hesitation that we get up to disagree. But I come from a fundamentally different point of view, in that I think that first past the post is, as I argued earlier, the best system, for a range of reasons.

I wonder, though, whether he is right in using the New Zealand example as a precedent for us, for two and maybe three reasons. First, New Zealand has a unicameral Parliament, so there is only one Chamber and only one election takes place. They do not have, as we do, two Chambers and—as I said in relation to the previous amendment—the possibility of having two different systems, one of which produces the Government and the other which produces the balancing force, or balancing Chamber. That is very important.

Also, as far as I remember—and I am sure that my noble friend Lord Rooker will get up and correct me if I am wrong—the example that he suggested was introduced by the Labour Government in New Zealand. They thought that it was right to change the electoral system. I visited New Zealand a few years later and spoke to a number of Labour Party members who were very strongly of the view that they had made a mistake in introducing it. I know that my noble friend Lady McDonagh was General Secretary of the Labour Party and has contacts with the New Zealand Labour Party. I was there on a CPA visit and met them and they were very regretful that they had moved in that direction. Despite his deep knowledge and the detail that my noble friend gave us from the Plant report and the system in New Zealand, he was not able to answer my noble friend’s question about the turnout, about how many people actually turned out to make these great changes in the two referenda that took place, and whether or not that could be justified.

That brings me to two final points. Someone suggested earlier that there was filibustering going on. There was actually a very good debate, which seems to me to be the purpose of these kinds of Chambers. I was pleased that quite a few Conservatives got involved in the debate.

The Liberal Democrats and some Labour people keep arguing that democracy is all about an arithmetical correlation between the number of votes and the number of seats, as exact a correlation as possible. That is democracy, they say—to get the nearest you can to the number of seats relating to the percentage of votes cast. I think there is another, perhaps even more important, aspect of democracy, which is accountability: that is the ability, first, of your party in the constituency and, secondly, of the electorate in the constituency to hold you to account. In my view, that can be done properly only by the first past the post system.

Earlier, the noble Lord, Lord Phillips, made a very strong argument about wasted votes. One aspect of that was dealt with by one of my noble friends. The argument was that there are safe seats that never change. Come up to Scotland and go to Edinburgh South, which was held by the Tories for generations and is now a Labour seat, or go to East Renfrewshire, which was held by the Tories for generations and is now a Labour seat. We used to think our votes were wasted, but we worked hard, we convinced people, we got people on to our side, they voted for us and we got a majority. Surely that is what democracy is about. It is about convincing people and changing people’s minds. It is Gilbertian to think that because someone was born a Tory, they will always be a Tory or because they were born a Labour person, they will always be a Labour person. You can change people, you can convince people. If you will excuse me saying so, I was talking to my noble friend Lord Maclennan—I still call him my noble friend—earlier on. He won the seat through his campaigning, his personality and the Labour Party in Caithness. We had never held it before. We can win these seats and can convince people to change their minds. Surely that is what democracy is about.

Although my noble friend Lord Rooker has very powerfully argued the case for his amendments, I do not find it totally convincing. I say to the Tories that I wish that more of them in this place would have the courage of what I know to be their convictions and would stand up as the noble Lord, Lord Hamilton, did earlier today and say what they really believe: that first past the post is the best way of electing people to the House of Commons.

[Lord Campbell-Savours]

My Lords, I join my noble friend in calling upon the Conservative Benches to take a view because I do not know whether they really understand the danger that would arise in the event that an AV referendum was successful. It has huge implications for the Conservative Party. They sit there and say very little, apart from the noble Lord, Lord Hamilton, and it leaves me quite bewildered.

I can now answer the question that I asked my noble friend about what happened in New Zealand because it is in Review of Voting Systems: the experience of new voting systems in the United Kingdom since 1997. On page 136, it sets out precisely what happened and it is very interesting, so I shall put it on the record:

“New Zealand provides a particularly interesting example because it has changed its electoral system from FPTP to the MMP”—

mixed member proportional—

“system (similar to AMS in the UK) in recent times. The first election to be held under MMP was in 1996, following referendums”—

which my noble friend referred to—

“in 1992 and 1993 which first rejected FPTP and then selected MMP from four proportional options. The 1993 referendum, which was binding, took place at the same time as the 1993 election where 84.5 per cent of voters favoured replacing FPTP and 70.3 per cent chose MMP”.

That shows that, when you ask the electorate what have been deemed in these debates to be complicated questions over the detail of various proportional systems, they actually understand what they are being asked and they are prepared to go out and vote and state a preference. The evidence is there in English-speaking New Zealand. It did it, and it shows the way forward. It is interesting to note, in the following pages in this section, that the turnout in New Zealand elections following the change in the electoral system in 1990 has consistently remained around the 80 per cent mark. That is almost as high as in my former constituency in one election, but it is vastly higher than the average within the United Kingdom. Again, we may have something to learn from New Zealand.

It is also worth noting what the review says is the impact of the system that New Zealand chose in this well-supported referendum.

“Since 1996, New Zealand has been governed by coalitions, usually with a minority of the seats in Parliament. Obviously this makes it more difficult for the leading party to achieve all of its policy aims but, arguably, policy decisions reflect the views of a wider coalition of voters. Tina Day, a Director of the Joseph Rowntree Reform Trust interviewed 21 MPs in the 2002-05 Parliament for her research. She argues in her 2005 paper Increasing the representativeness of parliament … that there has been a shift of power from the Executive to Parliament, with select committees (whose composition reflects the multi-party Parliament) assuming a very powerful role”.

That reservation, expressed during the course of that consultation, might well be the one to which my noble friend refers.

The review continues:

“There is also a greater representation of women (around 30 per cent of members), Maori and the Asian population in Parliament. She argues that this has increased the legitimacy and standing of Parliament (notwithstanding the early unpopularity of coalition government). It also means that divisions in opinion within the country are played out in Parliament to a greater extent”.

The point I am making is that if you trust the people and give them the information in a form that they can understand, and put realistic options on the paper, they may well surprise us and actually choose a system that—

[Lord Sewel]

I am grateful to my noble friend, my near neighbour, for giving way. Could he resolve this dilemma? He mentioned that there was the early unpopularity of coalition Governments at the same time as there was popularity for a change to a more proportional system. A more proportional system will more than likely—I put it no stronger than that—lead to coalition Governments. How does he square the circle of the popularity of the voting system with the unpopularity of the product it produces?

[Lord Campbell-Savours]

It is because it was only in the early days prior to coalition that public prejudice on the issue of coalitions led to this general view that coalitions cannot work; whereas following the referendum decision and the creation of the coalition, and a recognition by the public that the system did work, the coalition then gained in popularity. All I am saying to my noble friends is that I find this particular amendment very appealing because it offers the public the opportunity that many of us believe they should be given during the referendum.

[Lord Falconer of Thoroton]

That raises a fundamental point which my noble friend Lord Rooker puts very well; you have to be able to explain why AV has been chosen and the public are not being given a choice on anything else. I have to say again, rather distressingly, that the noble Lord, Lord Strathclyde, did not deal with that at all in relation to the last amendment. He said that clarity was important. That is an answer, but it does not deal with why AV has been chosen. There is a profound sense in this House that there are a range of options. My noble friend Lord Rooker and the noble Lord, Lord Lamont, have pretty well destroyed the idea that AV is an effective choice.

If at all possible, I should like the coalition to explain why it has chosen AV as the only alternative proposition that it is putting to the electorate. If the answer is—I think that the Deputy Chief Whip is trying to tell me this—“Well, that is all we could agree with the Liberal Democrats”, that is fine, and I hope the electorate will treat that with the contempt that it deserves. Then the position is that we are not suggesting that it is the best alternative; we are saying that it is the only one on which we could reach agreement. I very much hope that the coalition is straightforward about that, because this is a serious debate about the constitution. Unless no answer is forthcoming, there is no other option but for this House to debate which are the better options. I know that that wearies the noble Lords, Lord Strathclyde and Lord McNally, but if you cannot explain or debate the best alternative to first past the post, the position is that the merits of each of them have to be debated.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Falconer of Thoroton]

I am grateful to my noble friend Lord Adonis. The noble Lord, Lord Rennard, was not in a position to deny the assertion that they were seeking AV without a referendum. So the Liberal Democrats trust the electorate but only on the basis that they give them the answer that they want.

[Lord Campbell-Savours]

Is there not a distinction between how this House would have handled the matter then as against now? Earlier in the year if every Member of the House had been voting for what they wanted, that would not have gone through. It is a distinct possibility that the Labour Government would have been defeated on the issue of AV in this House. Now it is going through on the basis of people being prepared to vote for something they do not believe in. Which is the most honourable and honest House in those conditions?

[Lord Falconer of Thoroton]

The head-turning going on is easily identified. The public, however, are interested in the merits of the argument. What I cannot understand at the moment, because no argument has been advanced, is why AV is the only alternative that has been given. That is the question posed by the amendments of the noble Lords, Lord Skidelsky and Lord Rooker. There must be an argument beyond simply saying, “We reached an agreement over the weekend and that seemed a sensible thing to do”.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Campbell-Savours]

My Lords—

[The Deputy Chairman of Committees]

Is the noble Lord moving an amendment?

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Strathclyde]

I agree, but if the noble Lord, Lord Campbell-Savours, wishes to continue, I shall be happy to carry on. It will not take long.

[Lord Campbell-Savours]

To put it bluntly, I would prefer to go to bed. I do not know whether that suits noble Lords.

[Lord Strathclyde]

If noble Lords opposite have had enough, I am happy with that and we can resume the House. But if the noble Lord wants to move his amendment, we would be happy to carry on.

[Lord Campbell-Savours]

I am prepared to be helpful. If the House wishes to adjourn now we could regroup the next two amendments, which would help the House as two debates could be combined. I am perfectly happy with that.

House resumed.

Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill

Lord Campbell-Savours Excerpts

Monday 6th December 2010 Lords Chamber

[Lord Soley]

My Lords, I rise with one intention only: to ask a specific question of the noble Lord, Lord Strathclyde, and ask him to deal with it in his response. In asking it I should declare an interest as one of the political panel drawn from all the political parties, from both the House of Commons and the House of Lords, who act as advisers and information givers to the Electoral Commission.

At the moment the Electoral Commission believes that it is possible to hold these elections on joint dates without problems. Along with everyone else, however, it acknowledges—I think this was the key point made by my noble friend Lord Rooker—that problems could arise; and if they do arise, that will have a major impact on how well the referendum—or indeed the elections, but particularly the referendum—is held.

If in the course of events the Electoral Commission decides that it is not able to conduct a referendum in a manner that is acceptable to both national and international standards, will the Government put off the referendum to another date? That is an important question and I hope the noble Lord will address it with some care.

[Lord Campbell-Savours]

My Lords, I want to follow that specific question. I am pleased that my noble friend was able to intervene before me. It is not just a question of whether the Electoral Commission would recommend that the date be changed; it is whether the Government for other reasons might wish to change the date of the referendum. I would remind the noble Lord, Lord Strathclyde, that in 2001 a Government had to defer elections due to the foot and mouth crisis. All over the country, returning officers were arguing with their local authorities that it would be impractical, because of problems at polling stations, to carry out polling on that particular day. In addition to the question asked by my noble friend, I would therefore like to know what would happen in those circumstances.

In Clause 4(7) of the Bill there is reference to,

“Section 16 of the Representation of the People Act 1985 (postponement of poll at parish elections etc) does not apply to any polls taken together under subsection (1)”,

and subsection (1)(b) refers specifically to,

“a local referendum in England”.

So I think that we should have some assurance about what would happen in the emergency circumstances that might arise.

I had to leave the Chamber for personal reasons during the course of a couple of speeches, but I understand that reference was made to our alleged inconsistency in these matters. I would like to draw the House’s attention to the then Constitutional Reform and Governance Bill which was considered by Parliament earlier this year—a Bill produced by the then Labour Government. Under Clause 29 of that legislation we find my noble friend's amendment. Under “Referendum on voting systems”, it states:

“A referendum is to be held, no later than 31 October 2011, on the voting system for parliamentary elections”.

In other words, we showed in our Bill the flexibility that my noble friend seeks to establish in this Bill. Our position is perfectly consistent with the position that we took earlier this year.

I am very pleased to see a large number of Cross-Benchers in the Chamber today. The other day we debated an aspect of this Bill, when some of us were a little concerned that the Cross-Benchers had perhaps not been able to hear the debate. That is the insufficiency of consideration that has been given to the effectiveness of the electoral system proposed in this Bill. There is a lot of evidence out there to suggest that the optional multi-preference election system under the alternative vote system—which applies not in Australia generally in its federal Parliament arrangements, but only in one state, Queensland—is flawed. There has been a lot of academic work to prove that. In later stages of the Bill I will bring forward evidence, on the basis of international evidence which we have been able to collate, to dismantle systematically the case made for that system.

Even this morning I received a paper on STV which applies under the Scottish system for local elections. The interesting thing about STV in Scotland is that when a by-election takes place there it triggers an AV election. In other words, within the United Kingdom we have examples of AV operating which have not been fully considered by Parliament. The noble Lord, Lord Rennard, drew my attention to that the other day—he nods his head. What happened in those 32 by-elections in Scotland will be of great interest to the House when we produce that information. This morning I received a document, whose authors are Professor David Denver of Lancaster University, Dr Alistair Clark of Belfast and Dr Lynn Bennie of Aberdeen, on the operation of the STV system in Scotland—not on AV as it applies in individual constituencies when there is a by-election.

More work needs to be done on the electrical system proposed in the Bill before Parliament finally decides what the system should be. Furthermore, in the event that we proceed with the system proposed in the Bill, there should be time for a full public debate before any referendum takes place within the United Kingdom.

[Lord Rennard]

The noble Lord seems to suggest again, as have a number of noble Lords, that there simply has not been sufficient time to consider the relative merits of electoral systems and in particular AV. Is the noble Lord aware that a royal commission recommended the adoption of the AV system in 1910; that an all-party Speaker’s Conference made the same recommendation in 1917; and that the House of Commons voted for the introduction of the alternative vote system in 1931? Does he consider that this is perhaps the only place where 100 years is deemed inadequate time for consultation before voters are allowed to say how their representatives should be chosen?

[Lord Campbell-Savours]

That is the intervention of someone who has not done all his homework. It is true that AV was considered, but not in the form that is proposed in the Bill. That is at the heart of my argument. It is a different system. There are three major systems available under the alternative vote and the historic debate in this country has taken place on the Australian system, where it is compulsory to vote. Indeed, if you do not exercise all your votes, under the Australian AV system, your vote is discounted, not even taken into account.

[Lord Howarth of Newport]

I am very grateful to my noble friend, who has certainly done his homework and research very carefully indeed. Have I been advised correctly that the type of AV system that the Government propose should be used for elections to our House of Commons is found elsewhere in the world only in Papua New Guinea and Fiji? Has my noble friend, in the course of his research, found any lessons of more general application from those two laboratory experiments, which may be useful for us to think about as we consider an appropriate system for use in this country in the future?

[Lord Campbell-Savours]

I have identified those areas, but I think that the more relevant results are those in Queensland in Australia and in Scotland, which we will go through in some detail as we proceed on the Bill.

[A noble Lord]

You bet your life we will.

[Lord Campbell-Savours]

As I say, I have spent the last weekend talking to people throughout Scotland about how it operates and it is very surprising to see how it operates.

[Lord Grenfell]

My Lords, may I have the temerity to point out to the noble Lord, Lord Rennard, who correctly told us when it was last discussed, that a lot of us here, and, indeed, in the country, were not around at that time?

[Lord Campbell-Savours]

At this stage, I shall resume my seat and await later opportunities to discuss these matters.

[Baroness McDonagh]

I thank noble Lords who have come back to this issue of confusion. Can we knock on the head, once and for all, the suggestion that we are calling people stupid? People are not quite as obsessed by politics as we are and I always thought that it was the role of this House to look at legislation, to look at how it would work out in the country, in the community, in our experience, and bring back any concerns before legislation is passed. That is what we are doing. We are not, for a moment, calling anyone stupid. On Tuesday, the noble Lord, Lord Strathclyde, thought that in changing his parliamentary constituency in Scotland, he had also changed his European parliamentary constituency. I would not, for a second, call him stupid just because he does not appreciate that Scotland has only one European constituency.

I take this opportunity to ask about the 12 cities that are holding a referendum for mayor. I understand that some might be put off until 2012, but will the Minister tell us exactly where we are on that and, indeed, when the localism Bill will enter the House? Before I move off this issue of confusion, I say only that, if we are not careful—this is a serious point—we could end up having more spoilt ballot papers than the majority of votes, either for or against, under the alternative vote referendum. Given the legality of the Bill, there will be deep problems.

Who are we expecting to convey the arguments on the doorstep, if we proceed with an election in May? I would like to see anyone here get together a group of councillors facing re-election. These people are now going through very difficult times, having to cut something like 30 per cent of their budgets over the next four years. There will be serious cuts in adult services, child services and street cleaning, and some people may be moving to fortnightly waste collections. Any idea that you are going to knock on the door and explain that to the public and then say, “By the way, let’s have a chat about the alternative vote referendum”, is not living in the real world. I would like to be a fly on the wall in a room when anybody here attempts to do that. Without people on the ground being active in campaigns, be they for referenda or elections, they are not democratic election.

It seems rather ironic to have a referendum on our democracy at a time when there are elections in some parts of the country and not in others. By that very fact, you will skew—

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[Lord Strathclyde]

My Lords, we have had another series of interesting debates, largely on the same issue that we discussed the other night—the question of the date. Noble Lords who were there will have recognised that many of the issues that were raised last week were raised again today. I make no great criticism of that. It is inevitable in the early stages of discussing a Bill. The only surprise is that nobody, in an hour and a half of debate, mentioned a subject that was raised several times last week—that of the royal wedding. So as far as I can see, we have moved a great step forward over the course of the past week.

The debate really divided into three groups of speakers. First, there were those who were against the amendment and in favour of the Government’s proposal. Secondly, there were those like the noble Lord, Lord Rooker, who sensed that the Government were doing the right thing in offering a referendum but that they have not thought through all the various contingencies and needed some help and support—the word “lifeboat” was used and that sort of language. And thirdly, there were those like the noble Lord, Lord Grocott, my noble friend Lord Hamilton, and one or two others, who were opposed to the referendum and opposed to AV, and they also would support the amendment.

[Lord Campbell-Savours]

There is another group as well. There is a group of us who passionately support a reform of the electoral system.

[Lord Strathclyde]

Yes, there is a fourth group which supports a reform of the electoral system but not this reform. But this amendment is about the date, and all those who will support the noble Lord, Lord Rooker, if he presses it to a vote, have understood that by accepting this amendment, in practice the referendum cannot take place on 5 May. Amendment 5 does not specify an alternative appropriate day. Setting the date in the Bill, as we have done, gives certainty to those involved in the planning and campaigning. I could not help thinking during the course of the debate that if the Government had published a Bill with no date, noble Lords opposite would be the first to get up and say, “How outrageous this is. How can anybody campaign? This is the Government making it up as they go along”.

We decided on 5 May because it is the best date. It is when 84 per cent of the population will already be going to the polls. Or I should say that 84 per cent of the population will have the opportunity of going to the polls—the noble Lord, Lord Foulkes, is right to admonish me on that. I made the argument last week and I make it again: it will save us a great deal of money—something like £30 million—if we go ahead on the day that we have decided.

The noble Lord, Lord Lipsey, said that people will be confused. There is a lot of outrage in the House today about this sense of confusion. As my noble friend Lord Tyler said, people have no difficulty in voting in local elections and general elections on the same day. In this House, we are used to making lots of decisions every day, but the poor people outside are not so blessed with our brains and will find it much more difficult. I think not. People are well capable of deciding who should represent them in terms of local government, the Welsh Assembly or Scottish Parliament. They are able to decide on a simple yes or no whether they wish to have AV. I have no truck with these arguments about confusion.

The noble Lord, Lord Elystan-Morgan, made a point that was echoed by one or two other noble Lords including the noble Lord, Lord McAvoy, about whether it was negligence or discourtesy that we had not consulted the other parliaments and assemblies in the United Kingdom. The Government wanted to make an announcement on a national basis on a given day to Parliament. Even if it was a lack of respect, should we change the date just because of that lack of respect, if there is no other reason not to continue?

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Without debating the merits of a pure alternative vote system, it is a fact that it has been turned down by a number of recent inquires; notably, the Plant commission in 1990 and the Roy Jenkins committee in 1997, basically on the grounds that the game was not worth the candle. We believe that this is an additional argument for adding PR to the options offered by the referendum.

[Lord Campbell-Savours]

The Plant commission did not turn down AV. It said that it was a perfectly acceptable system, but that it just preferred another. That system was within the AV family of systems; namely, the supplementary vote. I know that the noble Lord has had to pick up the brief from others who unfortunately are not able to attend, but I am having difficulty in understanding why he does not accept the supplementary vote in his amendment. He alluded to it previously, but it was not clear to me exactly what he meant in his explanation. Will he tell us that before he sits down?

[Lord Skidelsky]

I think that those who tabled the amendment did not want to overcomplicate the choices being put to voters. When people get into the nitty-gritty of constitutional change, first, they can get obsessive about having their own preferred system and, secondly, it can become very complicated. In our view, it is simply a device to delay any changes. We thought that it would be a better idea to have three broad choices, one of which was proportional representation, leaving it to the House of Commons to decide, if that was the preferred option—that is, if more than 50 per cent of people support it—on which particular variety they would legislate. That was the logic behind it.

I urge this amendment on the Government and ask them to consider it seriously. Not to take advantage of the chance opened up by a promised referendum in order to offer the electorate a major choice about the future of the electoral system would be to miss a major opportunity to test their appetite for political reform. I beg to move.

Amendment 16A (to Amendment 16)

Moved by

[Lord Campbell-Savours]

16A: Clause 1, line 8, leave out “the” and insert “an”

[Lord Campbell-Savours]

My Lords, I shall speak to Amendments 16A and 17, which are in this group. I wish to follow up on something to which the noble Lord, Lord Skidelsky, referred. He referred to “a proportional vote system”, which would be inserted under proposed subsection (3)(c) to be inserted into Clause 1 under Amendment 16. In other words, this referendum would not deal with only clear alternatives set out in the referendum question; it would pose the question, “Do you want a proportional vote system?”, which at this stage is not to be identified in the referendum question. By implication, there inevitably would have to be an inquiry arising out of a referendum which might choose new subsection (3)(c) as the option.

I am very interested in inquiries because last week we spent several hours arguing the case for an inquiry. What interested me about this amendment, and why I sought in my Amendment 17 to include the supplementary vote, is that that is precisely what I want to see. I want to see an alternative vote referendum based on the need for an inquiry in exactly the same way as is proposed by the noble Lord, Lord Owen, the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Blackburn and the noble Earl, Lord Clancarty, in their amendment.

In private conversation, I asked the noble Lord, Lord Owen, whether he might be prepared to accept this amendment. There may well be conditions in which some of us would like to divide the House on this. It raises very important issues. He gave me the same explanation; namely, that it is too complicated. But the reality is that, of all the electoral systems that confront the British electorate at the moment, apart from first past the post, the supplementary vote is the simplest system. It is used nationally in the mayoral elections. It has been supported by many millions of voters. Next year, when the mayoral elections finally take place in the new mayoralties—I think that there was reference to 12—I presume that they will also be fought on the supplementary vote. I cannot quite understand why introducing the simplest possible system should be regarded as a complication of the question.

In winding up, I hope that the noble Lord, Lord Skidelsky, might offer to take back to those who have their names to this amendment the suggestion that before Report they might be prepared to include, if they were to retable their amendment, reference to the supplementary vote.

The content of Amendment 16A is the substance of an amendment that I shall move later and, again, it is about the principle of an inquiry. The referendum question at the moment refers specifically to “the” alternative vote—a specific system that has been identified, which I and many of my colleagues reject for different reasons. My amendment, which I would have slotted in as paragraph (d) of subsection (3) as proposed under Amendment 16, would enable the public to vote on a question which asked whether they were in favour of “an” alternative vote system. That would then beg the question of an inquiry to take place and a decision to be taken by Parliament or whoever wanted to make representations. Finally, a decision to be taken by government could be put to the House. I ask the noble Lord to take this back to his noble friends, because I regard the amendment that he has moved as one of the most important to be considered on this Bill.

[Lord Lamont of Lerwick]

My Lords, as always, the noble Lord, Lord Skidelsky, has made an attractive speech which was full of interesting references, although I think that this is a somewhat curious amendment. The noble Lord, Lord Campbell-Savours, made a powerful point, but it leads me rather in the opposite direction to the noble Lord and to think that one could not support this amendment.

It will not surprise anyone that I speak as someone who has been over time a strong supporter of our existing system. In the 1970s, I even wrote a pamphlet defending our system, called Electoral Reform No Reform. At least I stand by the title because it has always seemed to me that the advantages and disadvantages of electoral systems are more evenly balanced than people acknowledge. The word “reform” is tendentious and “change” would be a better word. I have to confess on reading my pamphlet written 40 years ago that not all the arguments have stood the test of time brilliantly. I accept that there is more of a case than it appeared then for something like the German mixed system.

Some of the criticisms, however, that are made of our system, including one made by the noble Lord, Lord Skidelsky, are fallacious. The noble Lord referred to the first past the post system as one that depends on making the winner someone with a plurality rather than a majority of votes. The criticism is commonly made about our system producing over 50 per cent of the seats with people who have perhaps only 40 per cent of the votes and this is not a majority. The point is made that the Government do not reflect majority opinion under our electoral system. The fallacy in this argument is that there naturally exists in public opinion such a thing as a majority. It is true that if you take any single issue—like whether people are for or against the euro, whether they are for or against privatisation, whether they prefer public expenditure to lower taxes—you can get a majority for any single proposition. But elections are not fought on one proposition; they are fought on four or five issues. Opinion polls show that it is much more difficult to get a majority for four or five issues at once than it is for one issue. So it is a wrong argument to say that you have an electoral system that produces a majority when there is not in fact an underlying real majority.

What is the magic of a majority anyway? In a democracy, power, even by a majority, must be exercised with restraint and with respect towards one’s opponents. All electoral systems create a majority in an artificial way. The first past the post system does it by converting around 40 per cent of the votes into 50 per cent of the seats. The alternative vote system creates a majority artificially by taking the second preferences of the bottom candidate and allowing those to determine the outcome. But the second preferences of the second candidate do not count. The second preferences are given undue weight, which is why I was able to quote in Second Reading what Winston Churchill said about the system when he called it the least scientific in which the most worthless votes for the most worthless candidate determined the outcome. That is the artificiality of the AV system in creating a majority. With PR, equally, majorities are created rather artificially because people take two or three parties that may have fought the elections on completely different programmes, as we well know, and add them together and call it a majority, although nobody actually voted for the programme of the Government. So the artificiality of a majority is something that has to be recognised before one pours all this criticism on first past the post.

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[Lord Rennard]

There are many places in this country with very safe seats, where issues of electoral reform are rarely debated. I accept that people are far more interested in outcomes than they are in processes, but I believe the process by which MPs are chosen is rather important in determining the outcomes. In your Lordships’ House, reference has constantly been made during these debates to the words of the Deputy Prime Minister considering the alternative vote system. Shall we just deal with those words for a moment? The first point is that the alternative vote system that he is now advocating is a compromise. Yes, it is a compromise. If no one party wins a general election, there is a need for compromise. I believe that many people in this country think that compromising is sometimes a good principle, not a bad one.

[Lord Campbell-Savours]

Compromises have to be settled, and the actual words of the Deputy Prime Minister were:

“I am not going to settle for a miserable little compromise thrashed out by the Labour Party”.

But he did settle on that very compromise.

[Lord Rennard]

My Lords, I thought that we had a very good compromise in 1997 agreed with the party of the noble Lord opposite but, after 13 years, that compromise was never delivered. I was quoting the Deputy Prime Minister rather more fully; I was going to talk about the word “little”, which he used. I believe that it is a little change, which preserves the single-Member constituencies, which Members in other parties hold very dearly. I happen not to. But since it preserves the single-Member constituency principle, I believe that it is a little change that will bring greater benefit.

There is also, of course, the word “miserable”. The only thing that would make me really miserable—and I say this in all sincerity to noble Lords who supported Amendment 16—would be if we failed to give people their say and made progress on a form of voting system that was effectively designed for the political circumstances in 1872, when Gladstone brought in the Secret Ballot Act.

[Lord Rennard]

My own view is that since Gladstone introduced the current system in 1872 in the Secret Ballot Act, for 138 years noble Lords and Members in another place decided that that system was perfectly good without revision and without letting people have their say. It is a good precedent to let people have their say, and we will wait to see when there is public demand again to have any further say. But for 138 years we have kept the same system. One hundred years ago, a Royal Commission recommended the adoption of the alternative vote, and 93 years ago, a Speakers Conference recommended the use of preference voting. Seventy-nine years ago, the other place voted for the adoption of the alternative vote, which was blocked on five occasions by your Lordships’ House. It is 36 years since a minority Conservative Government offered another Speakers Conference on electoral reform and it is 13 years since a Labour Government with a large majority had a manifesto promise and were elected on the basis that there would be a referendum on the issue of proportional representation. So it is a significant achievement for all those committed to electoral reform that twice this year in the House of Commons, with different Governments in place, there have been substantial majorities for a referendum to be held on the alternative vote. I want to see progress on this issue and hope that we will not give Members in another place a further opportunity to deny the voters their say on this issue and leave us back where we were in 1872.

[Lord Campbell-Savours]

Why does not the noble Lord be more honest—although I am not accusing him of being dishonest, he could be more honest—about where we stand who are in favour of electoral reform? Is not the reality that this is simply the first building block and that, once we have changed the system to a single-Member constituency arrangement, it will then go on to the next stage and ask for more? Is not that what is actually being said? I openly admit it; that is why I am arguing about the building block. I am saying that the preferential system being selected by the Government is the wrong building block on which to build the later stages. I wish noble Lords on the Liberal Democrat Benches would be more open and honest about that.

[Lord Rennard]

My Lords, I think that I have been remarkably open and honest all the time I have been in this House speaking on these issues. The noble Lord’s argument suggests that perhaps until the 25th century we should keep the political system exactly as it is and ignore centuries of progress. I do not think that that would be fair or democratic. Perhaps we should say that, given that 2,000 years ago in Athens people all turned up to vote on issues, we should have that sort of system now. I am not arguing that my system or my preference should be imposed on the British people. I am simply arguing that the British people themselves should have the democratic right to say for themselves how their representatives should be chosen. I do not understand how people who consider themselves democrats can resist that fundamental democratic principle.

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[Lord Liddle]

Is it the case that under that arrangement what you would have in practice would be more instability? What you would have is a Lords with full democratic legitimacy, elected on proportional representation, which would feel able to overturn the decisions of the House of Commons. Therefore, you would not get stability by that system.

[Lord Campbell-Savours]

I remind the noble Lord of a speech he gave to the parliamentary Labour Party about four years ago, where he made precisely the point that is now being made. He said that in the event that we were elected here by proportional representation and they by first past the post we would claim legitimacy where they could not.

[Lord Foulkes of Cumnock]

I remember it well. On that occasion, I said that, if senators were elected for Scotland, for example, or for Wales, Northern Ireland or England, to a second Chamber, which was a Senate, they would certainly claim some legitimacy or might even claim a greater legitimacy. However, if the Lords continues as a revising Chamber, I would argue the case for proportional representation for that revising Chamber.

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Going along with the amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Skidelsky, that of the noble Lord, Lord Rooker, or any of the comparable amendments would simply be to kill off this latest chance of some amelioration of the system we have. It would kill it stone dead. Why? Because the main party in the coalition—the Conservatives—will not have a PR system. It is as simple as that. It will go to the other end and they will chuck it back at us. The profound practical question tonight is about whether we give the people of this country the chance to choose whether they want a major—though not fundamental—reform of and improvement in the electoral system. I have spent much of my political life struggling to get some reform into the system. It is painful.

[Lord Campbell-Savours]

If it could be shown that by changing the electoral system in favour of STV or AV, turnout did not rise, would that in any way influence how the noble Lord thinks about the proposition on the table?

[Lord Phillips of Sudbury]

Yes, of course it would, but the noble Lord cannot demonstrate that until we have tried it. It is no good telling us about Ireland or Iceland.

[Lord Campbell-Savours]

If it could be shown that in Scotland turnout did not rise, would that influence the noble Lord?

[Lord Phillips of Sudbury]

It would influence me to some extent but I would want to know a great deal more about it before I admitted anything more than that here and now.

[Lord Campbell-Savours]

I hope the noble Lord is able to attend our future debates on this issue.

[Lord Phillips of Sudbury]

All I can say—

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[Lord Campbell-Savours]

Perhaps I may remind my noble friend that the only party that has consistently supported and campaigned for AV is the Labour Party. We are the only ones to have done so. Am I being helpful?

[Lord Snape]

My noble friend is indeed being helpful and I am grateful. The fact is that we got it wrong. At least that is certainly the opinion that many of us hold, and we will continue to get it wrong if we continue to support it. I accept the sincerity of my noble friend and my noble friend Lord Rooker. I remember a conversation that I had with him in 1987 after the then—from the party’s point of view—unsuccessful election. I asked him why he was in favour of PR. I cannot imagine why we were discussing PR—we must have been stuck on a very long train journey. I hope that I am not betraying any confidences when I say that my noble friend was brutally honest and said, “Because we can’t win under the present system”. However, we did eventually win under that system. The Liberal Democrats argue that they cannot win under the present system because their votes are diffused throughout the United Kingdom. I understand why they campaign in favour of proportional representation and I would understand them supporting some parts of the amendment before your Lordships tonight. However, I wish that they would be a little more honest, as was the noble Lord, Lord Phillips, in their declared support for AV. It is totally in their interests, although it is against everything for which they have campaigned for over 100 years.

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[Lord Strathclyde]

If noble Lord, Lord Owen, had been here—like others I wish him well—I am sure that he would have been immensely proud of the way in which the noble Lord, Lord Skidelsky, moved his amendment. I expect he would also have been reminded of the reasons why he left the Labour Party in the first place.

The purpose of the amendment is to give people the choice of a proportional system along with the choice of first past the post and the alternative vote. As the noble Lord, Lord Skidelsky, explained, they had previously tabled an amendment giving a choice of AV+, AMS or STV but had subsequently changed their amendment, so it was not about specifically wanting to pose AV+, AMS or STV as options in their own right but to pose the principle of PR as an option.

We believe that on an issue as fundamental as voting reform, the public need to be given a clear choice that will produce an equally clear result. The key point is about the impact that this sort of approach will have on the result. I understand that the noble Lord wished to see a multiple choice of voting options, including some form of PR. However, for the sake of simplicity—this is the crucial point—it is better to present people with a simple yes/no alternative, exactly as set out in the Bill. Multiple choice questions go against the recommendations of the Lords Constitution Committee report on referendums, which concluded that the presumption should be in favour of questions posing only two options for voters. That is one of a number of many points on which we agree.

A referendum on AV replacing the existing system will give a clear choice to the electorate, with the ability for them to express a clear view. Offering more than one choice could lead to an indecisive result and confusion over the interpretation of the result. The watchwords that we need to stand by when holding any referendum are simplicity, clarity and decisiveness. We would risk disregarding each of those if we went down the road suggested by these amendments.

The question in the Bill as it currently stands reflects the recommendations of the Electoral Commission, which tested the question through focus groups and interviews with members of the public as well as through input from language experts. This amendment risks going against that independent advice from the Electoral Commission, which recommended that, unlike a question requiring a yes/no answer, this style of question has never been used in a UK-wide referendum, and, as such, fuller testing would need to be undertaken before recommending this style of question ahead of a more traditional yes/no question.

[Lord Campbell-Savours]

If during the referendum campaign the noble Lord, Lord Strathclyde, is in a television studio and is asked why the public cannot decide on the system that they want—first past the post, a variant on the alternative vote system or a proportional system—how would he reply?

[Lord Strathclyde]

I would reply that this is the system passed by Parliament: that, in particular, the House of Commons agreed on the system, as we did—if that is what has happened—and that is why we have the choice of AV. As to why we have AV above the other systems, no doubt we will get to that in other debates. Of course, AV is the one that preserves best the link between elected Member and constituency.

Another issue is that the wording in the amendment could influence voters, as it says:

“It is proposed that the system should be changed”.

The Government are neutral on which voting system should be used, and that statement could be misleading.

In these amendments there is not even an indication of the kind of proportional voting system that the public would get if they voted for this option or of how this type of system would work. One attraction of the approach taken in the Bill is that for all the arguments there might be about how AV works, the Bill sets that out in Clause 9 and in Schedule 10. Any questions about how AV works can be resolved by looking at the Bill, which would not be the case with these amendments. The results might be a lack of clarity and voter confusion.