Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill

Lord Foulkes of Cumnock Excerpts

Monday 7th February 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Forsyth of Drumlean]

My Lords, can my noble friend comment on the concern expressed north of the border about the coincidence of the referendum and the elections to the Scottish Parliament, and the difficulties that returning officers will have in ensuring that the count is available? The results may not be available on the Friday and be delayed. Will this be a problem, and have the Government any plans to avoid the difficulty whereby Members of the Scottish Parliament will not know for some time whether they have been elected and the position of the Administration in the Scottish Parliament, because of the difficulties of counting both polls at the same time?

[Lord Foulkes of Cumnock]

My Lords—

[Lord Wallace of Tankerness]

The noble Lord, Lord Foulkes, has an amendment later that will give us an opportunity to discuss the linkage of polls. I repeat what I said in Committee last week: it is certainly intended that the votes for the Scottish parliamentary election will take precedence over the counting of the votes in the referendum. Inevitably, there will have to be verification, because Scottish election votes may be found in ballot boxes intended for the referendum. It must be for returning officers and counting officers to determine their own arrangements, because issues of tiredness have come up in the past. It is certainly anticipated that we will not have to wait until Saturday for a result.

My noble friend Lord Forsyth expressed concern about the forming of an Administration. I have been involved twice in forming an Administration after a Scottish election. If the result had been known on the Saturday or even the Sunday, it would not have made much difference. However, that is by the way, because the intention is that the counting of votes for the Scottish election will take priority over the referendum.

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[Lord Wallace of Tankerness]

I will add that they should also be delivered accurately. Therefore, this is a matter for the returning officers and counting officers, who are best placed to judge whether counting should start immediately or the following morning.

[Lord Foulkes of Cumnock]

For once, I agree 100 per cent with the noble Lord, Lord Forsyth—the noble Lord, Lord Baker, looks very worried. I draw the attention of the noble Lord, Lord Forsyth, to Amendment 5F on page 3 of the revised Marshalled List. If the Government were willing to accept the amendment—or even better, if the Committee were to accept it—that would deal with what the noble Lord, Lord Forsyth, wants, for exactly the reasons that he put forward, which are sound and sensible.

[Lord Wallace of Tankerness]

My Lords, we will return to this issue when we debate Amendment 5F. I look forward to the contributions of the noble Lord, Lord Foulkes, when he moves it, and of my noble friend, Lord Forsyth. We will debate this more fully at a more appropriate time.

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[Lord Campbell-Savours]

My noble friend might ask, “What’s wrong?”, and there may well be people in the Labour Party all over the country repeating, “Yes, what’s wrong?”. I will tell you what is wrong: we know it is wrong. We know if we were being reasonable, we could never have cut back the Conservative Party to 110 seats in 1997. It would have been a ludicrous result, producing, as the paper states,

“less than 19 per cent of seats in Britain compared with their vote share of 31.4 per cent”.

So here we have it. This system, we are told, is about fair votes; it is about somehow matching the number of seats with the votes cast in a general election, turning out in 1997, in the Labour landslide victory, 19 per cent of seats in Britain compared with their vote share of 31.4 per cent. That is a huge difference, and it is wrong that we should be introducing a system that potentially can lead to results on that scale.

“Such an outcome would be the most severe under-representation of the Tories in British history. The biggest reduction in Conservative seats would occur in the south west”.

It might well be there would be those who would argue, “Well, they are only Conservative seats that are being lost”, but it works both ways because AV exaggerates results and swings. You can get huge swings against a party which could just as well be the Labour Party and we, too, could be reduced to a rump. The Conservatives have simply failed to understand the dangers inherent in the system they want to introduce.

The paper goes on to point out:

“Under SV the Liberal Democrats would have won another 38 seats on top of their existing 46”.

We now know why they want to introduce the system. It clearly distorts. Then what does it say?

“Under SV Labour would also have gained 17 more seats, buoyed up by extra transfers from supports of eliminated Liberal Democrats, further boosting their already disproportionate majority, giving them over 68 per cent of British seats in Parliament on the basis of 44 per cent of the vote”.

This is this super system that we are introducing. This is the system we are told is fair votes. On the basis of the 1997 general election, the landslide victory for Labour, we would have won over 440 seats. What a ludicrous system. What a ludicrous proposition has been put before Parliament.

I go back to the amendment and the question posed by the noble Lord, Lord Newton of Braintree. People have not done their homework, and something needs to be done about that. We need a referendum question that invites people to say no to first past the post. Then let us get the inquiries established because the homework has not been done.

On the classic Queensland AV, the authors go on to say,

“We assessed AV’s impacts by examining whether the tiny differences in second preferences from the SV ballot would have changed any of the SV simulation outcomes in any constituency but we could not identify any such cases”.

The proposition before the House is that we do something we should not be doing. The Tory Government should stop this, and stop it now. We are on Report. They should go away and come back at Third Reading having fully considered the implications of the Dunleavy work from 1997. I know that the Minister will get up and say, “It doesn’t matter. It’s all gone through. It was approved by the House of Commons”, but they did not know what they were doing. They did not understand the implications of this system. We are dealing now with a major change in the constitutional arrangements of the United Kingdom. If we produce exaggerated results that would have given Labour 444 in 1997 and a massive majority much larger than we actually had, we are making a major error, and I appeal to the Government to think again before it is too late.

[Lord Foulkes of Cumnock]

That was a very powerful speech by my noble friend Lord Campbell-Savours. He certainly does his homework very effectively. Like him, I wish that some Members of Parliament had done it. In the past few weeks, I have listened to a number of Conservative Members of Parliament and to some Labour Members of Parliament, and I am not sure that they know exactly what they voted for and its implications not just in terms of the voting system, as my noble friend Lord Campbell-Savours said, but of the reduction in the number of Members from 650 to 600. That is something we will come to later. The purpose of a revising House is to try to draw attention to this, so I am really grateful to my noble friend Lord Campbell-Savours, as I am sure the House is.

I want to raise one point. What can we do to stop this misapprehension that everyone elected under this system of AV has achieved the support of 50 per cent of the electorate? We discussed this in a previous debate, and I think it was my noble friend Lord Rooker, in his usual eloquent way, who pointed out the various systems. As I understand it—I am open to be corrected if I am wrong because I do not want to go on if I am—if the system used is that everyone is required to use all their votes, so that if there are 10 candidates, they vote from one to 10, that does apply. However, as I understand it, in the system that has been proposed and that we are being asked to approve, that is not required. You can vote one, two or one, two, three or one, two, three, four and so on—

[Lord Grocott]

Or just one.

[Lord Foulkes of Cumnock]

Or just one, which my noble friend Lord Grocott and I would prefer. Yet again last week, in spite of the fact that this House has said it on a number of occasions and other people have said it, the Liberal Democrats—and I absolve the Tories of this—were saying, and the Guardian was repeating, that everyone elected under the system being proposed will have the support of 50 per cent of their constituents. That is manifestly untrue, and it is about time that the Liberal Democrats stopped spreading these lies.

[Lord Wallace of Tankerness]

My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Campbell-Savours, has moved an amendment which would change the referendum question to ask voters whether the supplementary vote system should be used instead of first past the post rather than the alternative vote system. It will come as no surprise, because it is the content of the Bill, that the Government are committed to providing for a referendum to be held on whether the alternative vote system should be introduced for elections for the other place. We had these debates on a number of occasions in Committee.

I know the noble Lord, Lord Campbell-Savours, has a degree of authorship of the supplementary system that is used in the London mayoral election. We have heard on a number of occasions his concern about the alternative vote provisions in the Bill. It is always very invidious to say how people might hypothetically have voted when that was not the system that was used. The comments made by the noble Lord and the noble Lord, Lord Foulkes, were quite legitimate points to be made in the referendum campaign, when the parties and the different participants will take their own view about the merits and demerits of the alternative vote system. I can confirm that under the provisions in the Bill, which the noble Lord, Lord Foulkes, accurately described, voters may express a preference for as few or as many candidates as they wish or, indeed, for one. As the noble Lord rightly said, that could mathematically mean that not all Members elected to the other place had secured 50 per cent. As we debated last week when we were considering the material now on the website of the Electoral Commission for discussion, which will be sent out to stimulate interest and to explain the proposition before the voters on referendum day, that point is made in the material that it will be putting out.

Clearly the noble Lord’s amendment to adopt the supplement vote system will limit voters’ choice in expressing preferences for candidates standing at the election as they would be able to express a preference for one or two candidates only. The Government are not persuaded that the AV provisions in the Bill should limit the number of preferences that any voter may express at an election. We consider that not limiting the number of preferences that a voter may express under the alternative vote will enable MPs to be elected with a broader level of support, although I make the qualification that as you can cut off and do not need to vote for everyone, it will not necessarily mean that an MP will achieve 50 per cent.

As my noble friend Lord Strathclyde explained in Committee, the Government believe that the optional preferential form of the alternative vote is the right form of AV to be put before the people. For elections to the House of Commons, voters will be able to express preferences and should be able to express as many or as few preferences as they choose. They should not have their ability to express preferences constrained in the way proposed in the noble Lord’s amendment. The optional preference form of AV avoids voters being forced to vote positively for political parties that might be distasteful to them, such as those on the extremes of politics. There is no indication in the amendment about how in detail the supplementary vote system would work. The attraction of the Bill as it stands is that for all the arguments that might take place about how AV works, the Bill sets out that process in Clause 9 and Schedule 10. Questions about how AV works can be resolved by looking at the Bill. That would not be the case with the amendment, which lacks clarity. I therefore urge the noble Lord to withdraw it.

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[Lord Touhig]

My Lords, briefly, my Amendment 5B would leave out subsection (2) and prevent the AV referendum being held on the same day as the Welsh Assembly elections. As in other parts of the country, the people of Wales will face voter fatigue. On 3 March, as my noble friend Lord Howarth has mentioned, we have the referendum on more powers for the Welsh Assembly. That is very important; it could change the way in which the Assembly works in its relationship to the Government and Parliament and might have long-term implications for our constitution. On 5 May, we have the elections for the Welsh Assembly, and now the Government want to hold the AV referendum on that date as well.

It is with a heavy heart that I say to the Government that throughout this debate they have shown nothing but contempt for Wales and its people. Wales is to lose one-quarter of its parliamentary constituencies. Twenty per cent of the whole reduction in the number of parliamentary constituencies throughout Britain is expected to come from Wales. However, despite our debate on Wales, which some noble Lords said was the best debate we had in the House throughout this Bill, the Government were not prepared to move. I say to the noble Lords on the government Benches that Wales is not a colony run by governors-general. We are used, with the exception of the noble Lord, Lord Crickhowell, to Conservative Secretaries of State who do not represent Welsh seats sitting in London in government, but Wales is not a colony. We are part of the United Kingdom and a nation in our own right. We deserve to be treated better than this.

The Government have so far been unwilling to move. If they are not prepared to move on this matter, households in Wales will, over the next few months, face a deluge of material through their letter boxes—material saying yea or nay to more powers for the Welsh Assembly, material for the Assembly elections from all the parties and material saying yea or nay to AV. Our National Assembly is still young and still growing. It still has a long way to go to win the hearts and minds of the people of Wales and establish itself in the way that its Members would wish. However, its role may change even further after the referendum on 3 March. We should give the Welsh Assembly election the dignity and status it deserves. It should be held alone, without any other election that day.

What really annoys me about this whole issue is that the Conservatives do not support AV; the Prime Minister says that he will campaign against it. The Liberal Democrats do not support AV; their leader has described it as a “miserable little compromise”. Yet such is the Government’s opinion of Wales that they are prepared to treat its people in this most disrespectful manner and push through holding a referendum on AV on the same day as the election for the Welsh Assembly. I say to the noble Lords on the other side only that if they persist in this way, the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats will pay a heavy price come the next election—and they will certainly deserve to.

[Lord Foulkes of Cumnock]

My Lords, that is almost a reason not to support the amendment to which my noble friend Lord Touhig has spoken. I will say just a few words in support of Amendment 5D in my name and that of my noble friend Lord McAvoy. As my noble friend Lord Howarth said, the Scottish Parliament, by a substantial vote of 90 to 30, called on this Parliament and the Government not to hold the referendum on the same day as the elections to the Scottish Parliament. The Prime Minister Mr Cameron, when he was elected, spoke about an agenda of respect—of mutual respect—for the Scottish Parliament. However, one of the first things that the Government did was to ignore the views of the elected Scottish Parliament—the people who know best because they are there on the ground and will campaign in the election. That is one strong argument in favour of the amendment.

The second is that there will be two confusing campaigns. In a previous debate, when I indicated my total support for the sane and sensible remarks of the noble Lord, Lord Forsyth, even Members of this House drew a sharp intake of breath at that unusual alliance. That alliance will be there again—campaigning in Scotland against AV, which the noble Lord, Lord Forsyth, and I are both against. However, we will be campaigning on opposite sides in the Scottish parliamentary election, and that will cause confusion. I use the noble Lord, Lord Forsyth, as just one example. There will be many such people. Indeed, I previously said that the noble Lord, Lord Strathclyde—whom I remember saying he was against AV early in the debate—and I could be tramping the streets of Mauchline together on the same side in the referendum but on entirely different sides in the campaign for the Scottish Parliament. That will cause confusion. The posters will be confusing, as will the campaign with loudspeakers. I am not allowed to repeat arguments but, as I said previously, the two campaigns will cause confusion.

My last point is about the franchises. I have made the point before but will make it in a different form now because the Ministers have still not addressed it. There will be difficulty in dealing with two substantially different franchises when in Scotland, as my noble friends know, many Polish, German and French people will be entitled and able to vote in the Scottish Parliament election but not in the AV referendum. It will cause great confusion, which would not arise if the polls were not held on the same day. Respect for the views of the Scottish Parliament and the confusion caused by two campaigns and two franchises are very powerful arguments that should make the Government think again.

[Lord Dubs]

My Lords, my noble friend Lord Knight and others have indicated clearly why it is not appropriate to hold the referendum on the same day as these other elections. My amendment refers to Northern Ireland, and I briefly add a Northern Ireland dimension to further the arguments that have already been made. I remember, about 11 years ago, the referendum in Northern Ireland on the Good Friday agreement. It also took place in the Republic on the same day. The build-up to that referendum was enormous. Everyone in Northern Ireland knew what the issues were. A brochure on the Good Friday agreement had been put through their door. Friends of mine who lived there discussed at home how they would vote in the referendum. It was very clear. It was a single issue and one of crucial importance to the people of Northern Ireland.

I contrast that with what will happen this time. Very important elections for the Northern Ireland Assembly and for district councils are to take place in Northern Ireland. A great deal has happened since the last Assembly elections to the balance of power between the DUP and the Ulster Unionists and so on. These elections will be very important and rather different in tone, content and substance from a discussion on the voting system for general elections.

The political parties in Northern Ireland are also entirely different from those here. I am not sure where the Conservative Party and the Ulster Unionist Party will stand in the future. They were together at the previous general election; that agreement may or may not last into the future, but this is not the occasion to debate that bit of folly. The parties are different, so there is no carry-over from, say, Lib Dem policies to what will happen in the referendum.

As was mentioned earlier in a brief discussion between the noble Lord, Lord Alderdice, and the noble Lord, Lord Reid, the voting systems in Northern Ireland are different anyway. STV is used for both the Assembly elections and, as the noble Lord, Lord Alderdice, said, the district council elections. The starting point is very different, and that is what will be in people’s minds—not the election process for general elections. The possibility of confusion will be enormous. The Northern Ireland argument is at least as strong as, if not stronger than, the arguments that have been put forward by my noble friends. It will be confusing and I do not think we should do it.

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Moved by

[Lord Foulkes of Cumnock]

5F: Clause 4, page 2, line 40, at end insert—
“, but the count for the Scottish parliamentary general election shall not be delayed as a consequence of the combination of polls.”

[Lord Foulkes of Cumnock]

My Lords, I move this revised amendment in substitution for the original Amendment 5F. I thank the Clerks in the Public Bill Office for helping me to revise the amendment and bring it into order. It appears before noble Lords rather late in the day, but that would not have happened if there had been the normal period between Committee and Report stage. I hope that the House will forgive me for moving this revised amendment. I am most grateful to the Clerks for their speedy revision on my behalf.

Last Monday, following a report in the Scotland on Sunday, I said that there was great concern throughout Scotland that—as the noble Lord, Lord Forsyth, said earlier, and as my noble friend Lady Liddell of Coatdyke has also said—if the count is not taken immediately after the close of polls in the Scottish parliamentary election, some of the excitement, and a speedy follow-up with the announcement of the result, could be lost as a result. As noble Lords who have participated directly in elections will appreciate, the public’s interest in the election is important. It is an entirely separate issue, as the noble Lord, Lord Forsyth, pointed out, from the question of whether the count for the parliamentary election is held before the referendum count. We accept the sequence—the noble Lord, Lord Wallace, explained it on a previous occasion, although it is the subject of another amendment in this group—and we accept the explanation. The question relates not to the order in which the counts are taken but to their immediacy.

As noble Lords from Scotland will know, I am not one to kowtow to the Scottish media—far from it. There are some people in the Scottish media for whom I have great respect. There are others for whom I do not. Nevertheless, it is an important part of elections that, immediately after the casting of votes, people go to the count with adrenaline coursing wherever adrenaline courses. They take part in the count and see the way things are going, and the result—in particular in Scotland in the 73 first past the post constituencies. As the noble Lord, Lord Forsyth, rightly said, after this election there may not be a coalition that will take some time to form; there may be a clear result. The way that the polls are going, with a substantial lead for Labour, a clear result is becoming more likely. People will want to know how things are going in the constituencies.

This would not be an issue, but some—although not all—returning officers have said that it will be difficult to carry out the count immediately because the counters will be too tired. They may have been polling officers in polling stations before moving on to do the count. Of course, that problem can be dealt with if different people are used for the count. Fresh people can be brought in, if necessary, so that we get the result. The candidates, agents and supporters of the parties will stay up late into the night for the results to come through. It is part of the British and Scottish tradition that we see the results come through. The TV will cover it. It will get more people interested in the Scottish elections and make them more likely to take part in future.

[Lord Forsyth of Drumlean]

Perhaps I have misunderstood this. Obviously the noble Lord has studied it more carefully than I have. Perhaps he can explain why this could not be resolved simply by having two ballot boxes, one for MSPs and one for the referendum. Would that not resolve the problem of tiredness? I do not think that people will be waiting anxiously for the result of the poll on AV.

[Lord Foulkes of Cumnock]

That question was raised on a previous occasion in Committee. The Minister—I think it was the noble and learned Lord, Lord Wallace of Tankerness—said the problem was that some electors might inadvertently put a ballot paper for the election into the ballot box for the referendum. The noble Lord, Lord Forsyth, sighs and shrugs his shoulders, but that was the explanation given by the Minister. I agree that the first thing that needs to be done is the validation of ballot papers. However, once they have been validated, which should not take very long, the referendum ballot papers can then be put aside for whenever that count will take place, and the count can be started of all the ballot papers for the Scottish Parliament elections. I do not think that opening ballot boxes and verifying ballot papers will cause much delay. It will delay things a bit, but not as much as stopping the count altogether and starting the next day, which is what some returning officers have suggested.

[Lord Forsyth of Drumlean]

I return to the point about people putting ballot papers in the wrong boxes. Surely it is not beyond the wit of returning officers to organise a polling station in such a way that that is avoided.

[Lord Foulkes of Cumnock]

I agree with the noble Lord. I was going to say “my noble friend”: that is the way things are going. There are some strange bedfellows already in the coalition, but I am not suggesting that there should be any others. If the amendment is passed, accounting officers and returning officers are more likely to ensure that all the ballot papers go into the appropriate boxes. It will put greater pressure on them if, in the terms of my revised amendment,

“the count for the Scottish parliamentary general election shall not be delayed as a consequence of the combination of polls”.

If that is agreed by this House and by Parliament, that would put pressure on the returning officers to make sure that people cast their votes in the appropriate ballot boxes.

[Lord Kilclooney]

My Lords, if the count for the Scottish Parliament gets priority over the count for AV, does that mean that the results for AV in Scotland will be revealed much later than the results for AV in England?

[Lord Foulkes of Cumnock]

No. In England, Northern Ireland and Wales, the sequence is that the AV count will follow. The sequence is the same in each part of the United Kingdom. I propose not to change the sequence but to bring further forward the AV count in Scotland, because we will have the Scottish parliamentary election count earlier. If that takes place immediately, the AV count will be brought forward. This excellent amendment has that limited advantage as well. I am most grateful to the Public Bill Office for advising me. Strong views on this are held in Scotland. I know that the noble Lord, Lord Strathclyde, who is replying to this debate, takes as much interest in the Scottish parliamentary elections as I do. I have seen him at counts in Ayrshire on occasions. Usually I am smiling and he is not, but I am sure that he will not worry about that and will give the amendment sympathetic consideration.

[Lord Lipsey]

My Lords, my Amendment 35 in this group has much the same purpose, namely to deal with the worries that have been expressed in the Scottish press and in this House about the count in Scotland. It has had the effect of flushing out some reassurance. The Electoral Commission has publicly stated that instructions to the returning officer in Scotland will be that the count on the AV referendum is not to start until 4 pm. There may still be a case for putting this in the Bill. I look forward to the Minister’s response to this short debate.

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[Lord Strathclyde]

My Lords, different bodies have said different things on different occasions. We are entirely happy that we have the confidence of the Electoral Commission and other bodies to do it in this way.

The noble Lord, Lord Kilclooney, asked about later announcements—how they would be made across the United Kingdom and whether they would all be made at one point. I can confirm to the House that there will be one announcement for the whole of the United Kingdom. That is one of the reasons why the Electoral Commission is organising the counts.

Any provision that seeks to add specific provisions to the timing of the count may well be complex and would be apt to confuse administrators at this late stage. It is likely that any amendment would need to be replicated for each election on 5 May. We have a clear statement of government policy and the clear view of the Electoral Commission. I hope that that is sufficient for the noble Lord, Lord Foulkes, to withdraw his amendment and for the noble Lord, Lord Lipsey, not to move his.

[Lord Foulkes of Cumnock]

I have received the Minister’s response with mixed feelings. He prays in aid of Lord Gould—it was the noble Lord, Lord Martin, who mentioned Lord Gould—and I remind him that, although the noble Lord, Lord Tyler, was shaking his head, the noble Lord, Lord Forsyth, was right to say that Lord Gould recommended that the polls should be separate.

[Lord Martin of Springburn]

The person I referred to was not the noble Lord, Lord Gould; he was a Canadian gentleman. He certainly was not a Lord.

[Lord Foulkes of Cumnock]

I have a noble friend Lord Gould, whom I absolve of any responsibility for this.

Mr Gould, the Canadian, suggested that the elections should be separated. In fact, the Scottish Parliament took a decision to delay the local government elections for a whole year as a result of that and suddenly it finds the referendum spatchcocked in to create extra problems for it. Although extra problems will be created, they are not in any way as bad as the problems described by the noble Lord, Lord Martin, where the electronic counting came on top of the voting on two ballot papers, one of which was the most confusing I have ever seen in my lifetime—and I have seen ballot papers in the Soviet Union, the United States of America and elsewhere. It was a crazy ballot paper. I hope and expect that these ballot papers will be simpler and that the count can take place.

I am disappointed that the Minister still presses that the count should not be held overnight. I am worried that the chief counting officer will have responsibility for this. As I understand it, the chief counting officer is the chair of the Electoral Commission. What the noble Lord, Lord Martin, said about the Electoral Commission will be echoed by a number of Members in this Chamber. However, it has improved with the recent addition of political members and, I hope, will now be more sensitive.

Notwithstanding what the Minister has said, I hope that the chief counting officer and the chair of the Electoral Commission will have heard this debate loudly and clearly and will recognise the pressure to have the count overnight, not only from this House but also from all political parties in Scotland. Although I accept that, as the Minister said, it may not be best to have that written into the Bill, I hope that it will be taken into account—otherwise the chief counting officer will be even more unpopular in Scotland than Mr Alex Salmond. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment 5F withdrawn.