Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill

Lord Hamilton of Epsom Excerpts

Wednesday 8th December 2010 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hamilton of Epsom]

My Lords, I remember the words of the noble Lord, Lord Snape, in an earlier debate when he said, “If it’s not broke, don’t break it”. That seems to fit most of the prejudices with which I approach politics. But I think we should look again at the question of voting on Thursdays. That was set up in an age when people did not move very much. We are now dealing with a much more mobile population and people who travel all over the country. How many of us have canvassed on election day, knocking on doors to find that somebody has travelled the length of the country and is sitting in some city a very long way away from where they can vote? There are arguments for moving the date of an election to the weekend because it is much more likely that people would then be at home. This is something that needs consideration. As the noble Lord, Lord Snape, pointed out, the Europeans on the whole vote on Sundays and that seems to be eminently sensible. This has a degree of merit and should be seriously considered because the habits of people are changing.

A noble friend said to me when I was considering supporting this amendment that we now have postal voting and so therefore this becomes less of a problem. I am not certain about that. Postal voting has opened up enormous opportunities for fraud and it seems to be possible to create electors in inordinately large numbers who do not actually exist. There is something to be said for restraining the growth in postal voting and possibly considering moving the election day to the weekend when there will be more people at home and in a position to vote.

[Lord Wills]

My Lords, I am very pleased to follow the remarks of the noble Lord, Lord Hamilton, on this and to support the amendment tabled by my noble friend Lord Snape. Both noble Lords are right to draw attention to the fact that in the past there has been a great flexibility on election day and the changing circumstances of the British people now suggest that we ought to be looking at this again. That is why the previous Government held a consultation on this issue. That consultation, for which I was the Minister responsible, proved a very interesting one. There was a mixed response, as one would expect. There were a lot of voices in favour of moving election day. There were equally, I think it is fair to say, a lot of voices very much opposed to it. But what it showed was that there are a great number of issues that have to be taken into account on this: participation in elections, which is a fundamental of our democracy, questions of faith, the patterns of the working day for the great majority of the British electorate and the cost of shifting the election day.

These are complex issues. In the end the previous Government took the view that it was right that the British people should have a decisive say in that. It is their democracy. It is not for us but for them to decide what day would be most convenient, bearing in mind all those other considerations that both noble Lords have alluded to and which the consultation highlighted. We thought in Government that the best way of allowing the British people to have their say was through a citizens’ summit, as my noble friend Lord Snape has reminded us. I still think that probably is the best way but I realise that that is not on offer from the Government. I regret that, but we have a unique opportunity with a referendum. It is the next best thing and I urge the Government to consider this. Both noble Lords have made powerful cases for the consideration of this. It is not a question of deciding to shift it from Thursday. This is really about giving the British people the right to decide. I have heard the Leader of the House say many times that the British people are wise and sagacious enough to make these decisions for themselves. Those on both sides of the debate will put their arguments forward but then the British people in their wisdom will decide. He has said that many times in our debates on this Bill already so I urge him to follow his own logic and accept the amendment put forward by my noble friend Lord Snape and at least put it to the British people to decide.

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[Lord Tyler]

My Lords, I am always struck by the eloquence of the noble Lord, Lord Snape, but what might happen in such a constituency—not his former constituency, of course: nor, I hope, in mine—if the majority of people who performed their democratic function of going to the polling station wrote on the ballot paper, “None of the above”.?

[Lord Hamilton of Epsom]

My Lords, I very much support the noble Lord, Lord Stoddart: and the noble Lord, Lord Rooker, on his previous interventions. We are greatly reluctant about compulsory voting, which has to be right. People have to have the option of not voting at all. I am afraid that on this issue I am not with the noble Lord, Lord Snape, as I was on his previous amendment, but I was rather attracted by his suggestion of incentives to vote, rather than doing what the Australians always purport to do, which is to fine people who do not vote. I do not quite know how many Australians get fined for not voting, but I suspect that it is not a very efficient system.

However, an incentive to enable people to vote strikes me as rather attractive. An incentive that takes the form of, say, a voucher to knock something off your rates or something of that sort, which you are given in the polling station, would encourage people to vote in person. That would get us away from the problem of the growing number of postal votes and all the fraud involved in that, which was alluded to in an earlier discussion.

[Lord Norton of Louth]

My Lords, I shall not repeat my earlier points about whether it should be included in the Bill, which I will take as given. I will briefly address the substance of the argument. I acknowledge that there are quite substantial arguments for compulsory voting, but my view is very much along the lines advanced by the noble Lord, Lord Stoddart of Swindon. Voting should be regarded as a civic duty. It should not be a statutory obligation. If people do not wish to vote, we should not force them to vote. I am also a bit wary of the argument that is sometimes used in favour of compulsory voting: that there is an increasing disaffection with politics, which is why people are not voting, so there should be compulsory voting.

I do not find particularly attractive the argument that we should say to people, “Look, you are being put off politics, therefore we are going to force you to vote”. That would increase their disaffection rather than ameliorate it. I do not find the argument persuasive, although I accept that there are arguments on the other side. I rather warm to the thinking advanced about incentives to get people to the polling station. That is well worth exploring, but with the obvious proviso of “not in this Bill”.

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[Lord Hamilton of Epsom]

My Lords, I failed to contribute to the Second Reading debate on this Bill and have not had the opportunity to spell out the reasons why I am so deeply unhappy about Part 1. Unlike the noble Lords, Lord Campbell-Savours and Lord Lipsey, I do not believe in any form of proportional representation. The first-past-the-post system has served us extremely well. I do not think that we should move away from it. The problem is that if you believe in any form of proportional representation, you have to believe, like the noble Lord, Lord Campbell-Savours, in coalition government. I know that we have such a Government, but I do not think that that is an overwhelming reason to change the electoral system, which would make it more likely that we would have coalition government in perpetuity.

Surely, the problems of coalition government are being pointed out very well. For example, one could think of the problems that the Liberal Democrats have on the whole question of student fees. The press say to the Liberal Democrats, “Ah, it was a commitment in your manifesto that you would stop student fees rising. Why aren’t you voting against the rises in student fees?”. But the whole point of coalition government is that the coalition partners bin all their manifesto commitments. That is what comes from coalition government. You end up not with any precise party that you voted for with its commitments in its manifesto; you end up with a mish-mash and certain commitments are dropped. I as a Conservative am rather unhappy that the coalition Government seem to have dropped all the commitments that we had in opposition. I think I remember the Prime Minister saying when he was in opposition that he regarded reform of your Lordships’ House as a third-Parliament issue. Now we have reform of the House of Lords trundling down the road as fast as it can be organised.

[Lord Garel-Jones]

Would my noble friend be prepared to go a little further and say that one of the inevitable consequences of a fully proportional system is that the Government and the programme that emerges thereafter is, by definition, a programme that no one has voted for?

[Lord Hamilton of Epsom]

I totally agree with my noble friend. Indeed, you could argue that the coalition agreement drawn up immediately after the election was something that no one voted for. I thought that the Conservative commitment was to repatriating powers from Europe, but nothing much seems to have happened on that front, and I thought that we were going to repeal human rights legislation. A number of things have gone from the Conservative manifesto. I am rather surprised that the Liberal Democrats have been attacked in the way that they have been for binning commitments in their manifesto. That comes with coalition. If the country votes for coalition, which basically is what it has done, it must expect to end up with a Government who produce a number of policies for which no one has voted. That is why I am extremely unhappy about changing our electoral system to make coalition government more likely.

[Lord Stoddart of Swindon]

I agree absolutely with the noble Lord that coalitions are likely to arise almost inevitably from a proportional system. But I was interested to hear what he said about the coalition. In the light of his remarks, does he agree that what is happening is that the tail is wagging the dog?

[Lord Hamilton of Epsom]

Indeed, that is another argument. I have been agreeably surprised by the achievements of this coalition Government in terms of the fact that they seem to have grasped many issues, such as welfare reform and reforms in education which former Prime Minister Tony Blair used to dream about and which have been long overdue. I am a great supporter of much of what the coalition is doing, but that does not mean that I want to see coalition governments in perpetuity from hereon.

I was very interested in the remarks made by the noble Lord, Lord Campbell-Savours, about the YouGov poll on the alternative vote. In fact, there was a bare majority from a completely ill informed electorate—in fact, there was a no vote by 1 per cent. But when the implications of the alternative vote were spelt out a 33 per cent no vote went up to 38 per cent. I would say to any Conservative that that is very significant indeed. If you have time to explain to people how perfectly ghastly the alternative vote is, the chances of defeating it are greater. Under this Bill, however, we are insisting on cramming the referendum together with the local elections, a point we debated earlier on in this clause.

It worries me tremendously that, if we are not careful, this thing will get muddled through with the local elections. The issues will not be debated properly in the country because people will be much more concerned about whether they are winning or losing in the local elections, and they are not going to come to understand the appalling difficulties that the whole business of an alternative vote brings into the argument. I am deeply apprehensive about it. I keep hearing from people on my side of the House that they support the Bill and think it is a frightfully good idea. They all say, “Don’t worry. We are going to defeat it in the referendum”. But I notice that a lot of them are the same people who told me that we would get a commanding and overall majority at the general election.

None of us knows what the outcome of any referendum will be. It cannot be forecast with any accuracy because many other factors come into play. I do not have that deep feeling of assurance that we are going to defeat the idea of an alternative vote without any difficulty. Things could very easily go wrong, and if they do, I believe that it will put the Conservative Party at a permanent disadvantage.

[Lord Elystan-Morgan]

My Lords, the arguments about AV, SV and STV are fascinating arguments that embrace ethics, philosophy and, one might almost say, theology. But the House will be relieved to hear that what I want to raise is a very limited point which I need only mention in limine, as it were. It relates to the Welsh translation of the question that will be put on the AV ballot paper. The noble and learned Lord, Lord Morris of Aberavon, and I have already raised this matter with the department, but it seems that it may be too late for anything to be done about it. The reason, as I understand it, is that time is of the essence and that it would involve a long exercise in ping-pong between the Electoral Commission, the Welsh Language Board and possibly other bodies which might take many months. Possibly that is the reason why the amendment moved by the noble Lord, Lord Foulkes, did not go any further than it did.

Be that as it may, perhaps I may point out that the translation that appears in the Bill is one that it would be wholly impossible for the ordinary, intelligent Welsh speaker to understand. I do not doubt that a panel of distinguished academics could justify many parts of it, but in total it is as obscure as ancient Sanskrit to anyone who speaks Welsh from day to day. I speak as one of the half a dozen Members of this House for whom Welsh is their first language, and I must say that it beats me that anyone could have arrived at such an agglomeration of so many different facets.

First, the term, “the UK” is perfectly understandable to anyone living in the United Kingdom, the full term in Welsh, “Deyrnas Unedig”, is also well understood, but the initials “DU” have no meaning whatever. “Duw” means “almighty God” in Welsh. I am sure that many people will wonder why there is a reference to the Almighty in this translation. The next matter is the first past the post system, which is referred to in the English version. Whether there is an aversion to taking a reference from the field of horse racing, I know not. It may be something that Non-Conformists would reject totally as a matter of instinct. But in Welsh it reads as, “y cyntaf i’r felin”. There is a saying in Welsh,

“Y cyntaf i’r felin gaeth falu”.

My noble friend opposite is nodding his head. It means, “The first to the mill shall grind”. If one wanted to translate that back into English, one might say something like, “The early bird catches the worm”, which would be more understandable. But it has nothing at all to do with first past the post. Someone looking at the English version might ask, “What has this to do with mills and grinding?”.

Then we have, “pleidlais amgen”, which translates to “the alternative vote”. I am no grammarian, but I think I am right in saying that the word “amgen” came into the Welsh language 20 or 30 years ago. Strictly it means “an alternative”, but it came into the language in the context of alternative energy, “ynni amgen”. Again, people will ask, “What has this to do with energy?”.

The totality of this is utterly grotesque and impossible. It may be that nothing can be done about it, but it does no great service to the Welsh language, it does no great service to those whose first language is Welsh, and indeed it is less than worthy of whoever was responsible for the drafting of this part of the Bill.