Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill

Lord Howarth of Newport Excerpts

Monday 7th February 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Howarth of Newport]

My Lords, perhaps I may say a word about Amendment 14 in the name of my noble friend Lady Hayter of Kentish Town. Her amendment would provide that if there is not a majority in support of changing the electoral system,

“in any one of the four parts of the United Kingdom”,

the proposition should fall for the United Kingdom as a whole. I certainly hope that there is common ground around the House that we wish to strengthen the Union and bind the peoples of the four parts of the United Kingdom in one coherent political system and, as far as possible, in one political culture. It would be singularly unfortunate and divisive, were the referendum to be lost in one of the four parts—let us suppose, for example, that the people of Wales were to vote no but those of England, Scotland and Northern Ireland were to vote yes—if the people of England, Scotland and Northern Ireland were then to impose their preferred version of an electoral system on the people of Wales. I think that that would be divisive, traumatic and very unfortunate.

[Lord Tyler]

Is the noble Lord really saying that it would be divisive in those circumstances when it is clear that what would be much more divisive is that if one part of the United Kingdom was able to veto the clear majority of the decision of the rest of the United Kingdom? That is a complete nonsense.

[Lord Howarth of Newport]

The noble Lord sees things in a mirror glass world and he is entitled to look at them from that perspective. However, I invite him to consider what the impact on the sentiment would be in Wales if, having voted against the proposition that, say, the alternative vote system should be used, it was none the less to be imposed by the rest of the United Kingdom on the people of Wales. I think that that would create a grievance and that it would be an unhappy development. The amendment in the name of my noble friend is well worth the House meditating upon.

[Baroness Thornton]

My Lords, I do not intend to address Amendments 12 or 15. The noble Lord, Lord Elystan-Morgan, spoke in the earlier debate on Amendment A1 moved by my noble friend Lord Rooker, and I follow his lead in saying that we do not intend to pursue these amendments.

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Moved by

[Lord Howarth of Newport]

16B: Clause 9, page 6, line 40, leave out from “preference” to end of line 41

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[Lord Howarth of Newport]

My Lords, Amendments 16B, 16C, 16E and 16F are intended to substitute for the optional preference AV system the obligatory preference AV system. We touched upon this issue in an earlier debate, and on the first day in Committee my noble friend Lord Campbell-Savours spoke very powerfully indeed on this topic. I none the less ask your Lordships’ indulgence to permit me to say a very few words about this because it is an issue of prime importance in this Bill.

My amendments, if they are technically valid, would replace the Queensland system, which is what the Government are proposing in the Bill, with the Australian federal system, and there is a very important difference. If you are voting in an Australian federal election to the Australian House of Representatives, you are required to vote for all the candidates on the ballot paper in the order of your preference. If you fail to do so, your vote is invalid. In the optional preference version of AV that applies in Queensland, you do not need to vote in order of preference for all the candidates; you may, if you prefer, vote for only one candidate. It is quite instructive to see what has happened in Australia over the years. The system that now operates in Queensland was introduced in 1992. Initially, when that was done, very few voters failed to express all their preferences in rank order, as had been their tradition—only about 20 per cent, initially. However, as time went by, more and more of them realised that they did not need to cast all these preference votes and they stopped doing so in very considerable numbers.

The turning point came in 2001, as my noble friend Lord Campbell-Savours told the House in Committee, when the Australian Labor Party ran a “just one vote” campaign, because it had realised that it was more likely to be in the interests of their candidates that they should discourage people from exercising all the preferences that they might. To concentrate all their votes on one candidate is termed “plumping”, a term originally coined in 19th century England when elections to school boards were introduced. Under that system, an elector was permitted to exercise perhaps 20 votes—a vote for every member of the school board—but they were allowed to cast all their votes for the same candidate. The object of that provision was to try to ensure that representatives of Christian minorities were represented on school boards. However, what actually happened in practice, very interestingly, was that it was organised that people would plump or concentrate their votes in support of women candidates, because it was felt to be desirable that women should serve on school boards. That plumping was very beneficial to the feminist cause in the 1880s and thereabouts. The term has been borrowed in Queensland.

The result of the practice of plumping in Queensland, as we are told by the academic authority of Messrs Rallings and Thrasher from the University of Plymouth, is that in 2009, 63 per cent of those who turned out at the state elections in Queensland voted for just one candidate—and, in some constituencies, the proportion was as high as 73 per cent. Even when the political parties urged their supporters to use their preference votes in the manner associated with AV, they did so decreasingly. For example, the Greens urged their voters to exercise all preference votes, and to exercise their second preference in support of Labor, but very large numbers—46 per cent—of those who gave their first preference to the Greens did not do so; they made no other choice. We have seen the same effect in the London mayoral elections, where there is a modified version of AV in the supplementary vote system. A significant percentage—perhaps one in five voters—vote for only one candidate.

I am not a supporter of AV, but if the proponents of AV want to see the benefits that they profess that AV would confer, I suggest that they would do better to have the proper AV system—the obligatory preference system—rather than the one that is being proposed in this Bill. If we have only optional preference voting under AV in this country, it will rapidly turn into a pretty close replica of the first past the post system. People will scratch their heads and ask why on earth they have been through all this palaver, why we have had a referendum, and why—if they did so—they have voted for an alternative vote system that turns out to be remarkably similar to the first past the post system that they have rejected. This needs very careful thought, and it is not too late for the Government to give it that thought. I beg to move.

[Lord Wallace of Tankerness]

My Lords, the amendment moved by the noble Lord, Lord Howarth of Newport, would provide that, under the alternative vote system, voters would be required to express a preference for every candidate standing at the election. As he indicated in moving his amendment, we had some debate on a related issue earlier in the evening. In the Bill as drafted, by contrast, voters may express a preference for as few or as many candidates as they wish—indeed, as the noble Lord, Lord Foulkes, observed, even just for one. We believe that this approach gives maximum choice to voters. We would not support a system where voters were required to express preferences for all the candidates standing at the election.

In Committee, my noble friend the Leader of the House explained that the Government believe that the optional preferential form of the alternative vote system is the right form of AV to be put before the people. There is a genuine issue here and a genuine debate, but we believe that for elections to the other place, if voters are to be able to express preferences, it is only right that they should be able to express as many or as few preferences as they choose; their ability to limit their preferences should not be constrained in the way that the noble Lord suggests.

Furthermore, the optional preferential form of the alternative vote avoids putting voters in the position where they are obliged to vote positively and to give a preference for political parties that may be wholly distasteful to them, such as those on the extremes of politics. Indeed, it is not impossible that people might be dissuaded from casting a vote at all if they felt that they had to go to the ballot box and put a number beside a party that they found extremely abhorrent. That would be the opposite of what those who support the alternative vote would say is the aim of using it as the system for electing Members to the House of Commons.

The noble Lord, Lord Howarth, mentioned Australia. In those elections where a compulsory form of AV is used, voters must indicate an order of preference for every candidate on the ballot paper, as he described, in order for their vote to be valid at all. The noble Lord’s amendment does not specify what would happen if a voter did not express a preference for all candidates. Would that vote be declared invalid? It is not clear what would happen in those circumstances. There is a danger, of course, that it could risk disfranchising voters who did not wish to express a preference for all candidates standing at the election. Against that background, I urge the noble Lord to withdraw the amendment.

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[Lord Wallace of Tankerness]

The noble Lord, Lord Campbell-Savours, says from a sedentary position that it is right. Be that as it may, the noble Lord, Lord Rooker, prefaced his remarks by saying that he did not support the compulsory system and preferred the optional preferential system. If we believe that that is a better system than the compulsory system, I think that that is what we should stick with. If it is the case that there is not another national legislature that does it, so be it—we are devising a system for the House of Commons.

[Lord Howarth of Newport]

My Lords, I think that it is clearly implicit in my amendments that, if people did not use all their preferences, their vote would be invalid, as is the case in federal elections in Australia. The noble and learned Lord rejects what I suggest; be it on his own head. If Ministers in the Government wish to make a botch of their attempt at electoral reform, so be it. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment 16B withdrawn.