Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill

Lord Liddle Excerpts

Monday 6th December 2010 Lords Chamber

[Lord Foulkes of Cumnock]

I am grateful for that clarification and I apologise if I have misrepresented the noble Lord. I hope he will then agree with this practical argument. We should look towards first past the post continuing for the House of Commons. If we have elections to the House of Lords, that is where we should have some proportional system. If the Commons continues, as it will, to form the Government—in other words, once the Commons is elected that is where the Government come from—stability is important. Apart from the current aberration of the coalition, first past the post normally produces stability. It produces one party in power for a period of time—five, 10 or 15 years. That gives some stability, which, in government, is important.

[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.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Liddle]

I was very tempted by the amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Skidelsky, because I should like to see a wide-ranging debate about all forms of electoral reform in this country. I am very tempted indeed by the amendments of my noble friend Lord Rooker, which go for a two-party arrangement, first seeking the people’s opinion on whether in principle they want change and then asking them what system in particular they want. That is an amendment that deserves the support of many people on our side of the Chamber.

So far as concerns the general question of why we need a debate on this issue, I think that we should set aside questions of party advantage. I know that people will laugh at that but I think that we should do so and ask ourselves whether the present system has legitimacy. The first general election in which I canvassed and campaigned was the 1964 general election, when the Labour Party and the Conservative Party got more than 85 per cent of the votes cast. The two parties were overwhelmingly dominant in our politics. But when you look at the result of the last two general elections—2010 and 2005—you see that the two major parties won only about two-thirds, 65 per cent, of the votes cast. This is not legitimate. You cannot have a system, which is an alleged two-party system, in which the voice of 35 per cent of the electorate is not being effectively heard. That is why we have to have a big debate in our country about electoral reform.

There are many arguments made against electoral reform, such as that it will result in weak government because there have to be coalitions. However, although I do not agree with the Conservative/Lib Dem coalition, I do not believe that it is a weak Government. I think it is quite a decisive Government who are getting on with doing a lot of things I do not particularly like. It blows a hole, however, in one of the arguments against proportional representation, which is that it would result in a coalition politics that would mean that nothing would ever get done.

There is a strong argument to be made for the sake of the country. The late Lord Jenkins, of whom I was a great admirer, attached a lot of importance to the belief, based on his experience in the 1980s, that it was a very bad situation indeed when there were no Conservatives in the county of Durham and no Labour people in the county of Surrey. What you got was a polarisation of the country when in fact what you want is a system of representation where there are Conservatives who have to represent the deprived areas of the north of England and there are Labour MPs who represent the more affluent districts. That would be good for the country and would produce a more legitimate system. That is why I support electoral reform; why I am tempted by the amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Skidelsky, but am not going to support it; why I would definitely support the amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Rooker; and why I very much support the principle of a referendum on some change.

[Lord Sewel]

My Lords, in a previous existence I used to teach something called social science research methods, which was basically reduced in large part to constructing questionnaires and getting undergraduates to go out and ask people in various ways which way they would vote if there was a general election tomorrow. There never was a general election tomorrow, so the results were always slightly erroneous and had no predictive basis whatsoever.

The amendment in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Owen, says:

“At present, the UK uses the ‘first past the post’ system to elect MPs to the House of Commons”.

Then we get this wonderful sentence:

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

Let us note the two words “proposed” and “changed”. You are actually sensitising the respondent to the desired response, because everyone accepts on that basis that it is proposed, so it is a good thing: and “change”, as we know, is a very powerful word—think of Barack Obama. It is a false question in terms of equal balance because you are making clear the direction of the desired response just by using those two words: “proposed” and “changed”.

We then get on to the more substantive issue of linking the first past the post system, which is actually undefined, with the alternative vote system. The one thing that we have learnt during the debates and discussions on this is that we do not know whether there is “the” alternative vote system. Very different types of systems claim to be the alternative vote system, but there is not one “the” alternative vote system.