Elections Bill

Lord Liddle Excerpts

Lords Hansard - Part 1 & Committee stage
Wednesday 23rd March 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Liddle (Lab)]

I should confess to having been a supporter of electoral reform for many years—since the 1970s, when I was working for the Labour Government. The reason I became a supporter of electoral reform was that I felt our society was becoming very dysfunctional, our way of government was very dysfunction, and the Labour party was essentially two parties forced together into one and was not really working in the best interests of the country.

The essay question I would love to debate with the noble Lord, Lord Moore, and that has to be addressed, is this: in the post-war period, particularly given the troubles we have been through in the last 10 years, has Britain had a more satisfactory system of governance than Germany? Germany has been so successful, with its proportional representation and federal system—a system, incidentally, in which British advisers and British politicians played a very important part in ensuring in the democratic part of Germany after 1945. For me, that is the big essay question. I know what I think about it, but it would be worthy of debate.

However, we are not debating that general question this evening; we are debating the specifics of whether the supplementary vote system should be changed. I have been sitting for an hour and 43 minutes through this debate, and I should think that less than a third of it has addressed that specific point, and so I do not want to detain the Committee for long. I accept all the arguments that have been made about the undesirability of this proposal emerging at a very late stage in this Bill. I do not think changes in electoral systems should be introduced in an arbitrary way, or as my noble friend Lord Lipsey said, as Tony Crosland would have said, in a frivolous way; they ought to be seriously considered.

It is possible to have different electoral systems for different purposes; we do not have to have the same electoral system for everything. We now have a great variety of electoral systems. I am quite interested to know why the noble Lord, Lord True, thinks it is desirable to go back to first past the post for the Mayor of London elections but to retain the proportionally elected London Assembly. It seems to me that if, as a result of that action, the mayor’s political base is significantly lower than it is under the present system, then there is the possibility of real dysfunctional government when agreeing budgets and other questions where the London Assembly has a say. That is a very serious point.

I think that devolution has been a success, certainly in Scotland and Wales. I even think that what the noble Lord, Lord Kilclooney, said about Northern Ireland was very interesting. The success of devolution has depended on a proportional system, and on the additional member system in Scotland and Wales. Look at how support for devolution has grown, particularly in Wales, since it came about in the late 1990s. It would be difficult for the Government—even this Government—to try to abolish Welsh and Scottish devolution. One of the reasons it has such strong support is because it is seen to be very representative across the community. There is an understanding between Plaid Cymru and the Labour Party in Wales. Similarly, despite disliking the thought of an SNP Government, they do show that a proportional system enables change to happen. Labour showed great foresight in devolution, in agreeing to a proportional system. For that purpose, it has been very successful.

On the question of the supplementary vote, particularly for mayors, one of the arguments—as I remember it from when I was in No. 10—for introducing this arrangement was that we wanted to encourage the possibility of diverse and independent candidates coming forward who might challenge the established parties. That is quite a good argument.

[Lord Collins of Highbury (Lab)]

My noble friend did not say that at the time.

[Lord Liddle (Lab)]

It was said in the councils of which I was part that it would be a good idea to shake up conventional politics at the local level. That was the argument.

[Lord Grocott (Lab)]

I do not normally draw attention to this but my noble friend and I were both working in No. 10 at the same time. I would say two things: first, if that was ever discussed, I never heard it; and, secondly, if I had heard it, I would have been ferociously opposed to it.

[Lord Liddle (Lab)]

I have no doubt about that; that is why we would not have mentioned it to my noble friend. I am trying to make the point that there is an argument for something that opens up politics a bit more.

In the case of mayors, it is not like voting for an MP, where you are basically voting for who you want to be Prime Minister or which political party you support. It is very much about who you want to govern your local area, and they should have the widest possible base of support.

[Lord Murphy of Torfaen (Lab)]

My Lords, it is a great pleasure always to follow my noble friend Lord Liddle, even though I would not agree with an awful lot of what he said; it is a great pleasure to follow him, nevertheless.

I absolutely think that there is no case at the moment for changing the electoral system for police commissioners. We have no directly elected mayors in Wales but we have police commissioners. There is a very strong case for trying to increase the turnout and the interest in elections for police commissioners. I am reminded of the fact that, in the very first election for police commissioners in Gwent, my own county, there was one notorious ward in the city of Newport where not a single person turned up to vote—no one at all. We are deluded if we think that changing the electoral system will improve interest. We look forward with great interest to the Minister telling us why we need to change the system.

I refer now to Amendment 136, and the very interesting debate we have had on first past the post versus proportional representation. This is not a wide debate—it would take days, weeks and months to do that—but rather one on the nature of the amendment we have been asked to consider. The amendment says that the House of Commons should be elected by PR, full stop. My noble friend Lord Grocott, in a fine speech, referred to the fact that these things cannot be changed unless there is a referendum on them. It is a rather unusual argument to suggest that because we had one in 2011 it is no longer relevant. Of course it is relevant, in the sense that we should have another referendum if that is required and should not change things unless the people are asked.

In my political lifetime, I have fought 11 elections. I served as an elected representative for 49 years, 28 of them in the other place. The great advantage of our system is that there is a marvellous link between the elected representative and the people whom he or she represents. It is unique. I was always referred to as “my MP” or “our MP” in the possessive case because they thought that. The contrast, for example, with the change that took place when we altered our electoral system for the European Parliament was immense.

Of course, the constituencies for Europe were very large—grotesquely large in some senses—but I bet your bottom dollar that people knew who their Member of the European Parliament was. I bet your bottom dollar, too, that they did not when the new system came in. I did not know who mine was, and I was an MP for the area towards the end of that system. We completely lost that link between the elected representatives and the people whom they represented. That is the greatest aspect of our system, which we must not do away with.

Of course, we have different systems in different parts of the United Kingdom. I was partly instrumental in bringing about the system in Northern Ireland. The noble Lord, Lord Kilclooney, was right. He was very advanced and forward-looking when he made that change all those years ago. The only way that the partisanship in Northern Ireland could be destroyed was to have that system changed. It is very different there from the rest of the United Kingdom. It is not the same as Wales or Scotland or England because, by voting the way they do in Northern Ireland, they express a very different view from that expressed by the rest of the United Kingdom. That was a very significant change indeed. The Assembly is elected by STV; local government is elected by STV, but, of course, the MPs in the United Kingdom Parliament are elected by first past the post.

Scotland and Wales are different. They have top- up systems, known as AMSs. They are entirely incomprehensible to the voter. I entirely agree with the noble Lord, Lord Moore, that if the voter cannot understand what they are voting for, it is a very poor system. Indeed, in Wales, a commission has been set up to investigate changing to a different system, although I do not think they will change completely to first past the post. There is some merit in having different systems in different parts of the country—in Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland for their own assemblies—but they have to be comprehensible to the voters who use them. At the moment, that is not the case.

The biggest flaw, of course, in this amendment is that it does not seek proper legitimacy for the change. It is not just the 2011 referendum, but in every case—in Northern Ireland, Wales and Scotland—referendums were held for the new systems of government, and that included the way those Governments and Assemblies were elected in every single case. In Wales, of course, when they wanted extra powers some years ago, they went for another referendum to get that legitimacy which lies behind every change. So, for me, the great weakness of this amendment is not just that I do not agree with PR, but rather my belief that the way in which the change would be introduced has to be done by asking the people. If you ask the people, you must also say to them: “Do you understand what it is you are voting for?”

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord True (Con)]

My Lords, the noble Lord says let us have a look at 2016. The noble Lord also said not to pay any attention to the 2017 Conservative Party manifesto which is explicit on this point before the Committee. He wants to go back to 2016 for one thing and not back to 2017 for another. I think the noble Lord is rather picking and choosing his arguments. I wish to make progress—

[Lord Liddle (Lab)]

The Minister made an important point in his argument about the 2011 referendum. That was on first past the post for Westminster elections. Is the Government’s contention that they want to see first past the post for all elections in the UK, including the Scottish and Welsh Parliaments and the London Assembly? If that is so, why have they not introduced that in this Bill? Why pick on this particular electoral choice?

[Lord True (Con)]

My Lords, I am speaking to what is before the Committee at the moment. As far as the Scottish and Welsh elections are concerned, the noble Lord knows very well that there is devolution, which this Government respect.

I will respond to what the noble Lord said about the London Assembly. It involves rather more complex issues in terms of the Assembly’s potential make-up. We will be considering further how these principles could be applied to the London Assembly and perhaps promoting the use of first past the post, but we are open to representations on how that could be implemented. For the moment, the proposition is on these specific elections, against the background I have described: the Government committed to first past the post, the Elections Bill and the evidence of problems in 2021.

I turn to the broader amendments—which I must because they are before the Committee—from the noble Lord, Lord Wallace, and the noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Moulsecoomb. It is always the less popular parties which clamour for PR. They want to introduce a new clause abolishing the use of first past the post at parliamentary general elections held more than six months after the passage of the Bill. For the reasons I have already discussed, we cannot accept that. First past the post ensures a clear link between elected representatives and constituents in a manner that other voting systems do not. The noble Lord, Lord Murphy, was compelling on that point.

The new clause proposed by the noble Lord, Lord Wallace, is not clear even on what sort of electoral system he wants to introduce—that is the most bizarre thing about the amendment that he is asking your Lordships to agree with. He wants to get rid of the present system within two years, but he does not say what would happen if an election came along before that or in the period where there was uncertainty because a new system would require further primary legislation to enact it. There is a real risk, if we went down the road proposed by the noble Lord, that we might not have an established legal method as to how Members of the other place were elected. To be confronted with this question mark of an amendment when the Government are charged with being frivolous—I think the proponents of this amendment are frivolous. All we know from the noble Lord’s amendment is that he wants a system that would have had, over the past five parliamentary general elections, a mean average Gallagher proportionality index of less than 10—that will get them jumping around in the pubs in Saltaire and Moulsecoomb, I am sure.