Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill

Lord Lipsey Excerpts

Tuesday 30th November 2010 Lords Chamber

The decision taken during the coalition talks was rushed. No one sat down and said, “Yes, we want a single-member constituency alternative vote system”. No one said, “Hang on a minute. From within the family of AV systems, which one should we select?”. The coalition just waved the matter through, perhaps on the basis of some recommendation by the Liberal Democrats, who in many areas have not fully considered all the implications of their proposal. I hope that we can change the recommendation in the Bill with the support of the Cross-Benchers, who should, I think, take a more dispassionate and independent view of what is in the best interests than the politicians might take in these matters. I hope that we can have this inquiry and that, as a result, a far more sensible and informed decision can be taken. I beg to move.

[Lord Lipsey]

My Lords, I think I noted a moment during my noble friend’s closing remarks when the eyes of the noble Lord, Lord McNally, turned to a closed position. I quite understand when it comes to the detail of voting systems that that is a tempting posture for any man of good sense to take. However, those of us who have devoted many years to the study of these subjects are of course more excited by them.

[Lord McNally]

My Lords, it has been a long-established practice in this House that Members occasionally close their eyes and lean back to the loudspeaker to concentrate more on the wisdom coming through it. I am shocked that the noble Lord, Lord Lipsey, is not aware of that.

[Lord Lipsey]

We should make sure that the noble Lord’s microphone is finely tuned, so that should some noises which indicated to the contrary emit from him, the whole House would be aware of them. I did not mean to criticise him, because it will be a long hard Bill and we all have to get our naps in when we can.

Turning to the amendment, I, as my noble friend knows, do not agree with him on which is the best of the different majoritarian systems proposed as alternatives to first past the post. I prefer the alternative vote; he prefers SV and the London alternative vote, which we will discuss the origins of in a minute. However, I most strongly agree with his fundamental point that this issue has never been looked at.

Noble Lords will remember that I was on the Jenkins committee which proposed AV as part of its solution. I have to say that we had bigger fish to fry and we never considered the difference between various AV systems. We considered SV, but only fairly cursorily. That was perfectly appropriate for a broad committee of inquiry trying to take us to square one in this reform process. It is not appropriate at a time when Parliament and your Lordships’ House are considering matters which can fundamentally affect—I do not exaggerate by saying that—the constitutional future of this country.

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[Lord Grocott]

I had expected the noble Lord to tell me that I was a constitutional Conservative, or some other such epithet. I think that on the previous occasion he described me as a Neanderthal; now I am dragging red herrings. I asked a fairly simple question—but I think that the House feels that it is an important one—regarding the integrity of the passionate commitment to a legislative referendum which, as I understand it, his party was opposed to in the coalition agreement.

[Lord Lipsey]

My Lords, during the past half hour I have felt as if I have strayed to the wrong end of the building as I see a lot of people who I still think of as Members of Parliament in the Commons making the same speeches as I have heard them make so many times in the House of Commons Chamber. They bear repetition and it has been a great pleasure to listen to them, but I doubt whether they will be the most effective at converting the Minister because he and his party are in favour of AV whereas recent speakers have made it very clear that they are not in favour of it, and they are perfectly entitled to hold that view. As a supporter of AV, I want to put the case for this amendment. However, I will not put the constitutional case, which the noble Lord, Lord Rooker, has put very well.

The bit of the speech of the noble Lord, Lord Rooker, that convinced me—I came into this debate with an open mind—was that he saw this measure as an alternative to thresholds. The House will debate thresholds later. However, when I hear first past the posters advocating the enormous benefit of thresholds, when they are in favour of a system whereby it does not matter what the turnout is or however low the share of the vote a Member has—if he gets one vote more than another Member, he is elected—I do not take the case for thresholds from them terribly seriously. However, there is a political danger for those of us who believe in AV that that plausible argument for thresholds will come through and will be passed, even in this House, will go down to the other end and will be backed by the Tories. At the end of the day, we will be fixed with a threshold. I am long enough in the tooth to remember what happened with George Cunningham’s threshold and the devolution legislation of the 1960s.

It seems to me that the better approach to the genuine problems raised by those who seek a threshold—what happens if there is, for example, a 3 per cent turnout—would be better dealt with by this amendment and by making the referendum not absolutely binding. That would put aside the threshold issue and leave us to get on with the referendum on a basis which, I hope, all sides could accept.

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[Lord Rooker]

At about 2 pm I was given notice about degrouping part of this group. Amendment 5 is mine. I was advised that Amendments 5, 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12, all of which contain specific dates, would be degrouped. They would come after Amendments 4, 6 and 13 which do not contain dates. I was advised to have the debate on that basis. I apologise for not being early enough in the day to give proper notice of that.

[Lord Lipsey]

I hope my noble friend Lord Foulkes will forgive me because I am going to say something very shocking—I agree with every word of the speech he has just delivered, although from a different perspective on electoral systems.

There is one thing at least that everybody in this House can agree on. The decision that will be made in the referendum—whenever it comes—is extremely important for our country. It is a small change that will make a big difference, for better or for worse. That has very important implications for how that decision is taken. It is extremely important that the British people are thoroughly engaged and take their decision after due consideration of all the facts. This is important not just to those who agree with me that the system should be changed but also to those who do not want the system changed. If you have a mucky referendum result, the issue will not go away—it will come up year after year and the referendum will not have succeeded, as many of us hope it will, in resolving the issue.

Making electoral change in democracies is very hard. According to research from the politics department at the University of Reading, there have been only six major changes in electoral systems in all the established democracies of the world in the past 25 years. The number of countries involved is only four, since the French went one way and back and the Italians went one way and back. It is very rare that a country chooses to change its electoral system. Winning referendums to change electoral systems is not easy either. I am optimistic that the form I favour will win, but I would not be so if I consulted the international form book.

My amendment, which backs up the amendment of my noble friend Lord Foulkes by leaving it to the Government to put in another date to replace the one which he is trying to get removed, would mean that there would be time for a proper debate. It would remove the debate from, let us face it, a rather small inner circle of people who up to now have been interested in the electoral system, and take it to the people for them to make their considered and revered decision. Most of that is probably common ground.

My noble friend Lord Foulkes talks for Scotland; I will talk for Wales, where I live. This is the political prospect facing Wales in the run-up to this election. We have a referendum in March on the legislative powers of the Welsh Assembly, an issue of great importance to many people in Wales. On 6 May, there will be, simultaneously, the elections for the Welsh Assembly—extremely important elections, closely fought, four parties engaged in much of Wales—plus local elections and, at the same time, you will have the campaign about this issue.

I got a feel for what it was like last Saturday because I went to my local Brecon and Radnorshire constituency Labour Party and spoke for AV. I must have been in reasonable form because I felt that I got a pretty sympathetic reaction. There was only one person opposed. The question came, however, of what they were going to do about it. One lady said, “I am not campaigning with the Lib-Dems”. She hated the Lib-Dem council and she was not going on to the streets—however convincing my words—to campaign. Parties form an informative function in our democracies as well as bringing voters out. People learn from those they know and trust locally as well as from their national newspapers, thank God. This lady will not be giving her take—which I hope would have been the take I gave in my speech—because she is not prepared to be knocking on doors at the same time and on the same side as the local Liberal Democrats, who she hates, who are local representatives of the coalition, which she also hates. This is a recipe for a blurred referendum, an uninformed referendum, a referendum where the people’s verdict will not ring as loudly as it could.

I fail to grasp the arguments that are used in favour of this coincidence of dates. The only one I have heard repeated is about cost. The cost of the referendum is £80 million. The additional cost of having them on separate days is said to be £15 million. Perhaps the Minister will confirm those figures. You would not mock £15 million; it is tempting to say that you cannot put a price on democracy, except I am an economist so I can put a price on democracy and anything else you want. Honestly, £15 million will not run the National Health Service for an hour. To take a fundamental decision about a referendum of this importance, of such fundamental impact on our democracy, on the basis of £15 million sounds most peculiar.

I am not naturally a suspicious man, but I suspect that the Lib-Dems have persuaded themselves they are more likely to win a referendum if it takes place on that date. I have done some work on this. I have consulted some of the leading psephologists in the country. There is no evidence of any kind for that proposition; the evidence is rather the other way. There is, for example, the argument that more people will vote in Scotland because it is being held jointly with the Assembly elections, and that they will be more likely to vote for change. YouGov polls have shown that support for AV in a referendum in Scotland is at precisely the same level as that in the rest of the country. There is no evidence for this motivating belief at all. It is not more likely that AV will win in May; my own judgment is that it is somewhat more likely that it will lose.

I am left with a vacuum. Here is a clear case of a democratic abuse which I am sure those on the Cross Benches will be very quick to pick up. Here is an argument from the Government in favour of what they are doing which, even by the standards of the many Governments of all complexions I have known over the years, seems to me extraordinarily thin.

Tonight we have a chance to break this, and we will have other chances in later amendments to the Bill. I hope your Lordships will do so by voting in favour of the amendments in this group.

[Lord Palmer]

My Lords, I certainly support this amendment as a resident of Scotland. I would love to know if anybody in this House properly understands the AV voting system. Of those of us who are elected hereditary Peers—and we have had several over the past 10 years—none of us seems to understand it. Possibly the Clerk of the Parliaments is the only person who does. I think that what the noble Lords, Lord Lipsey and Lord Foulkes, have said bears very serious consideration, bearing in mind the terrible problem we have in Scotland of voter apathy. This is a very important point, in my view.

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[Lord Lipsey]

I must have been much less clear than I normally am. I was arguing precisely the reverse of the case and, indeed, the case that I think he is about to argue—that with all these things, you will not get a better vote.

[Lord Deben]

I hesitate to disagree with the noble Lord in what he has said, but as I understood it he was lauding the fact that there would be a separate date for the referendum on the Assembly’s powers. He suggested that there should be another date for this referendum and there would of course be the date for the Welsh Assembly elections as well. Those are three dates.

As regards the comment about the unwillingness of people to go out to vote, if you have three opportunities to vote, you are likely to have low turnouts in all of them, which does not seem to be a very good idea. One has to face the fact that although we may be fascinated by this subject, it is not a subject which is the constant conversation at the Dog and Duck. I am afraid that it is not. I wish that it were. The noble Lord opposite suggested that we are in that sense anoraks. We are different because we find this all very interesting.

It hardly befits people who are in favour of AV. People will be asked a series of numbers to put down, As the noble Lord, Lord Lipsey, said, there will be complicated discussions about where you are on, say, numbers 5 and 6. For one then to say that it is too complicated for people to be able to decide yes or no on a simple ballot paper is really not a sensible argument. If we are talking about complication, it is quite complicated to decide about a regional list and a constituency member. But we seem to think that people can manage that on one occasion. We are merely asking that they may also manage a simple choice as to whether they want AV or not. If we cannot believe that people can do that, there is no case for AV whatever because it is so complicated that no one could possibly manage it at all. We have to be a little less condescending to the electorate. The big difficulty is not complication. It is the willingness to take part and to make people feel that it is worth doing. They are more likely to feel that it is worth doing if there are a good number of things to do on the same occasion and they are not spread out over time.

Some people make the argument that the referendum should be on the date of another election because they think that there are advantages. I do not think that there are any advantages either to my side or the other. I would be totally unable to decide, so I think that I am being entirely independent. But I have to say that if the noble Lord, Lord Lipsey, really thinks that £15 million is unimportant at a time when I am trying to justify very small amounts of money that have to be removed from people because of the situation we are in, I would not like to have to try to explain that in my former constituency of Suffolk Coastal or in any Welsh constituency. They would spend that £15 million somewhere else. I beg noble Lords not to accept what seems to be a superficial argument.

As to respect, what could be more respectful than saying to people when they vote for the excellent Scottish Parliament that they also have an opportunity to make a decision about the electoral system of the United Kingdom. That is very respectful. For the Scottish Parliament to believe that it is not respectful to ask two questions on the same day seems to be a definition of respect that has been surpassed in unsuitableness only by a former Member of the House of Commons creating a party after that name, which was also a misunderstanding of the meaning of the word.

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[Lord Strathclyde]

My Lords, I will come to the question of confusion in the polling booths in 2007 in a moment. The point is that, in principle, I do not believe that people will be confused by virtue of having to vote on different issues at the same time. On top of that, the referendum question—

[Lord Lipsey]

The noble Lord is about to move off the point, raised by my noble friend Lord Foulkes, that I want to follow up, so I am grateful to him for giving way. It is all very well to say that he got the figure of £30 million from his officials, but they previously gave a figure of £15 million. Therefore, could the noble Lord kindly put in the Library a full explanation of both figures and what they involve, so that the House can have a factual basis on which to make its judgments?

[Lord Strathclyde]

My Lords, I am happy to do whatever I can to bring clarity to this debate and I am happy to do what the noble Lord suggests. The saving has doubled because it is across all the polls on 5 May; £30 million is the net figure.

The referendum question is straightforward. It has been fully tested by the Electoral Commission and has been amended to incorporate its recommendations. The question will enable the electorate to understand the choice that they are being asked to make and to express their views clearly. Several noble Lords said that a national referendum will overshadow the devolved and local elections. However, having seen those elections, which noble Lords opposite experienced, I simply cannot imagine that that will be the case. There will be two different campaigns, run at different levels, over the run-up to 5 May. Given the important issues that are to be voted on at devolved and local levels, I do not see why those issues should be swept to one side simply because a national poll on a different issue will be held at the same time. I just do not believe it.

The noble Lord, Lord Foulkes, says that there will be confusion but there is no evidence for that. There will be a national campaign and I believe that this will increase the turnout. As far as being confused on the franchise, which the noble Lord raised, the Electoral Commission will make voting eligibility utterly clear in the information that it distributes. Furthermore, polling cards will be sent to every voter saying which polls they can vote in.