Queen’s Speech

Lord McAvoy Excerpts

Monday 1st June 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Rennard (LD)]

My Lords, the election results on 7 May 2015 felt for many of us like those of 1 May 1997 in reverse. However, what is consistent in our general elections is the lack of consistency between the votes cast and the number of MPs elected. This is not about unfairness to parties but about unfairness to voters, many of whom simply have not had their views properly represented as a result of the election.

Three weeks ago, the Conservative Party won just under 37% of the vote but 51% of the seats. The Labour Party won 30% of the vote and 36% of the seats and my party was reduced to 8% of the vote and only 1.2% of the seats. The lack of fairness and real democratic representation resulting from the recent election can perhaps best be seen in terms of the number of votes required to elect an MP from each party. On 7 May, it took 34,244 voters to elect a Conservative MP, 40,290 voters to elect a Labour MP, but 301,986 voters to elect each Lib Dem MP. The distortions from how people voted were even greater for other parties. It took 1,157,613 voters to elect a single Green MP and 3,881,129 voters to elect a UKIP MP. In contrast, it took only 25,972 voters to elect an SNP MP.

We heard much from the Conservatives in the election campaign about the threat of what they called the “undue influence” of the SNP but that influence now comes about because the electoral system rewarded a party that obtained 50% of the vote in Scotland with 95% of the seats in Scotland. This point was acknowledged by the noble Lord, Lord Forsyth, who is not in his place but who noted the problem without pointing to the obvious solution. The distortions produced by first past the post in Scotland will again, in my view, put in jeopardy the future of the United Kingdom.

[Lord McAvoy (Lab)]

Would the noble Lord care to remind us of the result of the referendum on the AV proportional system?

[Lord Rennard]

My Lords, one of the big problems was that noble Lords such as the noble Lord, Lord McAvoy, clearly did not understand that AV was not a proportional representation system at all; it was far from proportional representation. If politicians in other parties had had the courage to let voters choose between proportional representation and first past the post, there might well have been a very different outcome. Certainly, it was an option in the Labour Party’s 1997 manifesto, when Tony Blair secured a majority of 179 on the basis of that manifesto having a referendum on proportional representation. That should have happened.

This Government should now realise that achieving a majority in the Commons based on the support of less than 37% of the voters does not give them the right to rule as though the views of the 63% who did not support them are unimportant. We heard earlier from the noble Lord, Lord Dunlop, in an excellent maiden speech, about what he called fairness for England, but we heard nothing about fairness for voters. We also heard much from the Conservatives in the last Parliament about what they called “fair constituency boundaries”. The consequence of the successful amendment to the then Electoral Registration and Administration Bill which I tabled in the autumn of 2012, together with the noble Lords, Lord Hart of Chilton, Lord Wigley and Lord Kerr, was to prevent new boundaries that would have given an even greater unfair advantage to the Conservative Party coming into force in the recent election.

However, I doubt that many of the newly elected MPs realise that the legislation passed in 2011 means that they may never be able to fight those same constituencies again. Unless there is another Bill to prevent it, the size of the Commons will be reduced from 650 to 600 in time for the next election. The coming boundary review will be very disruptive because of the very narrow margin of only 5% allowed for any variation in the number of electors from the average set as a target. Some MPs may also be shocked to learn that these reviews will also take place every five years under the existing legislation, so that MPs might never fight the same constituency with the same boundaries on two occasions. Nor will those MPs know the boundaries of the constituencies that they may want to fight until well into the second half of each Parliament. The Political and Constitutional Reform Committee in the other place did an excellent job of showing how the boundary reviews could proceed on a much more sensible basis. The new Government’s response has been to abolish the committee.

In some of the first debates in which I participated in this place, I led for the Liberal Democrats on the then Political Parties, Elections and Referendums Bill in 2000. I warned then about the escalating arms race in party spending. On 3 April 2000, I said:

“In each of the 1974 elections the Conservative Party was calculated to have spent less than £100,000 on its national campaigns. By 1979, with the services for the first time of the noble Lord, Lord Saatchi, in charge of advertising, the Conservative Party is estimated to have spent £2 million … By 1983 the sum was £4 million; by 1987 it was £9 million; by 1992 it was £11 million; and by 1997 it was a staggering £28 million”.—[Official Report, 3/4/00; col. 1160.]

The failure of the last Labour Government to heed those warnings about party funding has now resulted in a far greater problem in which our democracy may quite possibly be considered to be “for sale”. The legislation that we approved in 2000 has clearly failed to control the arms race in party funding. In the year before the 2005 general election, the reported donations to the main parties amounted to £44 million. By 2010, the figure was £72 million, and this year it was over £100 million. That is a doubling in 10 years.

The proposal in the gracious Speech to limit trade union members making contributions without their express consent is long overdue. However, it must be part of a package that introduces a sensible cap on all donations, and allows all political parties to campaign without being in hock to the interests of the richest donors. Without that comprehensive package, British democracy may actually be sold off. We have an electoral system that is very far from one based on “fair votes”, and a party funding system which means that campaigns simply cannot be called a fair fight.

It is a cruel irony that the result of the most recent election is that those who have not been properly represented in the Commons will have to have their democratic voice heard here, in a Chamber without democratic mandate. In this House we have a duty to moderate the absolute power that this Government may try to exercise, and to ensure that constitutional legislation in the coming years has the interests of the voters—not any one political party—at its heart.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord McAvoy]

My Lords, I associate the Labour Benches with the tributes to the three maiden speakers today. They provided terrific entertainment. Great skill, expertise and commitment were shown by all three, and they were very much appreciated by the whole House.

Labour has committed to ensuring that the vow, as it has become known, is delivered in full, and that means keeping the Barnett formula alongside more powers to make the Scottish Parliament one of the most powerful devolved parliaments in the world. However, we cannot sit on the sidelines and allow the Conservative Government’s social security cuts to target the most vulnerable in our society and drive more children into poverty. Labour will seek to amend the Scotland Bill to give the Scottish Parliament the final say on welfare and benefits.

Labour amendments to the Scotland Bill would give the Scottish Parliament the power to top up UK benefits and create new benefits of Scotland’s own. Scotland would then have the powers to defend the vulnerable against Tory austerity while retaining the UK-wide pooling and sharing of resources offered by the Barnett formula. Labour’s proposals would therefore protect Scotland from Conservative welfare cuts so there could never be another bedroom tax in Scotland supported by the Liberals and the Conservatives. Labour’s proposals would also protect Scotland from any benefits cuts caused by a fall in Scottish funding, due, for example, to the collapse in the oil industry, the inevitable consequence of the nationalists’ plan for full fiscal autonomy. This will deliver the security of a UK pensions and benefits system plus the power for Scotland to top up UK benefits and create new benefits specific to Scotland because the Scottish Parliament would have the financial freedom to support this. If Scotland loses the pooling and sharing of resources across the UK—

[Lord Forsyth of Drumlean]

I know the hour is late, but could the noble Lord tell us where the money is coming from?

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord McAvoy]

It will be entirely a matter for the Scottish Parliament to raise the money. You ask a question, you get the answer. If Scotland lost that pooling, there would be an additional £7.6 billion gap in Scotland’s funding.

During the general election in Scotland, the SNP First Minister indicated that they wanted full fiscal autonomy and control of everything in Scotland. Then the penny dropped and it became that full fiscal autonomy would need to be negotiated over a period of years, so that cat is out of the bag.

[Lord Forsyth of Drumlean]

I thought the noble Lord was describing the Labour Party’s policy, but he seems to be articulating the SNP’s policy. He is not really explaining where the money would come from in order to provide these benefits, the protections, not having to pay the bedroom tax and the rest. We have just had an election campaign in which his party took a considerable defeat on its economic policy. How can he possibly advocate this?

[Lord McAvoy]

We have taken a defeat. The noble Lord, Lord Forsyth, indicated that we were defeated because of our economic policy. There were many reasons for our defeat, which we will deal with and hopefully fix in the future. The combination of the Barnett formula and the tax-raising powers of the Scottish Parliament will be entirely up to it. If it does not have the money to do these things, it will not do them. It is our policy to make sure that it has the choice to do so, and that is the difference.

Devolution is about all of the United Kingdom. The Labour Party and I endorse Ivan Lewis’s statement that there is a duty on all parties within the Stormont Parliament to come to a responsible arrangement. We urge them all to do so. We also urge the Government to play a part in bringing these folk together as well.

Labour supports measures to put Welsh devolution on a stronger statutory basis, as in Scotland. We agree with taking forward proposals from the Silk commission and extending the power the people of Wales have over their transport, elections and energy. Wales must not be unfairly disadvantaged by the Barnett formula. The previous Government cut the Welsh budget by £1.5 billion, so this Government must ensure a fair funding settlement for Wales by introducing a funding floor, and we are glad to hear that that is what they are proposing. The measures that are expected to be put into the Wales Bill transfer new powers to Wales by implementing the agreed settlement for Wales and handing over more responsibility to the Welsh Assembly.

I am trying to paint the picture that devolution is not just about Scotland. Scotland is naturally taking all the headlines at the moment, but for devolution to work it must work for the United Kingdom.

I shall deal with one or two things that cropped up in the debate. My noble and learned friend Lord Falconer of Thoroton cleared the noble Lord, Lord Dunlop, of any guilt concerning the poll tax. My view is that if somebody is in the Scotland Office, I believe in collective guilt, so with one bound he is not free. I am still waiting to hear a complete denial of that.

The noble and learned Lord, Lord Hope of Craighead, had a very lucid, shrewd perspective, urging the SNP to nominate. I thought it was a very useful contribution: a voice comes from the non-political world, urging the SNP to get involved. The noble Lord, Lord Forsyth of Drumlean, has made some credible criticisms of the Labour Party over the past few years. I am not saying that I accept them, but they are credible and must be answered. He has some questions to answer himself, for instance about the performance of his Prime Minister on the steps of Downing Street on the morning after the referendum, with his quite disgraceful party-political broadcast on English votes on English laws, thereby giving the Scottish National Party the justification for saying that all unionist parties lied to the people of Scotland to get their vote and then withdrew everything else for it. He altered at a stroke the outcome of that referendum. It was a defeat for the SNP, but Mr Cameron’s intervention helped to turn it into a victory for them. In addition, the Prime Minister compounded it by the scare tactics of using the SNP in England to get votes by frightening people in England about how Scotland was going to take over—Mr Miliband in Salmond’s pocket, and all the rest of it. Therefore if there is some reckoning to be had, the noble Lord, Lord Forsyth, should be knocking on the door of No. 10 and making his point of view heard. Knowing him as I do, he has probably been there already.

I also picked up on the issue of voting systems. I was quite surprised to hear my two noble friends Lady Adams of Craigielea and Lord Foulkes of Cumnock indicate, in all honesty, that perhaps a look should be taken at the voting systems. However, the votes study, which the noble Lord, Lord Flight, mentioned and my noble friend Lord Gordon of Strathblane analysed, does not give a clear picture that the problem would be solved by the introduction of the Liberals’ holy grail of proportional representation. My noble friend Lord Gordon destroyed that case—it is not a clear picture. We are all interested in tackling the problems; all the Liberals can talk about is proportional representation, which gets quite boring.

[Lord Foulkes of Cumnock]

I do not purport to speak for my noble friend Lady Adams, who is more than able to do that. However, all we said was that that matter should be looked at, and I am sure that even my noble friend on the Front Bench would not object to that.

[Lord McAvoy]

That is absolutely right, and that is the point I made: that both my noble friends were genuinely and honestly considering whether this is a problem. There is nothing wrong with that at all, and I go along with that.

I must deal with my friend with a small “f”, the noble Lord, Lord Sanderson of Bowden. Again, he was one of the few people not to say something during his speech that was said previously, and he indicated that as well. He may not know it, but he is a local hero in Rutherglen, Cambuslang and Halfway—he does know it—for his services to those areas in local government reorganisation in the 1990s.

I will quickly mention something the noble Lord, Lord Jopling, said when he seemed to warn the Labour Party about the constitutional danger of voting against the Government. I remind him that between 1997 and 2010 this House defeated the Labour Government over 500 times, so the lecture, if it was meant to be that, was a bit misplaced.

Finally, before I get accused of provoking people, the noble Lord, Lord Truscott, made a point about the £1,600 per head that Scotland gets. That is part of the metropolitan attitude that annoys people not just in Scotland but in Wales, the north, the north-west of England and elsewhere. If you took away the hidden government subsidy to London and the south-east from government bodies, contracts, employment and all the rest of it provided by the United Kingdom Government, there might be a better case for complaining about Scotland and elsewhere. However, there is a case for the decentralisation of England. Before I upset anybody else, I will close with that.