Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill

Lord Strathclyde Excerpts

Monday 20th December 2010 Lords Chamber

[Lord Foulkes of Cumnock]

My noble friend has had a lot more experience than I have. I accept his point in relation to drawing boundaries compared with the way we do it now, but if we pass the Bill and there are no hearings, I do not think I can be proud and pleased that we are doing it the best possible way. I am not saying that the US is perfect. There are other countries that can be prayed in aid.

We are pushing the Bill through. We have, in this clause, an Order in Council; some people outside believe that the Privy Council is some kind of democratic organisation, a bastion of democracy. My noble friend Lord Rooker will have been at many meetings of the Privy Council. I have only been at one, but it certainly did not seem to me to be any kind of bastion of democracy.

I am really concerned at the way the Bill is being pushed through without proper consideration. I say this honestly, and I know that a number of Conservative Members have heard me say it again and again: if the Bill goes through unamended in substance, I think that they are going to wake up, in a few months’ time and say, what on earth—I was going to say something else—have we let ourselves in for? I think that there will be some deep regret.

Finally, in relation to what we were discussing earlier—the electorate and whether we draw the boundaries based on those who are registered, or those who are eligible to vote—I can tell the noble Lords, Lord McNally and Lord Strathclyde, and the noble and learned Lord, Lord Wallace of Tankerness, that this morning, to be helpful, I put down an amendment to page 11, on the interpretation of the “electorate” for the purpose of the Bill, which would take account of that. This was just to show that on this side of the House, we can be helpful. I hope that, eventually, we will get some more help from the Government.

[Lord Strathclyde]

My Lords, this Bill is a vision of simplicity and clarity. It provides for a referendum on a voting system. If the answer is yes, it should apply at the next general election and there should be fewer MPs and different boundaries. That simplicity should be able to unite us all. Yet in the words of the noble and learned Lord, I am utterly bewildered by the arguments put forward by noble Lords opposite. They complain that there might be a low turnout yet they support amendments that are likely to make the turnout lower by not having the referendum on 5 May. My position is at least as arguable as the noble Lord’s.

The noble and learned Lord said, “Don't argue. We should trust the people”. I think “trust the people” is one of the most important and significant labels that we have in this country and indeed in western democracy. The noble Lord, Lord Foulkes, prayed in aid the western foundation for democracy. What is the western foundation for democracy if it is not to trust the people? Yet with every single amendment noble Lords are saying, “Don’t trust the people. They may not come out and vote. If they do come out and vote and they say yes they are probably wrong. Only we can decide”. What is even more bewildering is that the Labour Party voted one way in the House of Commons and another in this House. No wonder I am bewildered. What is happening is bewildering.

The charge is that we are bulldozing this Bill through, but we are about to start the seventh day in Committee and we have not yet agreed Clause 8. The House of Commons dealt with the Bill in five days in Committee. It had significant votes on every single aspect of the Bill at some stage. The Bill has been given more time and more consideration in both Houses than most of the Bills produced in the past 13 years.

[Lord Soley]

The noble Lord is labouring this for another reason. Does he bear in mind that his own Members in the House of Commons complained about lack of time? Not only did they complain about the lack of time, they also produced evidence from Conservative councils about lack of time. Does he also understand the crucial point here is that this is a constitutional Bill? We have a situation where a Government are changing the composition in terms of numbers of the House of Commons without either an independent assessment first or the agreement of all the parties. That is what makes the Bill much more serious than he is pretending at the moment.

[A noble Lord]

Name them.

[Lord Strathclyde]

My Lords, I am sure that some Conservatives oppose the Bill. Indeed, many oppose AV. But the noble Lord, Lord Soley, says that there is no agreement among the parties. Is that not partly why we are having a referendum? The fact is that the Labour Party is divided. The leader of the Labour Party says that he is in favour of AV and he has pledged his party to be in favour of AV yet we know that that there are many Labour politicians who are opposed to AV, like the noble Lord, Lord Foulkes.

[Lord Foulkes of Cumnock]

The Leader of the House says that he is not bulldozing this through, but he says that only in terms of time. He has accepted none of the amendments, many of them sensible. He shows no prospect of accepting any in the future. His leader is packing this House with 50 more coalition Peers to get this through. He calls them in from the hinterlands and backwoods to vote us down on every occasion. If the Leader of the House showed any flexibility or willingness to take on board some of the things that we said, I would take back what I said about bulldozing the Bill through.

[Lord Strathclyde]

We will have to agree to disagree on almost every single aspect of what the noble Lord, Lord Foulkes, said. We are not in favour of thresholds. We are in favour of having a referendum on 5 May. The noble Lord disagrees with us. There is no point in the noble Lord, Lord Campbell-Savours, shaking his head. He is not in favour of having a referendum on 5 May, which is why he and his party have consistently supported amendments which oppose that.

It is widely known what this clause does. It provides for when the alternative vote provisions will either take effect or be repealed, and it is carefully worked out what all the provisions do. Subsection (2) provides that if there are not more yes votes than no votes in the referendum, the Minister must make an order repealing the alternative vote provisions. The two policies are included in this Bill because they are both crucial issues relating to how people are elected to the other place. This referendum will, for the first time, give voters a say in how they elect their MPs and the boundary proposals will mean fairer and more equal constituency boundaries can be put in place for a general election in 2015. Both these policies went through another place with clear majorities, and I very much hope that this clause will stand part.

[Lord Campbell-Savours]

Does the noble Lord really believe that 13 per cent of the vote can be described as the will of the people?

[Lord Strathclyde]

I am afraid that I lost a long time ago where this 13 per cent figure came from. It might have come from the noble and learned Lord at some stage.

[Lord Falconer of Thoroton]

It came from my noble friend Lady Hayter, who is sadly not in her place, who proposed a 25 per cent threshold, which with extreme enthusiasm the noble Lord, Lord Strathclyde, rejected. When asked whether he was therefore happy that 13 per cent could lead to the change, he said, “Yes”. That is where it came from.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Strathclyde]

Are we not just building one hypothetical proposition onto another?

[Lord Falconer of Thoroton]

Thresholds deal only with a situation where the vote is that low. If it is higher than that, you never rely on the threshold.

[Lord Campbell-Savours]

The noble Lord says this is hypothetical. I have read out to the House a whole series of statistics from Manchester City Council showing that it is unlikely that it will be more than 13 per cent, based on the historic record of the elections in 2007. How can he call it hypothetical? That is what is going to happen.

[Lord Strathclyde]

My Lords, I really do not think so. All the evidence points to the fact that considerably more than 13 per cent of the people will vote because we are having a referendum on 5 May, when so many other elections are taking place across the United Kingdom. That is the point. It is not just a referendum in Manchester; it is right across the United Kingdom, where no doubt the turnout will be average. But we fully expect there to be a reasonable turnout.

Clause 8 agreed.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Bassam of Brighton]

My Lords, before we come to consider my noble friend’s amendment, I ought to advise the House that it is customary that we conclude our business at 10 pm, other than by agreement.

I was happy in discussions with the usual channels to agree to the House going until taxis. Taxis is commonly understood to be 10.40 pm. We are now at 11.10 pm and this would be an appropriate moment for the House to draw its proceedings to a conclusion, given the inclement weather, among other good reasons.

I do hope that is going to be the case, and I was rather looking to the government Benches to move that the House now be resumed. It would be very helpful to the House if the government Benches indicated exactly what they do intend, because there are many people at work this evening in the House and we have a number of Members here listening to the debate. The agreement was to taxis; we are now well past that point.

[The Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster (Lord Strathclyde)]

My Lords, we seem to be getting on very well. Let us just finish the clause.

[Lord Rooker]

My Lords, this is a fairly corrupt voting system. I am not going to go over the details of what we discussed in the earlier clauses; this amendment essentially deals with the second preference of the losing candidate.

We had a speech earlier on, which may have been from the noble Lord, Lord Lamont, but was certainly from the Conservative side, which quoted what Winston Churchill had said about the alternative vote and what made it a very false system—that the second preference of the voter who had voted for the least popular candidate was used to create the winner. On balance it looks like you are giving two votes to voters who choose the least popular candidate. You are not giving two votes to the voter who chooses the most popular candidate, or the second most popular candidate, but the voter who chooses the least popular candidate is effectively given two votes.

I do not think that is fair, and we have to address this issue of using AV, which the Lib Dems now appear to love. I have visions. I have been listening today to the debates, which will not get reported, but I cannot wait to watch the television studio performances in March, April and May of the leading lights of the coalition Government as these provisions are dissected by the Paxmans of this world. They are paying no attention to it now—and I am not complaining about that—but who, when it comes to the minutiae, will start to think back and say, “Oh, bloody hell, they raised this in the Lords and we never listened to what they were saying”.

On this one I am giving you another lifeboat; what to do with that least popular vote that looks unfair to the public. Why should someone have two votes? It is clear that the alternative vote can be used to ensure that every voter can influence the results in a way that is not possible under first past the post. I freely accept that it can be used. Under this Bill, however, it is not possible to claim that every voter will be able to do it because it is an optional system. You still have the problem of what you do at the end with the vote that gets transferred.