Elections Bill

Lord Stunell Excerpts

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

[Lord Stunell (LD)]

My Lords, I want to make a brief contribution on Amendment 144C in the name of my noble friend Lord Shipley, relating to proportional representation in local government. My noble friend Lord Scriven, the noble Lord, Lord Murphy, and others have spoken on it as well. I want to pick up one remark made by the noble Baroness, Lady Noakes, that the problem with, for instance, the European elections and the nature of the voting system for them was that those elected were too distant from the electors. I will make a couple of points relating to local government, which I think might be relevant.

Last May, in the local elections, 3.2 million people voted Conservative but still found themselves in a local authority that had no Conservative councillors at all; 40,000 of those were in Manchester, the neighbouring authority to my authority of Stockport. Those 40,000 people voted Conservative, but they did not get one Conservative councillor elected in Manchester. In fact, there has not been a Conservative elected to Manchester City Council since 1992. There are actually a large number of local authorities where one or the other of the two big parties does not have any representatives at all in that area.

The Conservatives have no councillors elected in Newcastle, Norwich, Newham, Oxford or Cambridge. There is a list, but I will not go on any further than that. Conversely, of course, there are plenty of Labour voters who are not represented at all by a councillor in the authority in which they reside: 5.8 million Labour votes were cast for candidates in local authorities where no Labour councillor at all was elected. When it comes to being distant from the electors, we need to bear in mind the very polarising effect of first past the post in quite a number of our local authorities.

One place where Labour has no councillors is the Royal Borough of Kingston upon Thames in London. Labour had 36% of the national share of the vote at the last round of elections but no Labour councillor was elected. That was a Liberal Democrat stronghold, but in Harrogate, 23.4% of people voted for Labour candidates, but none was elected. That is a Conservative stronghold.

It is not just whether people have representation at all in a local authority; it is whether they have appropriate representation, depending on the strength of the electorate who supported them. I picked out just one local authority—not completely at random—the London Borough of Richmond upon Thames, where in 2018, 78,491 votes were cast for Conservative candidates, and that resulted in the election of 11 councillors. In fact, they lost 28 seats as a result of that. They should, in fact, have had 20 seats, had there been a more proportional system.

I will not detain the Committee any further on that but point out simply that this amendment would introduce a change to local government in England which would be very much to the benefit of local democracy and the fair representation of people. It would give people a voice or a channel of communication, at least, for their point of view in practically every town hall in the country.

On the much wider debate that has opened up, I say simply to the noble Lord, Lord Grocott, that in 2010, when he stood for election on the Labour manifesto, he stood on a commitment to introduce the alternative vote. Indeed, I remember, as one of those who took part in the negotiations with the other parties in the start-up of the coalition Government, having a discussion with senior members of his party about that proposition.

[Lord Grocott (Lab)]

If I heard aright, the noble Lord said that I stood in the election of 2010, but I am afraid that I was in the House of Lords by that stage.

[Lord Stunell (LD)]

How very wise the noble Lord was to miss that particular commitment, is all I can say. A number of his colleagues were blessed by that promise.

To return to the substance of Clause 11 and the amendments moved by the noble Lord, Lord True, I remind the Committee that the Law Commission said that there should be a comprehensive overhaul of election legislation brought forward in a proper Bill. The Committee on Standards in Public Life produced 47 recommendations for change. Both those ideas have been rejected by the Government on the grounds that there has not been enough time, it needs more consideration and there would have to be wide consultation before they could be brought in. Finding that this proposition has been dumped into the Bill is inconsistent with that view against having a comprehensive reform of electoral law, along the basis that independent sources strongly recommend.

I was impressed by what the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman, said about the views of the Mayor of Greater Manchester and his reasoning. That struck me, as someone who lives in the area over which the mayor casts his eye, more powerfully than it probably did other noble Lords. There is no element of self-interest in what the Mayor of Greater Manchester said. It grieves me to say that in the May mayoral election, Andy Burnham, the mayor, won a plurality of votes in every ward in every borough in Greater Manchester, including all those which at the same time returned Tory, Liberal Democrat and, in one or two cases, independent councillors. There was a clear view from the electorate that they wanted this personality as the Mayor of Greater Manchester. Whether we like to believe it or not, it clearly transcended people’s normal political convictions to say, “In this case, I am voting for this person.” That characteristic of the mayoral election frankly surprised me, because I am not a supporter of mayoral systems, but I must admit there was a powerful advert for it in that election.

There is also a powerful advert there for the retention of a first and second choice. It was not called into play in Greater Manchester so we do not know what the figures would have been, but we know the result in those places where it has been called into play, and people have quite easily adopted the idea that they have a preferred candidate but, if it cannot be that one, there is another who would do as their second best. That development of an overall mandate is a powerful benefit of the present system, whatever its authorship might be. It might well be the first time that the noble Lord, Lord Campbell-Savours, and I have been on the same side of any discussion.

I strongly support the view that we should delete Clause 11 and retain the current system of electing our mayors in the big cities.

[Lord True (Con)]

My Lords, it has been a lengthy debate. I say to the noble Lord, Lord Stunell, that I have not presented any amendment. I am presenting to your Lordships’ House a Bill which has been passed by the elected House, and your Lordships are expressing opinions on it. It is certainly not the Government who have sought to Christmas-tree the Bill with a generalised debate on proportional representation. The actors in that are elsewhere than at the Dispatch Box.