Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill

Mark Lazarowicz Excerpts

Monday 6th September 2010 Commons Chamber

[George Eustice (Camborne and Redruth) (Con)]

I shall support the Bill this evening because I have always been a strong supporter of referendums. They can play an important role in rekindling confidence in our democracy. A referendum allows the country to focus on a single issue, rather than having too much personality in politics and too much party politics. It also encourages the creation of cross-party coalitions based on an issue.

I know that many Opposition Members have gone off the idea of coalitions in the past few months. My first job in politics was working for a different coalition—the no campaign against the euro. Some of those in the Opposition—the Labour against the euro campaign and the Green party, and trade unions such as the Transport and General Workers Union—were instrumental in making sure that this country made the right decision on the euro and decided not to join. I very much look forward to working with old friends again, as I am again on the no side of the campaign, and perhaps with some new friends to defeat the AV referendum campaign.

Our one person, one vote system has stood the test of time. Sometimes I hear proponents of electoral reform say, “If the candidate that you voted for doesn’t get elected, your vote is wasted.” It is shameful that people say that. There is no such thing as a wasted vote in our democracy. Every party that takes part, however big and however many votes it gets, is part of the richness of that debate. All of us as MPs have to try to win the confidence of voters who might be minded to vote for smaller parties. It is not true that those are wasted votes.

The AV system is not even a more proportional system. It is just a second-rate version of the first-past-the-post system. It does nothing for smaller parties. The message to smaller parties is that people can vote and then try again and again, until in the end they vote for one of the big two parties in any given constituency. That is not more proportional.

[Mark Lazarowicz (Edinburgh North and Leith) (Lab/Co-op)]

In the light of what the hon. Gentleman has just said, and of his welcome endorsement of giving the people a say, does he agree that there should be a question in the referendum to offer voters the choice of PR?

[George Eustice]

That is an interesting proposition and it may be one of the issues that is examined in Committee. Those who advocate proportional representation are at least making an intellectually honest case, whereas there is no strong intellectual case for AV. It is a system that is less proportional and one in which some people have votes counted twice, whereas other people have only one of their votes counted. How can that be more fair?