Proportional Representation: House of Commons

Debate between Mike Gapes and Vicky Ford

Tuesday 23rd April 2019 Westminster Hall

[Vicky Ford (Chelmsford) (Con)]

It is a delight to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Evans. I am one of the few parliamentarians to have been elected under both the first-past-the-post system, as a Member of this Parliament, and a proportional representation system—I was elected twice to the European Parliament.

Some people say proportional representation will lead to a more consensual approach to decision making. I have seen that consensus sometimes does occur more in the European Parliament than people occasionally perceive to be the case here, but in my experience from the past couple of years, there are many areas of Westminster in which decision making happens along consensus lines; I think especially of the work we do in Select Committees and on all-party parliamentary groups. On the other hand, I have seen fundamental flaws in the proportional representation system, and we should be very careful when thinking about adopting changes to our system.

Let me take Members back 10 years to 2009, when European elections were held at the height of the expenses scandal. The turnout was very low, which meant people could get elected with only a very small number of voters turning up to support them. Two members of the British National party were elected, with fewer than 3% of the voters supporting them. At the time, that party would not allow someone to join as a member unless their face was white. Those people were given seats in the European Parliament. They were given credibility and respectability.

[Mike Gapes (Ilford South) (Change UK)]

Does the hon. Lady not accept that part of the problem with that election was the closed-list d’Hondt system, which discriminates? In certain regions it allows extremist parties to get through, but in other regions it requires parties to reach a much higher figure. Would it not be better to move to a national form of proportional representation for European elections, such as the one that the French use?

[Vicky Ford]

We could use the German system—a national system with a national list, which means that a candidate needs 0.7% of the vote to get a seat. My point is that, especially as turnout is low, a very small number of votes can give people with quite extreme views credibility, funding and access to support, so we should be very wary.

In my experience, proportional representation also really changes a Member’s relationship with their voters. Because there are multiple Members for each seat, there have to be wider constituencies, meaning that Members do not have the same close relationship with their voters. [Interruption.] I will not give way, I am afraid, because lots of people want to speak. Under proportional representation, Members do not have the same intimate relationship with their voters, in which the voters know, “That is my MP; I can hold that person responsible,” and the Member knows they are responsible to those people. Proportional representation breaks the link between the voter and the elected representative. I would be very wary of doing that to our democracy.

Democracy, as Winston Churchill said, is the worst form of government, apart from all the rest. Trust in our politics is very low, but I do not believe that changing our electoral system is a miracle cure or a silver bullet that will solve that problem.