Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill

Roger Godsiff Excerpts

Monday 6th September 2010 Commons Chamber

[Mr Roger Godsiff (Birmingham, Hall Green) (Lab)]

I am most grateful for being called to speak in this important debate, Mr Deputy Speaker. I wish to say at the outset that I support the Government’s proposal to hold a referendum on the alternative vote system. I supported my Government when they introduced their proposals on 9 February and I have not changed my views since. I reread the record of the debate on 9 February and found it interesting that not one of the Conservative MPs who spoke was in favour of having a referendum on AV and that the Lib Dems’ spokesperson made it clear that their support for the proposal was only on the basis that they wanted to get rid of the first-past-the-post system and have proportional representation. I make those points in view of what I am going to say in a moment.

I repeat that I have always supported the AV system, because it is not proportional representation—the hon. Member for Cardiff North (Jonathan Evans) pointed that out— but an improved version of the first-past-the-post system, whereby the winning candidate has to get 50% plus one vote. Although I welcome the proposed referendum on AV, I very much regret the fact that the Government, despite their saying that they are being radical, have not been prepared to be even more radical; they could have not just proposed that there should be a referendum on changing the voting system to AV, but had another question on the ballot paper asking whether people wished to have obligatory voting in the United Kingdom. That happens in Australia, which also uses AV for its House of Representatives. It is not just me saying this, because the Electoral Commission and the Select Committee on Home Affairs have both said that there should be a proper public debate on this issue.

[Greg Mulholland (Leeds North West) (LD)]

I entirely agree with the hon. Gentleman that we should also have that debate. Does he agree that if we are going to examine that, we will also need to examine the issue of compulsory registration? We are all concerned about the large number of people who are not registered to vote, and we must tackle that difficult question, too.

[Mr Godsiff]

In theory, registration should be compulsory at the moment. Indeed, I saw something issued by Greenwich council saying that people should put their name on the register of electors and could be fined £1,000 for not doing so. However, I take the hon. Gentleman’s point.

We live in an age where all parties, rightly, make great play of the virtues and obligations of citizenship. I would have thought that it was a basic obligation of a citizen of the United Kingdom, who chooses to live in a democratic country, to take the trouble to express their view through receiving a ballot paper when a general election is held. Bearing in mind that the coalition Government are proposing five-year, fixed-term Parliaments, it does not seem to me an onerous obligation to place on a citizen of the United Kingdom once every five years.

Of course, I am not saying that an individual citizen should be obliged to vote for any party or candidate. People are perfectly entitled to do what they want with their ballot paper once they have received it. They could deface it, for example, or rip it up. Indeed, all of us will have stood at counts and seen ballot papers on which electors have put either no mark at all or certain marks in order to express their views on all the candidates—sometimes in the most colourful language. I have absolutely no problem at all with somebody doing that, because the important thing is that they will have expressed their views, whatever they might be and however offensive I might find them, and I believe that that is a basic obligation of a citizen in a democratic society.

Furthermore, by moving to a system of obligatory voting, we could begin to address the very important issue, which several Members have raised and the Electoral Commission has highlighted, whereby 3.5 million-plus people are missing from the electoral register. The majority are not on the register because the head of household did not register them, because they were not in when the council canvasser called or because they did not think that they were entitled to be on it.

[Mrs Laing]

Will the hon. Gentleman add something to that list? He rightly said that, currently, it is compulsory to register to vote, but is it not possible that some people do not want to be registered to vote because it suits them not to be on the register?

[Mr Godsiff]

That might well be the case, and I shall come to that point in a moment. I hear what the hon. Lady says, but in my opinion the majority of people who are entitled to vote but missing from the electoral register do not deliberately choose not to be registered. However, it is quite true that during the furore over the poll tax a large number of people deliberately left their names off the electoral register, because Mrs Thatcher’s Government, in their wisdom, decided to use the electoral register as the basis for levying it.

By far, the majority of people who are eligible to be on the electoral register but not registered are younger people, those from lower-income social groups, those who live in rented subdivided houses, people who do not have a strong command of the English language and individuals who have learning difficulties. If voting were obligatory, there would be a much stronger emphasis on electoral registration officers ensuring that, in every household, everybody who was eligible to register was registered.

I very much hope that the Government will seriously consider allowing the electorate to express their opinion on obligatory voting in the United Kingdom, particularly given that we are moving towards a system that is used by Australia, where voting is obligatory and, in comparison with Britain, the turnout is more than 90%. Indeed, it would make absolute sense if such a question were on the same ballot paper as the one under discussion, because the argument about cost just does not come into the debate. We are going to have a referendum anyway, and nobody can convince me that two questions on a ballot paper would increase the cost. So, if ever there were a time when the Government could hold a ballot, it is now.

If the coalition Government say, “No, we are not going to do that,” we will be left with the bizarre situation in which the Conservative party does not want AV, and in which the Liberal Democrats do not want AV—because they want PR—but will vote for AV for reasons of expediency and still hold a referendum on it. If the answer to that question is no, however, they are not going to hold a referendum to ask the people whether, on a second question, there should be obligatory voting in the United Kingdom. That is bizarre. I do not wish to make a partisan point, but the Deputy Prime Minister dotted his speech with phrases such as, “Not for us to decide,” “The will of the people must prevail,” and “The final decision should be with the electorate.” I suspect that, if nothing else, such a question would certainly engender a lively debate throughout the country, and I commend it to the Government.