Proportional Representation

Wes Streeting Excerpts

Monday 30th October 2017 Westminster Hall

[Caroline Lucas]

The hon. Gentleman will forgive me if I do not agree that that felt like a relatively short time; it felt like a very long time. As I said, under PR, 1 million votes would have given the Greens more than 20 MPs in 2015. That is the bottom line. Yes, we occasionally find a way of bucking the system, but that does not give confidence to our constituents up and down the country, who simply want to know that their votes count. That does not seem a lot to ask. Interestingly, it has been estimated that between 20% and 30% of people voted tactically at the last election. In other words, people are trying the best they can to fix the system themselves, but they should not have to try to game the system; we should change it.

[Wes Streeting (Ilford North) (Lab)]

My constituency was marginal in 2015. I was returned with a larger majority this time, but I went door to door asking Liberal Democrat voters to lend me their vote, and there was no Green candidate because the Green party recognised that splitting the vote might allow a Conservative in. I was grateful to the local Green party for making that choice, which delivered a more progressive outcome.

[Caroline Lucas]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for that contribution. My Green colleagues were incredibly brave to make such selfless decisions for the good of the country rather than tribal political self-interest.

The Electoral Reform Society described the 2015 general election, in which a Government were elected on just 24% of the eligible vote, as “the most disproportionate” in electoral history. It further reported that in the election just gone more than 22 million votes —68%—were essentially wasted because first past the post takes no account of votes for the winning candidate over and above what they needed to win, or indeed of votes for losing candidates. In five constituencies 90% of votes made no difference to the outcome because they were cast for candidates who did not win, or cast for the winning candidate over and above what they needed to win. More than 90% of votes—a huge number.

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[Craig Mackinlay]

That is a point well made, and that leads us to the state that we are in today. My point is that the constituency link is lost, but how can we have a region? When we have a pure system, a little like Israel or the regional system for European parliamentary elections, how on earth can we have a constituency link from Milton Keynes to the Isle of Wight and through to east Kent? How can people feel any familiarity with or knowledge of the people who represent them? To have a proper system in which those elected completely reflect the votes cast, the area has to get bigger and bigger, and that link is lost.

Even under the d’Hondt system we have closed and open lists. The worry with the closed list system is that hon. Members cannot say with any sincerity that it is the right system and that it puts the power in the hands of the electors. It puts the power in the hands of the party machines, electing people who are in favour with the party leadership of the time to be top or bottom of the list, or wherever in between.

[Wes Streeting]

It would be down to parties to choose how to decide the order of the lists. In the Labour party, members of the party have always decided on their candidates at a general election. There is no reason to think that, under a proportional or list system, members of the Labour party would not be involved in deciding both the candidates and the order of the list.

[Craig Mackinlay]

Again, it puts the power in the hands of the party rather than those of the elector. That is the key point. I see many constituencies where the person is elected because their views are more in tune with their public rather than with the party that people normally support. I certainly put the hon. Member for Brighton, Pavilion in that category. She has that appeal because it is her, and that is very important.

It is unfair to say that any of us, no matter how we were elected, treats any of our electors any differently. We do not say to them, “Did you vote for me? Then I will not help you. Oh, you did vote for me? Then I will.” That completely disappears once we are elected Members; so it should be and so it should stay. It comes down to a question of what is fair. My view of fairness will probably be different from other people’s, and that is the problem with the varieties of PR or alternative systems out there. I worry that perceptions of fairness change depending on the vote share and the outcome of the protagonist’s favoured party at the last outing. That is another argument against PR.

One final unfairness is last month’s vote in Germany. Angela Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union party received just 33% of the vote. There is no clear Government even today.

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[Stephen Kinnock (Aberavon) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Roger. I thank the Petitions Committee for enabling this debate. I rise to argue that the central purpose of the campaign for proportional representation must be to shine a light on the clear, strong and manifold causal links between the state of our broken politics and the state of our discredited voting system.

The simple fact is that the British people deserve an electoral system in which every vote counts. Why do the vast majority of developed nations use proportional representation, while our electorate are forced to accept second best? Why should our people be forced to accept the fundamentally flawed logic of a system whereby seats in Parliament do not reflect vote share? Why should we have to tolerate tactical voting? Polling found that on 8 June 20% to 30% of the electorate voted tactically. Why should we have to put up with a system whereby almost 7 million people felt that they had to hold their nose while voting?

What does it say about our democracy when millions of people are going to the ballot box to vote for the “least worst option,” as opposed to voting for the party or individual they feel will best represent their values, beliefs and interests in this place? Can we really sit here today, in the building that is sometimes referred to as the cradle of modern democracy, and defend a system that fails to pass the most basic principle of democracy—namely, the right of voters to vote for the party or candidate that they actually support? Perhaps most importantly of all, why should the British people have to accept a system that delivers the winner-takes-all political culture that is the root cause of the deeply divided, polarised and fragmented country that we have become?

Decades of research from around the world shows that proportional representation correlates with positive societal outcomes: greater income equality, less corporate control, better long-term planning and political stability, fairer representation of women and minorities, higher voter turnout, better environmental laws and a significantly lower likelihood of going to war. This is the real prize of electoral reform: building a better politics. It is the means of shaping a more inclusive society in which resources are allocated on the basis of real needs and opportunities rather than cynical swing-seat electoral calculations. It should therefore come as no surprise that polls consistently show that a majority of the public want PR. The latest poll shows that 67% want to make seats match votes, and those people are joined by a growing alliance of parties, MPs and public figures who want real democracy.

There are those who argue that the great advantage of first past the post is that it delivers “strong and stable” government—I think the less said about that, the better. We are also told that the great danger of PR is that it will mean back-room stitch-ups. What, like the £1 billion bung for the DUP?

[Wes Streeting]

On the point about back-room stitch-ups, does my hon. Friend also recognise that, under the present system, political parties are themselves coalitions? In the Conservative party we see the libertarian tradition and the patrician tradition. In the Liberal Democrats we see the social democrats and the “Orange Book” liberals. Of course, in the Labour party we agree on everything all the time. [Laughter.] Let us let the people in to some of those compromises, choices and trade-offs.

[Stephen Kinnock]

I thank my hon. Friend for that intervention. He is absolutely right; the transparency of a more coalition-based system whereby parties are able to self-identify clearly as parties in their own right is a far more healthy way of running a democracy.

The truth is that it is first past the post that increasingly leads to smoke-filled rooms, backstairs deals and pork barrel politics. I prefer the open politics of transparent coalition building, in which parties are clear about the trade-offs that they would make in a coalition, and the public clearly do too. They like to see their politicians putting the national interest ahead of narrow party political gain, because they can see that our entire political culture, underpinned and compounded by our winner-takes-all electoral system, is not geared to building broad-based political support right across the country. No, it is geared to focus on approximately 100 constituencies —the so-called battleground seats.