Prepared: 23:06 on 9 February 2010
David Howarth: I am sorry that I do not agree with either of the points that the right hon. Member for Birkenhead (Mr. Field) made. That is unusual for me, because usually I agree with his points. The first was that under preferential voting systems, people effectively have more than one vote. That is not the case, because as the hon. Member for Battersea (Martin Linton) pointed out, they have one vote but are effectively asked what they would do with it if their first-preference candidate were not standing. That is called tactical voting, which happens all over the country in every general election, but in a preferential voting system it is done more formally and rationally, and people do not have to guess.
The right hon. Gentleman’s second point was in favour of the French system. I am sorry that I cannot follow him on that either, even though, unlike the hon. Member for Stroud (Mr. Drew), I am generally a great admirer of all things French. The electoral system in France has had an unfortunate effect not just on its politics but on its culture and way of life, because it has split the whole country into two large camps of left and right. France suffers constantly from that, and we should not go down that route. It would have the effect—perhaps many Members would welcome this—of taking us back to a bipolar system that is very difficult to break into. It is very difficult for new views to come through in such a system.
It seemed to me that the hon. and learned Member for Beaconsfield (Mr. Grieve) had only one argument, which defeated his own case. It was that he was against AV because it could be less proportional than first past the post, which is true. If he accepts that argument, he should therefore accept that as the single transferrable vote system, for example, is more proportional than first past the post, it is better and fairer according to his own argument. The Conservative case therefore seems self-contradictory.
Mr. Gummer: Does the hon. Gentleman not accept that many of us believe that despite its disproportionate drawbacks, the advantages of the first-past-the-post system are so great that it is better than any proportional system? It is perfectly possible to argue that proportion is the only reason why one might want a change, and that this is the one disproportionate way of changing the system. It is therefore utterly barmy. To have a choice between first past the post and some sensible, proportional system, so that people could make a reasonable decision as to whether the advantages of one system outweighed its disadvantages, would be perfectly reasonable. However, to choose between one disproportionate—
The Chairman: Order. I know that there are complex arguments to be put in Committee, but I have to say to the right hon. Gentleman that that is an extraordinarily long intervention and may deprive himself and others of the time that they will need later.
David Howarth: I am trying to remember the start of the intervention. It seems to me that one cannot argue that first past the post balances the disadvantages of disproportionality and the advantages of decisiveness in such a well calibrated way that any movement either way is obviously wrong. That does not make any sense, especially as everyone admits that we cannot tell precisely the degree to which AV would make a difference. We cannot answer that question, because preferential voting is like tactical voting but carried on in a different, more organised way. If tactical voting is unwound and people start to vote for their first preference, they will be voting in a way that they do not now. That is why it is perfectly reasonable to say that we do not know what the effect of the AV system would be.
Lynne Jones: Those of us who feel that we ought to move to a more proportional system cannot support the Liberal Democrat proposal, because it would break the link between the Member and the constituency. I would find it absolutely onerous to be a Member of Parliament representing the whole of Birmingham, for example, along with other Members. Why are the Liberal Democrats not supporting the proposal put forward by the royal commission, which is well thought out? It would move towards proportionality but by and large keep the link between even the additional Members and their constituents.
7.15 pm
David Howarth: There are two points to consider in the hon. Lady’s question. The first is whether the single transferrable vote would break the constituency link, which it would not. It would just mean that there were more Members per constituency. It would break the one Member, one constituency link. For 17 years I was a local councillor and there were three members in my ward, but I did not feel that that meant I represented the people in my ward less. In fact, when a member of another party represented the ward for a few years, it increased competition between the parties in the ward and made us all better representatives.
The hon. Lady’s second point was about the Jenkins commission’s proposal, which was a political compromise but not one that we have to stay with for ever. It has a great number of disadvantages. First, it would set up two entirely different sorts of Member—the constituency Member and the list Member. There would be an overlap of responsibility between the two, but they would have very different mandates, which would lead to difficulties. Secondly, because the county seats would be so small—the lists would not be national; they would relate to very small regions by the standards of most regional list systems—the proposal would create the most extraordinary conflict of interest between AV-elected Members and county list Members. It would be in the interests of a list Member if his or her party colleagues lost in the constituency seat, which does not seem particularly sensible from the point of view of political parties or coherent government.
Mark Lazarowicz (Edinburgh, North and Leith) (Lab/Co-op): The situation that the hon. Gentleman describes applies under the additional Member system in both Scotland and Wales, and the most reasonable commentators do not see any difficulty with that system. If it works well in Scotland and Wales, why cannot it operate at UK level for this Parliament?
David Howarth: I concede that it is a better system than first past the post, but a lot of the problems are about how big or small the electoral regions are. The larger they are, the less problem there is with the overlap between the jobs of the two sorts of Member, and the less it is in the interests of list Members that people on their own side are defeated in the constituency elections.
Mr. Cash: Does the hon. Gentleman accept a point that I have addressed to him and the Secretary of State, that advocating proportional representation is an attempt to obtain more seats? In a way one can understand the Liberal Democrats taking that view—there is a sort of cynicism there, but it is an understandable one. Does he also accept that in the heady days long ago when Lloyd George had a big majority, he said that proportional representation was
“a device for defeating democracy…bringing faddists of all kinds into Parliament and…disintegrating parties”?
Then in 1931, Lloyd George changed his position, and in an electoral reform Bill proposed the alternative vote. Does the hon. Gentleman not see a little cynicism in all this?
David Howarth: It comes as no great surprise that my great leader Mr. Lloyd George was accused of cynicism on occasions, but nevertheless there is equal cynicism in the Conservative party, which argues for first past the post solely because it gains such a disproportionate advantage from it.
Mr. Tom Harris: The hon. Gentleman said earlier that the STV system does away with the single-Member, single-constituency link, but that is not quite true. The Liberal Democrats have tabled new schedule 3, which proposes new multi-Member constituencies. For instance, under that proposal, my seat would be subsumed into a seven-Member Glasgow seat with an electorate of 500,000. Some of those Members would, of course, be from minority parties. However, Argyll and Bute, with an electorate of 68,000, would remain a single-Member constituency, as would Orkney and Shetland, with an electorate of 35,000. Can he tell the House to which party the current Members for those constituencies belong?
David Howarth: Our proposal would do the same for the Western Isles, which is held by the Scottish National party. In any circumstances, there are certain geographical limits to the size of a seat. That is why, in any preferential system, there must be a range in the sizes of constituencies. One can have bigger seats in urban areas while retaining a sense of representing a geographical area than one can in rural areas, especially the thinly populated marine areas of the sort the hon. Gentleman mentioned. On the whole, the proportionality of the STV system comes from urban areas, because there are larger numbers of Members in those seats. That has always been the case. The proposal in 1916 was precisely that there should be STV in the cities and AV in the countryside, so it is not new.
Daniel Kawczynski rose—
Hugh Bayley (City of York) (Lab) rose—
David Howarth: I will give way to the hon. Gentlemen later, but I want to make some progress—I have not even started my speech yet.
Although new clause 88 is far from perfect, for reasons that I will seek to explain, and although we will seek to amend it radically, we will support it in the Lobby, at least so that it is read a Second time. According to the rather peculiar procedures of this Committee—compared, for example, with local government—the only way one can press an amendment to the new clause to a Division is if the new clause is read a Second time.
Why are the Government proposing a referendum between AV and first past the post, and not between the latter and a more proportional system? To that extent, I agree with what Conservative Members have been saying.
Mr. Oliver Heald (North-East Hertfordshire) (Con) Will the hon. Gentleman give way?
David Howarth: In a second. Why have the Government come to propose such reform so late in the day? It looks like a manoeuvre to me—a death-bed conversion. In Cambridge in 1997, I was obviously identified by the Labour party as a Lib Dem voter—I was a Lib Dem councillor, so I suppose I was rather easy to spot. I received a targeted letter from the Labour candidate—all parties send them—who expressed her undying support for a referendum on electoral reform. She asked me to vote tactically for her on the ground that a Labour Government would deliver electoral reform, or at least a referendum on it.
Mr. Frank Field: What did you do?
David Howarth: I did not believe her, and given that 13 years later, no referendum has happened, I am inclined to the view that I was right not to do so. I suspect that the reason why the Prime Minister has come round to promoting a referendum again is precisely so that Labour candidates can send out more of the same kind of letters. This time, I suspect I will not be the only one not to believe them.
Mr. Heald: After all these years of going on “Question Time” and other programmes saying that the Liberal Democrats want proportional representation, does it not feel a bit odd to the hon. Gentleman to be arguing for disproportional representation? Why are the Liberal Democrats going to vote for something that Lord Jenkins and so many other commentators have described as unfair and disproportionate?
David Howarth: We will vote for amendment (b) to Government new clause 88 so that the referendum is between first past the post and a proportional system. What will we do if that is defeated? Although the new clause is a very small step in the right direction, there are two truths. First, changing the electoral system is on the political agenda, which is a big and important point for us. Secondly, AV is a preferential system, which we are in favour of. The system we support—STV—is a preferential system, but it just happens to be proportional as well.
Daniel Kawczynski: In my discussions with the Electoral Commission, it has stated that it is possible to argue that we already have so many different types of voting systems that it causes confusion for certain people. In addition, we have not sorted some of the concerns about postal ballots. Is it not better to sort out and rationalise some of those problems before we get on to the subject of voting systems?
David Howarth: No. We should just get on with doing the right thing, which is to move to a fairer electoral system that is proportionate and preferential.
Mr. Hayes: I hope that the hon. Gentleman will put the answer to my question on the record once again, because he may have made a slip of the tongue, and I want to be fair to him—I am always fair, even to Liberal Democrats. Is he making it clear tonight that the critical thing for Liberal Democrats is that the system is preferential and that he is not so concerned about proportionality? We have heard from the Liberals for years about proportionality, but in the end, when push comes to shove, is proportionality less important to them than a preferential system?
David Howarth: The hon. Gentleman exaggerates the extent to which AV is disproportionate or worse than first past the post—sometimes it is, but not always. As I said a few moments ago, it is very difficult to predict the effects of AV, because first-preference votes will change. For us, it looks like progress, even if it is a small amount of progress, because it is precisely what the hon. Gentleman says: a preferential system. That is a small gain, but one worth having.
Pete Wishart (Perth and North Perthshire) (SNP): I note the hon. Gentleman’s pain and his great concerns about voting with the Government for new clause 88. I share that pain—my party will also very reluctantly support the measure. In Scotland the hon. Gentleman’s party is also reluctant to support a referendum on Scottish independence, even though that has majority support in Scotland. The proposed referendum on electoral reform has no public support whatever. Why is he against a referendum in Scotland and why will he not allow the Scottish people a choice, yet he is prepared to support a measure that nobody wants and a referendum in which no one has shown any interest in voting?
David Howarth: I fear, Sir Alan, that if I stray into that debate, I will be brought up short very quickly. The holding of a referendum is not in itself a particularly massive gain. I do not remember there being a referendum to bring in first past the post—it is the starting point simply because it is the status quo. There is a bias in favour of it simply because it is there.
I should like to mention one thing about the Prime Minister. I heard what the hon. and learned Member for Beaconsfield said about the Prime Minister’s previous views on electoral reform and I agree with the former’s position. That is another reason why I suspect the proposal is a manoeuvre. The hon. and learned Gentleman referred to the diaries of Lord Ashdown. I appear in those diaries, especially in volume 2, with a degree of accuracy for which I would not entirely vouch. Nevertheless, it was true at that time that the Prime Minister was seen as a fundamental block to reform.