Prepared: 00:30 on 10 February 2010
Hugh Bayley: It is very kind of the right hon. Gentleman to give way, but he has got the mathematics wrong. In the first round in the circumstances that he describes, the Conservative voter has one vote, which goes to the Conservative party. The Lib Dem has one vote, which goes to the Lib Dems. If the Lib Dem candidate is eliminated, in the second round, that vote may go to some other candidate, and in the second round the Conservative voter still gets one vote and it goes to the Conservative candidate.
Mr. Gummer: The Conservative voter has the same vote in both rounds, whereas the other voter is able to change his vote. That means he has two votes. [Interruption.] I am very sorry. The hon. Gentleman can make his point as much as he likes, but the fact is that one chap has two chances to decide and the other chap has only one chance to decide. [HON. MEMBERS: “No!”] Look, in the House of Commons it is always perfectly reasonable to say that there are two ways of looking at the mathematics, or we would never have passed any of the Government’s Budgets.
One can say, “It’s really one because it’s sort of the Conservative voting Conservative twice.” In my view, one person has a series of different choices and the other has one choice, and he cannot go back and say, “In the end, I’d rather like to have done it a different way,” so he is in a different position.
Mr. Straw: I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman. I am enjoying his speech, and he will wish to know that his description of his opponents chimes a few chords on the Government Benches. Let me correct him, if I may. In his example, the Conservative voter and the person whose first preference was knocked out and who went for a second choice both have the same number of choices. This is a serious point. If there were an eliminating ballot, of the kind that all the parties have used, and the right hon. Gentleman were lucky enough to get a plurality of the first preferences whereas Straw was knocked out, on the second ballot Straw supporters would have to decide who to vote for. So would Gummer supporters. Gummer supporters would carry on voting for Gummer. Straw supporters might decide to vote for Gummer. In both cases two votes have been exercised.
Mr. Gummer: I do not want to go into this too far, because I think the Chair would stop me. The right hon. Gentleman gets it wrong. If there is a sequential vote, as there is in his example, the Gummer supporters can say, “I’m not quite so sure. I don’t think my chap is going to win if it goes on like that. He is only a couple of votes ahead of Straw.” Because the Gummer supporter is able to vote again, he may vote for Cormack. We had a vote in the House not long ago in which that was precisely what many Members did. It is a different system and not one that I am proposing. I am merely saying that the sequential system is fundamentally different and fairer than the AV system.
I know that others want to speak so I shall conclude my remarks. I am sorry that there are now only three Liberal Democrats in the Chamber, as I have more to say about their approach to the new clauses that we are discussing.
The Liberal Democrats have said that they are going to vote for AV even though they accept that it is no more proportional—indeed, it may be less proportional—than first past the post, because it is baby steps towards proportional representation. That is a very suitable phrase for the Liberal Democrats. I ceased to be a liberal at the age of 11—I grew out of it—and that is one of the issues here. The point about the Liberal Democrats is that they will do anything to change the system, because the present system does not do them the justice that they feel they should have. They would even move from first past the post to a less fair system so that they get more votes. What kind of principle is that?
The Secretary of State said that this is a matter of principle. I have heard no principle from those who support these new clauses. Therefore, I hope that the Committee will consider four points. First, there is a fundamental difference between reform and change. The Secretary of State has been talking about change as if it were reform. If he were bringing this change forward alongside the Wright Committee recommendations in a manner that enabled the House to discuss and vote on them properly, we might believe in the reform agenda, but there is no motion before us to stop automatic guillotines, for example, or to provide that we will sit for as long as it takes properly to discuss issues. There is no motion to require 100 hours in Committee before a guillotine. All those suggestions would keep the Executive under closer control. We cannot apply the word “reform” to a move from first past the post to something that is less fair and more complex.
The second point is that those of us who are passionate supporters of the European Union, as I am, have gone to great trouble to look at the systems of our neighbours. It would be good if we had a more common approach. However, none of them has a system that I would swap for ours. The disadvantages in every other country are clear, and I shall give one example. If anyone knows a Dutch MP, they will know that he is elected under a perfectly proportional system, but has no interest in a constituency, because in order to be perfectly proportional the system can never be constituency-based.
The third point is that decisions on constitutional matters taken for party political reasons are always bound to fail—apart from also being fundamentally wrong. Parties of all kinds have tried it, and all of them have discovered that it don’t work.
The last point—
Frank Dobson (Holborn and St. Pancras) (Lab): Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?
Mr. Gummer: As the right hon. Gentleman has not been in his place for the debate—
Frank Dobson: I was watching it in my office.
Mr. Gummer: Well, that is one of the problems of this House. When we voted for television, we foolishly did not say that it should not be put in Members’ offices, so that they would have to come into the Chamber to hear a debate. That is another change that the Government might introduce as a reform—
The First Deputy Chairman of Ways and Means: Order. That is definitely a debate for another day.
Mr. Gummer: Let me finish then. My last point is again addressed to the Liberal Democrats. In the past, they have had a majority in this House. Did they come forward with proportional representation then? Were they keen on making everybody happy with equal votes? Did they give the nascent Labour party the opportunity to have a proper reflection of the number of votes it won? No, they did not. While they had power under the first-past-the-post system, not a word of such a reform passed any of their lips. This question only comes up in the House when a party thinks that it can get something out of it, and if anybody thinks that that is reform, rather than change, they should think again.
9.30 pm
I say to the Lord Chancellor, a man whom I respect and honour—he always knows that that probably means that the next sentence is not going to be as polite—that he cannot help to regain the trust of the people in Parliament by proposing a change that every independent commentator has said is entirely for cynical, party political reasons. No one believes him. No one outside the House thinks that it would have been brought forward had the Prime Minister not thought it was good for him and his party. It would not have been brought forward if the Prime Minister held high views of his responsibility towards Parliament and the people, instead of some of the lowest views of any Prime Minister in our history.
Several hon. Members rose—
The First Deputy Chairman of Ways and Means: Order. I advise right hon. and hon. Members that the winding-up speech, I understand, will commence at 9.50 pm. I would like as many Members who rose as possible to make a contribution to the debate. I leave hon. Members to do the maths themselves so that that can take place.
Hugh Bayley: We have heard this afternoon a lot of party political advantage masquerading as high principle, but nobody has done it better than the right hon. Member for Suffolk, Coastal (Mr. Gummer). I do not buy the argument that the public are not interested in how we, as Members, are elected to this place. I think that, at the next general election, there will be two key questions. The first will be on the trust that the public have in us, as Members, and in the House and Parliament as institutions. Secondly, they will be interested in accountability—how they, as the public, can make Members of Parliament, especially those in safe seats, more accountable to the electorate. That is why the public are pressing for things such as primaries to select candidates, the recall of Members, greater transparency through the publication of expenses and Members’ commercial interests.
I believe that the alternative vote increases accountability, because it encourages Members of Parliament and candidates to listen to, and seek to gain second preference votes from, supporters of other parties. For a long time—more than 20 years—I have been a member of a Labour campaign for electoral reform, and I used to argue for proportional representation, but I have to say that I have been won over to the case for the alternative vote, principally because it preserves the constituency link, which I believe is a key issue as far as accountability is concerned.
Over the past decade and more, we have introduced non-first-past-the-post voting systems for a number of institutions, including the additional Member system for the Scottish and Welsh Parliaments. Twenty years ago, I would have favoured that system, but I do not think that it has worked particularly well because it has broken the constituency link and encourages bickering between parties. For example, there might be two MSPs from different parties claiming different mandates from the same group of people.
The party list system, which the House approved for the European Parliament, like STV, which the Liberal Democrats support, uses multi-Member constituencies that are so big that they break the link between the constituent and the Member of Parliament, leave the public unclear about who represents them and, as we saw at the last election, allow extremists, such as the British National party, to be elected when they have nothing like the support of a majority of members of the public.
The London Mayor—I say this nervously, with my right hon. Friend the Member for Holborn and St. Pancras (Frank Dobson) sitting behind me—is elected by a modified form of the alternative vote. That system has worked quite well. Over three elections, we have had three changes. We had an independent Labour Mayor elected, a Labour Mayor elected and a Conservative Mayor elected. That shows that the alternative vote does not lock in an unfair advantage to the left or the right, or to the two largest parties at the expense of others.
Opponents of electoral reform ask, “Why bring the proposals forward now? What has changed?” Three things have changed. First, there is greater public mistrust in the system than ever before. Secondly, there has been a fragmentation of the vote. In 1951, 582 MPs—94 per cent. of the total—won with an absolute majority, with more than 50 per cent. of the votes in their constituencies. By 1979, when Margaret Thatcher came to power, the proportion was down to 68 per cent. By 1997, in Blair’s landslide, the figure was down to 53 per cent., and at the last election it was down to 34 per cent. Barely one third of the Members of this House enjoy the support of a majority of their voters, let alone a majority of those living and entitled to vote in their constituencies.
The first-past-the-post system works fairly well in a two-party race and reasonably fairly in a broadly two-party system, but the United Kingdom no longer has a two-party system. We have three broadly left-of-centre parties: the Labour party, the Liberal Democrats and the Green party. In addition, we have two broadly right-of-centre parties—the Tories and the UK Independence party—and some other parties too, which are represented in the Chamber this evening.
In York in 1987, which was the first time I stood, there were four candidates. In the last election there were eight candidates. There has been a fragmentation of the political parties, too. In 1987, I lost the election by 147 votes. The Green party took 637 votes. The Liberal Democrats, who had a particularly strong candidate—a Social Democratic party candidate, as he was in those days—in the form of the person who is now the hon. Member for Twickenham (Dr. Cable), took 9,898 votes. I would not be human if I did not wonder whether I might just have scraped ahead if those votes had been redistributable to other candidates. The same question occurs to Conservatives who lose by a whisker because their vote is split by UKIP or some other right-of-centre party.
In a constituency where 40 per cent. of the voters vote for candidate A and 40.1 per cent. vote for candidate B, should not the remaining 20 per cent. of the electorate have a say over whether A or B should represent them? [HON. MEMBERS: “No.”] We are hearing the self-interest now. Under first past the post, everyone in that 20 per cent. is disenfranchised. They have no say one way or the other between the two leading candidates. The alternative vote would enfranchise them. As the hon. Member for Foyle (Mark Durkan) argued so eloquently, the public have the right to decide whether they want to make a change. We should put our trust in the public and have a referendum on the issue.