(13 years, 7 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
21:59 - The House divided: - Ayes: 254 / Noes: 347 - Question accordingly negatived.
22:15 - The House divided: - Ayes: 328 / Noes: 269 - Question accordingly agreed to.
22:32 - The House divided: - Ayes: 324 / Noes: 272 - Question accordingly agreed to.
22:50 - The House divided: - Ayes: 319 / Noes: 91 - Question accordingly agreed to.
Mr Speaker
I have selected the amendment in the name of the Leader of the Opposition.
The Deputy Prime Minister (Mr Nick Clegg)
I beg to move, That the Bill be now read a Second time.
Before turning to the Bill, I am aware that since we last met, the right hon. Member for Blackburn (Mr Straw) has announced that he will be stepping back from front-line politics when the new leader of the Labour party is finally elected. I am sure that I speak on behalf of everybody when I say that I wish him, in advance, a happy semi-retirement on the Back Benches. I hope that he agrees that Second Reading of this Bill and Second Reading of the Fixed-term Parliaments Bill next week is a fitting finale or curtain call for him, given his lifelong interest and expertise in constitutional matters, which we hope he will continue to draw upon from the Back Benches.
In the run-up to the election in May, all the major parties pledged to reform politics. Some of the measures proposed were quite different from this one and others strikingly similar, but there was consensus that this Parliament has a duty to restore trust to the institution of Parliament. So the people who put us here must now see us taking the action needed to do that, ensuring that politics is transparent, making certain that we can all be held to account, and ultimately, demonstrating to them that we understand that they are in charge. This Bill is a major step towards achieving that, because it is about the legitimacy of this House and restoring people’s faith in how they elect their MPs.
Mr Brian H. Donohoe (Central Ayrshire) (Lab)
Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?
The Deputy Prime Minister
If I could make a little headway, I will of course give way.
The coalition has agreed a full, five-year programme of various political reforms, including fixed-term Parliaments, reform of the other place, action to clean up party funding and a new power of recall, but unless we can give people confidence in the fundamentals—in how they choose their Westminster representatives—that programme will fall short. Parliamentary elections are the foundation of our democracy, and it is vital to our political system as a whole that they are considered to be legitimate and fair. That is what the Bill seeks to deliver.
Mr Donohoe
Will the Deputy Prime Minister answer a simple question? Does he see any party political advantage in the proposal on AV?
The Deputy Prime Minister
It is impossible to predict what effect a new electoral system will have—[Interruption.] Well, many people have tried and they have come up with conflicting views—
Mr William Cash (Stone) (Con)
The Deputy Prime Minister refers to the question of the most fundamental matters of our democracy. Does he not agree that one of those is that we subscribe to our manifestos?
The Deputy Prime Minister
As my hon. Friend knows, this Bill is the product of an agreement between the two parties in the coalition Government. It is by definition a compromise between our manifestos.
There are two major issues that we have to face. The first is the big difference between the sizes of many parliamentary constituencies, which has the effect of making some people’s votes count more than others, depending on where they live. The second is the widespread concern about first past the post as the means by which MPs are elected. Therefore, the Bill will require the independent boundary commissions to redraw constituency boundaries so that they are more equally sized, and it will pave the way for a referendum next May on whether to change the voting system for the House of Commons from first past the post to the alternative vote.
Kevin Brennan (Cardiff West) (Lab)
The Deputy Prime Minister mentioned that the Bill is before us today because of the deal between his party and the Conservatives in the coalition agreement. Was it part of that deal that the two measures had to be brought before the House together, because otherwise he would not get his referendum on AV?
The Deputy Prime Minister
They are simply two issues that relate to how we are elected to this House, and therefore it is natural to bring them together in the same Bill.
These proposals have rightly provoked a great deal of debate—they are matters of major significance—but while new boundaries and the prospect of a new voting system may seem radical to Members of this House, and certainly the changes will have a direct impact on each of us, these reforms are the bare minimum that any Parliament serious about political renewal must deliver. To the people we serve it is patently obvious that individuals’ votes should carry the same weight, and if that means reforming the rules for drawing boundaries, that is what we must do. When a big question mark hangs over something as important as our voting system, the only way to resolve the dilemma is to let people have their say. Therefore, these are common-sense changes that are long overdue, and they are the basics that we must now get right.
Daniel Kawczynski (Shrewsbury and Atcham) (Con)
Will my right hon. Friend acknowledge the all-party group for the promotion of first past the post, which I chair jointly with the hon. Member for Central Ayrshire (Mr Donohoe), and that many Members feel passionately about that tried and tested system? Will he agree to meet with the all-party group to hear our side of the story?
The Deputy Prime Minister
Of course I would be delighted to meet my hon. Friend’s group. Whether we will have a meeting of minds is another matter. He feels passionately about the current electoral system, but others feel passionately that there should be a different system. Those passions should be reserved for the debate that will occur in the run-up to the referendum, and at the end of the day it is not for us to decide, but for the people of Britain to decide what kind of electoral system they want.
There are three problems with the current electoral map. Constituencies vary too much in size, they are based on information that is out of date, and there are too many of them. In our parliamentary system, MPs both represent their constituents and are their stake in who forms the Government of the day, but at the moment the will of the voters is not weighed equally. For example, last December, Manchester Central contained 85,522 electors, while Glasgow North had just 50,588, a difference of 41%. On the broken scales of our democracy, 10 voters in Glasgow North have the same weight as 17 voters in Manchester Central. That is not a single anomaly, because those differences are repeated up and down the country. As of last December, Wirral West, Edinburgh South and Wrexham had fewer than 60,000 voters. Falkirk, Banbury and West Ham had more than 80,000. That unfairness is deeply damaging to our democracy.
Ms Gisela Stuart (Birmingham, Edgbaston) (Lab)
The Deputy Prime Minister stresses greatly the need for constituencies of the same size, as it is a question of equality of voting. It currently takes about 35,000 votes to return a Labour MP, 37,000 votes to return a Tory MP and about 115,000 votes to return a Lib Dem MP. When we redraw the boundaries, what does he think would be a fair number to go for to return a Lib Dem MP?
The Deputy Prime Minister
As I will describe shortly, the number that we anticipate being the guidance for the boundary commissions is roughly 76,000, and we allow for a 5% margin greater or less than that in the Bill.
The Deputy Prime Minister
I will just make a little more headway.
Equally problematic is the cumbersome process by which boundaries are drawn. The review process is lengthy and time-consuming. The last review in England took more than six years. The constituencies in place for the 2010 general election were based on data that were a decade old. At the root of this is the law governing how the boundary commissions carry out their work: the Parliamentary Constituencies Act 1986. The rules laid down in that Act are supposed to require each commission both to draw seats of equal size in its part of the United Kingdom and to have regard to considerations such as geography and community, which matter to many people. However, the scheme in that Act is flawed. The rules are in tension with each other, and the overall effect is that dozens of seats are far smaller or larger than others.
Emily Thornberry (Islington South and Finsbury) (Lab)
I wonder whether the right hon. Gentleman could enlighten us. Is Mrs Clegg aware that under the current proposed legislation, her status as an EU citizen will mean that she is a non-person when it comes to counting the size of Sheffield, Hallam?
The Deputy Prime Minister
She is aware of that, and I will remind her today.
Finally, the legislation underpinning reviews means that the number of MPs has crept up. We do not have a 650-seat House by design; it is simply a result of the flawed rules, which have a ratchet effect on the number of MPs. As a result, this House of Commons is now the largest directly elected Chamber in the European Union.
The Bill seeks to address each of those problems. New rules will demand that every constituency is within 5% of either side of a single size. Using the electoral register from last December, we estimate that this will be around 76,000 voters, as I have said. Subject to that strict requirement, the independent boundary commissions will then be able to continue to take into account the same factors as now: local geography, local authority boundaries and local ties. To guard against future misalignment of voter numbers in constituencies, boundary reviews will take place on a five-yearly basis.
Mr Edward Leigh (Gainsborough) (Con)
I am sure that it is right that constituencies should be broadly the same size, and it may be right that there are too many MPs, but what is the point of wading through blood to reduce the number of MPs just to create second-rate elected Members of the other place?
The Deputy Prime Minister
I am not sure that I entirely understand the connection, but as my hon. Friend may well know, around the turn of the year we hope to publish a draft Bill, for the first time in decades—indeed, in generations—on how we will seek to reform the other place, a reform that escaped previous Administrations for a long time.
The Deputy Prime Minister
If I could make a little bit of headway, I will of course give way. This is an important Bill and many people want to speak.
There will be only two exceptions to the new rules named in the Bill: the dispersed island groups of Orkney and Shetland, and the Western Isles. In both those cases, geographical size and remoteness make any change to the boundaries completely impractical. Orkney and Shetland was explicitly exempted in law by the Scotland Act 1998, and the Western Isles have been recognised as an exception in practice since 1918. To recognise the fact that parts of the United Kingdom are sparsely populated, no constituency will be greater than 13,000 sq km in size—just larger than the largest now, Ross, Skye and Lochaber. On that, let me clear up a rumour that seems to be doing the rounds. There are no secret Government plans to exempt Ross, Skye and Lochaber; we simply used its size in suggesting a ceiling for how large any constituency should be. However, how boundaries are drawn, including in that constituency, is a decision for the commission alone.
Mr Andrew Turner (Isle of Wight) (Con)
Does the right hon. Member accept that people living in the Isle of Wight are perfectly content with one Member and that it does not need to be made smaller?
The Deputy Prime Minister
I am aware of the popularity of the current Member for the Isle of Wight, and he will know better than I do that the number of MPs representing that area has changed quite dramatically through the ages. I believe that the Isle of Wight once had eight MPs. I understand that this proposal is controversial there, but equality of size as a general rule—with the two exceptions I mentioned—seems to us to be a cornerstone of the Bill.
Mr David Davis (Haltemprice and Howden) (Con)
I thank my right hon. Friend for giving way, but even those who are on side in respect of what he is trying to achieve through equalisation of the size of parliamentary seats are somewhat concerned at the speed and perhaps the brutal simplicity of the approach. Will there be scope for judicial challenge of any of the individual decisions taken by the boundary commissions?
The Deputy Prime Minister
As the right hon. Member will know, anyone can seek judicial review in normal practice, but on the criteria given to the boundary commissions, it is worth stressing that they will retain their existing ability to refer to local links, geography, county boundaries and so on, but subject to a principle of equality. That is a simple—yes, it is simple—straightforward principle of equality that we are enshrining in the legislation.
By having more frequent boundary reviews—one every five years—constituencies will be kept more up to date, reflecting changes in where people live. In order to make that possible, we are changing the consultation process. Consultation is, of course, vital, but as leading academics concluded in a report published just last week, local inquiries have become “the playthings” of political parties and have had, in practice, little impact on the commissions’ final recommendations, so we will abolish local inquiries. Instead, we will triple the time that people have to make representations to the commissions to have their say—from one month to three months. Residents will have—
Mr Speaker
Order. I apologise for interrupting the Deputy Prime Minister. Let me assure him and the House that I am no authority on the subject of the equality of size, but the reason I rise is that the House should know that no fewer than 74 Back Benchers are seeking to speak in the debate, so a little self-restraint is necessary. The more noise and the longer the Front Benchers take with their speeches, the greater the delay.
The Deputy Prime Minister
Aside from these improvements, the arrangements for drawing the boundaries will remain untouched. For more than 60 years, the responsibility for drawing constituency boundaries has rested with the four independent boundary commissions. That guarantee of impartiality will remain. This is not, as some critics have sought to suggest, an elaborate attempt to gerrymander the boundaries, because the Government will have no say in where the new constituency perimeters will fall.
Mr Speaker
Order. It is helpful if the Deputy Prime Minister indicates clearly to whom he is giving way.
The Deputy Prime Minister
I said I was giving way to the right hon. Lady. Is the hon. Member for Sheffield South East (Mr Betts) answering to that?
Caroline Flint
I thank the right hon. Gentleman for giving way, but why has he settled on a figure that is different from the one proposed by him in the Liberal Democrat manifesto—which was to reduce the Chamber by 150, I believe—or by the Conservatives, who sought to reduce the number to 585? Has the figure of 600 been settled on because going any further in the downward direction would affect Tory and Liberal Democrat seats rather than just Labour ones, as proposed?
The Deputy Prime Minister
We settled on 600 MPs, a relatively modest cut in House numbers of just less than 8%, because it saves money—about £12 million each year—and because we think it creates a House that is sufficiently large to hold the Government to account while enabling us all to do our jobs of representing our constituencies. It also creates a sensible average number of constituents—76,000, as I mentioned earlier—that we already know is manageable because there are already 218 seats that are within 5% of that number. That is why we feel 600 is about right.
The Deputy Prime Minister
I want to make some progress so that others can have their say later.
Some hon. Members from Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland have also raised concerns about the likely impact in those nations of the cut in MP numbers. Of course I understand those anxieties, but our priority must be to ensure that a person’s vote is of equal worth—wherever they live in the UK. If the current rules distort that, they surely need to change.
Mr David Hamilton (Midlothian) (Lab)
Many in the House believe that geographical layout is as important as numerical. As cohesion is important, what discussions has the Deputy Prime Minister had with the commission about talking to the Scottish, Welsh and Northern Irish commissions? We should ensure that the change stands the test of time, and that we do not move into another cabal when we come to Scottish, Welsh and Northern Irish elections.
The Deputy Prime Minister
I agree that the change should stand the test of time. That is why the Electoral Commission, with our active support, has established a group of all the boundary commissions, with officials from the Cabinet Office and the territorial offices to ensure consistent application. As the hon. Gentleman knows, we have blended two things: a maximum geographical size of 13,000 sq km, to avoid constituencies of excessive geographical size; and the principle of equality in relation to the number of constituents.
The Deputy Prime Minister
I will make a little more progress.
The commissions will continue to use the electoral register as the basis for their reviews. That has been a feature of the system for decades, under Governments of all shades. With registration in Great Britain at well over 90% and in line with comparable countries, the register remains the best basis for reviews. That is not to say that where people are not on the register, we should do nothing. That has been the attitude for far too long. Under-registration exists in coastal areas and the inner cities, among younger people, including students, and minority ethnic groups. There is no silver-bullet solution. We are investigating a number of solutions, including freeing up local authorities to use existing public sector databases to identify people who are not registered, and then actively encouraging them to register. We are also acting to tackle registration fraud, accelerating the shift to a system of individual, rather than household, registration—a process started by Labour Members.
Greg Hands (Chelsea and Fulham) (Con)
Does the Deputy Prime Minister share my consternation that, for the first time in 50 years, under the previous Labour Government, the total UK electorate registered in this country declined when the UK population was rising—between 2001 and 2005? If Labour was serious about getting people on to the electoral register, it did a pretty poor job of doing so in government.
The Deputy Prime Minister
It is a distinguishing feature of this debate, and previous debates, that Labour Members are now very animated about matters that they did absolutely nothing about in government.
I now turn to the referendum on the alternative vote. Fewer, more equally sized and more up-to-date constituencies will help to bolster the legitimacy of parliamentary elections. However, in parallel with that step, we must address the question of reform of our voting system. Some believe that we are better served by sticking with the current system, which, they say, benefits from its familiarity and strong constituency link. Others believe that it leads to too many safe seats, giving many MPs jobs for life with only minority support from their constituents. Advocates of AV note that it would retain the current constituency link, but that it would give people more say over their vote by allowing them to rank candidates in order of preference. As a general rule, therefore, MPs would come to Westminster with the support of the majority of their voters.
Mr Denis MacShane (Rotherham) (Lab)
Will the Deputy Prime Minister clarify one technical point? Do the Government propose a compulsory alternative vote as in Australia where electors have to give a vote for every candidate, or a liberal one whereby they can vote for just one candidate?
The Deputy Prime Minister
In the Bill, as the right hon. Gentleman will see, we propose an optional preferential alternative vote system: the one used in New South Wales for state elections, not the one used at federal level in Australia.
Mr Douglas Carswell (Clacton) (Con)
If we are to have a referendum on electoral reform, why do we propose including only one alternative to the status quo? There is much talk of the new politics in which people, not politicians, decide. Why do we not let the voters decide what change should mean?
The Deputy Prime Minister
I accept that, on paper, a multiple-choice referendum is an attractive suggestion. For the sake of simplicity, however, it is better to present people with a simple yes or no alternative, exactly as set out in the Bill.
My hon. Friend may be interested to know that my officials have produced a simple fact sheet explaining the operation of the alternative vote system and first-past-the-post system. I will place a copy in the Library today.
The Deputy Prime Minister
I shall make a little progress, if I may.
There are members of the Government who hold contrasting views on these systems. Come the referendum, there will be those of us who campaign on different sides. We emphatically agree, however, that the final decision should be made not by us, but by the British people. Despite our differences on this matter, that is the shared position of the Government, and I hope that the Opposition will be able to support it as well. We propose that the referendum should ask a straightforward question: do voters want to replace the current first-past-the-post system with the alternative vote system, yes or no? If there is a “yes” vote in the referendum, the alternative vote system will come into force together with the new parliamentary boundaries.
Gordon Birtwistle (Burnley) (LD)
As my right hon. Friend knows, I am a new Member. When I arrived, I was surprised to learn that we already use the alternative vote system in the House. Mr Speaker was elected through that system, as are the Chairmen of Select Committees and the members of constituency Labour parties, and as the new leader of the Labour party will be. If they can have that system, why cannot the good people of this country have it in order to elect Members of the House?
The Deputy Prime Minister
That argument will, of course, take place during the referendum campaign, but my hon. Friend is right to point out that what is being suggested is an evolution rather than a revolution. It goes with the grain of our existing system of one Member per constituency. As I have said, that debate will take place during the weeks and months running up to the referendum.
Let me turn to a crucial issue which I know has elicited some controversy. The date of the poll is set for 5 May 2011. There are a number of reasons for that. First, the coalition agreement set out a commitment to hold a referendum, and it is right for us to move swiftly to meet that commitment. People have been promised the chance to decide, and they should not now be made to wait. Secondly, it makes sense to combine the referendum with the other elections that are already happening on that day.
The Deputy Prime Minister
May I explain the issue first, and then give way?
About 84% of the United Kingdom’s electorate will already have a reason to go to the polls for either local elections or elections to the devolved Assemblies. I believe that if we can avoid asking them to return to the ballot box more times than is necessary, we should. As Members will recall, we were elected just two months ago in a poll that was combined with local elections in many parts of the country.
Thirdly, combining the referendum with other elections will save a great deal of money. We estimate that across all polls on 5 May, the overall savings might be in the order of £30 million. Those savings will be shared between the referendum and the other polls. We will strive to keep costs down, and we are exploring whether further savings can be made.
Mr John Baron (Basildon and Billericay) (Con)
My right hon. Friend is right to talk about trust in politics, but one of the problems with the alternative vote is the democratic con trick that it can play on voters, who can never be quite sure what they are going to get. For example, what would my right hon. Friend say to the Labour sympathisers who were encouraged to vote Liberal by the slogan “Vote Liberal and keep out the Tories”?
The Deputy Prime Minister
My recollection is that there were plenty of leaflets around from Conservatives saying “Do not vote Liberal Democrat to keep Labour out”. I think that everyone played that game in the run-up to the general election.
Dr Julian Huppert (Cambridge) (LD)
Is my right hon. Friend aware that only one in three Members received more than half the votes cast? Does he agree that AV would end safe seats and ensure that Members received all those votes, that it would end the distortion of people being forced to guess who would be the last two still going, and that it would provide a more positive politics than we seem to have in the Chamber?
The Deputy Prime Minister
That may well be a case for the alternative vote, but we should focus today on providing the British people with the opportunity to hear those debates and make up their own mind.
The Deputy Prime Minister
I would like to make a bit more progress as many Members want to contribute to the debate.
I am pleased that the Electoral Commission has recognised that there are benefits to holding different elections on the same day. It is rightly concerned, as we are, to make sure that the poll runs smoothly, so we are working with it and electoral administrators to make sure that the combination of the polls works well, and we will table combination rules reflecting those discussions as an amendment to the Bill for debate at Committee stage.
Mr Bernard Jenkin (Harwich and North Essex) (Con)
I am grateful to my right hon. Friend for giving way, but he will be aware that the position of the Electoral Commission that he has just outlined is a dramatic reversal of that adopted by it in 2002. Is he also aware that one of the reasons it gave for changing its mind on the current occasion was:
“If we oppose combination but it goes ahead anyway, we then have a major role in conducting the referendum—potentially undermining our own credibility”?
It does not sound like a very strong-minded quango under these circumstances. Is it one of the quangos my right hon. Friend is thinking of chopping?
The Deputy Prime Minister
No, we are not thinking of that—at least not at present. If my hon. Friend reads the documentation provided by the Electoral Commission he will see that it has been very open about the fact that it shifted its view after having examined the international comparisons, and as he will know it concluded that
“it should be possible to deliver”
the polls scheduled for 5 May 2011. It has also highlighted a number of risks about combination—risks which we are seeking to address in close working partnership with it.
I would now like to outline briefly the effect of the substantive clauses. I know that many Members want to speak in the debate so I do not intend to describe the Bill clause by clause; there will be plenty of opportunity for that in Committee. For the moment I hope it will suffice to say that there are three main parts to the Bill: provisions for a referendum to be held, in clauses 1 to 5 and schedules 1 to 5; provisions for implementation of the alternative vote system in the event of a yes vote in the referendum, in clause 7 and schedule 6; and provisions to reform the setting of parliamentary boundaries, in clauses 8 to 11.
We have allowed for five full days for the Committee of the whole House to consider the Bill’s provisions and a further two days on the Floor for Report.
The Deputy Prime Minister
Those timings have been agreed with the Opposition. I give way on that point.
Mr Peter Bone (Wellingborough) (Con)
I thought the coalition Government were opposed to programme motions and to reducing the time for scrutiny of Government, especially on constitutional matters, so why do we have a programme motion for this Bill?
The Deputy Prime Minister
The programme motion simply states that there will be five full days of debate on the Floor of the House of Commons—nothing more and nothing less. I do not think that that can be construed as a heavy-handed or intrusive approach.
Mr Angus Brendan MacNeil (Na h-Eileanan an Iar) (SNP)
On the date, with the benefit of hindsight does the Deputy Prime Minister think that he has blown the respect agenda to smithereens? He has managed to unite opposition to AV, the boundaries and the date—he has quite sucessfully united opposition to what he is trying to do. Will he reconsider what he plans to do on the date, and thereby have some respect for elections that will be taking place in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland?
The Deputy Prime Minister
Those remarks seem to suggest that in addition to the votes they will be casting in any event in local elections and devolved Assembly elections, people will not be able to take a simple yes or no decision on a simple question, and I think that that is disrespectful to them.
The Deputy Prime Minister
I would now like to draw my comments to a close to allow others to have their say.
The reforms that the Bill proposes are at once significant and simple. Ensuring that people’s votes are more equal and giving voters a say over their voting system are both important reforms. They are about correcting unfairness in the way voters elect their representatives and putting power in the hands of people. If we together cannot deliver these reforms, we will have to ask ourselves what we really meant when each of us promised our constituents that we would seek to reform and strengthen our politics. We promised a new politics. Today is the day we must begin to deliver on that promise. We must make the system fair. We must put people back in charge. I commend the Bill to the House.
Mr Jack Straw (Blackburn) (Lab)
I beg to move an amendment, to leave out from “That” to the end of the Question and add:
“this House, whilst affirming its belief that there should be a referendum on moving to the Alternative Vote system for elections to the House of Commons, declines to give a Second Reading to the Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill because it combines that objective with entirely unrelated provisions designed to gerrymander constituencies by imposing a top-down, hasty and undemocratic review of boundaries, the effect of which would be to exclude millions of eligible but unregistered voters from the calculation of the electoral average and to deprive local communities of their long-established right to trigger open and transparent public inquiries into the recommendations of a Boundary Commission, thereby destroying a bi-partisan system of drawing boundaries which has been the envy of countries across the world; and is strongly of the opinion that the publication of such a Bill should have been preceded by a full process of pre-legislative scrutiny of a draft Bill.”
May I begin by thanking the Deputy Prime Minister for his generous remarks about my voluntary decision to move to the Back Benches after 30 years on one or other of the Front Benches? I felt that 30 years was enough and it may be that after I have spoken that view will be shared by this House.
Over the period of the previous Labour Government more significant constitutional reform was carried out in 13 years than had taken place in the previous 70 years. Although some of those reforms initially generated controversy, we actively sought, and were able to achieve, a wide cross-party consensus as the proposals went through, and they will stand the test of time.
Last year, with the crisis of confidence in British politics caused by the expenses scandal, to which the Deputy Prime Minister referred, my right hon. Friend the Member for Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath (Mr Brown), the then Prime Minister, rightly judged that the British people should have an opportunity to decide for themselves whether there should be a change in voting systems. Legislation to that effect was agreed by this House in early February, by a majority of 188. The Liberal Democrats voted with the then Government and I am grateful for their support, notwithstanding the faint praise for the referendum from the Deputy Prime Minister, who at the time—February was a long time ago—described an alternative vote referendum as a “miserable little compromise”. He is now going to support the “miserable little compromise” actively—there are many other bigger miserable compromises that he has supported since then. The proposals failed to become law only when they were blocked in the other place by the Conservative party.
The Labour party remains committed to that referendum on the alternative vote. Of course, opinions on the merits of voting systems differ within parties and across them; I am in favour of AV, but many of my colleagues take a different view. Regardless of our personal preferences, the Labour party is united in its belief that the people should decide how their Parliament should be elected. Our plans were to hold a referendum no later than October next year and for there to be extensive consultation before we decided on the exact date. The right hon. Gentleman proposes by this Bill that the referendum should take place with a date set, without any prior consultation, for next May, to coincide with local and national elections. I urge him to consider carefully the legitimate concerns expressed by people of all political persuasions, inside and outside this House, about clashing the referendum with local and national elections.
The exact date of the referendum, although important, is a Committee matter. If it had been our only concern with this Bill, Labour Members would have enthusiastically supported it on Second Reading and left such matters to the Committee stage. However, in the four months since he took office, the right hon. Gentleman has shown an extraordinary capacity for making the wrong call and for maximising opposition to himself and his policies when with a little wisdom—this certainly applies in this case—he could have minimised it. He could and should have made the AV referendum the subject of a single-issue Bill. Instead he either chose to join, or was suborned into joining, that measure with one that is not directly related to it and which could and should have been put in a separate Bill.
Mr Straw
I began my contribution at about 4.40 pm and, as Mr Speaker said, more than 70 hon. and right hon. Members wish to speak, so I am going to break the habit of 30 years and try to make a short speech. I therefore need the assistance of Members on both sides, but I give way.
Daniel Kawczynski
The right hon. Gentleman says that he is in favour of AV, but can he answer one simple question—the bedrock of why I am so opposed to it? I believe in one man, one vote. Under AV, some people will have two votes while others will have only one. How can that be fair?
Mr Straw
I am afraid I do not follow the hon. Gentleman’s argument. I accept and respect the fact that people have many different views on this matter. He and I may be on different sides on first past the post, but we are on the same side in opposing any idea of proportional representation, or such nonsense, for elections to this House. Those are issues that can be debated during the referendum campaign and it is for the people to decide.
Mr Leigh
I agree, as is so often the case, with the right hon. Gentleman on the necessity of having this vital referendum on its own day, but as a matter of interest, as a supporter of AV does he think it will be more likely to get through if the referendum is on the same day as other elections?
Mr Straw
Indeed. I suspect it would be far better to have the referendum as a single-issue referendum on a separate, dedicated day. That is not about whether the British public can cope with one or two issues at a time, but about ensuring that the issues are properly aired. There are all sorts of incredible complications about the funding limits for the parties and for the referendum campaigns when the polls take place on the same day.
Mr Tom Harris (Glasgow South) (Lab)
Can my right hon. Friend shed any light on the latest budget for the referendum? I believe that before the election the Government made it clear that the referendum would cost £40 million. On 27 July, the hon. Member for South West Devon (Mr Streeter) said it would cost £9.7 million, representing a saving of £17 million, because it was being held on the same day as the other elections. On 18 August, the Deputy Prime Minister told the press that it would cost between £80 million and £100 million. Can my right hon. Friend shed any light, or are we just looking at a random selection of numbers?
Mr Straw
The parliamentary answers I gave were that the costs, on a variety of assumptions, would be somewhere between £80 million and £100 million. That was not plucked from the air and of course, if I had stayed in office, as I wish I had, we would have sought to refine the costs.
Part 2 of the Bill is one of the most partisan proposals we have seen in recent years. It proposes arbitrarily to cut the number of Members to 600, to redraw parliamentary boundaries according to inflexible new arithmetical rules based on an electoral register from which millions of eligible voters are missing and, extraordinarily, as we have heard, under clause 10 public inquiries by the Boundary Commission into the Government’s preliminary proposals are explicitly to be prohibited.
If enacted, those proposals would represent the very antithesis of the high ideals that the Deputy Prime Minister initially set out for his political reforms. They have nothing whatever to do with those high ideals. Instead, they represent the worst kind of political skulduggery for narrow party advantage. There is no need for Members on the Government Benches to take that from me. All they need to do is to look at the ConservativeHome website and the detailed statement put there today by the hon. Member for Cities of London and Westminster (Mr Field)—to coincide with this debate, I assume. He says that
“the current proposals for AV and the reduction in number of parliamentary constituencies are being promoted by Party managers as an expedient way to prevent our principal political opponents from recapturing office.”
That is the truth and I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for saying it.
Mr Mark Field (Cities of London and Westminster) (Con)
I entirely stand by those words. I believe that is one of the problems with what is being proposed. However, as a matter of context, and to put the record straight, it is also fair to say that the current boundaries are entirely unacceptable and were maintained, particularly in relation to the over-representation of Wales and Scotland, by the Labour Government. Both sides have pretty dirty hands on the matter, but I very much agree with what the right hon. Gentleman said. It is quite wrong for any constitutional changes to be promoted, as traditionally they have been on both sides, simply for the narrow advantage of one side of the House.
Meg Hillier
Today we heard from the hon. Member for Chelsea and Fulham (Greg Hands) that the number of people on the electoral register went down after 1997; it actually went up by 2 million. At Question Time in June, the Deputy Prime Minister cited a figure for my constituency that was 18,000 short of the 72,920 people who actually voted on election day. With figures like that, can we trust anything that Government Members say when it comes to the Bill, which breaks the accountability link between voters and their MPs, who could change at every election?
Mr Straw
As I shall point out, the Deputy Prime Minister is rather forgetful of some of the facts, but let me deal with the issue of the size of constituencies, which the hon. Member for Cities of London and Westminster mentioned. We agree that constituencies should be of broadly equal size; that is the main purpose of the Boundary Commissions’ work. That principle is written into electoral law, which derives not from our Government, but from Margaret Thatcher’s Government in 1986.
Further legislation, designed to speed the system up, was introduced in 1992, in John Major’s Administration, by the right hon. and learned Member for Rushcliffe (Mr Clarke), now the Justice Secretary. We supported that 1992 legislation, and did not divide the House on it, but it will come as no surprise to students of the Liberal Democrats’ approach to life that—guess what?—they opposed that legislation. They divided the House on it, with Robert Maclennan—now Lord Maclennan—saying:
“The Bill is partisan and the way in which it has been introduced is proof enough for citizens of objectivity who are concerned about such matters.”—[Official Report, 15 June 1992; Vol. 209, c. 696.]
He then called for discussions between the Government and the other parties.
Mr Straw
No. If I may, I shall make some progress.
We left the Conservative laws in place. To deal with the point raised by the hon. Member for Cities of London and Westminster, we never sought, and would never have sought, to change the laws relating to boundaries without broad cross-party agreement. The insinuation that we somehow contrived to secure a large gap between the average size of Labour seats and Conservative seats is wholly ill-founded. Six of 10 of the largest constituencies are now Labour, and only three of the 10 smallest are. As I say, we would have been happy to discuss with the Deputy Prime Minister sensible and fair ways of speeding up the timetable for drawing boundaries, just as we did in 1992. Unfortunately, he has put political self-interest way ahead of democratic principles. That is especially evident in his proposals to reduce the size of this House to 600 Members.
The justification for that proposal, which we heard yet again today, is that the House is allegedly too large. That claim does not withstand examination. Our ratio of elected parliamentary representatives per head of population is roughly the same as that in France and Italy; the ratio is much smaller for other EU partners such as Ireland, Sweden, Greece and Poland. Of course, our House is larger than theirs because the population is greater here, and we are not a federal state. That said, we have only 20 more Members than the Bundestag in Germany.
In any event, a more sensible basis on which to decide is to ask what level of representation is right for the United Kingdom, and to examine how the electorate and the House of Commons have changed over time. If the number of Members of Parliament had grown out of all proportion to the size of the electorate, there would clearly be a problem, but that is not the case. Today, there are 650 Members, an increase of less than 4% in 60 years. Over the same period, the electorate have grown by 25%, and the work load of Members on both sides of the House has increased exponentially; that is both the work that arises from constituents, and the work that arises from responsibilities in the House.
Perhaps that is why, in 2003, the man who today is Prime Minister argued to preserve the boundaries of his west Oxfordshire seat and made a strong plea for the size of the House of Commons to stay as it was. The right hon. Member for Witney (Mr Cameron), now the Prime Minister, said in his oral evidence to an independent local public inquiry, which existed then and existed under us, but which will no longer exist:
“Somebody might take the view that at 659 there are already too many Members of Parliament at Westminster. They may take the view . . . that Westminster has less to do, with less MPs—I certainly hope that is not the case.”
I quote from the Boundary Commission for England: Transcript of Oxfordshire Boundary Inquiry, 2003.
The Deputy Prime Minister—this was another error by him—said that the number of Members in the House had crept inexorably up. That is not the case. If he had bothered to examine the House of Commons Library research note on the Bill, he would have seen that on the back. The numbers went up to 659 under the Conservatives. They were put at 659 in 1992. They were at 659 in the 1997 election. They are now down to 650. Of course we would have been happy to discuss sensible and agreed reductions in the total size, as indeed we did when we were in office.
Mr Charles Walker (Broxbourne) (Con)
Is it not the case that we have 650 Members of Parliament because we draw the Executive from Parliament? At any given time there are at least 300 Members of Parliament serving in the Executive or the shadow Executive. That leaves only 350 Members of Parliament to hold the Government to account.
Mr Richard Shepherd (Aldridge-Brownhills) (Con)
I am obliged to the right hon. Gentleman for giving way. The point just made is crucial to the equation. Clearly, if we reduce the number of Members of the House of Commons, and not the size of the Administration, their control over the size of the House of Commons increases. That is the very thing that the House is struggling to address in the wider context of constitutional reform.
Mr Straw
I entirely agree with the hon. Gentleman. I recall that when that point was put to the Deputy Prime Minister in the debate on the Queen’s Speech and he was asked whether he accepted that there should be a pro rata reduction in the number of Ministers and aides, he refused to give any commitment at all.
Let me return to the issue of public inquiries. Back in 2003, when the present Prime Minister supported the system, he had an opportunity to have his case put before a local inquiry. Under the Bill, no such right will exist in the future. Instead, all that the public are offered is a longer period for written representations, which is no substitute whatever for a proper examination, including oral evidence, before a judicially qualified chairman.
The Deputy Prime Minister said in the House a few minutes ago that there was no evidence that such local inquiries had changed the original proposals from the Boundary Commission. Again, he is not woefully ill-briefed, because he has a fine set of officials, but he is woefully ill-informed. The Boundary Commission’s fifth report for 2007 reported that local public inquiries had led to change in the original recommendations in 64% —two thirds—of the cases where proposals had initially been made. The right hon. Gentleman shakes his head. That happens to be the case, and the source for that is the Boundary Commission.
Mr David Davis
I put exactly that point to the Deputy Prime Minister earlier. If we are not careful and the Bill goes ahead as it is currently drafted, instead of public inquiries, will we end up with a series of local judicial challenges on the basis of reflection of community interests?
Mr Straw
Yes, I agree.
Let me pick up on something that the Deputy Prime Minister mentioned parenthetically when he said that the timetable motion had been agreed by the usual channels. I am not responsible for negotiations with the usual channels, but I can tell the House that we are adopting the same approach to the programme motion that was always adopted by the Conservatives when they were in opposition. We do not believe that sufficient time has been allocated to this Bill, and we shall vote against the programme motion.
Mr Straw
Allow me to make progress.
Every single other constitutional measure that I can recall has been considered within a time scale that allowed for proper pre-legislative scrutiny, but the man who came to office preening himself on how he was to raise the standards of our politics has brushed all that aside—so much so that the Political and Constitutional Reform Committee, to which he is answerable, denounced his approach in unusually strong terms. It said:
“The Deputy Prime Minister has accurately described the Bill as ‘fundamental to this House and to our democracy’. We regret that the Government’s timetable has denied us an adequate opportunity to scrutinise the Bill before second reading.”
Had the Select Committee had time, it might have been able to prise from the right hon. Gentleman some better explanation for clause 9, which can only be described as the Liberal Democrat protection clause.
The essence of the Bill is that arithmetic trumps all—that it trumps community loyalties, historical ties, long-established county boundaries, mountains, and, indeed, the sea. In pursuit of arithmetic, for example, the views of the people of the Isle of Wight are wholly to be ignored. It is all in the name of an arithmetical formula, except in one area of the United Kingdom—the north of Scotland. There will be two protected constituencies: Orkney and Shetland, with 37,000 voters, and the Western Isles, with 22,000 voters—a third of the standard size. Our objection is not that Orkney and Shetland and the Western Isles should have special considerations taken into account, but that they are the only areas that will be allowed to put their case about local needs and concerns.
Then we have the most bare-faced and partisan exemption of all: a new rule to allow seats that are more than 12,000 sq km in size—where this figure came from, I do not know—to exist even without the required quota of electors. Alongside that, another rule prevents any seat from exceeding 13,000 sq km. At present, only one seat on the mainland is bigger than 12,000 sq km—Ross, Skye and Lochaber, the seat of the former leader of the Liberal Democrats. Contrary to what the Deputy Prime Minister intimated, this is to protect a small seat with 24,000 voters—fewer than the average at which all other seats will be aimed. The only other seats that could conceivably be assisted by that rule are located in the Scottish highlands, and they are also Liberal Democrat-held.
Mr Straw
If the hon. Gentleman does not mind, I need to make some progress so that others can get in.
The Deputy Prime Minister labours under the delusion that arithmetic equals fairness and that—the north of Scotland excepted, of course—human and natural factors should be cast aside. The strength of that delusion was recently spelt out by the Electoral Reform Society, which said:
“Conservative proposals”—
we now, of course, have to add Liberal Democrat ones—
“mean that most constituencies will pay less regard to what most voters think of as community and natural boundaries, and change more frequently, destabilising the link between MPs and constituents. The United States has rigorous requirements for arithmetical equality of population in congressional districts, but the worst gerrymandering in the developed world.”
Mr Straw
If the hon. Gentleman will excuse me, no.
In contrast, Margaret Thatcher’s 1986 system recognised the need for balance, which allowed local commissioners and the commission to take account of historical and natural boundaries, and density as well as sparsity of population, and to do so with the widest public acceptability. That ability to achieve balance has also meant that long-standing problems such as the under-registration of voters has had less impact on the final outcome. The problem of under-registration goes back to the 1990 poll tax. We sought to stabilise registration levels, but that poll tax legacy remains. The right hon. Gentleman must recognise that his reliance on arithmetic above all makes the problem of under-registration so acute and so potentially unfair.
Mrs Laing
I thank the right hon. Gentleman very much for giving way. He knows what I am going to say because we have had this argument so many times across the Dispatch Box. He knows, as does the rest of the House, that under-registration will be put right to a very great extent by the introduction of individual voter registration, which was proposed by the Conservative party way back in 2005 and which the right hon. Gentleman’s Government delayed for five years before they introduced it.
Mr Straw
The hon. Lady will recognise that we introduced agreed legislation on the phasing-in of individual registration. She will also know—and she is on the record as recognising—that although there were potential benefits from individual registration, there were dangers too, which were clear from the Northern Ireland experience. It had to be phased in carefully, with a large amount of resources—not rushed, as the Deputy Prime Minister now proposes.
Mr Straw
I am coming to the close of my remarks.
The right hon. Gentleman has repeatedly acknowledged that some 3.5 million people are missing from the register; the figure is from the Electoral Commission. Yet as he told the House today, and did in July, the boundary review will be based on the register published in the beginning of December. Millions will be missing from that register and, as he admitted, they will not be randomly spread. Instead, they will be concentrated among the young, private sector tenants and black and ethnic minority British residents and will be most likely to be found in metropolitan areas, smaller towns and cities and coastal areas with significant population turnover.
Given those facts, which are accepted by all, why is the right hon. Gentleman rushing to redraw all the boundaries according to an entirely new set of rules whose effect cannot be challenged in public inquiries before these missing voters are put on the electoral roll?
I should have said to the right hon. Member for Haltemprice and Howden (Mr Davis) that I accept his point that there are likely to be many more judicial reviews, including successful judicial reviews, of the Boundary Commission proposals. The Boundary Commission will have to wade through a large number of written representations; there is no way in the world that it can give them the proper concern that would be given if there were an independent, legally qualified chair for each of the boundary inquiries.
Yes, boundaries have been reviewed in recent times on the existing registers, but that did not happen according to a rigid new electoral quota involving an arbitrary cut of 50 seats. Furthermore, those reviews were always balanced by the ability to hold public inquiries, so that account could be taken of issues such as population movement, natural boundaries and, yes, voter registration.
When this issue was debated before the election, Liberal Democrats took a very different view from the one that they now take; no surprise there. Their then spokesman, David Howarth, then the hon. Member for Cambridge, said:
“The idea that fiddling with boundaries based on out-of-date information can make the first-past-the-post system fairer is absurd.”—[Official Report, 8 April 2010; Vol. 508, c. 1217.]
Is that no longer the view of the Liberal Democrats and their leader? Are they now willing to concede a “fiddling of boundaries”—Liberal Democrat words, not mine—provided that they get a referendum on electoral reform in return?
The Liberal Democrats hawk their democratic consciences around, yet they are happy to ignore the democratic rights of millions of eligible voters who will not be part of this boundary review process. Every day in opposition they were speaking as loudly as we are about the problems of under-registration.
Mr Straw
I am about to close.
In his excellent blog on the ConservativeHome website, the hon. Member for Cities of London and Westminster wrote today:
“Reform to our constitution should never be made as a short term, tactical gambit.”
This is a deeply flawed and partisan Bill. It will do much harm and sow a great deal of division. I urge the Deputy Prime Minister to return to the democratic principles that his party’s Front Benchers articulated before the election and to remove the unfair boundary clauses from the Bill. If he splits the Bill, he will have our support. In the meantime, I commend our amendment to the House and urge the House to give that amendment its full support.
Madam Deputy Speaker (Dawn Primarolo)
Order. Before I call the next speaker, may I remind the House that some 74 Members wish to speak in this important debate, and that Mr Speaker has set a time limit of six minutes per speaker?
Greg Hands (Chelsea and Fulham) (Con)
I rise to support the Bill, although I shall talk mainly about part 2, on parliamentary boundary reviews, as somebody who was heavily involved in the boundary review in my own area of north London last time around. It was a very lengthy process that began in 2001 and ended in 2007. That is the important point—reviews are currently extremely long-winded affairs. It is crucial to understand that they are far too long and infrequent, and as a consequence we have electoral data that are far too dated to produce a modern electoral system and lead to far too many constituencies being either too small or too large when the boundary changes finally come in, as they did most recently this past May. In fact, the boundaries introduced then are based on electorates drawn up in 2000, so we have just kicked off with new boundaries that are already 10 years out of date.
Under the old system, we would normally be expected to have those boundaries for up to three Parliaments, which could mean that they are in place until such a time as 2024, for example. By that time, the electoral data will be a colossal 24 years out of date. In the last Parliament, the electoral data were already 16 years out of date in 2009. It is very important that we have more frequent and thorough boundary reviews based on current data.
I want to say a couple of quick words on the alternative vote, which I do not support. I will campaign for a no vote on AV, and if I had a free choice I would not put it to a referendum. However, it is clearly a constitutional matter, and it is important that such proposals should be put to referendums. I welcome the coalition Government’s commitment that such questions, including a proposal to change the voting system, should be put to a referendum. As it currently stands, and as I believe the Labour party offered to the Liberal Democrats in the abortive coalition negotiations in May, any Government can come along and arbitrarily decide to change the system through legislation without having a referendum. I therefore commend the Government for seeing that the matter needs a referendum, which will set an important precedent.
There are two possible objections to having more frequent boundary reviews, and especially to their being held every Parliament. One is cost, and the other is administrative inconvenience for Members of Parliament and others involved in electoral administration. Those are the only two possible objections to more frequent and regular boundary reviews, but unfortunately the Labour party has chosen not to have one of them as its grounds for objection. It is objecting, on absurd grounds, to the creation of equality for electors in a parliamentary constituency, something on which it and its predecessors have been campaigning since the early 19th century. Suddenly, Labour Members are the people defending the principle that constituents should be unequal, which is entirely wrong.
It is perfectly possible to have boundary reviews much more quickly. The previous one lasted six years, but the meat of it lasted about a year and a half from the time when the first proposals were made to the time when they were approved by the Boundary Commission. Thereafter, it mainly came down to approval by Parliament.
Geraint Davies (Swansea West) (Lab/Co-op)
Will the hon. Gentleman give way?
Geraint Davies
Given that it has been said that the savings would be £12 million, how many hundred million pounds does the hon. Gentleman estimate the reduction by 50 MPs will cost, given the judicial activity and so on that will happen?
Greg Hands
That is a bit of a red herring because judicial activity that is happening through the current system, with the local reviews, is extremely expensive. I personally think that those matters are not for the court or lawyers—they are administrative matters. They should never have been given over to QCs and other lawyers because they are simply not matters of law. We are considering reviews of how parliamentary boundaries are drawn, and they should be more frequent and more effective.
I want to end by examining the Labour party’s position. It has set out to oppose equal-sized parliamentary constituencies. Let us consider that for a moment. The right hon. Member for Blackburn (Mr Straw) used the word “gerrymandering”. He should know better; his use of it was an abuse of the English language. One cannot describe a way of formulating a set of seats as gerrymandering, but one can so describe its execution, for example in an irregularly shaped constituency, particularly one made for party political purposes. However, that will be down to the Boundary Commission, so thankfully there cannot be any gerrymandering—we have an independent Boundary Commission to conduct the execution.
Let me mention three points of 19th-century history. The right hon. Gentleman studied law at university. Perhaps he is like Tony Blair, who, having completed his time in politics, thinks that he should have studied history instead of law. The Labour party did not exist in 1832, but many Labour party members believe that the Great Reform Act of 1832 presaged the development of the modern Labour party. Yet that was all about abolishing rotten boroughs and trying to create a system of parliamentary constituencies of equal size. Before that, we had constituencies such as Gatton with seven electors, Old Sarum with 13 electors, Dunwich with 32 electors and so on, while the whole of Yorkshire, including the great cities of Leeds, Sheffield and Hull, had some 20,000 electors.
I shall pray in aid the Chartists. The right hon. Gentleman knows that their people’s charter of 1838 is frequently cited as one of the origins of the modern Labour party. Many people in the Labour party hark back to the six points in the people’s charter. Point 5 is:
“Equal constituencies, securing the same amount of representation for the same number of electors; instead of allowing small constituencies to swamp the votes of larger ones.”
That is from the people’s charter of 1838, which Labour is seeking to revoke.
I welcome the commitment that AV is a constitutional matter. I welcome more frequent and faster boundary reviews, but I am afraid that Labour’s opposition to the Bill is cynical and self-serving. Their predecessors would be deeply ashamed of what they are doing today.
Margaret Beckett (Derby South) (Lab)
The Bill is as dangerous as it is dishonest because it is rooted in a set of false premises. My right hon. Friend the Member for Blackburn (Mr Straw) completely demolished the argument that it is either necessary or desirable to redraw almost every constituency boundary, especially when the independent Boundary Commission has just redrawn them. He highlighted the danger of removing the previous process of scrutiny and appeal.
I want to address the second half of the gerrymander—the proposal to change our electoral system. We are told that it is necessary to change—“reform” is the word used—because our current system is “unfair”; that the reform will give greater power and influence to the people, and that that is what the people demand. I contest each of those premises. It is dishonest to say that our current system is somehow unfair and that proportional representation is fair. There is no such thing as an electoral system that is absolutely even-handed and fair in every respect. Each has its own fairness and unfairness.
It is legitimate to argue that our current system can give majority groups an outcome that is somewhat disproportionate to the scale of that majority, but it is equally true—I believe that it is even more so—that the major effect of more proportional systems is to give wholly disproportionate power instead to minorities. The views supported by a smaller number often hugely outweigh in the balance of power those of the majority of the population. There may be reasons for saying that that is desirable—I can see from their reaction that the Liberal Democrats share that view—especially, of course, for those in minorities, but I struggle to see how it is more democratic.
Simon Hughes (Bermondsey and Old Southwark) (LD)
Will the right hon. Lady give way?
Margaret Beckett
I am sorry, but time is so short.
I recognise the argument that the alternative vote does not create a fully proportional system, but I oppose the proposal for exactly the same reason that the Liberals support it. Like them, I regard it as the thin end of the wedge, and I oppose their ultimate goal. Incidentally, it is now clear that in the formation of the coalition, the Liberals tried to force both the Labour party and the Conservative party to push through the change to alternative vote without a referendum and without seeking the views of the British people at all, so I hope that we will not hear much from them about what a great idea a referendum is.
Our current system has substantial strengths and virtues. It is simple and easy to understand, and the British people know exactly how to operate it to get the result that they want. For decades, I have listened to the most arrant rubbish about how our electoral system somehow cheats the British people of the Government whom they want. I have never believed that, and I do not know how anyone can continue to argue it with a straight face after the elections of recent years.
In the ’80s and ’90s, those who support PR argued that votes cast for the Labour party, the Liberals and others outweighed those cast for the Thatcher and Major Governments, and said that our system prevented the people from removing them. However, people knew perfectly well that if they voted Tory or for a third party rather than the Labour alternative, they were actively choosing or risking the re-election of a Tory Government. I deeply regretted their decision, but I never doubted that it was a conscious one. The argument that our electoral system stood in their way was surely demolished for ever by how they voted in 1997. Indeed, so well did they understand our system, they could even produce a Parliament such as this one, when no party has a clear majority.
The people therefore have the influence and the power, and they understand how to make change if that is what they choose. It is not true that the Bill will give more power and influence to the people. The Bill takes power away from the people and gives it to the politicians, as the coalition Government daily demonstrate. If the Bill is enacted and if the British people choose to give away their power in the referendum that the Liberals tried to deny them, so be it, but they must be told the truth about the choice that they are making and the effect of their decision. They must not have the wool pulled over their eyes by politicians who believe that they stand to benefit.
Over the years, many people, especially in other countries, have asked me to explain why Britain has such comparative political peace and stability. I believe that that is in large part because the British people know perfectly well how to make dramatic electoral change if that is what they want. If on the basis of a false prospectus of giving them more power and influence that power is taken away or diminished, I believe that there is a risk of a backlash that jeopardises precisely that stability.
Mr Robert Syms (Poole) (Con)
I rise to support the Bill. I am a supporter of first past the post, but frankly the system will not work unless there are regular reviews of electorates by the Boundary Commission. I helped and participated in the last boundary review, which was really a kind of 18th-century procession around the country. The commissions managed to do inquiries for north and south London, and for west and south Yorkshire, but did each individual area on its own, which took such a long time. There is no reason why the process cannot be speeded up and yet remain impartial and allow for representations.
There are five days to discuss the Bill on the Floor of the House, which is ample opportunity to make further representations regarding some form of public inquiry, but we do not need barristers and others to turn up to give evidence in each individual county of three, four or five constituencies. That is too slow. As we have heard from a number of my hon. Friends, we have just fought an election that is already 10 years out of date. Unfortunately in the modern age, people move, which causes disparities and unfairnesses. That has to be addressed by this House. If it is not addressed, we will end up in a situation in which one party wins most of the votes and another party wins most of the seats. That sometimes happens because of bizarre quirks in the electoral system—for example, in 1951 Labour had more votes and we had more seats—but broadly speaking people get what they vote for, if the boundary system is up to date. So reform is necessary.
It is sensible to proceed on the basis of the Bill. No one can argue that this is being railroaded through, as it will have five days on the Floor of the House. At times, in opposition, we pleaded for more time to discuss constitutional Bills, but we were given no more time, we faced guillotines and we could not discuss them. The right hon. Member for Blackburn (Mr Straw) was his most genial and persuasive self this afternoon and I agreed with much of what he said, but I sat on the other side of the House when we discussed electoral reform for the European elections—a list system that was introduced without a referendum, and without even the boundary commissions looking at how the regions were drawn up. We had massive disparities between Wales and Scotland and the south-east of England. That change was railroaded through by the Government. The right hon. Gentleman’s case would be more persuasive if he had not put that legislation on the statute book.
Mr Straw
I was trying to keep my remarks brief, but I did point out in the Queen’s Speech debate that one blemish—for which I was responsible—on the previous Administration’s otherwise good record in seeking all-party consensus on constitutional issues was the European elections system. I regret that. It was not a good chapter for the Labour Government, although no one could claim that we did it for party advantage, because it worked against our party and helped small and fringe parties.
Mr Syms
After 30 years on the Front Bench for the right hon. Gentleman, it is nice to hear all his confessions. However, some of us warned of the problems when the legislation was considered. For example, I made the point on Report about extremist and nasty parties benefiting from the electoral system that was being introduced, and we have seen the British National party and one or two others getting in. The system, because it is purely democratic, sometimes allows people to be elected when perhaps the first-past-the-post system would not.
We have to look at this Bill as sensible and pragmatic politicians, and if we want first past the post to continue—as I do—we must have boundary commissions that can produce regular reports, get through the business rapidly and produce constituencies of equal size.
I welcome the proposal for 600 Members and I agree with the point that if the number were reduced too much it would increase the power of the Treasury Bench and the Government. If we reduce the number of Back Benchers without reducing the number of Ministers, it would change the balance of the House.
We have had several boundary reviews in which the number of Members has gone up. We are not as big as we were when the southern Irish were here—at one point, there were 700 Members—but in each boundary review a compromise is reached at the end and the numbers tick up. We need to top off those numbers, reduce them modestly and, in future reviews, perhaps reduce them still further. We do have an awful lot of Members of Parliament. I accept that there is more work, including e-mails, but we have more staff than we did when Enoch Powell used to sit in the Library writing his letters by hand. Things have moved on, but—especially with an elected or substantially elected upper House—we could have fewer Members of Parliament.
Duncan Hames (Chippenham) (LD)
Does my hon. Friend agree that at a time when public servants across the public sector are being asked to find efficiencies it would be strange to exempt Members of Parliament from the same challenge?
Daniel Kawczynski
My hon. Friend mentioned the elections to the European Parliament. If we are going to change any voting system, surely it should be those elections, in which only 30% of the electorate turn up to vote, because they are very unhappy with how we vote for MEPs. Conversely, in our elections the turnout is 70%. Most people are happy with the way they elect us, but not with how they elect their representatives to the European Parliament.
Mr Syms
I am sure that that is the case.
The basis of this Bill is still geographical representation, which has served our country well over a long period of time. However, the matters that we are discussing today are not new. In fact, AV went on the statute book in the Parliament of 1929 to 1931. The economic crisis and the formation of the National Government changed that, because the legislation was taken off the statute book when the national Government were formed. There was a debate in the House in 1933, initiated by a Liberal, on electoral reform in which Clement Attlee spoke from the Opposition Benches in defence of the first-past-the-post system. He was challenged by Sir Herbert Samuel as to why he had voted for AV, and he stated: “It was the result of a bargain with the Liberals. Although I voted for it, I disapproved of it.”
That was in 1933; we are now in the year 2010. No doubt that was an unprincipled agreement, rather than a proper coalition agreement such as that which we have today, but first past the post has lasted rather a long time. People have said “RIP” to first past the post many times before. However, I am happy to vote for the Bill and send the referendum to the British people, because at the end of the day, I trust the common sense of the British people.
Mr Angus Brendan MacNeil (Na h-Eileanan an Iar) (SNP)
The Deputy Prime Minister spoke about reform of politics and political renewal. It is therefore perhaps a shame that the SNP’s amendment to the motion was not selected, as it would have better achieved those ends than the amendment before the House. However, that is possibly another matter.
As a supporter of democracy, I was at one with the Liberals in the past in supporting the single transferable vote. However, they have now moved downmarket, sadly, and have left us in the nationalist parties alone in supporting STV. AV is not the halfway compromise that the Liberals imagine it to be. It is not halfway between first past the post and STV or even a quarter of the way; it is not a 10th of the way or a 20th of the way. At best, it might be a 50th of the way. Perhaps that is progress, but it is not much of a leap.
However, there does seem to be a leap in the paranoia growing among those on the Benches of this House, including paranoia among some Tories that although their second-preference votes might be distributed to the Liberals, the Liberals will not reciprocate in the same manner. Labour also has paranoia, about seats and boundary changes. The final paranoia that I am detecting is that if AV goes through, the Tories might collapse the Government and hold an election before AV gets assent, in order to give the Liberals a disadvantage.
However, my fear is ultimately based on the tremendous lack of respect that we are seeing. My hon. Friend the Member for Carmarthen East and Dinefwr (Jonathan Edwards) tells me that in Wales the Tories and the Liberals stopped a referendum that would have been held on the day of the Welsh elections. However, in Westminster, the Tories and the Liberals are pushing a referendum on us in Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland on the day of our national elections. That is not happening in a Welsh context alone; there will now be an asymmetrical voting day across the United Kingdom, which is a tremendous mistake.
The confusion of electoral methodology, boundaries and the date is a strategic master class in creating opposition to the Bill. Surely respect demands another day. Among the hundreds of days that the Government could have chosen for a referendum, they have chosen the one day on which votes will be taking place in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland—a master call in creating opposition. I note sadly that the Labour amendment makes no mention of the date.
As I have said, the Deputy Prime Minister spoke about political reform and letting the people decide. Why, therefore, do the Government not trust the people to decide properly? Why do the Liberals and the Tories not trust the people to discriminate between first past the post, AV and STV? I have just heard a Government Member say that he trusted the people to decide and choose the right system. Well, give them a proper choice and let them choose properly and comprehensively, because otherwise we will not be letting the people choose. Instead, we will be giving them a very narrow field of choice. Do the Government not trust the people? The rhetoric behind it all was that this programme would be greater than the Great Reform Act of 1832, but it is certainly falling down badly in the sidelines.
Finally, let me deal with the date and I shall detain the House no longer. All we ask for in Scotland is some respect for what is happening there and for Scottish dynamics. We do not want the media to be dominated by a secondary issue to the main bread-and-butter issues that will apply in Scotland. If we are to have a referendum in Scotland on the day of the election, why will the Government not consider having a referendum on giving greater powers to the Scottish Parliament? This is going to happen in Wales this coming spring, so why can we not have it in Scotland? Why can we not have either independence or greater fiscal powers under the status quo?
Daniel Kawczynski
The hon. Gentleman is issuing a lot of challenges to various political parties, so will he accept the challenge of taking a small bit of the mainland in order to make his seat the same size as our constituencies?
Mr MacNeil
I am delighted that the hon. Gentleman has raised that matter. This morning, I travelled here by ferry in a force 7 gale; the ferry could not turn and had to reverse in the Sound of Barra. Secondly, I got a plane from Benbecula to Glasgow and then another plane from Glasgow to Heathrow. If the hon. Gentleman wants to make that journey, let him do so; if he does not know the geography, I would ask him to come and visit my constituency.
Mr Gary Streeter (South West Devon) (Con)
I have been a Member of this House for 18 years and as far as I can recall I have never voted against my own party on a three-line Whip. I am sad to say that that record—I am not quite sure whether it is a proud or a shameful record, or possibly a supine record—is going to come to an end with respect to this measure, unless substantial amendments are made in Committee. I propose to abstain this evening, but vote against the Bill on Third Reading unless substantial amendments are passed.
Why on earth would I want to act that way in respect of this seemingly innocuous measure? Before I explain my four reasons for doing so, it is only fair to read out a list of the constituents who, over the 18 years I have been a Member of this House, have contacted me—whether it be by letter, e-mail, phone or even in the street, and I add that my constituents are not shy about accosting me on any particular issue—to ask for a referendum on an alternative voting system. I must put this list on the record. Oh, but look, it is a blank piece of paper! The reality is that for 18 years my constituents consulted me on every conceivable issue under the sun, but not a single one has ever said to me, “We must change the AV electoral system, Mr Streeter.” Even since the measure was introduced in the coalition agreement—it is, of course, excellent—very few constituents have bothered to get in touch. There is a raging lack of interest in this matter out there. There is a lot more interest in a move to full-blown proportional representation, and if the referendum were about that, I would have a lot more respect for it. That is not the case, however, which is why I feel I cannot support the proposals. There is no constituency interest or support for this measure—my first reason for opposing it.
Secondly, at a time of stringent austerity when every public body is being asked to prune spending and when public spending is being slashed, we are going to spend between £80 million and £100 million on a referendum that nobody wants. That money could be spent on a whole range of other things. Everyone will have their own pet project, but I know that a number of my constituents have been upset over recent weeks and months by the ending of free swimming for under-fives and over-65s. That has been subsidised at a rate of about £48 million a year. I would rather continue with free swimming for another two years than have a referendum that nobody wants.
My third reason for opposition is that these proposals were not in the manifesto of any party at the last election. Call me old-fashioned, but I think that manifestos are important and that we should do what we say we are going to do in them. [Interruption.] Yes, I know that Labour Members are opposing the Bill. I always enjoy the shadow Lord Chancellor’s speeches, but his speech today would have had a bit more credibility if, over the past 13 years, his party in government had done more to tackle under-representation in some of the seats that he expresses concern about. It is an important issue, and the Labour Government had 13 years in which to tackle it.
The measure was in the manifesto of our coalition partners, not in our manifesto. It was in the coalition agreement, which I respect—it is an impressive agreement—but I do not believe that that agreement is binding on me. This Parliament is sovereign, and my manifesto is binding on me, but the coalition agreement is not binding on me.
My fourth reason for opposing the measure is that I have long believed that first past the post is the best system for electing people to the House. It is simple, everyone understands it, and by and large, as the right hon. Member for Derby South (Margaret Beckett) said, it produces the right result. If the Bill passes on Third Reading, I am concerned that, even with the most excellent information, constituents will be confused. This morning, I received an e-mail from a lady in Ivybridge, in response to an excellent article I had written in the Plympton, Plymstock and Ivybridge News, which I know many Members are keen to read on a weekly basis, and should they be so moved they can read it on my website. The lady took me to task for saying that I would oppose the alternative vote system, which, she said, she wanted because she had voted Labour all her life, and as she lives in a rock-solid Conservative seat, her vote has never counted. Of course, proportional representation would make her vote count, but the alternative vote would make not a scrap of difference in South West Devon. The lady has taken the trouble to get in touch, but has completely misunderstood what AV is. I am concerned that such misunderstanding would be widespread.
I support the coalition, which is working extremely well, but I fear that if we moved to an AV system, we would never have an outright Conservative Government again. I would consider that to be an extremely bad thing. The Conservative party is already a broad church. Some Members say that it is good to have the Lib Dems on board because they will make us much fairer than we would be on our own. I find such remarks offensive and absolutely wrong, and I would hate to be party to any measure that would prevent an outright Conservative Government from being returned in this country again. If the measure is passed on Third Reading, it will prove that sometimes turkeys do vote for Christmas.
Mr Graham Allen (Nottingham North) (Lab)
It is a great privilege to make my first contribution as the newly elected Chair of the Political and Constitutional Reform Committee. A great number of the Select Committee’s members are in the Chamber today, and I look forward to listening to their speeches later.
I would like to refer you, Madam Deputy Speaker, to the work of the Select Committee, to the evidence taken at length, to a large document to which many of the key academics and most of the important people had contributed their views, and to a widespread consultation that had taken place. I would also like to refer you to the racy and readable summary of that Select Committee report, because if parliamentarians on the Select Committee do not do their job and lay down basic, agreed and impartial facts, the debate might get partisan and a little tribal.
I would like to do those things, but I cannot do them. My Select Committee has had a grand total of two sessions to discuss and take evidence on the Bill, which is arguably the most important that the House will pass in this Session—the most far-reaching and fundamental Bill. It changes our electoral system, it changes the number of Members of Parliament, it changes the balance between the Executive and legislature—for the worse, because fewer Members will mean that a larger percentage of us will represent either the alternative Executive or the Executive themselves, making it even harder to hold the Government to account—and it changes the relationship of individual Members to their constituents.
My Select Committee has a good bunch of people on it, from different parties, who are independent-minded and who speak their minds. One thing that unites them, in the sliver of a report that we have had a chance to put before the House, is the belief that we have not been adequately consulted during discussions about the Bill.
The Leader of the House, whose statement I welcomed, said that if we were to take the House of Commons seriously, we must have proper pre-legislative scrutiny. There must be a period, before any Bill comes to the House for its Second Reading, that would allow us to say, “We have studied this Bill, and here are some of our conclusions.” The Leader of the House wrote to the Liaison Committee—which consists of all the Chairs of all the Select Committees—stating in terms that he believed that 12 weeks constituted the minimum amount of time that we should spend on each Bill before it came to the House for Second Reading, but I am afraid that he has had to eat his words.
This is not some small order or statutory instrument, but potentially the biggest Bill that the House will consider in five years, and my Committee has been given just two sessions in which to consider it. I do not regard that as the new politics. I do not regard it as involving all Members in the House. I am not making a partisan point on behalf of one party or another; I am making a point on behalf of my Committee, which believes that it is inappropriate for a Bill of such magnitude to receive such cursory attention from the House before its Second Reading.
I hope very much—and I hope that the Minister of State will take my words away with him—that it will never be possible for this to happen again, but my hopes may be forlorn. The Fixed Term Parliaments Bill will come down the tracks next Monday, and again we shall have only two sessions in which to consider it. That must strike at the heart of every Member of Parliament. It must cause all Members to ask themselves what they really feel is their role in this place. Of course they must support their Government or their Opposition, but they must ask themselves whether this is the way in which we want to pursue our politics over the next five years. I ask them please to find it within themselves to say, “We can do better.”
Let me make a more personal observation about the boundaries provisions. As other Members have already pointed out, the population in our constituencies has risen by 25% since 1950. The expectation of what we should do has massively increased the work load of Members, particularly those in deprived constituencies such as mine. If we proceed with these proposals and make no effort to change them, we shall be voting to give our constituents a poorer service, and that is not why we came here.
Roger Williams (Brecon and Radnorshire) (LD)
It is a great pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Nottingham North (Mr Allen). I especially noted his point about pre-legislative scrutiny. Already in this Parliament, a number of Bills that have subsequently become Acts have been dealt with relatively quickly. Those Bills would certainly have benefited from pre-legislative scrutiny, although that is not to say that I oppose the principles contained in them.
There are those who would have liked two elements of this Bill—the proposed equalisation of constituencies and the referendum on a change in the voting system—to be in separate Bills. Pre-legislative scrutiny could have dealt with that, and perhaps produced greater agreement. I believe that from time to time the public of this nation have the right to a referendum on important issues such as this, and I hope that the majority of the House agrees with that. However, I shall concentrate on the issue of the equalisation of constituencies. We have heard a number of compelling arguments that we should seek to ensure that our boundary commissions look very frequently at our constituencies and the numbers of electors in them. As has been pointed out, equal constituencies was a key issue for the Chartist movement.
We all represent constituencies that are unique and every one of us could argue that because of deprivation, geography or demography our constituency should have greater representation or fewer electors so that we, as Members of Parliament, can do the work that we need to do. Indeed, I represent a very rural constituency; it is about 80 miles from north to south and about 40 miles from east to west—it may be the largest constituency in England and Wales, although I know that a number of Members would contest that—but I do not think that that should be a reason to have fewer electors electing somebody from that part of mid-Wales. Indeed, I am a bit of a purist on this subject and I would like no exceptions to the way in which constituencies are set up. I say that knowing that the hon. Member for Na h-Eileanan an Iar (Mr MacNeil) is present, and I am also concerned that I am upsetting my Chief Whip in this matter, which might not go very well for me in future.
If these proposals go ahead, we in Wales will see a fairly drastic reduction in the number of MPs, as will Scotland. It might be wise to ask why Scotland and Wales had greater representation than England. It might have been a sop to the nationalists that Wales and Scotland had greater representation in this House, and therefore the tendency to support the nationalist cause could be reduced.
Mr Mark Williams (Ceredigion) (LD)
I am not sure about the history of the circumstances of that, but does my hon. Friend not agree that there is logic in conducting the review into the reduction in the number of seats at the point at which the National Assembly for Wales acquires more powers, and not before? On a more positive note, will he also acknowledge his support for clause 11 which, essentially for us in Wales, decouples Westminster seats from Assembly seats, so that the work of the Assembly is not diminished in any way?
Roger Williams
Yes, I do very much welcome the decoupling of the seats for the Assembly and the electoral system for the Assembly from the Westminster process. That will certainly ensure that local representation is maintained in Wales and that Assembly representatives will be able to represent their areas on a very local and particular basis.
I will wholeheartedly support the equalisation of constituencies. If anything can be done for constituencies in which constituents have particular travel and access difficulties, that should be on the basis of allowing greater expenditure on staffing or further offices. I have to run two offices in my constituency, yet people still have to travel 30 miles to access them.
Roger Williams
That is a very difficult issue, but when we had public inquiries in our part of the world the most telling points were made not by QCs and legal representatives but by local people, and such points can be equally well made in written submissions.
I believe that the equalisation of constituencies will go some way towards restoring the British public’s faith in the electoral system and, indeed, in this House.
Mr Frank Doran (Aberdeen North) (Lab)
I want to address the issue of boundaries and, as a Member from the north of Scotland, particularly the issue raised by my right hon. Friend the Member for Blackburn (Mr Straw) about the way in which it seems the rules are to be changed and moved about to facilitate certain hoped-for outcomes.
The north of Scotland loses out badly under this Bill, because we have more than our fair share of large and sparsely populated constituencies representing remote and rural areas. It is agreed, of course, that there should be special provision for Orkney and Shetland and the Western Isles, as there has been for many decades, but the Deputy Prime Minister also declared at the outset of this whole process
“that no constituency will be larger than the size of the largest one now”.
He went on to spell that out, saying that his party colleague, the right hon. Member for Ross, Skye and Lochaber (Mr Kennedy), represented
“a constituency that is by far the largest in the country”
and that the Government would take
“the cue from his constituency”—[Official Report, 5 July 2010; Vol. 513, c. 25-29.]
The Deputy Prime Minister had, of course, already said that every mainland seat would have to have an electorate between 95% and 105% of the UK average electorate, which in current terms means between about 73,000 and 80,000 voters. I apologise for all the figures that I will mention. However, that did not help the right hon. Member for Ross, Skye and Lochaber, because his electorate is far too small—just short of 52,000—and no amount of Government spin-doctoring can add 21,000 voters to a rural constituency without adding a single hectare of land.
In a press story in July, it was pointed out that the suggestion that Ross, Skye and Lochaber could continue unchanged was fundamentally wrong for two reasons. The first was the legal requirement to add more than 20,000 electors, which was not possible without taking a couple of wards in the city of Inverness from the constituency of the Chief Secretary to the Treasury—which would obviously be undesirable. Of course that would make the seat larger than it is now, even if only by a few square kilometres.
The Deputy Prime Minister had an answer to that, however. In the Bill he has set the cap on size of constituency at not
“just shy of 13,000 sq km”
as he had promised, but at exactly 13,000 sq km, which is enough to allow Ross, Skye and Lochaber to add some 285 sq km and so, perhaps, 21,000 voters in the city of Inverness. More importantly, the Deputy Prime Minister had gone back on his insistence a few days earlier that there would be no more concessions to special cases. The Deputy Prime Minister had said on 5 July:
“As for the basis upon which the boundary commissions will make their decisions, the exceptions on the face of the Bill will be very limited—for obvious reasons, the two island constituencies that I set out, and the geographical cap in size that I specified.”—[Official Report, 5 July 2010; Vol. 513, c. 29.]
No doubt that was the deal: exceptions for two seats to preserve Orkney and Shetland under the new regime and a guarantee that Ross, Skye and Lochaber would not be made any bigger, in exchange for a promise that the Liberal Democrats would not seek any more exceptions but would deliver what the Prime Minister and Conservative central office wanted and face down Back-Bench dissent from either Government party.
On 22 July, however, a new concession appeared: that a constituency would be exempted from the rule requiring it to have an average-sized electorate in the event that it had a land area of over 12,000 sq km, so long as the boundary commission concerned is
“satisfied that it is not reasonably possible for the constituency to comply with that rule.”
There is, of course, only one constituency currently with a land area in that magic category of between 12,000 and 13,000 sq km: Ross, Skye and Lochaber. However, in spite of his party leader’s best efforts, the problem for the right hon. Member for Ross, Skye and Lochaber has not been solved. In fact I think it is arguable that it has only been more cruelly exposed.
The Deputy Prime Minister himself had said that Ross, Skye and Lochaber was “by far the largest” constituency in Britain, and that is indeed the case. There is a vast difference in land area between that seat, at 12,715 sq km, and the second largest constituency of Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross at 8,711 sq km. The Deputy Prime Minister’s party colleague, the hon. Member for Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross (John Thurso), may never have been leader of the Liberal Democrats, but his problem is none the less the same: with only 47,000 electors in a large rural constituency, he needs to find another 25,000 voters if he is to meet the requirements of the legislation.
Worse still, there is only one mainland constituency neighbouring Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross in which extra voters or hectares can be found. Bringing the hon. Gentleman’s seat up to size will require large additions from Ross, Skye and Lochaber and perhaps also from Inverness, Nairn, Badenoch and Strathspey. Despite the Deputy Prime Minister’s best efforts, the Bill must result in three new constituencies in place of the four currently representing the areas of Highland and Argyll, and the seat most likely to disappear if the Boundary Commission for Scotland operates in its normal way, whether it comes from south to north or north to south, is Ross, Skye and Lochaber. Thus, perhaps during the passage of the Bill we will see yet another concession and yet another crude attempt to protect Liberal Democrat seats in the highlands from the logic of the Conservative drive to cut Scottish seats. If we do, it will expose yet further the sheer cynicism and party political opportunism behind this measure.
Jonathan Evans (Cardiff North) (Con)
Thank you very much for giving me the opportunity to contribute to this debate, Madam Deputy Speaker. May I say how delighted I am to see the right hon. Member for Neath (Mr Hain) on the Opposition Front Bench? He will be very aware that, between 1945 and 1970, the Labour party in Wales demonstrated huge electoral pre-eminence, winning more than a majority in the Welsh elections in every general election in that period and having a significant return in representation from Wales. Let me take the opportunity to congratulate him on the performance in the general election, because since 1970 the Labour party has never had a majority of votes in Wales but has always had a majority of seats there. His record is that in the election just held in Wales the Labour party polled only 36%, which is its lowest proportion of the vote since 1918, but ended up with no less than 65% of the Members of Parliament from Wales. I know that he is standing in the shadow Cabinet elections, so may I point out to everybody that if the Labour party had replicated that result nationally it would have had a majority of 228 in this House?
In reality, the Conservative party got 36% of the vote and did not get an overall majority. I am therefore not impressed by any of the arguments that we have been hearing this afternoon about there being, in some sense, skulduggery on the part of those on this side of the House in endeavouring to address the structure of our electoral system. I know that many people on the Labour side in Wales are very concerned about the impact that the changes proposed in the Bill will have, not least the former Secretary of State for Wales, the right hon. Member for Torfaen (Paul Murphy), who spoke about them in the Welsh Grand Committee. The hon. Member for Pontypridd (Owen Smith) has recently written in The Western Mail about his deep concern, pointing out that the reduction in the number of Members of Parliament from elsewhere in the UK will be only 7%, whereas the figure for Wales will be 25%.
There is to be a 25% reduction, but I shall just point out why that is. Of the 10 MPs who are likely to go under this legislation, eight would go if there were no reduction elsewhere in the UK. As my hon. Friend the Member for Brecon and Radnorshire—I am delighted to call him that now, given that we have spent so long fighting one another in that constituency over the past 20 or so years—rightly said, it is essential that every vote in the United Kingdom should have equal value. It is of some interest to see that the only part of this House in which that proposition has opposition is on the Opposition Benches.
It is not as though this is a problem only within Wales. We know that all the analyses carried out on the results of the past three general elections have shown that Labour would have had a disproportionate advantage had there just been a replication of votes between the Conservatives and Labour. In other words, if both parties had received exactly the same number of votes, the Labour party would have had majorities in every one of those elections. Any democrat should find that situation insupportable and it is one of the reasons that I support these changes.
I have rather more reservations about the AV proposals. My hon. Friend the Member for Shrewsbury and Atcham (Daniel Kawczynski) and I are polar opposites on this issue, because for 20 years I have been one of the outspoken supporters in the Conservative party of electoral reform, having spoken about it at almost every party conference. I can tell those on the other side of the House that that is a beleaguered and isolated position, as they will be able to gather. I must say how disappointed I am to see legislation proposing AV, which is not a form of proportional representation at all. Lest those on the Labour Benches say that this is being done for narrow political advantage, I must say that I have seen the analyses that have been done, which indicate that the Conservative party would probably be 20 seats worse off if the AV system had been in operation.
I agree that on this matter the choice should be put to the voters—too often we do not do that. As a former leader of the Conservatives in the European Parliament, may I remind my colleagues that we campaigned very often for the electorate to have the choice in a referendum? It is fair that on this issue the choice should lie with the electorate, and I say that despite believing that AV is no sort of substitute for electoral reform carried out on the basis of proper proportionality.
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.
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.
Mr David Davis (Haltemprice and Howden) (Con)
The Deputy Prime Minister, when he opened this debate, presented this Bill as something designed to increase people’s respect for the political system that we work under. The people might respect us more if we admitted the real reasons for what we are doing. Of course party advantage is implicit in what we are talking about—with an electoral system, it would be surprising if it were not—and I am sure that the proposal has come about, in part, as a result of the political grievances of each component of the coalition Government. On the part of the Conservative party, the grievance is that it takes a 10-point lead over Labour to get a majority in the House. That seems a perfectly legitimate grievance. The Liberal Democrat party has a grievance that, as the long-term third party in this country, it does not get a share of power very often. Now is an exception.
So, there are understandable grievances, and there is nothing wrong in our political system with parties doing things that are to their advantage and in their own interest, but we must do such things with open eyes, and in a way that subordinates party interest to public interest, and that is where I have a problem with the Bill, because we must recognise that we are proposing to change a system that has worked extremely well for well over a century. Arguably, it has worked better in this country for our democracy than in any other country and for any other democracy in the world. We have avoided extremism and, in general, had good outcomes throughout that time.
We are going to replace that with the alternative vote. The Deputy Prime Minister quite rightly said that it was very difficult to predict the exact outcome of an alternative vote. We do not have to do our own calculations, however. The Blair Government asked Lord Jenkins to chair a commission on proportional representation, and one thing that he considered was the alternative vote. Interestingly, Lord Jenkins rejected it, and one of his grounds was that it was too anti-Conservative— Lord Jenkins, let alone anybody else, said that. More importantly, he rejected it also on the ground that it was not just not more proportional than first past the post; in many cases it was actually less proportional—more disproportional—than our current system.
In that report, the most telling thing of all was a minority report by Lord Alexander, one of the great legal brains of his day, who took a case study of an alternative vote in a constituency with the Tories on about 40% of the vote and Labour and the Lib Dems neck and neck on 30%, plus or minus one percentage point. He showed very clearly and simply that what decided who won was who came third. The result had nothing to do with the primary preferences of constituents; it was the accident of who came third. That is the system that we are talking about putting in place.
Stephen Williams (Bristol West) (LD)
Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?
Mr Davis
If the hon. Gentleman will forgive me, I will not. I have only six minutes, unfortunately.
This House has many characters with very interesting differences, and the other thing about AV is that it acts to create a coalition of antagonists, picking the least unpopular rather than the most effective Member. I think of AV as an anti-Carswell system. It is a pity that my hon. Friend the Member for Clacton (Mr Carswell) is not in the Chamber in order for me to tell him that. AV disadvantages bold and unconventional Members, those the House should treasure, and that is an important side effect.
We are measuring that system against a first-past-the-post system that has been very effective throughout history. It has been decisive, radically and ruthlessly so when it needed to be. When it brought in the Attlee Government after the second world war and the Thatcher Government in 1979, it recognised times of crisis and responded to them. At other times of crisis, when it decided that none of the major parties had all the answers, it created a coalition, and that is what it has done this time. That is what it did in the 1930s and the 1970s. That system actually works well and it has done so without creating the gap between the electorate and the ruling elite that we have seen in countries with proportional systems. The system has delivered outcomes that are in the tenor of the times and that have given an answer to the problems of the times.
We should be very careful about replacing that system. As has been said, this is a major constitutional change, greater than many that we have considered down the decades. It should be a choice for the people—I agree with that—and it should be an informed and deliberate choice. The hon. Member for Nottingham North (Mr Allen), the Chairman of the Select Committee, is no longer in the Chamber. He complained because insufficient thought and analysis went into the assessment before it was presented to the people. Let us compare these proposals with the Scottish referendum, which followed a constitutional conference, a White Paper and manifesto commitments.
What we need to make sure is that we inform the people and give them enough notice and enough knowledge to make the decision properly, and to have it resolved clearly. What I fear is that instead we shall have circumstances where perhaps only 30% of the population will turn out, so only 15% or 16% will vote for the system, and on that basis, we shall have the biggest change in our constitutional history for half a century.
Paul Murphy (Torfaen) (Lab)
I almost entirely share the views of the right hon. Member for Haltemprice and Howden (Mr Davis).
I hope not to listen to anything more about the Chartists. The Chartists of 1839, when there were lots in my constituency, had very different constituencies from those of 2010. Chartists believed in annual Parliaments, something I used to think was not a very good idea.
The hon. Member for Cardiff North (Jonathan Evans) rejected our view that the Bill is partisan, but why is it so rushed? Why was there no pre-legislative scrutiny and why is there no attempt whatever at consensus? The Deputy Prime Minister boasted that all parties will be involved in some way or other in reforming the other place, but for this Bill, which in many ways is much more controversial, no attempt at consensus has been made. From all my years as a Minister in Wales and in Northern Ireland, I know that any lasting settlement must be based on consensus and compromise. If not, it will not work and it will be a constant sore. That is my first charge against the Bill.
My second charge relates to Wales. The hon. Member for Brecon and Radnorshire (Roger Williams) thought the Bill was good, so he is agreeing that 25% of Welsh Members of Parliament must go after the next election. What he did not say—but we will—is that when people voted for the devolution settlement in 1998, they voted for a package. That package was not simply the establishment of the Assembly, but the continuance of Members of Parliament, at that level, here in the House of Commons to protect the interests of the people of Wales and their nation. If we have a referendum, and there are greater powers, that might change, but at least people would have voted on it. However, in 1998, they voted for the opposite—the retention of Members of Parliament.
The other issue to which the hon. Gentleman referred was the size of our constituencies, but he represents one of the biggest constituencies in the whole United Kingdom. If he had to have 76,000 electors, it would create an enormous—a preposterous—constituency, which would start in Crickhowell and finish in Wrexham; it would be the size of Powys. That is nonsense. The great problem with the proposal is that equal electoral districts do not mean absolutely equal arithmetical electoral districts, because that would be nonsense. In Wales, it would fly against our valley constituencies, the rural seats, county towns or other parts of our country where the link between the constituency Member of Parliament and the community is absolutely vital. That is why I vigorously object to the part of the Bill that would take away those links, whether they are based on geography, history or tradition.
That relates to what is in some ways the worst part of the Bill, which would take away from the British people the right they have had for generations to stand up in inquiries in their communities and object to, or agree with, whatever the Boundary Commission proposes. To take away that right is a real dereliction. Two years before I entered the House in 1985, there were proposals to split my valley constituency into three. There was uproar, not just from the political parties but from the whole community—from the Churches, business people, trade unions, local authorities and ordinary people. They were able to go to a public inquiry, which was headed, for those of us opposed to splitting the constituency, by the late Sam Silkin. It was a great inquiry, because everybody was involved and the proposals were completely overturned.
We are now abolishing that right for local people, although it seems—the Minister might be able to deal with this point when he winds up—that when we are looking at boundaries for the Scottish Parliament, the Welsh Assembly or the Northern Ireland Assembly, there will still be a right to hold public inquiries in all those countries, but not for our mother of Parliaments in Westminster. That is wrong.
I hope that over the next few months we shall be able to change the Bill in Committee. I hope that those upstairs, in the House of Lords, will also be able to change it. They are called the watchdog of the constitution—I hope that they are not the Deputy Prime Minister’s poodle—but ultimately, the people of our country, in constituency after constituency, will object with great vigour to doing away with a system that, in my view, is the greatest parliamentary system in the world. By abolishing those rights, we do ourselves a great disservice.
Mr Andrew Turner (Isle of Wight) (Con)
This afternoon a delegation travelled from the Isle of Wight to present the results of an online petition to 10 Downing street. This evening I shall present the petition in the more traditional paper form.
The petition was organised by the cross-party OneWight campaign. Former parliamentary candidates, Mark Chiverton for Labour and Jill Wareham for the Liberal Democrats, were in the House. Kevin Smith, the chief executive of the island’s chamber of commerce, and Richard Priest OBE, the non-political spokesman for the campaign, joined us. In a few short weeks, the campaign attracted support from more than 17,500 people.
Some people say that constitutional reform is a matter of interest only to political anoraks. That is not true in this case. Islanders do not want 30,000-plus voters to be transferred to a cross-Solent constituency.
On 15 July, the Deputy Prime Minister told the Select Committee on Political and Constitutional Reform, of which I am a member, that we must
“come to terms with the need for extensive political reform in order to re-establish public trust in what we do here.”
He went on to say that in the past
“too much… power has not been sufficiently transparent.”
I agree with the Deputy Prime Minister’s words, but it is hard to reconcile them with his actions. His aim is for 600 Welsh, Scottish, Northern Irish and English constituencies of more or less equal size. He says he wants greater fairness for electors, yet he has arbitrarily decided that there will be some exceptions.
I support the principle that islands with no physical link to the mainland are a special case, but the Deputy Prime Minister has singularly failed to explain why Isle of Wight residents have not received similar consideration to Scottish island constituents. Like the Scottish islands, we are physically separate from the mainland, but our uniqueness is ignored. There has been no consultation and no explanation.
Unlike the Scottish islands, the Isle of Wight has no scheduled air service. It takes between 40 and 50 minutes to cross the Solent on a car ferry. Many Members take similar amounts of time on car journeys around their constituencies, but this is not a car journey, it is a ferry. Our car ferry needs to be booked in advance. At busy times, people frequently cannot get the crossing that they want. The cost of peak sailings can be more than £100 for a return ticket. If one misses the ferry, one must wait up to an hour and a half for the next one. Foot passengers face even more difficulties. There are also times when the ferries simply do not run due to adverse weather or sea conditions. In fact, many islanders rarely visit the mainland.
Living on an island with no rail or road links to the mainland is, in many ways, a joy, but one has to experience it to realise the challenges that we face. I hope that my hon. Friend the Member for New Forest West (Mr Swayne) will not be too upset to hear that the possibility of him representing West Wight has not gone down well. That is because islanders and the Lymington River Association hold different views about the need for a new Wightlink ferry. It was not until I moved to the Isle of Wight in 1997 that I fully understood that island life is really different.
In addition to the two Scottish island constituencies, there are other exceptions not subject to the strict principle of fair votes. There will be a cap on the geographical size of any constituency, and there are provisions that enable over-representation in Northern Ireland. The effect of those exceptions is that Scottish and Northern Irish votes may be worth more than English and Welsh votes. There may be good reasons for that, but they should be explained by the Deputy Prime Minister. He is rushing the Bill through, but has given no proper explanation for the exceptions. Nor has he said why he has ignored the case for treating the Isle of Wight differently.
Mrs Laing
There is considerable support in the House for my hon. Friend’s case. There is no logical reason why the north of Scotland should be treated in a special way on the one hand, and the Isle of Wight should be completely ignored on the other. My hon. Friend has a lot of support from the people in this Chamber.
Mr Turner
I am very grateful to my hon. Friend. As I say, the Deputy Prime Minister has given no proper explanation. The island’s media have asked for interviews; that would give him the opportunity to explain to islanders that he knows best about how they should be represented.
I wrote to the Deputy Prime Minister on 11 August, asking for information about how his exceptions had been decided on. I also e-mailed him, asking him to meet the delegation that travelled here today. I received no reply, despite my office chasing the matter up, and he did not meet the delegation. If that represents him taking direct responsibility for major constitutional issues, we are in deep trouble. I want him to explain the exceptions that he has made, so that my constituents can see that the island’s case has been judged fairly. In the absence of any meaningful response, I can only conclude that his fine words about accountability and transparency are just that—fine words.
The OneWight campaign is a broad alliance of the three main political parties, island businesses and many other island organisations and individuals. The local council has indicated support for it, as have town and parish councils across the island. Many of my constituents want to retain one MP. Some would rather have two. I would be happy with either solution, but not with a cross-Solent solution. No one wants a one-and-a-bit MP. In my election address, I promised islanders that I would vigorously oppose any attempt to impose a cross-Solent constituency, and I will continue to do so until the special case for the largest constituency in the UK, and the smallest, is recognised.
John Robertson (Glasgow North West) (Lab)
It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Isle of Wight (Mr Turner), who made good sense; he made some excellent points, as did the hon. Member for Na h-Eileanan an Iar (Mr MacNeil). A number of important points have been made about distances and sizes of constituencies.
I come from an inner city. I am the Member for Glasgow North West; it has affluent parts, but it also has very poor areas, and some areas of high deprivation. I have a problem, in that the people in those areas of deprivation do not vote. There are 5,000 houses in my constituency in which nobody is registered, yet I know that people live in them. That is 5,000 votes lost. Members mentioned how out-of-date the electoral rolls are, how that will make a difference, and the fact that by the time that we come to look at the issue again, they will be 10 or 20 years out of date, but the figures are regularly out of date. Even though we top up the rolls annually, there are still those 5,000 houses in which the people are not registered. There are also people who say that they live alone but do not. There are people who share their house, but who register only one person at that address, because that gets them a reduction in their council tax.
It is not beyond the wit of man or woman to work out a roll that does not just use the council’s way of carrying out registration. There are other methods by which we can gather information on who lives in a house, and who receives benefits of various types. We can do that, but not overnight. The Bill is a galloping horse that has taken off, and there is no stopping it, no matter what. The Deputy Prime Minister talks about fairness, but we on the Labour Benches are not kidded. We know fine well what the proposals are all about; they are about trying to put down the Labour party and Labour Members. They are about making sure that the Labour party never comes to government again. Well, we are going to stop that. It has been tried before, and the Labour party has always bounced back.
Iain Stewart (Milton Keynes South) (Con)
Judging from the Library note, the hon. Gentleman’s electorate number 61,000. If one adds on the 5,000 thousand electors that it is claimed are missing—or even if one adds 10,000—it puts the electorate for Glasgow North West at about 70,000. My electorate in Milton Keynes South number nearly 90,000. Is that fair?
John Robertson
That is the problem that I will discuss in my speech. I would hazard a guess that I have a lot more problems in my constituency than the hon. Gentleman does in his, even though it probably has the best MP it could possibly have. The fact is that we are disadvantaging the disadvantaged. The poll tax tried to do the same; Margaret Thatcher introduced it deliberately to get people off the electoral roll, so that people would not vote Labour. That was tried; it was run in Scotland before anywhere else, but—the hon. Gentleman may not know this—the Conservatives have only one Member of Parliament north of the border. After the next election, there will be one Liberal Member of Parliament there. Everybody will complain that all those who come to the House from north of the border are either Labour or from the Scottish National party, but it will be the Conservative and Liberal parties who brought that about. They are the ones who have made sure that their parties are not electable.
The Conservatives and Liberals do not even listen to their parties north of the border. The Liberal party will do its best to try to make sure that it gets seats, but I would not mind betting that the people around Inverness will go back to Labour; they used to have a good Labour Member of Parliament, and will return another Labour Member.
It will come as no surprise to everybody who knows me that I will not be voting for AV. However, I will not be able to campaign on the issue, because I will be too busy campaigning in the Scottish elections. Not only is there a first-past-the-post side to them, but there is a list system, too. There are now two systems that I need to promote and try to explain to the people of Scotland and, in particular, of my constituency, so that they know how they should vote and how they can get the best returns for a Labour candidate. Now, the Government are saying that we have to have a vote on AV as well; we have to have a referendum.
The issue is not that there is confusion in filling in ballot papers, although 100,000-odd people were disfranchised in the last Scottish election because two questions were put on the one ballot paper, as has been mentioned. That does not work; it confuses people when there are two different votes on one ballot paper, to such an extent that we have managed to ensure that there will be two ballot papers.
John Robertson
I give way to my hon. Friend; he is my hon. Friend on this subject.
Daniel Kawczynski
Does the hon. Gentleman agree that there should be one voting system for all elections in the United Kingdom, and that that should be first past the post?
John Robertson
The hon. Gentleman is right. If we are to introduce PR, let us have the same voting system for every form of election. Let us have the debate on whether PR or first past the post is the way to go. I am happy to have that argument, but I cannot do that north of the border because the Scottish elections take place at the same time, and I want to ensure that the Labour party is returned in Holyrood. I cannot do that if I am arguing about what sort of system we will have.
The hon. Member for South West Devon (Mr Streeter), who is no longer in his place, mentioned how many letters he had received on AV and produced a blank piece of paper. I agree with that. I cannot remember receiving one letter about the voting system. Other than the people in the House, nobody cares. One can tell from the number of people in the Press Gallery how much they care: they are not here. The Deputy Prime Minister is not present. He could not even wait until the first Opposition Back Bencher stood up to speak before he left. What chance is there of a proper debate if the Member proposing it from the Dispatch Box is not here to listen to the arguments? In effect, we are talking to ourselves, and I hope we are all enjoying the speech. Not long to go.
The most important thing to the people of Glasgow North West is to get an elected representative who they know is theirs. We have heard an argument for changing parliamentary boundaries, but that is not possible. How can people get to know their own constituency, the area represented by their Member of Parliament, how do they get to know that Member of Parliament, and how does the Member build a rapport with constituents and know that he is representing them in the way that they want him to?
We have already been through that in Scotland. We lost 13 seats for the 2005 elections, and constituencies changed. I am fortunate to have been a Member of Parliament since 2000. It was very difficult to get used to the new part of my constituency, which was previously represented by George Galloway. It was different then because he sought more publicity than I do. It was important for me to get out and about in that area, but because of the deprivation in my own area, I had to spend as much time as possible there. As has been pointed out, people’s expectations of their Member of Parliament are greater than 10 years ago.
We on the Labour Benches are not fooled. We know what the Bill is all about. I call on all Members to join us in the Lobby and vote against it.
Mr Mark Williams (Ceredigion) (LD)
It is a pleasure to speak in the debate on the Bill, which gives us the opportunity to improve our electoral system and to eradicate some of the unfairness that has existed for a very long time. We have the opportunity to debate not with academics, not with think-tanks, not with the various organisations that presented briefings to us before the debate, but with the British people, and to assess whether they want to change the voting system.
Mr Williams
I will not give way, if the hon. Gentleman will forgive me. Time is short.
When we consider the ability of the current system to reflect the views of the people who elect us, we should remember that only 33% of us were returned with more than 50% of the vote. AV has a number of strengths. Although it is not ideal—I say that as a Liberal Democrat—it is certainly preferable to first past the post as we know it. It allows voters to express genuine preferences, and it removes most of the opportunities and the need for tactical voting. Guilty as charged—in my campaigns I have used those two-horse race leaflets remorselessly. I imagine that many in the House have done that as well.
By allowing us to have a system of preferential voting, AV means that people can go into the polling station and vote positively for candidates on the basis of preference, casting votes on party lines, but also according to whether they think a candidate would be a good MP or against an MP who they think has taken constituents for granted. The right hon. Member for Derby South (Margaret Beckett) was right. It is not a proportional system. However, AV will usually produce a more proportional outcome. Although greater proportionality is not an argument for the adoption of AV, I would rather have that system than our present one.
It has been said in the debate that the electoral system is not a burning issue—that MPs’ postbags are not full of letters from people demanding a change. That is certainly the case. I have had one letter from a constituent of mine who wrote passionately about these issues, but the polling evidence suggests that there is a wish on the part of the electorate to explore these issues further. A ComRes poll from 2 June—significantly, after the election—found that 78% felt that the voting system should be changed to one that would produce a more proportionate outcome. That suggests that people do care about the electoral system that we use, whether or not those concerns are currently communicated to us.
Given the lack of support for the present system, it is only right that we give the people—the ultimate arbiter on the issue—the choice of an alternative. On that, from the Liberal Democrat Back Benches, I very much concur with the view that the hon. Member for Brighton, Pavilion (Caroline Lucas), who is not in her seat, has been advancing about the extent of that question—whether it should just be an AV question or whether there should be an opportunity for us to explore STV or any other system.
As the debate has highlighted, the most controversial aspect of the Bill is the reduction and equalisation of parliamentary seats and whether we should reduce the number of Members available to carry out the work of Parliament. We need to have that discussion. The most compelling argument that I have heard this afternoon was from the hon. Member for Aldridge-Brownhills (Mr Shepherd) in his comments about the balance between members of the Government, Opposition Members on the Front Bench and our capacity as Back Benchers to hold the Executive to account. It would be fair to say that in terms of the economic arguments for deficit reduction, the Bill is more symbolic than substantive. We need to look at the requirements of the House.
There has been much talk about gerrymandering. The recent democratic audit study found that under AV the Conservative party would have lost 13 seats, the Labour party 25 and my party seven seats. The hon. Member for Cardiff North (Jonathan Evans) made the point that Labour has unquestionably won more seats in recent years on the basis of unequal electorates. That is one of the reasons why many of us feel that that unfairness should be corrected.
In my final minute and a half, I turn to the situation in Wales and the concern expressed so eloquently, as usual, by the right hon. Member for Torfaen (Paul Murphy) and the spectre of Wales losing a quarter of its representation in the House. There is a depth of feeling, not just among the chattering classes and around The Western Mail and other papers, about the prospect of losing in one fell swoop 25% of the Welsh voice at Westminster. I hope the Minister will acknowledge that concern.
I have always taken the view, as has my party, that the time when powers are shifted from the House to the National Assembly for Wales in Cardiff is the time when we should be articulating the case for reducing the number of Members of Parliament at Westminster. We will have our referendum. I applaud the Government for that, although the timing is not ideal. The date must be announced soon. It should have been in September; it will probably be in March.
We need to look at the arrangements for the National Assembly. As I pointed out in an intervention on my hon. Friend the Member for Brecon and Radnorshire (Roger Williams), the decoupling is important. There was a fear that we could lose numbers of seats in the Assembly, which would diminish its work.
I will vote for the Bill because it reconnects this place through a referendum—
Chris Ruane (Vale of Clwyd) (Lab)
There is much wrong with the Bill, or Bills—I think there are two separate Bills, which have been woven into one for political expediency—that have been presented today. As highlighted in the Opposition amendment, the Bills are top-down, hasty and undemocratic, and by their very nature they have lost their bipartisan appeal across the House. However, my main complaint is not what is in the Bills, but what is left out. There is no reference to any action on under-registration.
I have been interested in that issue since 2001, when my hon. Friend the Member for Dumfries and Galloway (Mr Brown) informed me of the massive drop in my electorate and the electorates of many MPs across the UK. Since then, I have tabled hundreds of parliamentary questions, spoken dozens of times in Parliament, and met people at the Electoral Commission and various Ministers, but the position remains the same—3.5 million people are missing off the register. Poll tax is one of the reasons for that.
The Government say that the Labour Government did nothing to get those 3.5 million people back on to the register, but we did take steps, and they were not partisan. In 2001, we introduced a measure that said, “If you, or the head of the household, do not personally sign the register for two years on the trot to keep your name on it, you will be taken off.” That was detrimental to the Labour party and the Labour Government, but we took that step because it led to clarification and to improved quality. Many of us complained at the time, although we were not listened to, but it was done for the best purposes.
When I asked the Parliamentary Secretary, Cabinet Office, the hon. Member for Forest of Dean (Mr Harper), what type of person was missing off the register, he said that no national estimates had recently been made. However, the Electoral Commission found in its 2005 report, “Understanding electoral registration”, that based on data from 2000, 17% of ethnic minority individuals, 22% of students, 10% of those renting from a local authority, 11% of those renting from a housing association and 18% of unemployed people were missing off the register, and that areas with the highest levels of unemployment and income deprivation had the highest levels of non-registration. It has been shown that under-registration and inaccuracy are closely associated with the social groups most likely to move home across all seven areas in phase 2 of the study. Under-registration is notably higher than average among 17 to 24-year-olds, with 56% not registered. In addition, 49% of private sector tenants and 31% of British resident black and ethnic minority groups are not registered.
Chris Ruane
No, I will not. I had enough of the hon. Lady’s nonsense in a previous intervention, which I will come to in a minute.
In the Electoral Administration Act 2006, we tried to put pressure on electoral registration officers to ensure that they did their job properly, and progress has been made. Best practice is out there, but it takes time. I have managed to improve the situation in my constituency. Working closely with the electoral registration officer, we have put an extra 6,000 people on to the electoral register, 1,000 of whom were in a ward with houses in multiple occupation. I pay tribute to the work of Gareth Evans, the electoral registration officer in my constituency who has brought that about.
Individual registration is opposed by many Labour Members because we know that when it is introduced the electoral register goes down by 10%, as it has in Northern Ireland, and that the people who come off the register are the poorest in society. We were prepared to accept that because the previous Minister, my right hon. Friend the Member for Blackburn (Mr Straw), said that individual registration would go hand in hand with increasing the register.
I predict that the Government parties will blow a hole in the consensus and go for rushed individual registration, taking another 4.5 million people off the register in addition to the 3.5 million who are already off it. That bipartisanship will be lost for a long time unless they get those 3.5 million people back on to the register. The Deputy Prime Minister can talk in high-falutin’ language about the Reform Act of 1832, but if they are going to take 8 million of the poorest people off the register, and keep them off, they know that they are doing wrong. The British people deserve better than this.
Mrs Anne Main (St Albans) (Con)
I have listened with interest to this debate, because I am deeply unhappy about the yoking together of the two elements of this Bill. My hon. Friend the Member for South West Devon (Mr Streeter) said that not a single person had contacted him about AV as something that concerned them. I am in exactly the same position, and I suspect that the postbags of many other right hon. and hon. Members have not exactly been stuffed with correspondence saying that this needs to be an immediate reform in a new Parliament. I have many concerns in my constituency about hospitals, funding, and exactly what is happening to jobs, but AV has not been a pressing concern.
I have come into this Chamber feeling deeply sceptical. I support the idea that we should have more equality among constituencies, and there is a pressing case for addressing that particular element, but AV has been slipped into the Bill as a result of horse-trading—I can put it no other way—to make the coalition work. Some of us fought deep and bitter battles to get re-elected, against the very people who said, “Don’t re-elect that nasty Tory,” and here I am. I was elected as Member of Parliament for the good people of St Albans, and I serve all of them, not only the Conservatives. Like all hon. Members, once I put on the hat that means that I am privileged to be representing the constituency, I represent every single one of my constituents without fear or favour, including political favour.
I find it somewhat puzzling that, as my right hon. Friend the Member for Haltemprice and Howden (Mr Davis) said, we should be going for the election of the bland. Why do we have to have the rubber chicken version of a Member of Parliament—something that offends nobody and pleases nobody in equal measure? AV was not in our election manifesto. I do not mind a Whip sitting close to me, as one did about an hour ago, and encouraging me to support my manifesto, but I do mind being pressed on something that I am struggling with as a very loyal and non-rebellious member of my party and this Government. I came here thinking, “I’m not quite sure whether I’m going to abstain”—I despair of abstaining because I was not put here by the people of St Albans to do that—“or whether I should vote against this because I don’t feel I should be wholeheartedly supporting it.” However, I have listened to wiser heads than mine who said, “This is not the time—wait until Third Reading.”
I hope that those people out there who are listening to how we are behaving and making our comments will note that for many of us it sticks in our throats to have to support that particular part of the Bill. We will listen to exactly what happens in Committee. As we have heard, there are several things missing from the Bill, so there will be deep unhappiness in all parts of the House about addressing something that we do not have as a pressing concern.
Barry Gardiner (Brent North) (Lab)
Does the hon. Lady agree that it might make better sense for her to oppose the Bill on Second Reading, see what the Government do, and if they do what she wants, then vote for it on Third Reading? The Whips’ mantra throughout the ages is, “Oh, wait until Third Reading”—but they’ve got you by then.
Mrs Main
As someone who looks like he might have been got in a way that perhaps I could not be got, I accept what the hon. Gentleman says. That is one thing about being a woman—we do not have bits to grab that other people have.
Rebellion is a serious thing. If someone rebels against every single thing, then no one takes them seriously when they mean it. I am not a serial rebel, but I have had it up to here with this, as I am sure that many of my hon. Friends have. I try to support my Government, but I hope that they respect the fact that some of us are not just Lobby fodder but are trying to do our best by a coalition Government for this country—that we will swallow some of this, but only so much. There should be greater recognition of the fact that some of us believe that AV is probably the least sensible and least palatable solution—a solution that not even my Liberal Democrat opponents in St Albans were encouraging people to think of on the doorstep. I am surprised that the Liberal Democrats who are in coalition with us are supportive of this measure. It delivers the worst of all options, and I am deeply unhappy about it.
I am pleased, however, that we are tackling the issue of boundaries, which have been a problem for many voters who feel that the sizes of constituencies are definitely unequal and do not respect boundaries as they should. I have huge sympathy with my hon. Friend the Member for Isle of Wight (Mr Turner), who had a great point to make.
However, I will not make my rebellion on this issue tonight. I respect the comments made by the hon. Member for Brent North (Barry Gardiner) about the Whips, but listening to my colleagues in the Chamber has led me to this decision. If we are to have a Government who deliver on the difficult things, let us not make this into a huge argument over something that none of us wants. I do not believe that, if asked for their ideal solution, a single Member in this Chamber would have gone for AV. AV is the least palatable option and will leave us with the least palatable Members of Parliament.
I shall sit down soon, as I know colleagues wish to speak. As I said, many wise heads in the Chamber will be rueing the day we got ourselves in the nonsensical situation of having to support AV—given that if we were asked, in a general question, whether we liked AV, we would all have said no. I do not know how we ended up with this cobbled-together thing. I accept that it is part of the troika—the coalition of three horses pulling in different directions and the attempt to get them all to go the same way. However, I regret that our Government and my Conservative party should be having to consider something that under normal circumstances we would have consigned to the dustbin.
Mr Nigel Dodds (Belfast North) (DUP)
It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for St Albans (Mrs Main), whose speech has demonstrated an aspect of what has been an interesting debate. I have sat through a fair amount of it, but have heard few speeches from any party that have been in favour of the Bill. I am sure that that will be reflected in the vote later; I certainly hope so.
I shall deal mainly with the reduction in the number of seats in the House. We welcome the fact that the Prime Minister declares himself to be a Unionist. However, from a Northern Ireland perspective, it is an irony that one of the first things that this self-declared Unionist Prime Minister should have put forward is a proposal to reduce the representation of Northern Ireland in Parliament, given that it was a concession from a Labour Government back in the 1970s that increased the number of seats. That irony will not be lost on the people of Northern Ireland; it certainly will not be lost on those who voted for the Ulster Conservatives and Unionists New Force, or UCUNF, alliance. The Prime Minister did not tell the people of Northern Ireland about the proposal when he was campaigning for votes there, in alliance with the Ulster Unionists; the people, of course, gave their answer to that call. Voters will feel entirely vindicated for having given their overwhelming endorsement to the Democratic Unionist party.
I entirely agree with what the right hon. Member for Torfaen (Paul Murphy) said about the need to build a coming-together and consensus among all sections of the different parties in the House on major issues of constitutional and political reform. That clearly has not happened on this issue. It has been rushed through. The hon. Member for Nottingham North (Mr Allen), the Chair of the Political and Constitutional Reform Committee, eloquently laid out the lack of pre-legislative scrutiny given to the Bill. This is a major reform, yet it is being rammed through the House as a result of a coalition agreement.
The hon. Member for St Albans graphically described the nature of that agreement. No mandate for this measure was sought at the last election by either the Liberal Democrats or the Conservatives. At the end of the day, if the Bill goes through the House and there is a referendum, I fear that the people of the United Kingdom will give their vote in dramatic terms—delivering a verdict not only on the issue, but on how it has been handled by the coalition Government.
Dr William McCrea (South Antrim) (DUP)
Does my right hon. Friend agree that there is a public concern that our politics is being manipulated for self-interest rather than the good of democracy? That is exemplified by the undue haste with which this legislation is being taken through and by the lack of scrutiny.
Mr Dodds
My hon. Friend endorses my point.
On the relationship between the Bill and the devolved legislatures, clause 11 makes special provision for Wales and will ensure that the constituency boundaries for the Welsh Assembly continue. However, the Northern Ireland Assembly constituencies are tied to the parliamentary constituencies. Therefore, a reduction in the number of constituencies there would have a knock-on effect on the composition of the Northern Ireland Assembly. Has the Northern Ireland Assembly or any party therein been consulted thus far? Have the First Minister, Deputy First Minister or any of the Executive parties been consulted? No, they have not, yet there is a major implication for the make-up of the Assembly, which came about only after much intricate, complex and delicate negotiation. At the very least there needs to be a proper consultation and dialogue with the Northern Ireland Assembly parties. Their views on what affects the composition, operation and good functioning of the Assembly need to be taken into account.
A related point has been raised by the Scottish nationalists about the date of the referendum and the difficulty of having a number of elections and a referendum on the same day. On 5 May 2011, we in Northern Ireland face the prospect of having an Assembly election, a council election and a referendum. Northern Irish people are adept at switching between different electoral systems and voting on the same day in different elections. However, it would be unconscionable to hold a referendum and two sets of elections on the one day. Something needs to be done about that, but certainly not at the expense of the elections; in my view, the referendum should be moved to a different date.
I agree with the points made about doing away with the process of transparent representation in respect of the boundary review; that is a very retrograde step. Electors and their representatives are entitled to give evidence and cross-examine in person and to have these important matters examined face to face, not just in writing. It is absolutely wrong for the Government to rush through the nationwide review of boundaries and put in a provision that does away with that face-to-face, open, transparent evidence-taking and cross-examination. Those are a vital part of any boundary review because they allow the issues to be explored in great detail. They allow people to see the common sense as a consensus emerges. At the end of the day, if things are not done openly there will be no transparency and no way of knowing what weight a boundary commissioner will give various elements.
There is also the issue of cost. Up to £100 million is to be spent on all this in the next period, while we are being lectured about the need to cut back drastically—some departmental expenditure is to be cut by up to 25%. All that is involved, yet, let us face it, the vast majority of people have no interest in the issue being pursued. I urge caution. More time should be taken so that we can get a cross-party, consensual approach involving all parties and all the legislatures and representatives from the various constituent parts of the United Kingdom.
Mr Bernard Jenkin (Harwich and North Essex) (Con)
I fear that many right hon. and hon. Members are finding this Bill to be a rude awakening to the realities of coalition politics. I support the Bill, albeit reluctantly, because I support the coalition. I support the coalition because at the time of the election we faced a crisis and a deficit and we urgently needed to form an Administration with a prospect of being able to tackle that deficit. However, I did not—and still do not—support changing the voting system. I am reminded that Ipsos MORI regularly polled the electorate in the run-up to the election and never more than 1% raised constitutional matters as a matter of urgency. Yet the House is to be deeply preoccupied with such matters as a result of this unsatisfactory coalition agreement.
The coalition was formed, with the best of intentions, for the benefit of the nation. Obviously, not everybody in the House would agree with that. However, let us have no doubt that the Bill is the product of party politics. I believe that it is in the national interest to equalise constituencies, but I do not know whether it is in the national interest to combine that issue with a referendum on the alternative vote. One is reminded of Disraeli’s dictum that England does not love coalitions. If the general public were forced to watch this debate, they might arrive at that conclusion rather more quickly than Members on the coalition side of the House would want.
The Bill is the worst advertisement for the coalition: a product of backroom party political horse-trading resulting in a measure—the alternative vote referendum—that neither coalition party supported in its manifesto. We have to accept that as the reality of coalition politics.
Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)
Does the hon. Gentleman agree that this is the most shabby style of legislative change that we have ever seen in the House? It ignores the opinion of the general public and the views of elected representatives, and it is pushing through a legislative change that the people do not want. The people of Northern Ireland certainly do not want it. Does he agree that we should kill it at its second stage tonight?
Mr Jenkin
I do agree, but I think the hon. Gentleman is a new Member, and it is a feature of politics that Governments frequently push through things that people do not like—he will get used to it. The point is that the alternative vote is an orphan voting system. The Labour party is split over it, the Conservative party wants to keep the current voting system and the Liberal Democrats really want the single transferable vote.
Let us remind ourselves that AV is no more proportional than the current system. Indeed, it was rejected by the Jenkins commission in 1998 precisely because
“it might increase rather than reduce disproportionality”.
It does not mean fair votes. I hear Take Back Parliament, Unlock Democracy and all those pressure groups talking about fair votes, but they are wondering whether AV is the bandwagon that they should jump on. We watch with interest.
The myth of fair votes is further exposed by the fact that the alternative vote creates two classes of voter: one whose votes are counted once; and another, such as people who vote for the UK Independence party, the British National party or tiny parties, whose votes are counted again and again. As Winston Churchill argued, the alternative vote would mean that elections were decided by
“the most worthless votes for the most worthless candidates”.
For that reason, it is not a very good system.
Nor would the alternative vote abolish safe seats. I keep hearing that myth, but in Australia something like 43% of seats are considered safe. In 2005, some 371 seats were won by more than a 15 percentage point margin, and they are likely to remain safe. AV does not get rid of safe seats; it institutionalises tactical voting. It may be a different sort of tactical voting from what we have now, but rest assured there will be tactical voting. Finally, the alternative vote lacks the elegant simplicity of the most popular candidate winning, which is the system that is most widely used throughout the world and has served our democracy for 300 years. I think that we should stick with that.
I have never before spoken in a one-day debate that has been curtailed by a statement before it in which 74 Back Benchers have applied to speak. I ask myself, why the rush to timetable the Bill through on a guillotine, for that is what it is? Although I will support Second Reading, I will not support the timetable. It may be a generous one, but why do we not see how the debate goes before we give licence to all the filibusterers who will fill up the time by saying nothing much at all to stop people raising salient points, which is what inevitably occurs when there is limitation on the time of debate? Let us see whether the Government will genuinely engage with those who want changes and alterations to the Bill before we agree to any kind of guillotine.
Why the rush to hold the referendum on 5 May 2011? I return briefly to the Electoral Commission, not in its rather supine form that we see today but as it used to be in 2002, when it faced down Tony Blair, who wanted to have a referendum on the euro at the same time as the Scottish and Welsh elections in 2003. It stated:
“Referendums on fundamental issues of national importance should be considered in isolation”
and that
“the turnout of combined polls can have varied results. As such, the benefits do not appear so great or definitive as to automatically over-ride any potential problems”.
It continued:
“It is hard to avoid the conclusion that combining an election and a referendum can have a distorting effect on the conduct and outcome of both polls. Specifically, a combined poll may be perceived as being an extension of the political process as well as being for the sake of turnout. By not disengaging the referendum from the political process the Government risks jeopardising the integrity of the result”.
It also warned of the dangers for broadcasters:
“Distinguishing between election and referendum activities will be extremely difficult, if not impossible in some instances.”
If we are to have a referendum on an unwanted voting system in this country, let us at least have a fair referendum on a fair, separate date.
Emily Thornberry (Islington South and Finsbury) (Lab)
So this Bill will apparently be the biggest shake-up of democracy since 1832; well, in Islington we know a few things about radicalism. We elected Tom Duncombe as our Finsbury MP in the 1830s. He wanted a universal franchise, so he presented the Chartist petition, which was signed by 3,315,752 people. That is radicalism, and that is what I call a real shake-up. This Bill is simply wrong, and it is not radical. Given how little time I have, I wish to focus on just a couple of matters. The first is the fact that it ignores a whole swathe of the residents of my constituency, and the second is the issue of AV.
It is estimated that more than 77,000 adults live in my constituency, but under the Bill only 66,400 will count. The others will be non-people. Far more of my constituents will become non-people under the Bill than, for example, in Witney, where there are approximately 82,000 adults, 78,000 of whom will count. I see the Parliamentary Secretary, Cabinet Office, the hon. Member for Forest of Dean (Mr Harper), looking confused, so I shall explain why there is a difference.
First, there is the group of people who do not register to vote. According to the Electoral Commission, they are exactly the people of whom we have large numbers in my constituency. Half of young people do not register to vote, along with half of private tenants and a third of the black and minority ethnic community. There are not many young, black private sector tenants living in Witney, or in Maidenhead or Sheffield Hallam. It is no wonder the rate of non-registration for inner London is 18%. In Islington, our low registration was notorious. We reached the lowest point before the 2006 local elections, when the Liberal Democrat council achieved a measly response rate of 67%. When we challenged it to have a BME registration drive, the deputy leader of the council shouted across the council chamber, “That’s how we win elections.” As one can imagine, there was a huge row. To cut a long story short, as a result, in the 2010 election there were 9,000 more voters in Islington than there had been in 2005. Some 60% of them voted, and guess what? Six thousand more people voted Labour in Islington.
The second group of non-people that will be created in my constituency is those who come from outside the EU or the Commonwealth, many of whom are very political. In fact, they come from countries where the Governments believe they are far too political, which was why they had to come to this country in the first place. Many of them would love to vote, but they are not allowed to do so because they are not yet British citizens. Under the Bill, they will not exist. They will be non-people.
The third group is very important as well. They can vote and are on the electoral roll, but they do not vote in the right type of elections. In my constituency, I have 6,500 EU voters who, like Mrs Clegg, will not count under the Bill. That is 8% of the adult population there. As an MEP, the right hon. Member for Sheffield, Hallam (Mr Clegg) used to care about those people, but now he seems to have simply forgotten them, and they are to become non-people. According to the Library, more than half the countries in the world count entire populations when deciding on the size of constituencies, including France, Italy and Portugal. That is what we should be doing, rather than making 11,000 of my constituents non-people.
If that were not enough reason to oppose the Bill, I have another: I am against AV. My reasoning is simple: our current system builds a direct relationship between the community and its MP. Residents come together to decide whom they most want as their national representative; no one has more than one vote, which has to be cast responsibly; we are all equal and the first past the post gets elected. It is simplicity itself and it does not exclude anyone through being a complicated system or because people do not speak English as their first language. Some people scoff at the argument about complexity, but we can see from the London mayoral elections, in which five times as many ballot papers were spoiled as in the general election, that simplicity is important when trying to include everyone.
Of course, there are criticisms to be made of the current system, but AV will not resolve them. If AV brought us honest politicians, I would be a proud Finsbury MP, bringing another huge petition to Parliament, but it does not do such things and that is why the public are supremely uninterested in it. We should not spend our time on it.
The Bill is party political—a measure simply to prop up the coalition. I ask myself what Duncombe would make of it—of a measure that allows 11,000 adults in my constituency not to count in national policy. I am sure that he would be appalled at the use of the cloak of radicalism and the great cause of electoral reform to wrap around a sectarian measure. The Bill is designed merely to serve the interests of the ruling parties and to help prop up the wretched coalition. It will not improve people’s lives, and I will vote against it. I would use my second, third, fourth and fifth preferences to vote against it, too.
Greg Mulholland (Leeds North West) (LD)
It is amazing how many Labour Members seem to have forgotten that their manifesto stated that they were in favour of the alternative vote. It suggests that the hon. Member for Islington South and Finsbury (Emily Thornberry) has more in common with a rather less radical Islington resident—Tony Blair—than the people whom she described. We are slightly missing the point, because the Bill is about a referendum. The hon. Lady is entitled to her view that first past the post is the best system, though that is extraordinary in the light of the expenses scandal and the fact that so many MPs were not accountable. However, we are not debating that, but whether we should put the matter to the British people.
The hon. Member for Harwich and North Essex (Mr Jenkin), the Chair of the Select Committee, is right. Of course the Bill is a compromise; of course Liberal Democrats would have preferred also to put—perhaps only to put—the single transferrable vote to the British people, but the Conservatives did not want to do that. That is the nature of consensus politics. We have to be a bit grown up and accept that. However, I am not going to talk about that aspect of the Bill. I will talk about matters that worry me, because some elements need greater parliamentary scrutiny than they appear to be getting.
I agree in principle on generally equal-sized constituencies. Who would not? However, it is genuinely concerning that the Bill proposes that without regard to local authority boundaries or council ward boundaries, as well as some of the geographical issues that have been raised. It should cross those boundaries only in exceptional circumstances. That matter needs greater scrutiny and I am surprised that no other hon. Member has raised it. Every time a boundary change occurs, there is real chaos. It is difficult for all who stand as candidates, very difficult for all who are incumbent Members, and confusing and unfair to constituents. As soon as the boundaries are redrawn, there are two classes of constituent. One class can vote for the incumbent again—clearly, one will focus one’s campaigning effort on them—and another class cannot vote for the incumbent at the next election. One serves the latter if they come to see the MP, but one cannot sensibly—given that one’s career and, indeed, one’s livelihood, is at stake—put the same amount of effort into those areas. I therefore strongly oppose changing boundaries every five years. We should consider changing them more frequently than currently happens—perhaps every 10 years. Such an amendment should be tabled.
My hon. Friend the Member for Winchester (Mr Brine), who is not in his place, and I were discussing the confusion that can arise. In his constituency, there is an area—Chandler’s Ford—that has been in four different parliamentary seats in recent years. That is simply not fair on people in such areas. We should remember the impact of boundary changes on the ground.
Fiona Mactaggart (Slough) (Lab)
Does the hon. Gentleman share my anxiety that the timetable for the first round of boundary reviews, which has to be completed by October 2013 across the nation, and in which all results will be announced at the same time, means that throughout the country thousands of people will be in the limbo that he describes?
Greg Mulholland
I agree. We are all in limbo now because of the Bill. I believe that we should not make boundary changes until after the next general election. We should introduce the proposals then.
Registration has been rightly discussed. As many Members recognise, there is a huge problem, which the previous Government did not tackle adequately. Compulsory registration has been suggested, but how many people would be fined for not being on the electoral register? How many people are aware of the hundreds of thousands of people who are not on it? We must examine that. Those of us who represent areas with large student populations have a particular interest in the matter, which has simply not been considered.
I represent Headingley, which has a large student population. Many students are either double-registered—in Leeds North West and at home—or choose to register in one or the other. Double counting can then occur, which suggests that those people have not voted in the general election. That is wrong and accentuates and exaggerates a problem of student apathy. I often knocked on doors in the previous election campaign, and the people said, “Yes, we’ve voted Liberal Democrat.” I said, “Thanks very much”, and then they said, “Yes, back home” in Derby, Newcastle, London and so on. They are considered not to have voted in Leeds North West and the turnout figure is therefore false. I do not necessarily suggest that we should provide for students to be registered only in one place, but we need to address the problem.
I made it clear during the previous election campaign that I opposed the measure in the Liberal Democrat manifesto to reduce the number of MPs. I made no bones about that. Some bogus comparisons have been made with larger countries with fewer MPs. We are not comparing like with like. There are different systems, often with list MPs, who simply do not do the same job. Let us consider Germany. The Library provided a note, which quoted from “Electoral Systems: A Comparative Introduction”. It cites Geoffrey Roberts, who stated that German MPs do not have
“a sensitivity toward the constituency relationship; it did not exist before 1949, and has not been highly developed since then”.
Even the Ministers in the House have a hugely important role in representing their constituents. As soon as the number of MPs is reduced, even by 50, it takes us further away from our constituents, and makes it harder for us to fulfil that role. It might save some money, but we will realistically need more staff to deal with even another 5,000 or 10,000 constituents. I therefore reject that aspect of the Bill.
I accept that the Bill is not the right place to deal with the next issue that I want to raise, but it must be addressed. The missing bit of devolution—the English question—is not in the Bill. I am pleased that the Deputy Prime Minister suggested that it would be considered. That must happen, because the English are currently represented only by MPs whereas the Welsh and the Scots have Members of the Scottish Parliament and Welsh Assembly Members. The matter must be tackled so that the English are no longer the poor relations.
We need more time to consider the Bill. I fully support putting the question to the people of this country of whether they want a different voting system, but we must have more time in Parliament to consider the issues that have simply not been adequately thought through in the Bill. It is time for Parliament to show that it is the best Parliament in the world for doing that.
Mr Wayne David (Caerphilly) (Lab)
This is a far-reaching Bill, and it should have been the subject of pre-legislative scrutiny. What is more, there should have been prior consultation with the devolved Administrations in Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales, not least because the planned date of the AV referendum coincides with elections there.
However, I wish to focus primarily on the situation in Wales, where the Bill would bring about a dramatic change—a reduction of 10 MPs out of a total planned reduction of 50. A 20% reduction is unfair for Wales, especially when we consider that Wales has only 5% of the UK population. Some say that Wales is over-represented, but I would query that very strongly, and point out that Wales is a nation. It is an integral part of the United Kingdom—it has been joined to England since 1536—but let us not forget that it is a distinct country, with its distinct language and history, and social and political priorities. That has been recognised historically. That Wales has the representation it has is not the result of some Labour fix in the past, but because the British Parliament has historically recognised that Wales is a distinct nation with distinct needs. That must be addressed properly.
It has been mentioned that Wales has its own National Assembly—that is true—but it is important for us to remember that that is a secondary legislative body only. There may well be a referendum in Wales in the near future on giving the Assembly more powers, but let us not forget that even if that referendum is successful, we will still have a situation in which many powers are not devolved to Cardiff. Benefits, macro-economic policy, home affairs and broadcasting would be non-devolved, and there would still be a block grant from Westminster to Cardiff bay.
It is also important to recognise that, post-devolution, Welsh MPs have a crucial two-way relationship: they of course have a relationship with their fellow Westminster MPs, but they also have an important relationship with Members of the Welsh Assembly. In fact, under the Government of Wales Act 1998, primary legislation is effectively agreed by Westminster, and Welsh MPs have a critical role before powers are passed down to Cardiff bay. As a result of devolution, the role of Welsh MPs has increased and become more important. That is why the reduction in representation for Wales is fundamentally wrong and unfair.
There is absolutely no recognition in the Bill of the distinct geography of Wales, including the fact that we have very large rural areas and that in the south of Wales we have deep valleys, every single one of which has a distinctive sense of community. It is inevitable that if the Bill reaches the statute book, we will have monster constituencies in which individuals will be represented by Members of Parliament with whom they feel absolutely no affinity. That must be wrong and fundamentally undemocratic.
Another important point to make is that the appalling suggestion that public inquiries should be abolished is a fundamental undermining of democracy. When the Boundary Commission last looked at boundaries in England, 64% were changed following consultation via public inquiries. There were also changes in Wales. The Boundary Commission there proposed a change to the boundaries of my constituency of Caerphilly and the Islwyn constituency. There was a local hue and cry, representations were made and a public inquiry was held. The arguments were put, the cross-examinations took place, and the result was that the Boundary Commission fundamentally changed its proposals and accepted a counter-proposal from members of the public. That was an excellent exercise in democracy, but if we approve the Bill, such an exercise will be a thing of the past, which is fundamentally wrong.
Therefore, the Bill is bad for Wales. It undermines democracy and discriminates against the people of Wales. It is a denial of Welsh nationality and fundamentally undermines popular democracy. For those reasons and many others, I will oppose this legislation tonight.
Mrs Eleanor Laing (Epping Forest) (Con)
Contrary to the hon. Member for Caerphilly (Mr David), I support the Bill, but it requires the House’s scrutiny, and I will suggest several ways in which it can be improved.
May I first say that the measures to reduce the size of the House and equalise the size of constituencies are long overdue? I hear what Opposition Members say, but their arguments do not hold water. The size of the Chamber has changed almost randomly over the past century, and the number of MPs has never been properly tackled. In the current economic climate, we expect organisations in other walks of life to reduce their work force, and for people to work a little harder to take over the responsibilities of their former colleagues. There is no reason why the House should not set an example in that respect.
However, much more importantly, a democratic system in which votes are not of equal value is an insult to democracy. The right hon. Member for Blackburn (Mr Straw) did very well in trying to defend the indefensible for the sake of the Labour party’s current electoral advantage, but the fact is that traditional boundaries, consulting local people and community coherence are simply much less important than the integrity of our democratic system. Therefore, contrary to what he says, the arithmetic must be paramount, because one vote, one value is a basic principle of a fair democracy.
Sadly, however, the other part of the Bill will not enhance a fair democracy. The alternative vote system will undermine the very principle of one vote, one value. Many of my hon. Friends, and the right hon. Member for Derby South (Margaret Beckett) and other Opposition Members, put those arguments very well, and I am sure that they will be enhanced over the coming months. However, we must have a referendum, because it is a matter of honour. The Prime Minister agreed in the coalition agreement to a referendum on AV, but it is a stark reflection of the priorities of the Liberal Democrats that that was their essential first condition of entering into a coalition Government.
I support the coalition because we need the stability it provides, and I appreciate that a referendum is the price for that, but what a high price it is to pay, not only politically, but in simple financial terms. At a time when essential cuts to public spending are about to affect the everyday lives of almost every British citizen, the Deputy Prime Minister insists on spending £100 million on a referendum that nobody outside the House wants nor cares one tiny bit about. How many special needs teachers, cancer nurses or helicopters for Afghanistan could be funded by £100 million? I accept that we must have the referendum, but let it not go unnoticed that we must have it not for the better welfare of the people or the general good of the country, but only for the perceived electoral advantage of the Liberal Democrats.
I support the Bill, but it is the duty of the House to try to improve measures before it, and I will seek to improve this one in two ways. First, the result of the referendum will command far greater respect if it is held on a different day from the national elections in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, as many colleagues have said. The inevitable differential in turnout in different parts of the United Kingdom would leave the authenticity of the referendum open to question.
The second improvement that the Bill needs is in relation to the thresholds. Is it right to bring about constitutional change if only about 15% of the electorate vote for it? The status quo is the status quo because it is the status quo, and changing it should require far more than 15%. That would be wrong. The result of the referendum and the consequent constitutional change will not command respect unless a significant proportion of the electorate support it. It is our duty to improve this Bill, and although I will vote for it this evening, I look forward to seeing a very different Bill on Third Reading.
Mark Durkan (Foyle) (SDLP)
I can speak more warmly about the prospect of the alternative vote in the context of Northern Ireland than some others have done today. However, before I do so, I join others in expressing serious reservations about the mongrel nature of the Bill. It not only provides for a referendum on a change to the voting system, but scrambles to reduce the number of constituencies and, in that context, would fundamentally alter the procedure by which boundaries are set, including the consultation on and consideration of changes and the opportunities for proper issues of local identity and interest, communal affinity and natural geography to be brought into play. I therefore join others in asking the Government to separate this Bill into its constituent parts.
On the proposals to change the number of constituencies and how decisions on boundaries are made, the problem is not only that the Bill proposes to do away with local inquiries. It would replace local inquiries with a system in which the four boundary commissions would be obliged to present their proposals and recommendations for feedback for up to 12 weeks. They could then have a second go at presenting proposals, with a further 12 weeks in which to take feedback, but then the third set of proposals would not need any consultation or require them to listen to any representations. Many of us have been through boundary change exercises before, and sometimes it was the third version of the Boundary Commission’s proposals that created particular problems for a constituency. The third proposal might have resolved some of the issues that were hotly contested in one constituency, but created brand new, consequential problems for other constituencies. Under this Bill, nobody in those constituencies that would be affected by the final proposals—the ones that matter—would have a chance to raise any issues. We would just be told, “Sorry, it’s the third attempt and this is what we have said. There is no other right of consultation, that’s that.” In fact, compound anomalies could be created by the time of the third set of recommendations by the Boundary Commission, and the idea that that would not make parliamentary democracy a matter of fundamental dispute is something that the Deputy Prime Minister and his colleagues need to think more about.
The Bill provides a quota for constituency size, plus or minus 5%, but clause 9 would create a new schedule 2 to the Parliamentary Constituencies Act 1986 and that would create a new rule 7, which would allow an even bigger deviation in Northern Ireland. The Bill suggests that the deviation could apply to all constituencies in Northern Ireland, so many could have more or less than a 5% deviation from the quota.
Of course, the constituencies in Northern Ireland are not just parliamentary constituencies, but the constituencies that elect six Members of the legislative Assembly on a proportional representation vote. Therefore, we would end up with serious discrepancies in respect of equal representation in the Northern Ireland Assembly. However, the Deputy Prime Minister, despite all his concern for equal representation and equal value, has shown a blatant disregard of the need for equal value for votes in Northern Ireland for the Assembly, when this House and the parties that negotiated the agreement very deliberately included a multi-seat PR STV system.
On the proposed referendum on AV, I made it clear when the House debated proposals from the Labour Government that AV would not be the SDLP’s first preference, because we believe in the single transferable vote system. However, we agree that AV would be much better than the first-past-the-post system, which—in the particular context of Northern Ireland—traps us into sustaining sectarian impulses in Westminster elections. We have sectarian pacts. When the Tories announced that they were coming to Northern Ireland, they said that they would be no part of sectarian pacts and would go for cross-community votes, but they caved in and, under the pressure of Northern Ireland politics as induced by the first-past-the-post system, they entered into a sectarian pact with Unionist parties. That in turn led to pressure on my party—which we resisted, but we paid a price for doing so—to engage in a sectarian pact with Sinn Fein.
If people are serious about supporting the ethic of the Good Friday agreement and a new politics in Northern Ireland, they will recognise that allowing Northern Ireland to move to AV would help to complete the transition to normal politics that the agreement envisaged. Let us be free from the traps of the past that the first-past-the-post system imposes on Northern Ireland and let all people in the United Kingdom have a fuller say in who their MP is with the support of 50%.
Daniel Kawczynski (Shrewsbury and Atcham) (Con)
Many hon. Members who have been in this place far longer than I have spent much time fighting for democracy and against extremism. However, the AV system will help extremist parties. There is a possibility that BNP second preferences could decide the outcome of a seat. Imagine a scene in the future in which the Labour and Conservative parties are neck and neck in a particular seat. As we watch on television, the second preferences of the BNP are counted and ultimately decide who wins the seat. How would we feel as the BNP supporters cheer and shout? The idea sends a shiver down my spine.
As chairman of the all-party group for the promotion of first past the post, I can inform the House that we now have 90 members. Our role is to promote and protect the first-past-the-post system that has served this country so well for generations. In fact, we have too many voting systems in the UK, and I would like to see one tried and tested voting system only—the first-past-the-post system.
As chairman of the all-party group, I am in a difficult position. Do I go with my gut reaction and vote against this legislation or do I fulfil my obligations and loyalty to my party leader, our Prime Minister, and to the party?
Martin Horwood (Cheltenham) (LD)
I disagree with, but respect, the hon. Gentleman’s support for the first-past-the-post system. Would he not welcome the opportunity to campaign for it and vote for it in a referendum?
Daniel Kawczynski
I will come on to that point, but I recall listening to the Prime Minister when he came to give Conservative Members an insight into the negotiations with the Liberal Democrats. The deal breaker, as my hon. Friend the Member for Epping Forest (Mrs Laing) said—and I read it over and over again so it is indelibly printed on my mind—was a referendum on this system. How on earth will that referendum help my constituents in Shrewsbury? I always refer to Mr. Roger Walker, my constituent who is dying of prostate cancer. For the last eight months, I have been trying to get him a special drug, abiraterone, to prolong his life. I have been unsuccessful to date, but I will not stop. How will this legislation help him to tackle his illness, which will deprive him of his life? It is the equivalent of watching Nero fiddle while Rome burns. We have so many problems in our country, yet we are being distracted by this ridiculous referendum, which is going to cost taxpayers between £80 million and £100 million. What an appalling waste of money, as my hon. Friend the Member for Epping Forest (Mrs Laing) has said.
If the proposed system was used throughout the world, effectively and in a popular way, perhaps we should consider it, but it is used in only Fiji, Papua New Guinea and Australia. Only three countries in the world use it, and two of them, with all due respect, are rather small, minor powers.
Mr Jenkin
I hesitate to correct my hon. Friend, but the Australians use a variant of the alternative vote, not the system proposed. They call it preferential voting, and it requires people compulsorily to number all the candidates on the ballot paper. I am afraid that only Papua New Guinea and Fiji use the alternative vote.
Daniel Kawczynski
Right, there we are: we are trying to follow the example of Papua New Guinea and Fiji.
I have to say, however, that we should remember what happened in Tasmania, where the third candidate—the candidate who lost—ended up winning the seat because second and third preferences propelled him to victory. I do not want the least objected to to win; I want the most popular to win. I have come into politics because I believe in a certain ideology—a right-of-centre ideology. I want to go to the people of Shrewsbury and put that ideology to them—to stand on my convictions and ask them for a vote. I do not want to hide my views and feelings. I do not want to compromise or try to be all things to all people; I want a vote because I have garnered the most support.
Like me, millions of people will vote for only one party. I will never vote for any party apart from the Conservative party. That is my preference, but I will always vote only for the Conservative party. Millions out there like me will also vote for only one party; or, they will vote only for the party that comes first or second, so they have only one vote. However, those who vote for the BNP will always get two bites of the cherry. What really frustrates me is that their second preferences—or the “I don’t mind” candidates, as I call them—weigh in the same way as my vote. When I go to the polling station and put my cross next to a name, I take that very seriously indeed. I know that many people in my grandfather’s generation died—all the airmen in the battle of Britain; there were many Poles—so that we would have the right to vote, yet my vote will be counted in the same way as somebody else’s second preference. In my view it is absolutely disgusting.
If we are going to make a change, it should be to the European Union elections, in which there are turnouts of only 30%. I offer my constituents £100 if they can name me any Member of the European Parliament who represents us. So far I have not lost a penny. Why? Because Members of the European Parliament are elected to represent the whole of the west midlands, an area of 5.5 million people. None of our Members of the European Parliament lives in Shropshire, has an office in Shropshire, has a home in Shropshire or holds surgeries in Shropshire. How can someone be accountable to the people of Shropshire if they are elected under a ludicrous PR system, representing an area larger than many European Union countries? If we are going to change any voting system, let us change the voting system for the European Union elections, not the system for Westminster elections, which people are happy with so far.
The second aspect of the Bill is one that I do approve of: having seats of equal size. However, I want very much that as much respect as possible should be shown to county boundaries. I feel passionately about Shropshire. That is what I am all about: representing my seat. I do not want to represent any other county. I do not want to be a Member of Parliament if I have to represent something outside Shropshire. I make that pledge to my constituents: that I will stand for election only if I can continue to represent Shropshire.
Sir Stuart Bell (Middlesbrough) (Lab)
I am grateful for the opportunity to follow the hon. Member for Shrewsbury and Atcham (Daniel Kawczynski). Having listened to what happened in that parliamentary Conservative party meeting—a meeting of the 1922 committee, which was formed on the breakdown of a coalition Government way back in 1922—and heard that the deal breaker was a referendum on the alternative vote, I wonder why the Conservatives made a deal at all. They were eight short of an overall majority. They could have easily formed a Government and would have had a big majority in the House over other parties, although not an overall majority. They could have easily formed a Government and taken to the country the question of how we deal with the deficit. That the Conservative party should sell itself to the 1922 committee by going back to 1922, when the Conservatives pulled out and the coalition failed, and then go back into a coalition on that premise—a premise that is so false and empty, even from the Liberal party, which fought for a different system in the general election—is a wonder to behold.
We are now in the odd situation where we have one part of the Bill, which should be one Bill, on whether there should be a referendum on the alternative vote, and another on changing the distribution of seats.
Mr Donohoe
Was my hon. Friend aware that in the ’20s, the Liberal party in government—would you believe?—was opposed to any form of proportional representation?
Sir Stuart Bell
Times have changed since 1922, but it is a mystery to behold how we are in the current situation.
As one hon. Member has said, 72 Members wish to speak this evening. Early on in the debate, the hon. Member for South West Devon (Mr Streeter) made a remarkable and impassioned speech, saying that we should at least be thankful for small mercies. The small mercy was that the Bill is not a Bill for full-blown proportional representation. Tomorrow he should read the comments of the Deputy Prime Minister—who slipped it in very nicely—when he said that the Bill was a minimum requirement. The Government are not out of the woods on proportional representation, and someone should ask him—and we will ask in Committee—whether the Bill is the first stage on the way to proportional representation or an endgame.
Sir Stuart Bell
There are nods from those on the Liberal Front Bench. This Bill is even more of a pig in a poke. What we are voting on this evening has not been made clear to the British public or even to this House. The Bill is the first stage on the way to a different system of voting. That is quite remarkable. We have to be careful, not just about what is before us, but about what is not before us.
The point has been made many times that the Labour party in opposition supported a referendum. We do support a referendum—we committed ourselves to it, and we are the only party that did. The Conservative party committed itself to first past the post. The Liberals wanted a different voting system: the single transferable vote system. The Conservative party said that it wanted to change the distribution of seats by 10%. The point has been made: why 10%? Why not another figure? However, that was the only element in the Bill before us that was actually put to the British people. Nothing else was. The Liberal party did not put the alternative vote to the British people—we did put a referendum on the alternative vote to the British people—and neither did the Conservatives. We therefore have a Bill before us that has no manifesto commitment in it from any of the parties.
Martin Horwood
The hon. Gentleman seems to misunderstand the manifestos. Our manifesto certainly did argue for a more proportional system, but we are not in favour of making the best the enemy of the good. We still think, as we have often said, that the alternative vote is a better system than first past the post. He cannot possibly be under any illusion from the debate so far that the Conservative partners in the coalition would support a more proportional system, so he cannot possibly believe that the proposal is a stalking horse. The only party that supported AV was his.
Sir Stuart Bell
I have not read the Liberal party manifesto in detail, but I am aware that it advocated 500 seats in the present Parliament and a single transferable vote system. That is what was put to the people by the Liberal party—
Sir Stuart Bell
It is no good the hon. Gentleman shaking his head. The Liberal party fought the general election on a series of commitments. We are talking about a minor commitment that the Liberal party has abolished. The Liberals also had a commitment to get rid of five Trident submarines. That disappeared. They had a policy to ensure no further nuclear industry. That disappeared too. What we are seeing is part of the disappearing act of the Liberals, and then they come to the Floor of the House and say—
Sir Stuart Bell
The hon. Gentleman shakes his head. He should read his own manifesto and see what it says.
Let me ask the hon. Gentleman a simple question—does he believe in the doctrine of mandate? We have heard a lot about that doctrine tonight, so does he believe in it?
Sir Stuart Bell
Yes, I do. That is why Labour Members support a referendum on the alternative vote. What we do not support is mixing this Bill with what should be in another Bill, as was said earlier, for the purpose of the redistribution of seats. That proposal gets rid of the requirement for public inquiries that enable all constituents of an area to put their views on the basis of history or geography. Such inquiries also enable local councils to put their point of view, but all of that goes.
I was interested to hear the statements made at the weekend by the Deputy Prime Minister and the Prime Minister, who said that they were giving power back to the people. They are not giving power back to the people, they are taking it away from them. They are giving people no right to discuss how the seats should be distributed. They are offering the people either no consultation or a very brief consultation and they are allowing them no second opinion. If they can get their way, they are pushing through an Act of Parliament, which is effectively a gerrymander. The gerrymander has been mentioned several times in this House, and it is what we are discussing on the Floor of the House now. The gerrymander is having one Bill on an AV referendum, which we could support, another Bill on changing the distribution of seats, which is debateable, and putting the two together. The Government have done that because they knew that they could not get those measures through on their own. They knew that they would not get a Bill on AV through without the support of Labour Members because they knew they did not command enough support from their own Benches. That is why they mixed the two Bills together, giving rise to the agonising problems that we now see expressed by those on the Conservative Benches. Some say that they are not for the Bill or the AV referendum, but that they are obliged by their party to support it. If Conservative Members believe in the doctrine of mandate, they will not support the Bill.
The doctrine of mandate and the gerrymander go even further because we have a Prime Minister who says, “Well, I am putting this measure before the House, but I will not campaign for the alternative vote. I will be on prime ministerial duties.” Likewise, the Deputy Prime Minister and leader of the Liberal party will be on deputy prime ministerial duties and will go to the United Nations when his party meets in conference. He is not going to stand there and explain to his own party why he forged a coalition on the terms he did: he will take the plane instead. The Prime Minister will do the same, having put before the House the proposal for a referendum on AV—a proposal in which he does not believe, as he himself says, and on which he will not campaign.
We have a grotesque parliamentary situation here, in which the doctrine of mandate and the commitment to the electorate disappear and where the sovereignty of this House is impaired. This House exists to hold the Executive to account. That is what we are here for—that applies to Labour and Conservative Back Benchers—but Conservative Back Benchers cannot hold their party or Government to account because of this legislation.
Mr Charles Walker (Broxbourne) (Con)
When introducing this Bill, the Deputy Prime Minister dressed it up as the beginning of new politics. Well, this is not new politics; it is old politics exercised at its very best or its very worst, according to one’s disposition. It is about the Executive—the Government of the day—seizing more power for themselves. Let us not be coy about this. That is what Governments do. Let us not be afraid of admitting that.
The arguments for reducing the size of the House of Commons by 50 are nothing more than very flimsy. We are told that cutting 50 Members of Parliament will save £12 million. Well, colleagues, that is what 350 years of settled parliamentary democracy adds up to—we are going to save £12 million. Why stop there? Let us get rid of 300 Members of Parliament and save £72 million. There may be many good reasons for reducing the size of the House of Commons, but saving £12 million is not one of them. We trot out this ridiculous figure to appease the headline writers in the Daily Mail and the tabloid press, and those journalists who work for The Daily Telegraph, which is just a tabloid in a bow tie.
What really concerns me about this Bill is the fact that the Government talk about reducing the number of MPs to 600, but there is no mention of reducing the number of Ministers. What the Bill does, then, is to increase the patronage of the Executive. There will be yet more incentive for my colleagues to be good little boys and good little girls. That is what drives the public mad—seeing MPs say one thing in their constituency and doing another thing here in the hope of securing ministerial preferment.
I would personally like to see 450 MPs in the House of Commons, but only as part of the separation of powers where we remove the Executive from Parliament. The reason we have 650 Members of Parliament, colleagues, is so that at any given time—in the last Parliament, for example—300 of our number have either Front-Bench or shadow Front-Bench duties. As three hundred of our colleagues were taking their orders either from the Prime Minister or from the leader of their party, it left a mere 300 to 350 of us to hold the Government to account. I am all for reducing the number of MPs, but only as part of a far wider package of proper political reform.
To colleagues on all sides of the House, but particularly to my colleagues on the Government Benches, I say that there is a danger of politicising the issue of boundaries, as this reduction in the number of MPs so nakedly favours my party. I know that the system up to now, by an accident of design, has favoured the Labour party, but if this reform is to carry weight and legitimacy, it must be seen to be fair to all parties, not to the naked advantage of one party.
I have already mentioned what the public hate. They hate patronage; they hate politicians doing deals in smoke-filled rooms. Now, I support the coalition because it was the least worst of the options before us after the May general election, but let us be in no doubt that the coalition was agreed in a smoke-filled room by a few very powerful politicians at the head of two parties. I did not have a great deal of say in the formation of that coalition. I had no say in what policies were included or what policies were discarded. What happened actually transferred power further into the hands of a political elite.
Martin Horwood
The hon. Gentleman must make it clear to the House that he is speaking for his own party. In the case of the Liberal Democrats, the coalition was approved by a vote of the parliamentary party and the federal executive, and then by democratic vote of the representatives of every local party in conference assembled—and by a large majority.
Mr Jenkin
If my hon. Friend will allow me, let me say, with the greatest respect to the Liberal party, that members of the Liberal party and Liberal MPs are not the people. I believe that my hon. Friend is referring to the people of this country as being those who were excluded from the coalition deal.
Mr Walker
What I am saying to the hon. Member for Cheltenham (Martin Horwood) is that under the AV system, party negotiating teams will more often decide the outcome of a general election than will the public or the electorate, which will not increase confidence in democracy, but further erode confidence in it. “Are we to believe these manifestos?” is what people will say, as they see politicians saying one thing in the manifesto and then doing something different among themselves in a smoke-filled room.
Let us remind ourselves, colleagues, that the second part of the Bill, which is concerned with AV, is purely there to appease less than 10% of the House. That is the future of permanent coalition Government—deals to appease minority parties. I am extremely nervous about this Bill, which I do not think has been properly thought through. It has been presented, brought forward and debated in haste.
I will say this, however. I am extremely pleased that my right hon. Friend the Member for Witney (Mr Cameron) is the Prime Minister. I could not think of a better one. That is why on this one occasion—I say this particularly to my Whip—out of loyalty to the Prime Minister and for no other reason, I shall support this Bill on Second Reading. After that, however, every vote that I enter into, for the rest of the Parliament, will be a free vote. The Whip need not concern himself too much, because I am a Conservative to my core. Every fibre in me is Conservative. On most occasions, therefore, I will happily walk through the Division Lobby with my party. However, there will be occasions when I exercise my right, as the elected representative of Broxbourne, to disagree with my party. In essence, that is what I am, and it is what we all are: representatives coming from constituencies, to use our judgment on the great issues of the day.
I am representative of neither the Whips Office nor No. 10. More than anything, people in this country are crying out for independent-minded, honest, brave Members of Parliament, who put being a legislator and sitting in this place above all else. Too often, we are viewed as coming to this place with an aspiration to become a Minister. I say to my constituents that there is no greater honour than being the Member of Parliament for Broxbourne; there is no greater honour than being a Member of Parliament. If we begin to focus on our constituencies and remember why we are put here, we restore confidence in politics.
We have had a difficult few years, but if colleagues genuinely feel that they do not have the character to represent their constituents bravely in this place, they should stand down now and let someone else take their place.
Jonathan Edwards (Carmarthen East and Dinefwr) (PC)
I have three strong concerns about the Bill: the date of the referendum vote; the fact that there is not a proportional election system on the ballot paper; and the means of reducing the number of Members of Parliament, which will affect Wales more significantly than any other part of the United Kingdom.
Plaid Cymru has long advocated voting reform for elections to this House, so we welcome the fact that a new UK Government have put the issue on the agenda. As currently drafted, however, the Bill will be a massive missed opportunity. If there is to be a referendum, it should be on whether we take the more radical step of adopting the single transferable vote for elections and having a genuinely proportional system. In Committee, we will support amendments to achieve that, and we will expect support from those MPs who in February supported such an amendment to the Constitutional Reform and Governance Bill.
We are concerned about the date for the referendum indicated in the Bill, as it would clash directly with elections for the devolved Parliaments. Two separate reports, from Gould and Arbuthnott, pointed to the difficulties with holding multiple elections on the same day. There is no reason why the voting reform referendum needs to be held on the same day as elections to form the Celtic Governments. It is, at best, insensitive for the UK Government to proceed with 5 May 2011 as the date. It would make much more sense to hold the referendum on part 4 of the Government of Wales Act 2006 on that date, which was ruled out by both UK coalition governing parties.
We will argue that a new date should be set on which no other election is taking place, to avoid the accusation that the Government in London are riding roughshod over the interests and concerns of the devolved countries.
Michael Connarty (Linlithgow and East Falkirk) (Lab)
I am heartened by the second part of the hon. Gentleman’s contribution. Will he support the amendment tabled tonight on behalf of the Labour party in Scotland?
Jonathan Edwards
The hon. Gentleman will have to wait; our voting intentions will be made clear.
We have many concerns about the impact of constituency changes on Wales. Wales, more than any other part of the UK, will be seriously affected by the proposed changes. As many right hon. and hon. Members from my country have pointed out, Wales will probably have about 30 seats following the changes—a cut of 10 seats or 25%, compared with 5.5% in England, 9% in Scotland and 17% in Northern Ireland. We do not agree with those changes, which will strongly affect the Welsh voice at Westminster. We will table an amendment to prevent such a massive loss of representation.
Guto Bebb (Aberconwy) (Con)
On the reduction in the number of Welsh MPs from 40 to 30, does the hon. Gentleman agree that, in the eyes of the Welsh public, an unintended consequence of that change will be an enhancement of the powers of the Welsh Assembly. We can debate the powers of the Welsh Assembly, but my view, which I suspect he shares, is that the people of Wales should make a decision about the powers of the Welsh Assembly. Does he agree that by reducing the number of Welsh MPs from 40 to 30, and reducing the voice of Wales in the House, we are, in effect, increasing the powers of the Welsh Assembly by default?
Jonathan Edwards
The hon. Gentleman makes a valid point, which was also made by the right hon. Member for Torfaen (Paul Murphy). A case could be made for reducing the number of Welsh MPs, but such a reduction would have to follow a further transfer of powers and a plebiscite in Wales, following a referendum. Part 4 of the Government of Wales Act awards sovereignty over current devolved fields only, so that would not justify a reduction in Welsh MPs either, even if a referendum was won in March.
The think-tank Demos recently published a map showing the power gap—how different constituencies in the UK vary in importance with regard to their voters’ actions. The proposed change to a system based on electoral registration will not, as the Deputy Prime Minister argues, ensure that all votes will be worth the same in electing a Member of Parliament. Under AV, the same few swing seats will still decide the Government. In addition, basing such a system on electoral registration might be doubly damaging to some areas. Those areas with greater social problems, such as poor education or higher unemployment, are likely to have fewer people on the electoral roll. In reality, therefore, MPs for such areas will be dealing with a greater number of electors than he or she imagined, as well as a much higher caseload.
The leader of my party, the hon. Member for Dwyfor Meirionnydd (Mr Llwyd), expressed amusement at the idea of new constituencies being no larger than 13,000 square miles. If I remember my geography lessons correctly, Wales is only 20,000 square miles in total. However, this is a serious point: if a Member’s constituency is 100 miles north to south and east to west, how can they properly serve their constituents while travelling between their constituency and London and around a large rural area?
As the Bill is on constitutional affairs, and we are dealing with changes to the Government of Wales Act 2006, other issues should be raised. Power to vary National Assembly election dates should be a matter for the Assembly and not the Secretary of State for Wales. We should end the electoral system that prevents candidates from standing for both a constituency and a regional list for the National Assembly—a policy with which, I believe, the Conservative party and the Liberal Democrats in Wales both agree.
There is little in the Bill to commend: a referendum on a voting reform option that will not excite the proponents of electoral reform and that will merely tinker with the edges of the problem of the first-past-the-post system, even if the referendum is successful; a referendum date with a negative impact on democracy, most obviously in the Celtic nations, carried through without consultation or discussion with those Administrations; and a change in the number of MPs, which will massively and negatively impact on my country. Although my party strongly believes in electoral reform, we cannot support the Bill at this stage.
Mr Christopher Chope (Christchurch) (Con)
I was elected on the Conservative party manifesto, which states on page 67:
“We support the first-past-the-post system for Westminster elections because it gives voters the chance to kick out a government they are fed up with.”
That is the very opportunity that the Australians have been denied in their recent general election. An article in The Times about 10 days ago suggested that if a first-past-the-post system had been operating in Australia, the Liberal party—effectively, the conservative party—would have been able to regain power in Australia, thereby demonstrating the wisdom contained in the Conservative party manifesto. I regard the AV referendum as an expensive and unnecessary distraction from the Government’s main job, which should be to get the economy back on track. To spend £80 million to £100 million on the referendum is absurd.
I am also concerned that other aspects of the Conservative party manifesto are being disregarded in the Bill. Page 63 of our manifesto states that
“we plan to change Britain with a sweeping redistribution of power…from the government to Parliament”.
Sadly, the Bill does exactly the reverse. As my hon. Friend the Member for Broxbourne (Mr Walker) pointed out, the proposal is that we reduce the number of MPs but not have a corresponding reduction in the number of Ministers. This Government have a record number of Ministers—more than at any time since the 1975 legislation was passed. When I was first elected in 1983, there were about 83 House of Commons Ministers in Margaret Thatcher’s Government. We now have 95, five more than we had at the height of the last Labour Government. If this Government are intent on saving money, why has one of their first acts been to increase the number of Ministers?
It will not surprise you to learn, Mr Deputy Speaker, that the category of Minister that has been increased above all others is the Whip. The number of Government Whips is now at an all-time high. People outside the House may well find it extraordinary that we have so many Ministers, given that we have devolved Governments in Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland and therefore need fewer Ministers here to represent those areas. That, in my view, shows that we are entirely in breach of what is set out on page 63 of the Conservative manifesto.
I also object to the fact that the debate has been guillotined. Page 67 of our manifesto states:
“Because we are serious about redistributing power, we will restore the balance between the government and Parliament, by… allowing MPs the time to scrutinise law effectively”.
That is exactly what is not being allowed. Why cannot the House decide for itself how much time is needed to discuss all that is in the Bill?
Addressing the Conservative party faithful in February this year, the current Prime Minister ridiculed the lack of effective parliamentary scrutiny that existed at the time. He asked:
“How has the mother of all Parliaments turned itself into such a pliant child? If we are serious about redistributing power from the powerful to the powerless, it is time to strengthen Parliament so it can properly hold the Government to account on behalf of voters”.
I do not know whether the Deputy Prime Minister has read what the Prime Minister said in that speech, but I have found no consistency between what he said then and the attitude being taken by the Government Front Bench today, and I find that extremely depressing.
Why the big rush? It is, of course, because the Government want to push through the change in the boundaries and reduce the number of Members of Parliament. They realise that there is a justification for wanting to get on with that quickly. How can they find a justification for introducing an AV referendum quickly? By linking the two issues. I consider it a cynical exercise to link two separate Bills, and I think that the restriction in the guillotine motion is much too tight. Such an amount of time would probably have been sufficient for each separate part of this Bill. As the Prime Minister suggested back in February, why should we not look at the detail of the Bill and then decide how much time should be allowed for discussion?
I have many other concerns about the contents of both Bills. That is why I shall vote against Second Reading and also against the guillotine motion. I shall not do so with a heavy heart, because I believe that we must stand up in the House and vote according to what we believe in. I believe in strengthening the House and reducing the size of government, and I do not think that the Bill does that.
Austin Mitchell (Great Grimsby) (Lab)
I have sat through debates on many unappetising measures in this place, both Thatcherite and new Labour, but I have never sat through a debate on a measure that has been greeted with such a conspicuous lack of enthusiasm as this. It is true that most of the criticisms have come from advocates of first past the post, who do not include me, but I intend to add to those criticisms as an advocate of electoral reform and a believer in proportional representation, because this is not electoral reform but an electoral fiddle that is designed to entrench the coalition.
The Bill helps the Liberal Democrats in the first place through AV. They think that they are likely to be everyone’s second preference; at least, they thought that before they formed the coalition and went in for cuts. It is estimated that they will gain between 12 and—according to the Electoral Reform Society—22 seats. That will help the Conservatives, because the redistribution will mean that smaller seats held by Labour will be enlarged. The reduction in Wales and Scotland’s representation is designed to hit Labour and benefit the Conservatives by between 12 and 20 seats. Those estimates come from polls and are obviously unreliable, but both sets of estimates suggest a gain. The interesting thing is that the only gain that is likely to materialise is in the redistribution. The Liberal Democrats had better look out, because the AV element is the less likely of the two parts of the Bill.
Why does the Bill propose the alternative vote? We have learned tonight that we are catching up with Papua New Guinea, and that is a marvellous position to be in—I always wanted to be in such a position—but AV will achieve very little else. It has suddenly been dragged out of the tomb in which it has lain since 1929, given the kiss of life—bandaged and bleeding as it is—by the Deputy Prime Minister, and trundled out on to the stage. It was not in the Liberal Democrat manifesto or the Conservative manifesto. Where did it come from? [Hon. Members: “It was in your manifesto.”] No, it was not. We proposed a referendum on AV, but the heart of our party was certainly not behind AV, as has been well demonstrated tonight.
Why should we have a referendum on AV, which no one particularly wants, and not a referendum on proportional representation, which a large percentage of people do want? All the polls indicate that AV is less popular than PR. In a referendum in New Zealand in 1992, people were asked whether they wanted to retain the first-past-the-post system. When 85% of the population said no, they were asked what system they wanted to replace it. They were offered four possible options. The German additional Member system was supported by 70%, whereas the AV system that is being proposed here was supported by a tiny 6.6%.
In my opinion, PR is the only system that will enable us to cope with all the emerging strains of a multi-party arrangement. Very odd results will be produced if we try to cram that into the constraints of first past the post. PR means that every vote is a wanted vote. It ends the elective dictatorship. It forces the parties to campaign in every constituency, rather than just in the safe seats.
It is true that the parties are divided. When I first went into the electoral reform game, I rapidly became chairman of the Labour campaign for electoral reform because all the other members left to join the Social Democratic party in 1981. At that time, the largest number of advocates of proportional representation were Conservatives; now almost no Conservatives advocate PR. The Labour party is divided on it, although there is a great deal more support for it on this side of the House. It is exactly this sort of issue—an issue on which the parties are divided—that is best submitted to a referendum. So why is PR not to be included in this referendum? Have the Liberal Democrats given up on it? Why did they not insist on its inclusion? If we are to have a referendum, why should we not include PR as an option?
Let me now briefly turn to the subject of the proposed reduction in the number of MPs to 600. The redistribution will go ahead even if AV is defeated in the referendum, but we MPs have a vital democratic role: we are the representatives of the people; we protect them against the Executive; we are local ombudsmen; we are the voice of our constituencies; and we have an increasing volume of mail and of work in this place thanks to the Select Committees and pre-legislative scrutiny and all the other innovations that we want to see. We cannot do our work effectively if the number of MPs is reduced. This proposal will strengthen the Executive, because the Executive will be bigger in a smaller pool of Members, and there will be a smaller pool of talent from which to choose the members of that Executive.
The proposal is based on a fallacy too: the fallacy that this place is too large. The number of Members we have as a proportion of the population is much the same as in France and Italy. We are not too large, because our system is one of the few that is not federal. In federal systems people have elected representatives at all levels to turn to, whereas in our system people have only the 650 MPs.
I think AV will be defeated in the referendum because referendums are Conservative devices. That will leave the Liberal Democrats with the following consequence, which they must consider. Their leader, who is looking more and more like Elmer Gantry, has dragged them into this. He has said, “We will liberalise the cuts and democratise the constitution.” When AV is defeated in the referendum, they will not be doing the latter. What, then, do they stand to gain from this coalition?
Iain Stewart (Milton Keynes South) (Con)
I support the Bill not because I think it is perfect—far from it in fact, and I will touch on its deficiencies in a moment—but because I strongly support part 2 on the equalisation of constituency electorates. We have heard much from the Opposition Benches about how it is somehow partisan of us on the Government Benches to equalise electorates across the country, but I contend that it is partisan not to equalise them, because we have a huge imbalance in our current electoral system. The Labour party won the 2005 election with 36% of the vote and it had a Commons majority of about 60 seats. In the 2010 election, the Conservative party won 37 or 38% of the vote but fell short of an overall majority. If anyone needs a clear indication of the imbalance in the current system, that provides it.
We also hear much from the Opposition Benches about problems with electoral registration; Opposition Members offer them up as an excuse not to rebalance and equalise constituency electorates. I applaud all measures to boost voter registration, but we should not allow that argument to take away from the importance of equalising electorates.
Let me give an example involving my Milton Keynes constituency. It is a new-town constituency and its electorate is fast approaching 90,000 people. However, when I compare that figure with the corresponding figures for the five new-town constituencies in Scotland I find that their electorates are at least 10,000 smaller, and in the worst case of Cumbernauld, Kilsyth and Kirkintilloch East the electorate is approximately 25,000 voters fewer than mine. That cannot be right.
Andrew Griffiths (Burton) (Con)
May I draw my hon. Friend’s attention to a similar case involving my constituency? Burton has an electorate of 75,000 but, just a 10 or 15-minute drive away, Stoke-on-Trent Central has an electorate of only 61,000. Why should the value of votes in Stoke-on-Trent Central be greater than those in Burton?
Iain Stewart
My hon. Friend makes a powerful point, but the key issue is that, in contrasting similar electorates in Milton Keynes and the new towns in Scotland, which presumably all have a similar socio-economic and demographic mix and therefore the preponderance of people to register will be about the same, we can show that there is an imbalance in the system even without looking at the issue of registration. I applaud the part of the Bill that gives every voter equal weight in an election.
I am not content with all of the Bill, however. I wish that we were not going to have the referendum on the alternative vote. For reasons that hon. and right hon. Friends have expressed, it is a distraction. We do not need it; there are far more important measures for the country that need to be taken to clear up the legacy we have inherited from the previous Labour Government. However, I accept that as no party formed a majority in this House following the last election, some compromise has to be made. I accept that having this referendum is a price worth paying to get the measures to tackle the deficit and the social problems, but that does not mean that we have to accept it in its current form in the Bill.
It is our duty as a House to make sure that the referendum is conducted as properly and fairly as possible. Referendums play a valuable role in democracies. Particularly on issues that cut across the usual party divides and on constitutional issues, they are a useful mechanism by which the people of a country can express their view, but the referendum result must reflect the settled will of the people. We therefore must impose safeguards to make sure that the outcome of this referendum represents the settled will of the people.
Most countries that have mechanisms for changing their constitution or that hold referendums do not just have a simple majority provision. In the United States, a two thirds majority is required in Congress and among the states. In other countries that operate referendums—Italy and Denmark for example—it is not just a simple majority that is required. I, along with my hon. Friend the Member for Epping Forest (Mrs Laing), will seek in Committee to introduce a turnout threshold, so that we do not end up with the preposterous situation whereby a tiny turnout of 35% or 40% and a tiny majority in favour of AV could somehow result in the constitutional changing of the country. In such circumstances, a change would be endorsed by only one in five of the electorate, and that does not provide a mandate.
Robert Halfon (Harlow) (Con)
What should be done were Scotland to vote in favour of AV in the referendum and England were to vote against?
Iain Stewart
I am a Unionist, so I think that the decision of the United Kingdom would have to stand. It would be a mistake to start disaggregating the views of different parts of the country. Where would we stop—county against county or city against city? The view must be a national one, but that national view must be clearly expressed. As I say, having a turnout threshold is the right way forward.
I dislike the alternative vote system and will campaign strongly against it. The amendment that I will propose is not about encouraging people to stay at home; I will encourage every voter that I can to turn out to vote no in this referendum. The amendment is about the referendum giving a clear view, so that we do not end up with a tiny minority dictating a constitutional change that will last for decades on the basis of the votes of a fifth or less of the electorate.
I wish that we did not have the proposal for such a referendum in the Bill. It is a distraction, but it is a price that we had to pay to get through other measures that we want for this country. If the settled will of this country is to change the electoral system to AV, I will accept that, as a democrat. However, I am not prepared to accept it on a derisory turnout. The right hon. Member for Greenwich and Woolwich (Mr Raynsford) said in respect of the referendum on the North East assembly that he would not introduce the legislation if there was a derisory turnout. That never happened because the vote against the proposal was enormous, but that is the correct process. My hon. Friend the Member for Epping Forest and I will seek in Committee to introduce that process.
Phil Wilson (Sedgefield) (Lab)
The only way in which we can go ahead with constitutional reform is by having political consensus across the whole House, but this Bill does not have that. The Bill is half-baked, and the part of it that is baked, so to speak, does not give nourishment to the people or help with their democratic rights; it is in place to give sustenance to the coalition. I say that because of what some of the clauses actually mean as far as a referendum is concerned. I do not agree with having it on the same day as elections in Scotland and elsewhere in the UK. No elections are being held on that date next year in County Durham, where my constituency lies, so we will therefore get differential turnouts. I agree with the Deputy Prime Minister that our voters can work out and deal with two or three different ballots on the same day. If they can do that, surely they can go to the polling station twice in one year, once for the local and national elections next May and once later in the year to cast their vote on a referendum such as this. We should not be patronising the electorate.
The other thing that we need to take into consideration when discussing the AV referendum is that we are starting to talk about equalising the size of the electorates in constituencies and so on. If we believe in equalising the votes and the constituencies, making the size of the electorates as equal as possible throughout the country, it follows that it is only right that any MP or other candidate who stands should have to achieve more than 50% of the votes cast. Someone who agrees with equal votes should agree with taking things that far. How can we accept the introduction of safeguards for the referendum itself, whereby there must be a threshold before the vote is recognised, while accepting that, under first past the post, a candidate can get 33% or 34% of the vote and become an MP? We cannot have safeguards in the referendum without having them in votes for MPs.
Nobody can be against the equalisation of constituencies, but why at the same time should we have to reduce the number of MPs from 650 to 600? Why cannot we equalise the constituencies and keep the number of MPs at 650—for the many good reasons that the hon. Member for Broxbourne (Mr Walker) put forward? The only reason for the proposed reduction to 600 is partisan gain on the part of coalition Members, especially those in the Conservative party. The proposal would not be on the table if 55% of those smallest constituencies had Tory Members, but, because 55%-plus have Labour Members, it seems to be all right to look at it and reduce the size of the House. The measure will not reduce the size of the Executive, however, and by reducing the number of MPs it will not answer the questions about holding the Executive to account.
People have drawn on spurious arguments about the size of this elected House compared with that of others throughout the world. The Deputy Prime Minister, in his speech on 5 July, drew attention to America and its House of Representatives, which comprises 435 members and has done since 1911, but there is actually a big process under way in America to increase the size of that House, because in many states it is putting a strain on democracy. Since 1911, the size of the electorate in each district has increased threefold, from about 190,000 to almost 700,000. America is obviously a bigger country with a bigger electorate, but that is more or less the size of a European seat.
Reducing the number of our MPs will save £12 million, but in America, where there are only 435 members of the House of Representatives, each member has 22 staff and expenses of more than $1 million a year. The Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority would have a field day if that were the case here, and cutting the number of MPs does not mean to say that we will save money.
People have mentioned the Chartists, but I always smile when I hear that they were in favour of equal-sized constituencies. Yes they said that, but they also said that they wanted annual Parliaments, and I do not think that we are going to go along with that. At that time, in the 1840s, even after the 1832 Reform Act, there were 70-plus rotten boroughs where fewer than 60 electors in each seat elected a Member of Parliament. We have come a long way since those days, so drawing comparisons between the Chartists and what we are doing today is spurious. We in this House need to establish consensus about what we want to do. We do not have that, which is why this Bill is a bad one.
Mr Richard Shepherd (Aldridge-Brownhills) (Con)
When it comes to electoral systems, the question that I am most concerned about now, in this later phase of my membership of this House, is what system best secures the sovereignty of the people as expressed through Parliament. There is only one.
Since 1997, the extraordinary development of the constitution—often unconsidered and, in many instances, certainly without pre-legislative scrutiny—has been rammed through by a majority, and we now have, somewhere in the United Kingdom, one of the following systems of election: the single transferable vote system, the additional member system, the closed party list system and the supplementary vote system. If this Bill gets through Parliament, we will then have the alternative vote system in place of the first past the post. We have had all those developments, but there is no satisfaction.
Over a lengthy period, I have watched the parading of princes in this House of Commons. I have seen Governments come and Governments go, so my objective is the system that best protects the sovereignty of the people. I profoundly believe that it is first past the post, for the simplest and most obvious reason of all—you know how to get rid of the Member of Parliament. [Laughter.] No, I do not find that funny. It is one of the most important features of an electoral system. Furthermore, we best know how to get rid of a Government. To me, that is the conclusion of the whole argument on voting systems.
I remember fighting the then Conservative Government —Mr Major’s Government—over Maastricht. I watched a political class across Europe assert that it was a matter for the political class and not for the people. That is very much a German position. I watched as subsequently Mr Kohl lost his constituency seat, but still remained a member of the Bundestag because he was head of his party’s list.
That was the fault and the difficulty that confronted Roy Jenkins when he looked at electoral systems for this country. He found that the alternative vote system could be less proportionate than first past the post, so he came to the conclusion that alternative vote-plus was the answer, which meant that there would be an element of the party list system—the very thing that most throttles the dynamics of democratic expression in the European continent, yet that was the system he promoted. He spoke in Westminster Hall to try to seduce members of the Conservative party; he was singularly unsuccessful.
I will, without hesitation, vote against the Bill on that issue, if that is what I am required to do. There is no dancing around about supporting the coalition. I believe that the coalition was supported in my constituency when it was formed, as it was by me, because it had in its charge one central purpose: to restore the public finances and reduce an unsustainable burden of debt. That is what it was about. I was party to some of the discussions, only in the sense that we were hastily convened at odd hours to be told the latest draft of where the coalition was going. This measure was not part of that, so I shall vote against it.
On boundaries, as was well said by my hon. Friend the Member for Broxbourne (Mr Walker), what is central is that the power of the Front Benches is increasing unstoppably. We now have a greater concentration, through that device, on our Front Bench, as well as on the Labour Front Bench. We can see that the free radical Back Bencher is an endangered species. That is why there is sourness across the nation, and that is why I will not vote for a reduction that would lose the continuity of counties, cities, towns and boroughs—the distinctiveness of the United Kingdom.
Finally, this measure is no constitutional process, it has not been seen in the round and it does not relate to what will happen in the House of Lords in four, five or six years. But we have been through all that. I urge colleagues to remember that we are all elected representatives. How can it be right to say, “I vote for this because of loyalty to the Fuhrer, the leader of a party”? Our loyalty is to the people who sent us here. That is in first place, so it seems to me inconsistent to say, “I damn the Bill, but I will vote for it in the hope that something turns up.”
Tom Greatrex (Rutherglen and Hamilton West) (Lab/Co-op)
Given the strictures on time, and as many colleagues wish to speak, I shall make a short contribution on this curious and expedient hybrid of a Bill—a hybrid that remains unexplained, as do its origins, despite the opening speech of the Deputy Prime Minister. Perhaps his Front-Bench colleague, the Parliamentary Secretary, Cabinet Office, the hon. Member for Forest of Dean (Mr Harper), can, when he winds up, do a little more to explain why the two measures have been put together in such an unsatisfactory way, but I remain to be convinced that that will happen.
Given the short time available, I should like to make a contribution specifically on the AV referendum element of the Bill. I stood for election on the basis of a manifesto that said that there should be a referendum on the alternative vote, as Government Members have pointed out, although the hon. Member for Leeds North West (Greg Mulholland) and, I think, some others may have misunderstood what was in our manifesto. I continue to believe that there should be a referendum if we propose changing the electoral system, and I do so for the reason that the hon. Member for Brecon and Radnorshire (Roger Williams) hinted at: if there is to be any change to the electoral system, the people of this country should have a say on it, because whatever honourable positions are taken, there is always the temptation, whether at the margins or more significantly, to make elements of those changes for temporary party political advantage. That should not be the case.
My principal issue is about the legitimacy of any proposed referendum, and therefore its result. The issue is really the date of the referendum. If it happens, it should take place on the basis that after the campaign and the debates, and after the points have been made, the result, whatever it is, should have legitimacy, be accepted and have authority among the people of this country. That is why I am deeply troubled by the suggestion that it should take place on the first Thursday in May next year.
The referendum would be on the same day on which people in my constituency will vote for their representatives in the devolved Parliament in Scotland. Other Members’ constituents will be voting in elections to the local authority, or to the National Assemblies in Wales or Northern Ireland. Others have made points about the failure to consult with devolved Administrations. The excuse that the fact that the measures needed to be announced in the House first precluded such consultation simply does not wash; there are plenty of examples of officials in Government Departments discussing issues with officials in devolved Administrations prior to announcements. However, quite apart from that, I have two concerns. First, the significance of either the referendum, or the elections to the devolved Assemblies and the Scottish Parliament, will inevitably be diminished, and neither deserves to suffer that consequence. Making what the right hon. Member for Haltemprice and Howden (Mr Davis) called an informed and deliberate choice is important when it comes to such a significant proposal as a referendum on changing the electoral system.
My second concern is about the recent experience in Scotland of combined elections, which took place in 2007. Perhaps some Members will not be as familiar with what happened as I am, but on that unhappy occasion, a perfect storm of different electoral systems and different ballots with a number of elements to them led to an unprecedented number of spoiled papers. The number of spoiled papers was higher than the majorities in some constituencies.
David Tredinnick (Bosworth) (Con)
I have heard the point about the number of spoiled papers before, but surely there must be a way of making it clearer to the electors that there are different voting systems in front of them, perhaps using diagrams. There must be a better way of doing things next time, must there not?
Tom Greatrex
I was just going to make a point about the report on those elections that was commissioned from the Canadian expert, Ron Gould, who considered the matter in great detail. He looked at education and information, but concluded that the sensible approach was to de-combine the elections; that made much more sense and was a better safeguard. Indeed, he said that a problem with combining has to do with the confusion that it creates among the electorate.
I do not agree with some of the comments from the Deputy Prime Minister and others that that is somehow demeaning to the electorate. The experience is there and it is recent. That report was widely welcomed by representatives of the coalition parties both in the House and in the Scottish Parliament in 2007.
I fail to be convinced by the suggestion made by the Deputy Prime Minister earlier in the debate that by working with the Electoral Commission and the electoral administrations, the issue can be dealt with. I remind the House that during preparations for the 2007 elections, there was considerable—some might say interminable—discussion between civil servants, electoral administrators and the Electoral Commission in Scotland, none of whom spotted the problem that was about to befall us and all of whom immediately afterwards, good and diligent people though many of them may be, were involved in a blame game about whose fault it was that the confusion occurred in the first place.
There is a relatively simple solution. If we are to have a referendum, it should be transparent and give confidence in the result. That could be achieved by holding it on a distinct date. That could be a month earlier, a month later or in the early autumn, so that there is a gap between the sets of elections. It will be incumbent on the Government Front-Bench team to consider that during the Committee stage, given some of the amendments that may well be proposed.
George Eustice (Camborne and Redruth) (Con)
I shall support the Bill this evening because I have always been a strong supporter of referendums. They can play an important role in rekindling confidence in our democracy. A referendum allows the country to focus on a single issue, rather than having too much personality in politics and too much party politics. It also encourages the creation of cross-party coalitions based on an issue.
I know that many Opposition Members have gone off the idea of coalitions in the past few months. My first job in politics was working for a different coalition—the no campaign against the euro. Some of those in the Opposition—the Labour against the euro campaign and the Green party, and trade unions such as the Transport and General Workers Union—were instrumental in making sure that this country made the right decision on the euro and decided not to join. I very much look forward to working with old friends again, as I am again on the no side of the campaign, and perhaps with some new friends to defeat the AV referendum campaign.
Our one person, one vote system has stood the test of time. Sometimes I hear proponents of electoral reform say, “If the candidate that you voted for doesn’t get elected, your vote is wasted.” It is shameful that people say that. There is no such thing as a wasted vote in our democracy. Every party that takes part, however big and however many votes it gets, is part of the richness of that debate. All of us as MPs have to try to win the confidence of voters who might be minded to vote for smaller parties. It is not true that those are wasted votes.
The AV system is not even a more proportional system. It is just a second-rate version of the first-past-the-post system. It does nothing for smaller parties. The message to smaller parties is that people can vote and then try again and again, until in the end they vote for one of the big two parties in any given constituency. That is not more proportional.
Mark Lazarowicz (Edinburgh North and Leith) (Lab/Co-op)
In the light of what the hon. Gentleman has just said, and of his welcome endorsement of giving the people a say, does he agree that there should be a question in the referendum to offer voters the choice of PR?
George Eustice
That is an interesting proposition and it may be one of the issues that is examined in Committee. Those who advocate proportional representation are at least making an intellectually honest case, whereas there is no strong intellectual case for AV. It is a system that is less proportional and one in which some people have votes counted twice, whereas other people have only one of their votes counted. How can that be more fair?
Robert Halfon
Although I understand the merits of first past the post, does my hon. Friend agree that the one flaw in it is that there are constituencies where no candidate gets a majority of the vote? What does he think of the French system, which retains first past the post but has a second run-off ballot for the top two a week later, making sure that in each constituency the winner has a majority of the vote?
George Eustice
My hon. Friend raises an interesting point. I personally favour the system that we have; it has stood the test of time, and we should stay with it. The system that is used in the French presidential elections might work in a presidential situation where there are just two candidates nationally, but not in the same way when spread more widely.
Sheryll Murray (South East Cornwall) (Con)
Does my hon. Friend agree that it would be extremely unfair to expect one of the Cornish constituencies—his, mine, or one of the others—to cross the historic Tamar border that we already have?
George Eustice
My hon. Friend makes an absolutely valid point. Cornwall is a special case. It is not just a normal county—it is a duchy. That is certainly something that should be considered in Committee.
I want to finish by making a couple of points about the fairness of the referendum. I understand the Deputy Prime Minister’s argument about the cost of holding a referendum on a separate date. As somebody who would like to see more referendums locally, I also recognise that we need to find a way of running certain local referendums on the same day as local elections. However, this is a very different kettle of fish—we are talking about a national referendum on a major constitutional issue, and that should be held on a separate date.
The current proposition is to run the referendum simultaneously alongside national elections in Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland. That poses two major problems. First, national elections in Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland have different spending limits from those pertaining in the referendum, so the Electoral Commission will have two parallel sets of spending restrictions under the Political Parties, Elections and Referendums Act 2000.
Secondly, there is the question of getting a fair debate in terms of broadcasting. It is already challenging enough for broadcasters to show fairness to all parties in an election: imagine how much more difficult it will be if, as well as showing fairness to all the parties in three separate national elections, they also have to show parity and fairness to two sides of a referendum campaign, where different parties will take different views, and different people within those parties will take different views. This aspect has not been considered sufficiently, and I hope that the Government will have further consultations not only with the Electoral Commission but with the Broadcasters Liaison Group to see whether there is a way around it.
Fiona Mactaggart (Slough) (Lab)
In the rhetoric that he used in introducing the Bill, the Deputy Prime Minister said that it would put the people in charge. I can accept that to some extent the referendum on the alternative vote does put the people in charge by giving them a chance to decide on their voting system, although I would much prefer a referendum on proportional representation, which genuinely puts the voter in charge.
I am particularly concerned about the second part of the Bill, because I do not believe that equal registers equate to equal constituencies. On 5 July, I asked the Deputy Prime Minister whether he would draw on the census that is to be held in 2011 in order to improve registration and accuracy in local constituencies; he said no. Members who have been in the House for some time will know that I am not necessarily the biggest fan of the Office for National Statistics. Thames Water estimates, based on the sewage output of Slough, that there are 21,000 more people in the town that I represent than the ONS believes on the basis of its interim assessment of population. Nevertheless, it is completely clear that we have fewer people registered than are entitled to vote. I asked an electoral registration officer why they did not use more frequently the legal power to prosecute non-registered voters. She described taking 17 cases through a very lengthy and expensive process whereby they were presented to lawyers who took two of them to court, and those involved ended up with fines of £10 and £200 respectively. So I am not surprised that we do not see more active prosecutions. Nor am I surprised that there is not more work on improving registers, given that one of the actions of the interim Budget was to cut the extra resourcing for local authority registration officers and press hugely on local authority budgets.
There is a need for a clearer hierarchy of issues in respect of deciding on constituencies. Obviously, equality should be one of the top ones, but it is not the only one. At the last boundary revision, my constituency was increased; I now represent the largest constituency in the whole county of Berkshire. I apologise to the hon. Member for Windsor (Adam Afriyie), who is sitting opposite, because I am going to refer to his constituency without having told him in advance. I accepted the change, which moved 5,000 people from his constituency, whose population is well below the county average, into mine, which has about 12,000 people above the county average.
That is what the people wanted. They were in the borough of Slough and were policed in Slough. They used to come to me continually, but I would say, “I cannot represent you, because you do not live in my constituency,” but they would say, “I don’t want to be represented by him! I live in Slough!” There needs to be respect for people’s feelings about their neighbourhoods, boundaries and constituencies. These people did not want to be represented by someone who did not have the active relationship that I had with their local police commander and local authority.
Let me say that the ward does not send Labour councillors to the borough; it elects Liberals, so no particular borough advantage was involved. However, the change respected the views of people about their communities. The real problem with the latter part of the Bill is that it does not do that. It specifically says that unitary authority boundaries—and all the authorities in Berkshire are unitary authorities—shall not be counted as local authority boundaries, so they are absolutely irrelevant. It also says that inconvenience to voters that comes out of the first boundary review shall be discounted by the Boundary Commission.[Official Report, 20 October 2010, Vol. 516, c. 8MC.]
In fact, the boundary changes are for the convenience of the Government. The urgency is on numbers and getting everything settled 18 months before the next general election. Let us be clear: the constituencies of every Member in the House, apart from those with protected constituencies, are likely to be thrown into the air and dropped down in some completely unpredictable way, without any respect for people’s lives and constituencies. We will all have to form new relationships with new voters. Under the Bill as it is structured, it would be just as right for there to be two Slough and Windsor constituencies rather than one for Slough and one for Windsor. That disrespects the voter, and I object to the Bill because of that disrespect for the voter.
Andrea Leadsom (South Northamptonshire) (Con)
Having sat here for rather a long time, I am pleased to have had the benefit of hearing the many wise heads who spoke before me. I am glad to be following the hon. Member for Slough (Fiona Mactaggart) because I completely disagree with her. I think that the Bill is totally about democracy. I also disagree with a number of my hon. Friends on this matter. Before the general election, people in this country were clamouring for change—to be given more of a voice and more of a say in how they voted. They certainly wanted the cost of politics and the number of MPs to be reduced. I really believe that there is a democratic requirement to hold the referendum in the interests of promoting our democracy.
That is one reason why I will support the Bill. The other, which is also very much in the interests of democracy, is that we forged a coalition Government in the interests of the country. Had we not done so, we might have limped on in minority government for a few months, or, worse still, the British public might have ended up with the right hon. Member for Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath (Mr Brown) still as their Prime Minister in a Lib-Lab coalition. Those two outcomes would have been a disaster, so we had to form a coalition and the Bill was the price that we had to pay. For that reason, too, I believe that we should support the Bill.
Having said all that, when it comes to the referendum, I am a huge advocate of first past the post, and there are three key reasons for that. First, only first past the post provides a clear choice of candidate. People clearly state their preference and get no other alternative, so somebody that they might quite like or have heard of does not end up with their second or third preference vote. They end up with a single Member of Parliament to whom they can relate in their own constituency. Any other system of voting introduces an element of lottery, in which some people vote for only one candidate and some vote for five. If enough vote for five, even when they do not know their fourth, third and second choices, a candidate can be elected to Parliament whom nobody really wanted but who was the lowest common denominator. That is a disaster, and first past the post does not deliver that.
A second reason why I am a strong advocate of first past the post is that we generally end up with a strong Government with a single manifesto. We have already seen, to the cost of many of us, and will no doubt see even more in future, what the downside of coalition government is. It is surely this Bill coming before Parliament, which is the price that has had to be paid to bring together a strong and workable Government. It was not in our manifestos and the people did not vote for it. In fact, although a lot of people have said that no one cares about AV or first past the post, that is not strictly true. A long-standing Conservative party member in my constituency resigned his membership card recently, and why? Because his Conservative Government are now putting in place policies that were not in our manifesto and for which he did not vote. That is the price that we pay for coalitions, and anything other than first past the post will inevitably lead to a greater propensity to coalition Governments.
Pete Wishart (Perth and North Perthshire) (SNP)
Does not first past the post lead to some curious results? For example, the Conservatives in Scotland got 17% of the vote but one Member of Parliament. Meanwhile, Labour secured a third of the votes in Scotland and got two thirds of the MPs. Surely that must be wrong.
Andrea Leadsom
The hon. Gentleman makes a very good point, but we have debated the matter at length this afternoon and evening and all agreed that first past the post is not the perfect system. No system is, but nevertheless first past the post offers the chance of a clear preference. The person who is the most popular wins a seat, rather than somebody’s second or third choice or the person they hated least. That is the benefit of it. Voters get a single manifesto and can then hold their Government to account on it.
That leads me on to the third important point about first past the post, which is that we get the ability to sack a Government when they have reached the point when we no longer want them. In Germany, for example, where they have long had proportional representation, every time there is a general election they wake up with the same people involved in government, but just with the deckchairs moved around slightly. The same can happen with the alternative vote. The day after polling day in this country, we could have ended up still looking at the right hon. Member for Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath. That would have been very bad for democracy, and I believe that first past the post is the right thing for this country and for our democracy.
Mr Michael McCann (East Kilbride, Strathaven and Lesmahagow) (Lab)
I am delighted that you have called me to speak in this debate, Mr Deputy Speaker, given that I sent a copy of my contribution away to my local newspaper earlier today saying how magnificent it would be. I was getting a bit concerned that I was not going to be able to make it and that there would be a bit of an error in the local newspaper.
Two issues are covered in the Bill, and I shall deal with them separately, as the Government should have done. The first is the alternative vote, on which my party, in its manifesto, was committed to having a referendum. For that reason alone, I will back a referendum.
However, let me remind hon. Members of the voting systems in Scotland. For the general election, we have first past the post; for the European elections, we have proportional representation; for the Scottish parliamentary elections, we have both first past the post and an element of proportional representation; and for local government elections, we have the single transferrable vote. In my opinion, that is a car crash of electoral systems, which leads to nothing but confusion, particularly for elderly voters in my constituency.
Like many other hon. Members who have contributed to the debate, I have long held the view that first past the post represents the best system for delivering proper representation and proper governance to a country. Most important, as many other hon. Members have said, politicians cannot hide in first-past-the-post systems. Despite my private feelings, I shall vote to give the public the choice, but I will also campaign to retain the first-past-the-post system.
Three issues concern me about the Bill. The first is the Deputy Prime Minister’s position. He has delivered a consistent message about our rotten political system and the new politics that he wishes us to pursue. His attacks have been against both the system and the parliamentarians in it. I disagree with that analysis. The problems that the House has had in the past were created by flawed individuals, not flawed systems.
Secondly, I am deeply concerned about the coalition’s plans for AV in the Bill because, as has been said many times in the debate, neither the Conservatives nor the Liberal Democrats put the case for AV in their manifestos. I am therefore baffled about why it is in the Bill, unless there is a more cynical reason: to place the alternative vote referendum alongside the changes to constituencies to create a smokescreen to cover up the gerrymandering of our constituencies in this Parliament.
Mr Stewart Jackson (Peterborough) (Con)
I respect the hon. Gentleman, who is making a powerful speech, but does he not find it perverse and unprecedented in recent parliamentary history that his party not only went to the electorate at the general election in favour of an AV referendum, but legislated for it before the election, and yet will vote against that policy tonight?
Mr McCann
We are happy to resolve that problem. All the Government need to do is decouple the measures. We will vote for the AV referendum separately, and against the constituency measure. It is in the Government’s —the hon. Gentleman’s people’s—hands to resolve the matter. However, I will vote against the Bill.
Liberal Democrat voters will still harbour some disappointment about going into coalition with the Conservatives, but nobody should be under any illusions about the duplicity of Liberal Democrats in the affair. Before the election, we had to listen to the nauseating lectures of the Deputy Prime Minister, who told us that his was the only party that had in no way been tainted by the troubles of the previous Parliament. That was not the case—it is factually incorrect—but we were led to believe that the Deputy Prime Minister would arrive on his white steed and there would no longer be any dirty deeds or skulduggery in politics because the right hon. Member for Sheffield, Hallam (Mr Clegg) would save us all. That stomach-churning hypocrisy pales into insignificance when we consider the Bill.
The Boundary Commission will be given the task of making arithmetical calculations and equalisations, and placing seats of 76,000 first, second, third, fourth and fifth in their deliberations, except in constituencies that have an area that exceeds 12,000 square kilometres, and except for the Shetland islands and the Western Isles. When I saw the hon. Member for Orkney and Shetland (Mr Carmichael) after the details of the Bill were released, the smile could not have been taken off his face with a blowtorch because he will get that free run at the next general election.
The primary beneficiaries of all the exceptions are the Liberal Democrats. We should remember that the Deputy Prime Minister said in a speech on political reform on 7 April 2010 that only the Liberal Democrats could be trusted on political reform.
Mr Alan Reid (Argyll and Bute) (LD)
The hon. Gentleman is wrong. He should read the analysis of the hon. Member for Aberdeen North (Mr Doran). If there were no exceptions, the Highlands council area and the islands councils areas would have three seats, all Liberal Democrat. The exceptions mean that the area will have fours seats—three Liberal Democrat and one Scottish National party. The one beneficiary from the exceptions is therefore the hon. Member for Na h-Eileanan an Iar (Mr MacNeil).
Mr McCann
That was an opportune intervention, because I was about to cover that point. We cannot base the new rules on the distribution of seats on arithmetic alone and then seek to introduce measures to protect certain seats. In that way, the Government are simply protecting certain communities against others. It is simply not possible for things to be a little bit equal.
The Bill includes other measures that would be detrimental to our parliamentary system, including the arbitrary reduction of the number of constituencies and the permanent revolution resulting from the boundary changes before each Parliament. Trotsky would indeed be proud of the Bill on that basis alone. However, just in case anyone develops the mistaken and untrue impression that only Members of the House are concerned, I also have a correspondence with Keep Cornwall Whole, which demonstrates that people outside the House believe that the Bill is wrong and that it should not proceed.
The AV referendum, however meritorious in its own right, is being abused by the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats as a cover for their proposals to break up and gerrymander constituencies. I ask right hon. and hon. Members on the Government Benches, particularly those who have spoken passionately on the Bill, to back the AV referendum and ditch the proposed constitutional reform of our constituencies proposed in it.
Simon Hart (Carmarthen West and South Pembrokeshire) (Con)
Like many hon. Members, I trawled through the records to see how many of my constituents had raised this matter over the last three or four years. I came to the grand total of one, and sadly, that one has subsequently died, although for completely unconnected reasons.
One point of consensus in the debate is that equalisation has its merits—not everybody is against it—and that it contains an element of fairness that we should try to encapsulate in law. However, it seems that there is also a consensus that we should not replace one form of bias with another and that the measure should not be about winning elections. That idea seems to be taking root, and in fact, the process rather than the principle appears to be the greatest source of concern.
Turning to some examples from where I live in Wales, it takes an hour and 40 minutes—a modest amount of time—to drive from one end of the Carmarthen West and South Pembrokeshire constituency to another. In Vauxhall, where I live in London, it takes about an hour and 40 minutes to walk across the constituency. By adding 15,000 people to the electorate in the former, we will almost certainly disconnect rural communities from their Member of Parliament slightly more than we should. If we have learned anything in the past 10 years, it is that we should try to connect rural communities, not disconnect them.
In Wales in 2011—I can hardly wait—we have a referendum on AV and one on further powers for the Welsh Assembly, and a Welsh Assembly election, at what cost I do not know. Yet the principle of reducing Welsh MPs by 25%, to which many hon. Members have referred, could be agreed, at least in principle, without any reference to the Welsh nation by 10 o’clock this evening.
Is seems to me that it is simply not sensible to apply a one-size-fits-all solution to a nation that has different social, economic and political values. If we go down the route of the proposals, Welsh Assembly and general elections will actually coincide in 2015, and we might have the slightly confusing situation of using two completely different voting systems along two different boundaries—one for the Welsh Assembly, one for the Westminster election—and, of course, with two languages to contend with at the same time. If that does not pose a problem of definition and understanding, I do not know what does. That must be reflected in the Bill before it is enacted, but it has not been properly addressed in the debate.
Penultimately, on the effect of the alternative vote in Wales, the Deputy Prime Minister said some time ago that the referendum campaign would not be party political. However, it is hard to imagine how that could be so, when he and the Prime Minister are travelling in slightly different directions on the subject. In Wales, we will hold the referendum on the same day as a very party political Welsh Assembly vote. We cannot possibly claim that that will not have some impact on the result. For example, what can the media legally say about the campaign? What can Welsh Assembly candidates say? What can Members of Parliament, who will be asked to comment, say about the AV referendum when we are bound by party political restrictions and will be involved in a party political campaign at the very same time? Will the measures simplify or simply complicate matters for voters? None of these questions have been properly dealt with today.
Last, I wish to address the issue of honesty. Let us not try to fool people about this Bill. Let us not pretend that it is a response to some kind of great public desire or thirst. Let us not pretend that so much money will be saved or that voting will be easier or that an unfortunate whiff of party political interest is not beginning to develop in these measures. But all that does not necessarily mean that the Bill should fail, because it is built on reasonably sensible, sound and fair foundations. It is the process, not the principle to which I object.
We have 649 boundary reviews coming up, which need to be in place, completed, signed, sealed and delivered by 2014, which will create a problem that extends beyond voters. It will impose considerable difficulties on all the political parties represented in this House—in administration, reforming, refunding and selecting new candidates—and will also have a significant bearing on voters.
As we have discovered, there is a fine line between political reform and political vandalism. Those of us who believe in proper political reform will be disappointed if that reform is set back by years if we fail to amend the Bill significantly or take into account some of the important evidence and impassioned speeches that we have heard from all quarters of the Chamber today.
Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)
Order. The winding-up speeches will begin at 9.30.
Ian Murray (Edinburgh South) (Lab)
I am grateful for the opportunity to take part in this debate, and I will be brief in order to keep to the three-minute time limit you have given me, Mr Deputy Speaker.
I wish to follow the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Slough (Fiona Mactaggart) about under-representation. Indeed, my constituency was mentioned by the Deputy Prime Minister in his opening remarks. The mid-2007 estimated population of my constituency was just over 88,500. Almost exactly 20% of those people are not eligible to vote, giving a notional registrable electorate of 71,000, or around the mean of the national average, given the 650 seats in this House. However, the number actually on the electoral register is around the 60,000 mark, so we must ask where those 10,000 or 11,000 missing people are. I suggest that the vast majority fall into one of the three categories highlighted by the Electoral Commission—young people aged 17 to 24, private sector tenants and the black and ethnic minority residents in my constituency.
The Edinburgh university students association did some work that estimated that there are more than 20,000 students in Edinburgh, and of those some 9,000 would be eligible to be registered in my constituency. On the Electoral Commission’s figures, 50% of those students are not registered, accounting for 4,500 of the missing electorate. I mention this because the principle of equalisation is not denied. We agree with it, but we must ensure that we achieve equalisation of representation at the same time. Some 25% of all the constituents who come to my constituency offices are not on the electoral register. Therefore, if we arbitrarily adopt a 600-seat House and just divide the number of people on the register in December 2010 by 600, we will end up with an artificial figure that under-represents the most vulnerable and the hardest to reach.
The evidence is borne out by the Lothian Valuation Joint Board, which by December 2010 will have completed only 85% of the work that it does on the register. Therefore, the electoral registration figures that will be used to fundamentally redraw our constituencies will be—
Ian Murray
I would, but I am afraid that I do not have time to do so.
The electoral registration figures in December 2010 will be far short of where they would be in the final register that the board will put together.
In the limited three minutes that I have been given to speak, I would like to say that the disparity between the largest and the smallest constituencies is a concern for the House. Nobody here would disagree that equalisation of constituencies is something that we should all strive towards. However, what we cannot do is strive towards it on the basis of an arbitrary figure, drawn from an electoral register that is not just out of date, but misses out the hardest-to-reach parts of our constituencies. If we do that, we will not only be doing a disservice to the hardest-to-reach, but ensuring that the Members of Parliament to whom they look to help them are under-represented.
Mr Peter Hain (Neath) (Lab)
After 36 excellent speeches, this debate has revealed serious objections, from all parts of the House, to the constituency changes proposed in the Bill. Indeed, as the right hon. Member for Belfast North (Mr Dodds) and my hon. Friend the Member for Great Grimsby (Austin Mitchell) pointed out, almost nobody, on either side of the House, spoke fully in favour of the Bill, with the exception of the Deputy Prime Minister. The hon. Members for Broxbourne (Mr Walker), for Aldridge-Brownhills (Mr Shepherd) and for Christchurch (Mr Chope) all made impassioned speeches about the dangers of diminishing the numbers of Back Benchers compared with the Executive and about the balance of power in this House. The right hon. Member for Haltemprice and Howden (Mr Davis) made a telling point: that abolishing public inquiries will actually trigger a much greater spate of judicial actions based on objections to the new constituencies from local electors.
My hon. Friends the Members for Glasgow North West (John Robertson) and for Rutherglen and Hamilton West (Tom Greatrex), and the hon. Members for Camborne and Redruth (George Eustice) and for Na h-Eileanan an Iar (Mr MacNeil) all pointed out the serious problem of staging the referendum on the alternative vote on the same day as national elections in Scotland and Wales. My hon. Friend the Member for Caerphilly (Mr David) pointed out the astonishing reality that the Deputy Prime Minister and the Government failed to consult the Governments of Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales on the decision simply to impose the referendum on the same day as their elections—and by the way, also on the same day as elections for local councils of different electorates.
My hon. Friend the Member for Nottingham North (Mr Allen), the distinguished Chairman of the Select Committee on Political and Constitutional Reform, made the point that not only has there been no consultation across the country or with the elected Governments of Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales, but there has been no consultation with this House. There has been no pre-legislative scrutiny or any recognition of the need to build constitutional reform Bills by consensus—a point also made powerfully by the right hon. Member for Belfast North and my right hon. Friend the Member for Torfaen (Paul Murphy). With his Northern Ireland experience, my right hon. Friend made the point about the importance of taking forward constitutional change on the basis of consensus rather than simply imposing change, as this Bill is doing.
The Deputy Prime Minister—the leader of the Liberal Democrats—has brought forward a Bill changing constituencies in a way that is fair only to the Conservative party. Some Liberal Democrat leader he is! The proposal is grossly unfair to Labour and especially and blatantly unfair to Wales, which will lose fully a quarter of its representation. It is also grotesquely unfair to local communities, imposing on them new constituencies from Whitehall and depriving them of their traditional rights to be fully involved in a process that is at the very heart of our system of parliamentary democracy.
Having swallowed a Budget that is unfair to the poor and pensioners and, quite astonishingly, most unfair to the poorest parts of Britain, including the north-east of England and Wales, now the Government are also destroying the fairness at the heart of our parliamentary democracy. They trumpet the case for equalisation of constituencies as though it were a novel concept, but equalisation has been the all-party principle behind our constituency system for generations. We are all signed up to it, but the boundary commissions have applied it in a flexible way over the generations, and in a way that is independent and takes proper account of local views, community identity, rurality and sparsity. In other words, the boundary commissions have operated the equalisation principle by consensus, in a way that is fair, practical and sensible. The Government have abandoned that consensus, in a way that is unfair, impractical and arrogant.
Mr Jeremy Browne (Taunton Deane) (LD)
I have 84,000 constituents. How many does the right hon. Gentleman have?
Mr Hain
I have just under 60,000, although my constituency is different. I would be happy to see more constituents in my constituency if this Bill were proceeding on a fair basis, with public inquiries and taking local consultation into account. The only exception to the equalisation principle, allowing some flexibility, is in the protection given to four geographically large seats in Scotland, three of them Liberal-held. As my hon. Friend the Member for Aberdeen North (Mr Doran) pointed out, we can conclude in respect of Ross, Skye and Lochaber only that this preferential treatment was the price paid to keep its Member, the former leader of the Liberal Democrats, from defecting to the Labour party.
Obviously, in the Government’s definition of equalisation, some seats are more equal than others, as my hon. Friend the Member for East Kilbride, Strathaven and Lesmahagow (Mr McCann) said. Wales, because of its own special characteristics, has always had special consideration by this Parliament and by the Boundary Commission for Wales, with cross-party support over the generations. For that reason, Parliament first decided in 1947 that there should be no fewer than 35 Welsh seats. Since then, rises in and shifts between the population over the past 60 years have led the Boundary Commission to increase the number of seats by a further five to 40. As a note from the Commons Library of 28 July 2010 confirms in paragraph 3.1, during the passage of the Boundary Commissions Bill in 1992, the then Home Secretary, the right hon. and learned Member for Rushcliffe (Mr Clarke), rejected the argument that over-representation of Wales should be tackled, referring to it as a long-standing constitutional arrangement—a point eloquently explained by my hon. Friend the Member for Caerphilly.
This Bill, however, will impose on Wales the most savage cut of all—a fact that the hon. Member for Cardiff North (Jonathan Evans) actually celebrated. Wales will lose three times the proportion of MPs as the average for the rest of the United Kingdom—a reduction of a full quarter from 40 to 30. As my right hon. Friend the Member for Torfaen said, how can that possibly be justified? Wales is long used to the Tories treating it unfairly and punitively, yet now the Liberal Democrats are doing the very same thing. I hope that the Deputy Prime Minister and the Minister replying will have listened to the arguments of the hon. Member for Ceredigion (Mr Williams), who asked for the changes in Wales to be delayed at least until after the referendum, given that successive arguments are being made within the Welsh Conservative party.
In the vast rural areas of mid and west Wales, the four constituencies—none Labour-held—including Brecon and Radnorshire, Montgomeryshire and Ceredigion, cover hundreds of square miles, yet under the Bill those four large seats will become two monster ones, each thousands of square miles in size. Until this Bill, every Parliament and every boundary commission has accepted an elementary verity about the Welsh valleys. In former coal mining constituencies, it is impossible to visit the next valley by the shortest route, because that happens to be over the top of a mountain. The only way to do so is by travelling either down to the bottom of the valley or up to the top of it and right around to the next one.
The Bill will produce a monumental list of other anomalies. The hon. Member for Isle of Wight (Mr Turner) is absolutely right to be incandescent about the carve-up of his island constituency, but let me say this to the rest of the House. Just wait until every Member in every area realises what will be done to their own constituencies based not on natural communities, not on natural towns or parts of cities, but on an arithmetical diktat imposed by the Deputy Prime Minister and the Government on the boundary commissions. [Interruption.] Government Members shake their heads, but I predict that they will all find that when it comes to their own constituencies, there will be rebellions in their local areas against this diktat from the centre on an arithmetical basis.
What we are seeing and what people find most offensive about the Bill is the way in which it sweeps away local democracy, as the hon. Member for Foyle (Mark Durkan) said. For generations, constituency boundaries have been reviewed and adjusted by local agreements, not by central imposition. Local people have had the opportunity to object if community identities were threatened or unsuitable mergers with nearby towns or villagers were proposed. Formal hearings would hear representations, and a final decision would be agreed, if not always by total consensus then at least with broad support. Last time, the process necessarily took fully seven years in England.
The Bill has unilaterally dumped that process for a rigid two-year deadline in a straightforward fix, abolishing the right to trigger public inquiries and destroying a bipartisan, independent system of drawing up boundaries, which has been the envy of countries elsewhere in the world. So much for big society localism. The Prime Minister tells us that the big society is about “empowering local communities”—a favourite phrase of the Deputy Prime Minister. As the hon. Member for Aldridge-Brownhills has said, however, the Bill destroys the essence of the British parliamentary democratic system, by imposing from the centre rather than developing from a pattern of constituencies. It rides roughshod over and breaks up local communities, as my hon. Friend the Member for Slough (Fiona Mactaggart) said. It proposes an arbitrary and partisan reduction by 50, to 600 seats, because that would hurt Labour most. A steeper reduction would have abolished too many Conservative seats.
Most outrageously, the Government have said that they intend to redraw the boundaries based on the December 2010 register, when they know that the current register is missing more than 3.5 million eligible voters, predominantly the young, poor and black and minority ethnic social groups. As my hon. Friend the Member for Vale of Clwyd (Chris Ruane), a champion of this point, tellingly argued, the problem of under-representation is greatest in urban areas, student towns and coastal areas of high social deprivation. As my hon. Friend the Member for Islington South and Finsbury (Emily Thornberry) said, London will be especially badly hit.
The Liberal Democrat leader has allowed himself to be sandbagged by his Tory partners in his otherwise laudable attempt to introduce a fairer electoral system, risking a once-in-a-generation opportunity for electoral reform. Instead of introducing a separate Bill on the alternative vote referendum, which would have been supported by the Labour party in a vote through Parliament, in line with our manifesto commitment, the Government have spatchcocked it together with the most blatant gerrymander of parliamentary constituency boundaries since the days of rotten boroughs.
As our amendment argues, the Government should decouple the proposals into two separate Bills: one on the alternative vote referendum and one on constituencies. In the constituency one, they should ensure that the original, fairer, more transparent and consensual boundary review system is restored, and that new boundaries are not applied in such a dogmatic, rigid and politically discriminatory fashion. They should ensure that Wales is treated fairly and not punitively, and statutory automatic registration from other public databases must be included in the legislation. That way, we might get two better reform Bills, based on consensus; we might even get the alternative vote, which I have supported for decades.
The Government should stop trying to rig democracy and ride roughshod over local community views, and they should withdraw this Bill now.
The Parliamentary Secretary, Cabinet Office (Mr Mark Harper)
We have had an excellent debate, with a high level of interest from colleagues across the House: 74 Members put their names down to speak, and I counted 40 who managed to make a contribution, all of which were excellent. In the relatively short time remaining, I will not be able to refer to every colleague’s contribution, but I will try to deal with as many of the issues as possible.
Before I do so, let me respond to those Members who raised concerns about the time allowed for debate and scrutiny of the Bill. The hon. Member for Nottingham North (Mr Allen), the Chairman of the Political and Constitutional Reform Committee, made clear his concerns and those of his Committee. In addition, my hon. Friend the Member for Harwich and North Essex (Mr Jenkin) raised concerns about the programme motion, which he said was a guillotine—if it is, it has a very blunt blade. For a 17-clause Bill, we have proposed five full days of Committee on the Floor of the House and two days for Report, which adequately recognises the importance of the issue to the House. That was agreed through the usual channels with the Opposition, who presented no objections to our timetable. It is disappointing to learn that they intend to oppose it tonight, and even at this late stage I urge them to think again.
As for the time available for debate in Committee, I should make it clear to Members on both sides of the House that the Government want the House to be able to debate and vote on all the key issues raised by the Bill, and that Ministers will work hard to ensure that the House has that opportunity.
Let me turn first to the referendum on the alternative vote and the concerns expressed about the date. A number of Members pointed out that it is also the date of elections to the devolved legislatures in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, and of elections in most of England. Eighty per cent. of English voters will be eligible to vote on that day.
Andrew Selous (South West Bedfordshire) (Con)
Will my hon. Friend give way?
Andrew Selous
I am extremely grateful. Can my hon. Friend reassure me that town and parish councils, whose elections are due to take place on the same day as elections to unitary councils, will not be forced by the AV referendum to hold those elections on a later date? That would cost some of them up to £50,000, money that ought to be spent on local services rather than on another election.
Mr Harper
I can confirm that our combination amendment will ensure that parish elections can take place on the planned date. As most of England will be voting on the same date, I foresee no problems with differential turnouts, and I think that Members who are concerned about that can be reassured.
I believe that, far from disrespecting the devolved Administrations—as was suggested by the hon. Member for Na h-Eileanan an Iar (Mr MacNeil), who speaks for his party on this matter—we are treating the voters of those countries with respect. We think that they are perfectly able to vote in their devolved elections and in a simple yes-no referendum on the same day. I think, if I may say so, that the hon. Gentleman underrates his fellow Scots and their capacity for decision making.
Mr MacNeil
If the Minister feels that we are underrating the public, does he not also feel that we should include the single transferable vote on the ballot paper, and let the people really decide?
Mr Harper
I shall come to that later.
A number of Members cited the merits of different electoral systems. As my right hon. Friend the Deputy Prime Minister said, that is a matter for debate not now but during the referendum campaign. I know that Members on both sides of the House, and on both sides of the coalition, will participate vigorously in that debate.
My right hon. Friend the Member for Haltemprice and Howden (Mr Davis) and my hon. Friends the Members for Epping Forest (Mrs Laing) and for Milton Keynes South (Iain Stewart) suggested a turnout threshold. Such a system would make an abstention effectively a “no” vote. It would give people an incentive to abstain from voting, and the Government do not believe that that can be right. As for the issue of turnout and legitimacy, I should point out that in the 2005 election only three Members of Parliament received the support of more than 40% of their registered voters: my hon. Friend the Member for North Herefordshire (Bill Wiggin), the hon. Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant) and the hon. Member for Belfast West (Mr Adams), an interesting combination. Members who suggest that voting is legitimate only if turnout is above a certain level should think carefully about where the logic of that argument takes them.
Mr Harper
I hope that my hon. Friend will forgive me if I do not. I have a great deal to do, and not much time in which to do it.
The Labour party’s position on the referendum on the alternative vote strikes me as ridiculous. Labour supported an AV referendum before the election—it was in the party manifesto—but Labour Members are not supporting it now. They are hiding their opportunism behind the fig leaf that the proposal is contained in a Bill that plans a boundary review to provide more equally sized constituencies and more equal votes.
The right hon. Member for Blackburn (Mr Straw) has criticised us for not presenting our proposals in a stand-alone Bill. Given that both our measures concern the election of Members of Parliament to the House of Commons, it seems perfectly sensible to link them. I remind him that he presented proposals for an AV referendum in the Constitutional Reform and Governance Act 2010. That was hardly a stand-alone Bill. It also included measures relating to the civil service commission, the civil service code of conduct, the ratification of treaties, amendments to the Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority, the tax status of Members of Parliament, financial reporting to Parliament, freedom of information, counting of votes and the Act of Settlement.
Mr Straw
The difference is that all of those had been subject to extensive pre-legislative scrutiny and were agreed across the House, whereas one part of this is agreed but the other is a wholly partisan measure. The political purpose behind it has been well exposed by the hon. Member for Cities of London and Westminster (Mr Field) in his excellent blog on the ConservativeHome website.
Mr Harper
The right hon. Gentleman has just demonstrated that on this issue the Opposition have put opportunism before principle, and it will not get them very far.
The boundaries argument is straightforward. The Government believe seats should be of more equal size so that votes are of more equal value. Indeed, the right hon. Gentleman and his colleague the right hon. Member for Neath (Mr Hain) have both said at different times that they agree with that principle. They say that, in theory, they believe in it; however, they oppose it in practice. That is not, of course, on principle; it is because they believe our proposals correct a bias in favour of them in the current system—another example of opportunism.
Many of my right hon. and hon. Friends spoke powerfully in favour of our proposals, including my hon. Friend the Member for Chelsea and Fulham (Greg Hands) in an excellent speech and my hon. Friend the Member for Milton Keynes South.
The right hon. Member for Blackburn cannot have it both ways. He tried to argue that our boundary proposals were purely arithmetic and did not take anything else into account, and simultaneously that they were about gerrymandering the system to suit us. Those arguments cannot both be true.
A number of Members, including the right hon. Member for Neath, referred to a likely reduction in the number of seats in Wales from 40 to 30, as did the right hon. Member for Torfaen (Paul Murphy) and the hon. Member for Ceredigion (Mr Williams). That simply corrects the fact that at present Wales is over-represented in this House. Once the measures in the Bill come into force, Wales will be treated in exactly the same way as England, Scotland and Northern Ireland. It will be represented in exactly the same way as the rest of the United Kingdom, which, it seems to me, is extremely fair. That is my response to the right hon. Member for Belfast North (Mr Dodds) as well, who made exactly the same point about Northern Ireland. The reduction in the number of seats simply corrects existing over-representation, which also used to exist in Scotland and was largely corrected at the last election, although there is a little more still to do. Every part of this United Kingdom will be treated in the same way, and most voters will think that that is eminently fair.
The right hon. Member for Belfast North and the hon. Member for Foyle (Mark Durkan) talked about the linkage between Westminster seats and those for the Northern Ireland Assembly. They will both know that the Assembly is under a statutory duty to consider its operation by 2015, including the size of the Assembly. The Government are committed to bringing forward further legislation during this Parliament to reflect the wishes of the Assembly. The Government have no intention of dictating the size of the future Assembly. We will work closely with the devolved Administrations.
Boundaries will continue to be drawn by the independent boundary commissions in each part of the United Kingdom. As the Deputy Prime Minister said, we will replace local inquiries with a much longer period—increased from one month to three months—for local people to be able to make written representations. The academics’ opinion on this is very clear. They have described oral inquiries as
“very largely an exercise in allowing the political parties to seek influence over the Commission’s recommendations—in which their sole goal is to promote their own electoral interests.”
They also say that
“it would be a major error to assume that the consultation process largely involves the general public having its say on the recommendations.”
That is not a convincing argument, therefore.
Electoral registration was raised by a number of Members, including the hon. Member for Vale of Clwyd (Chris Ruane)—who, I know from the number of written questions of his that I have answered, takes a great interest in the subject. He will know that the registration rate in the UK is about 91 or 92%, which is broadly in line with that of comparable countries. The boundary review will use the electoral register, as it always has in the past. As the Deputy Prime Minister acknowledged, there are issues with the registration system. I can assure the hon. Gentleman that when we announce our plans for speeding up individual registration he will find that the fears that he expressed this afternoon are misplaced. The Government have no intention of worsening the situation—quite the reverse; we plan, by the measures that we will introduce, to reduce the number of people who are not registered to vote and to improve the system.
A number of hon. Members raised the issue about the number of Ministers that will be in the House of Commons after the size of the House has been reduced, and they will know that the Public Administration Committee produced a report on the issue before the general election. That Committee, which is chaired by my hon. Friend the Member for Harwich and North Essex, is undertaking another inquiry to examine what Ministers do. When it reports, the Government and my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister will look closely at it to see whether the Government want to take forward any of the proposals about the number of Ministers in this House.
The hon. Member for Islington South and Finsbury (Emily Thornberry) talked about foreign nationals and EU nationals not being able to vote in parliamentary elections and therefore not counting for these purposes. That is not a change introduced by the Bill; that is the existing position. It is perfectly normal in most countries that in order for someone to be able to vote for the national Parliament they have to be a citizen of the country concerned. That is a perfectly normal process and we are not changing it in this Bill. It is the existing system and I feel sure that Mrs Clegg will cope with it perfectly well.
My hon. Friend the Member for Isle of Wight (Mr Turner) spoke powerfully on behalf of his constituents. I know that he received a reply to his letter before today’s Second Reading debate, although I accept that it was unacceptably delayed. An apology has been made to him for that, and I can assure him that either the Deputy Prime Minister or I will visit the Isle of Wight to listen to the concerns of his constituents in person.
Stephen Pound
Let us leave the Isle of Wight and turn to the island of Ireland. In view of what the Minister has just said, do the coalition Government have any plans to tear up the long-standing arrangement and reciprocal understanding between this country and the Republic of Ireland on voting?
Mr Harper
No, we do not.
I can assure the hon. Member for Slough (Fiona Mactaggart) that the reference in the Bill to “counties”, which she discussed, does include unitary authorities. So the Boundary Commission for England will be able to take into account the boundaries of all the unitary authorities in Berkshire as it draws up new constituency boundaries, subject to the issues relating to parity.[Official Report, 20 October 2010, Vol. 516, c. 8MC.]
My hon. Friend the Member for Camborne and Redruth (George Eustice) raised the issue of spending limits and broadcasting rules for the referendum. The Electoral Commission will determine whether campaigning is relevant for the elections or the referendum and will issue guidance. This is not an unusual issue to face—we face it with European, London mayoral and Greater London authority elections, as was the case in 2004. The Electoral Commission will work closely with broadcasters to make sure that the rules are clear and fair.
This is an important Bill. As I have said, the Government have made available five full days’ debate in Committee and two days for the Report stage, and we want to ensure that the key issues are both debated and voted on by the House. The Bill will start the process towards having seats of more equal size, so that votes are of more equal value, and will make a modest reduction in the size of this House. It will give the people the choice over the voting system for electing Members to this House of Commons. Whatever our views on AV and first past the post—many views are held by those in this House and it is no secret that members of the Government will be campaigning on different sides—we should have nothing to fear from letting the people decide, and I commend the Bill to the House.
Question put, That the amendment be made.