House of Lords: Reform
Lord Forsyth of Drumlean Excerpts(15 years, 1 month ago)
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Lord Forsyth of Drumlean
My Lords, it is a great pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Williamson, in this debate and to pick up the point that he has just made on ministerial appointments. He is quite right that the proposals in the draft Bill provide for the Prime Minister to make an unlimited number of appointments to a largely elected House. Well, hang on a tick. If there is no legitimacy in being an appointed Member and you need to be elected, what is the logic of arguing that Ministers in this House can be appointed by the Prime Minister? This is to turn the constitution on its head. My understanding of the position of Ministers is that they remain Ministers so long as they command the confidence of Parliament. This is turning it the other way round so that in order to be a Minister you have to be a Member of Parliament, and while the Prime Minister can appoint you to be a Member of Parliament, you will cease to be a Member of Parliament as soon as the Prime Minister has lost confidence in you. This is a complete inversion of the constitutional principles and accountability that are the heart of our parliamentary system.
Lord Elton
Does that not exactly endorse my claim that this is part of a war of Government against Parliament? It is trying to seize control of this House.
Lord Forsyth of Drumlean
Indeed it is; I entirely agree with my noble friend, who I thought made an absolutely splendid speech. I see on the front page of the Telegraph today—if I can be a candid friend to my right honourable friend the Prime Minister—that he is quoted as saying,
“You do the fighting, I’ll do the talking”.
If I can give him a bit of advice, a bit of listening might be in order here, otherwise some of us will start doing a bit of fighting. My noble friend, whom I have never really regarded as a great rebel, is absolutely right to say that this is about Parliament and its role.
My noble friend Lord Steel of Aikwood, in his speech, described the draft Bill as a dog’s breakfast. I know that he breeds Labradors, and that Labradors will eat absolutely anything. However, I suspect that his dogs would find this pretty hard to digest, because it is a complete shambles from start to finish.
If the politics of this are, as I read in the newspapers, that this has been put forward as a consolation prize to the Deputy Prime Minister after the debacle of the AV referendum, I would have to say that it is more of a poisoned chalice than a consolation prize. Listening to and reading the speeches made so far, I would have to say that there is no way in which this legislation will get through this House and on to the statute book.
My noble friend the Deputy Prime Minister would do very well to listen to the proposals that have been put forward by my noble friend Lord Steel of Aikwood. My noble friend’s proposals are about reform; the Deputy Prime Minister's proposals are about the abolition of this Chamber and the creation of a new House of 300 paid and pensioned Members. This Government have a curious sense of timing. At the very moment when they are telling people in the public sector that we cannot afford their pensions and we are short of money, they are proposing to create 300 new politicians, all with index-linked pensions. It beggars belief how we are expected to explain that to a public who are already sceptical about our political process.
I have been thinking, “What would it be like to be one of these elected Members of this House? What would I do if I were an elected Member of this House?”. The first problem I thought of is, “Which manifesto would I be bound by—the one that I was elected on, which would last for 15 years, or would it be a manifesto which changes?”. I shall give an example. My own party has had a series of positions on tuition fees: we have been for them and been against them, all within a 15-year period. If you were elected on a manifesto that said that you were in favour of tuition fees, what would you do if, at the next election, the party changed its policy? Which manifesto would prevail?
If there are going to be 300 Members of this House, presumably one of them will represent an area where there are three constituencies. A sacred part of our constitution is the ability of Members of Parliament to be elected for whatever party but to represent their whole constituency. You don’t say, “Don't come to my surgery if you didn't vote Tory”. We say that we represent them all. We have some experience in Scotland of what happens when you get that kind of effect. The list Members start playing politics in the constituency and try to undermine the Member of one party. That leads to a waste of public money, to officials getting letters from every corner of the geographical area and to utter cynicism on the part of the constituents.
I return to my question: how would I behave? I would think, “I am there for 15 years. The average tenure of a Member of Parliament is about eight years; perhaps it might be a little longer with fixed-term Parliaments. I am going to be the incumbent. I am going to be the person whom everybody knows. So what am I going to do? I am going to do everything I can to ensure that my party wins the constituencies in my areas—that is what I am going to do”. The idea that we will be like Members of the European Parliament, as the noble Baroness suggested a moment ago, is ridiculous. And, in behaving like that, we would undermine the whole nature of this place.
The Deputy Prime Minister says that he is bringing forward these proposals in order to restore trust in Parliament. They are based, he says, on a principle that they will not alter the way in which Members of Parliament behave. But of course they will. If I am elected, I will have constituents; and they are going to come to me with problems, and I am going to do everything that I can to advance their cause. Even if that means making life difficult for those down the corridor, of course I am going to do it.
By the way, the most ignorant part of the statements made in support of this legislation has come from those who have said that the conventions and powers will remain the same. The powers of this House are unlimited. Do those in the other place who support these proposals understand just what we are capable of doing if we have democratic legitimacy? That is the message for the House of Commons, which was made so powerfully and effectively by that champion of Parliament, the noble Baroness, Lady Boothroyd, in her excellent speech yesterday.
No, we want no part of abolition. But we do want reform, and reform is there. I advise those members of the Joint Committee, who have been handed a hospital pass, that at their first meeting they should conclude that there is nothing to be done except to pass the Steel Bill. It would reform this House. It would let the hereditaries wither away by getting rid of the by-election system. It would allow retirement and remove on permanent leave of absence those who do not come here. It would provide for an independent Appointments Commission. That is a sensible piece of reform that we could pass tomorrow. It is ludicrous that Parliament should be treated as a kind of political football in a game which, at its roots, comes from the failure of the Liberal Party to retain the trust of the people because it did not keep the promises it made at a general election. There is no criticism of the work of this House. The implementation of a regular guillotine has undermined the work of the House of Commons and made it all the more important that we fulfil our constitutional duty.
Lord Gordon of Strathblane
My Lords, it was on 17 May that the Government published their White Paper and draft Bill and, by happy coincidence, that was also my 75th birthday. I have always regarded this document as some sort of unintended, but none the less welcome, birthday present. I genuinely congratulate the Government on at least producing this Bill which, as I am sure the noble Lord, Lord McNally, will say tonight, Labour signally failed to do. Mind you, when I see the Government’s Bill, I am very glad that Labour did not produce one. I have no doubt that the Labour Bill would have been better than the Conservative one, but if it was based on the Jack Straw 2008 White Paper, I would certainly have voted against it because it would suffer from the same problem as the Government now suffer from. With smoke and mirrors and weasel words, you can pretend to be all things to all men in a White Paper. You can pretend that somehow you can devise a system of election that will be both accountable and yet in no way threaten the primacy of the House of Commons. Once you come down to legislation, you have to make a choice and spell out specifically what you are doing.
The Government have given themselves a life raft, if you like, by publishing, somewhat unusually, a White Paper alongside the Bill. You are meant to have made up your mind what is in a Bill before you publish it, but innovation is always a good thing. They have the life raft there because they recognise that once you go into detail, support for election, which is a wonderful slogan, disaggregates like snow off a dyke. The fact is that the Opposition and Cross Benches could take the day off, and this Bill, put to a secret ballot of the government Benches, would be defeated overwhelmingly in this House, and the Government know it. I am not asking for a secret ballot—that would be unreasonable—but it is at least reasonable to expect that the Government will give their membership a free vote. Let me say, and I mean no disrespect to our Whips, that if they do not give us a free vote, I am taking one, and I will be voting against the Bill. There have also been rumours that the Parliament Act might be used. Frankly, I think the Government would be well advised to dissociate themselves from that position very quickly. It smacks very much of an elective tyranny, and it would be wholly inappropriate for a constitutional Bill.
However, let us look at the Bill we have. After all, it has been in germination since 1832 and is the greatest reform Act we have ever seen, so one accepts that the Government have given it their best shot. This is the best that they can do, so what have they come up with? First, let us be quite clear that, as the noble Baroness, Lady Boothroyd, said, they are abolishing the House of Lords, not reforming it. I refer them to page 10, paragraph 1 of the White Paper. Secondly, they have gone for single, 15-year terms with no re-election. Let us recognise that that gives us no accountability whatever, not a scintilla. The reason they did that, I presume, is to try to make the system of election so divorced from that for the Commons that MPs will not feel threatened. Otherwise, they know the Bill will be defeated in the Commons.
The noble Lord, Lord Thomas of Gresford, made the point yesterday evening that he wants to go further and have recall provisions. If I am elected for Scotland—because I gather that that is one big constituency nowadays for this Bill—I am going to make sure that I am not going to be recalled, so I am going to take steps, and I am going to demand powers to ensure that I am shown in a good light to my electorate. The Daily Telegraph and the Sunday Times will have the equivalent of bird-watching cameras trained on the door of the House to make sure that people elected turn up at least once in their 15 years and do not have their cheques sent to some bank account in Barbados.
The fact is that people will be wholly unaccountable. They will certainly be no more accountable than we are. Again, although the noble Lord, Lord McNally, visibly showed dissent about this, I remind the Government about the achievement of the Joint Committee on Conventions. If there is any doubt about it, at page 23, paragraph 61 of its report, it is spelled out, in terms, that this was an agreement based on the existing composition and if an elected element, let alone 80 per cent or 100 per cent, came in here, all bets were off, and it was a new deal. If we really want to clog up Parliament with the sort of nonsense that will go on, I suspect that the reputation of politics, which is already low, will plummet.
I follow the noble Lord, Lord Forsyth, who used to be my MP—
Lord Gordon of Strathblane
I think I may have. I found the Labour Party quite difficult to support in the 1970s and 1980s, as, indeed, did most of the Labour Party.
Let us go back to this campaign. How am I going to fight an election? How am I going to differentiate myself from everybody else who is standing and appear the better candidate? Am I going to promise things? If so, how are people going to know whether I have delivered on the promises? How am I going to deal with the heckler who says, “You say you are going to do that, but do you have the power to do it?”? If I do not have the power, I am quickly going to find a way of getting that power. The fact is that it creates instability in the political system and will eventually create gridlock.
I shall make a quick jibe about the fact that Members are going to be salaried. For a start, it rather intrigues me. I thought salary went with a job and did not depend on the way that you were put into that job. The public might think, “Hold on, if the present House of Lords is not paid, and this new crowd are paid, are they doing more? Have they more powers?”. The impression will certainly be that you have to justify that salary by making more noise than perhaps we currently do. Certainly the impression will be that you have to justify that salary by making more noise than perhaps we currently do.
Let us get rid of a couple of myths. First, there is the great mantra that it was in all three party manifestos. Please remind me which party manifesto was ringingly endorsed by the electorate at the last election? It seems to me that uniquely nobody really got a clean bill of health. I quite genuinely do not want to be unkind to the Liberal Democrats but they are the most associated with House of Lords reform. They have genuine pedigree on it. They did very badly at the election. The next party that did very badly was frankly the Labour Party. It had cottoned on to an elected House somewhat late in the day. Let us say that the view was sincerely held by many people. That party was rejected by the electorate. The only party that did tolerably well was the party that was most lukewarm about House of Lords reform, the Conservative Party. I would not pretend for a minute that the election swung on House of Lords reform but had it gone the other way, all three Front Benches would have been claiming that it was because of House of Lords reform that they were all elected and that they had a mandate. You cannot have it both ways.
Finally, I want to endorse what the noble Lord, Lord Touhig, said. The other myth is that this is the settled will of the House of Commons. That is absolute nonsense. In the 2007 vote a majority of Conservative MPs and a majority of Labour MPs voted against 80 per cent election. Indeed, in the 2003 vote the most popular option—all seven options were voted against, by the way, so much for a settled will of the Commons—or the one that was least unattractive was an all-appointed House.
I think we are looking for some political courage here. All three parties have had a go at this and all three have failed. You cannot square the circle. You cannot have an elected House of Lords without diminishing the power of the House of Commons. There might come a time when the electorate wants that but I do not think it is yet. I therefore do not want this kicked into the long grass. I want somebody to get the lawnmower out, clear a circle and give it a decent burial.
House of Lords: Reform
Lord Forsyth of Drumlean Excerpts(15 years, 1 month ago)
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Lord Marks of Henley-on-Thames
Certainly I accept that, but I do not accept that it follows that the Parliament Acts will somehow be changed without further statute because of the passing of this draft Bill, or something like it, concerning the composition of this House. The powers of this House are determined and limited by the provisions of the Parliament Act passed, as the noble Lord suggests, in 1911 for the purpose that he sets out.
Lord Forsyth of Drumlean
I wonder whether the noble Lord might reflect on a more recent example, because his argument is that the powers as defined by statute will determine behaviour. I refer him to the Scotland Act, which makes it perfectly clear that the Scottish Parliament will not have the power to call a referendum on independence. Yet the Liberal Secretary of State for Scotland is telling us that we must acknowledge the reality that the SNP has won a majority in that Parliament and therefore that we ought to let it get on with it and not determine the position. Is that not an example of how political reality and lines set in statute come into conflict and that, in the end, the political reality wins?
Lord Marks of Henley-on-Thames
My Lords, what happens about any referendum in Scotland is a matter for the future. I have no doubt that the noble Lord will be taking a great part in the argument in relation to Scotland. However, the Parliament Acts are statutes passed by Parliament and they set a clear limit to the power of this House. It is within that framework that this draft Bill will need to be considered.
It is not only statute that would continue to guarantee the primacy of the House of Commons. The structure of the two Houses envisaged in the Bill will do much to reinforce that guarantee. First, the new House would be elected—or elected and appointed—in thirds, which would ensure that only the House of Commons represented the will of the people most recently expressed in a general election. That is because only one-third of the House, or slightly less, would be subject to election or appointment at the time of each general election.
Secondly, following a general election, the new Government would take office on the basis of results of elections to the House of Commons. It follows that Ministers in the Commons and in the Lords would be appointed on the strength of those results. The House of Commons will therefore control the composition of the Executive. Furthermore, the legislative programme will be the Government’s legislative programme and, therefore, dependent on the elections to the House of Commons.
Thirdly—this is particularly the case on the basis of the continuing presence of the Cross-Benchers, if we were to go for an 80 per cent elected House—it is most unlikely, although not impossible, that any Government would have an overall majority in the House of Lords. The likelihood of such a majority is further reduced by a proportional system for the election of Members. A number of noble Lords, often those strongly opposed to proportional representation—the question asked by my noble friend Lord Cormack is perhaps apposite to this point—have argued that election by proportional representation will give this House a democratic legitimacy that the House of Commons lacks. However, as a democrat, I accept the people’s verdict. It appears that the AV referendum result—
House of Lords: Reform
Lord Forsyth of Drumlean Excerpts(15 years, 1 month ago)
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Lord Strathclyde
Although it is rather flattering to be called emollient and relaxed by the noble Lord, what I actually said earlier this week was that it was entirely in the hands of the Joint Committee when it decides to report back to both Houses. I hope that it will do that as quickly as possible. The words that I used in response to my noble friend Lord Steel were, “given a fair wind”. If the committee were to report and the Government were to decide to go ahead with a Bill, it could be in place by the end of the next Session.
Lord Forsyth of Drumlean
My Lords, can my noble friend explain why the Government are sending out a message that they are against reform of this Chamber, for which there is substantial support and which is set out in the Steel Bill, and are instead going headlong down a path towards what can only be described as abolition of this House?
Lord Strathclyde
My Lords, this is where we get into a discussion about semantics. The Government are mad keen on reform. That is why they published their Bill. My noble friend Lord Steel’s Bill would create a wholly appointed House. I remind the House that no major political party stood at the last election in favour of those plans. All political parties stood for a wholly, or largely, elected House.
House of Lords Reform Bill
Lord Forsyth of Drumlean Excerpts(15 years, 2 months ago)
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Lord Strathclyde
My Lords, I do not know how long the noble Lord will be here, but there is no need to go forward with the Steel Bill if the intention is to have elected Members by 2015. We will spend probably the next Session and maybe even the Session after that on passing the House of Lords reform Bill.
Lord McNally
Can we hear from the noble Lord, Lord Forsyth, and then from the Cross Benches?
Lord Forsyth of Drumlean
My Lords, I congratulate my noble friend on how he has dealt with this matter today. May I press him on the answer he gave to the noble Baroness, Lady Symons? Throughout the Statement, he has been at pains to say that of course elected Members would change the relationship with the House of Commons. I have got only as far as page 7 of the White Paper, which says:
“We propose no change to the constitutional powers and privileges of the House once it is reformed, nor to the fundamental relationship with the House of Commons”.
Who should we believe? Should we believe what it says in the White Paper or what my noble friend has been telling us this afternoon?
Lord Strathclyde
My Lords, there is no tension between the two. All I say is what is obvious: in a House that is entirely elected, over time there will be evolution, as there already has been over the past 10 or 20 years. That is entirely natural and entirely in accordance with what is said in the White Paper.
Parliament: Elected House of Lords
Lord Forsyth of Drumlean Excerpts(15 years, 2 months ago)
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Lord Strathclyde
My Lords, it is proposed that there should be a Joint Committee of both Houses—an authoritative body of senior parliamentarians who would meet and examine the White Paper and the draft Bill. They could look at any aspects of them, which might include the conclusions of the Cunningham committee. My own view is that in the long term, if the composition of this House were to change, the conventions might change between this House and another place but there is no reason why they should. That will be up to decisions taken by the Members of either House.
Lord Forsyth of Drumlean
Will my noble friend take this opportunity to denounce the ludicrous reports that have appeared in the press that the size of this Chamber could be reduced by holding some kind of lottery? Is that not insulting to this Chamber and to its Members?
Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill
Lord Forsyth of Drumlean Excerpts(15 years, 5 months ago)
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Lord Strathclyde
There was the substantial concession on the Isle of Wight at the request of noble Lords opposite, the substantial concession on public hearings at the request of noble Lords opposite, and—most cheekily and unusually from the noble Lord, Lord Rooker—his amendment on delaying the referendum and providing an opportunity for it to take place at any stage between 5 May and 31 October this year was accepted. Indeed, we helped the noble Lord to rewrite his amendment so that it would work. Let us hear no more talk about this Government not making concessions.
We have had nine referendums in the past 40 years. Only the 1979 referendums had thresholds, and those were imposed by Back-Benchers in another place in order to thwart the possibility of devolution being implemented. They were successful in their intention and, as I have noted before, that has been a source of much resentment. There were no thresholds in the 1997 referendums on devolution, as I said earlier; nor have there been any other thresholds in any of the other referendums that have taken place in the past 13 years.
Lord Forsyth of Drumlean
Will my noble friend please address the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Rooker, that this referendum is quite different from any other because it is binding? The effect of his amendment will simply be to give the referendum the same status as every previous referendum in so far as the Commons is able to consider it and reach a conclusion. Will he address that argument, because it has not been addressed in either House so far?
Lord Strathclyde
My Lords, the referendum taking place in Wales on 3 March, on which there is no threshold and for which no threshold was requested, is for a poll which is binding on this Parliament. I know that noble Lords will say, as my noble friend and others have, that this is a binding referendum, so let me be entirely clear about my answer. Referendums are a constitutional device; they are rarely used but they are used occasionally to ask the people their view on a specific issue. I believe that it would not be right to offer the people a referendum where Parliament has explicitly laid out what the effects of that referendum would be and yet say that we might not give them what they vote for. A threshold, even in the more nuanced form proposed by the noble Lord, Lord Rooker, is unnecessary and, we believe, wrong.
Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill
Lord Forsyth of Drumlean Excerpts(15 years, 6 months ago)
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Baroness Ramsay of Cartvale
There were many clauses, but it was one Bill—one self-contained, sharply focused Bill on the Scottish Parliament, quite different from the hybrid Bill that we have in front of us.
I am not claiming that there was some kind of golden age in 1998 when we were in government and the Scotland Bill was being debated. Of course we got tired and we got angry with one another sometimes. However, we kept our cool and even accommodated in the timetabling of the Bill the late Lord Mackay of Ardbrecknish’s love of salmon fishing by allowing dates when he could do that.
Lord Forsyth of Drumlean
I suggest to the noble Baroness that one of the differences between the Opposition’s approach then and the approach of the Opposition today is that then their objectives were absolutely clear. It was also absolutely clear who was in charge of the Opposition.
Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill
Lord Forsyth of Drumlean Excerpts(15 years, 8 months ago)
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Lord Strathclyde
I will have a vote in the referendum.
I can let your Lordships into another secret: my noble friend Lord McNally will vote yes. Some might think, as our votes will cancel each other out, we should just stay at home and have a quiet dinner together, but we will not, because both of us are agreed that the British people should have this choice, and we will each campaign for the answer we seek.
How odd it would be if this unelected House, which lately voted overwhelmingly against the very idea that your Lordships should be elected, should have the temerity to tell the elected House how to proceed on its own election or to deny its wish to give the people their say.
The Lords Constitution Committee has now published its report on the Bill. It states that there has not been enough consultation on it. Respectfully, I disagree. The proposals in this Bill apply entirely to the other place. It has been rigorously examined there over eight days on the Floor of the House and through 35 Divisions. It reflects the settled will of the elected House.
On the referendum, the Government have worked closely with the Electoral Commission and administrators, and the commission has declared itself broadly satisfied that sufficient progress has been made to enable the local returning and counting officers to run the polls well and that voters will be able to participate in them.
The provisions in the Bill are sound, and Members of this House should consider carefully the clear signal from the elected House before making major changes in it.
There has been speculation about the last possible date for Royal Assent to allow the referendum to happen on 5 May. I believe there is more than adequate time. It is certainly important that, commensurate withfull scrutiny in this House, we give participants and campaigners in the referendum as much time as possible to prepare for a full and informed campaign. We owe that to the electorate, but it is possible to do that and allow enough time to examine the Bill, which I hope will complete its passage as soon as possible in January 2011.
I do not want to make unnecessary political points, but I remind noble Lords opposite of a forgotten document: A Future Fair for All, the manifesto of the party opposite only this spring, written by their current leader. On page 62, it talks of, “A New Politics”. It continues:
“To ensure that every MP is supported by a majority of their constituents voting at each election, we will hold a referendum on introducing the Alternative Vote for elections to the House of Commons”.
That was what Mr Miliband thought then, so I take it that we will have full support from the party opposite for the part of the Bill that provides for what it itself promised at the general election.
There is a small quibble: the party opposite promised a referendum by October 2011. The Bill proposes it in May 2011—one year into this Parliament, but that is a far slower timetable than the six-month one used by the party opposite for the referendums on Scottish and Welsh devolution in 1997.
Lord Forsyth of Drumlean
Is not there a big distinction, in that what the Opposition, then in government, were proposing was a pre-legislative referendum, not a post-legislative referendum, which is an important constitutional distinction?
Lord Strathclyde
Yes, my Lords, but on the whole I think it is better for people to know what it is they are voting on, which is what is envisaged in the Bill.
Lord Lipsey
My Lords, whoever drew up the speakers list clearly had a good sense of humour since my very good friend, the noble Lord, Lord Grocott, and I have debated the electoral system just about since the river Tamar came to mark the boundary between Cornwall and Devon, and I am sure that we will go on doing so in the run-up to the referendum, whenever that may come.
Before I turn to the other side of the case that he has put so well this evening—the case for AV—I want to refer to the other bits of the Bill in a couple of considered sentences. Governments of every complexion have generally proceeded cautiously on electoral matters, giving them due consideration, using, where possible, the independent judgment of the Boundary Commissions, and avoiding any charge of partisan manipulation. Most Governments have been extremely wary, and rightly so, of making electoral arrangements a kind of war booty to go into the hands of whatever party wins. We have only to look at France, which has enjoyed no such tradition, to see how wise we have been to adopt that. Therefore, it is our duty in this House to ignore the spurious arguments that have been put forward that somehow this is the prerogative of the House of Commons, which, incidentally, has not had a chance to consider very much of the Bill. We must do our duty and give this Bill the most careful, objective and, where possible, non-partisan consideration.
I want a referendum on AV but I do not want it on 5 May next year. Whenever it comes, I hope that the country returns a yes vote. I speak as a member of the Jenkins committee on electoral reform, on which my noble friend Lady Gould, who is not in her place this evening, also sat, and which recommended AV as part of its recommended solution. I say to the noble Lord, Lord Alton, who rightly quoted the report, that Lord Jenkins, who chaired that committee and was held in respect on all sides of this House and in British politics, had, by the end of his life, changed his mind. He wanted a move to AV, and he would be arguing for it if he were here tonight.
What is wrong with first past the post? In days of yore, maybe there was not much wrong. In 1951, 97 per cent of voters backed one of the two big parties—Labour or Tory. Nine MPs in 10 received half or more of the votes cast in their constituencies. The change has been dramatic. Today, the two big parties have just two-thirds of the national vote between them, and only one-third of MPs—one-third—are the choice of at least half the voters in their constituencies. That may not bother the noble Lord, Lord Grocott—as long as he was there, he felt all right about it—but it should worry anyone who believes in majority rule.
These facts create a disproportionate House of Commons, of course, but that does not particularly bother me. My objections to first past the post are quite different. It starves MPs of the legitimacy that comes from election. First past the post delivers Menshevik MPs. It encourages perverse political tactics by MPs. We should seek an inclusive politics where MPs try to get as many votes by reaching out to as many voters as possible. With first past the post, the temptation all the time is to concentrate on just enough of your core voters to get you back into Parliament. It gives too many MPs safe seats for life—a matter to which I shall return in a minute. It robs voters of choice. What do you do if you are a voter? Do you back the candidate you most want, or the candidate who has the best chance of beating the candidate you most do not want? First past the post, like rotten boroughs, the all-male franchise and university seats, is a system which people back out of nostalgia. Its day has gone, it is broke and it must be fixed.
Should we therefore go full circle?
Lord Forsyth of Drumlean
The noble Lord alluded to the situation in the 1950s when he said that first past the post worked very well. We are often told that the Conservatives received a majority of the votes in Scotland in 1955. Was not part of the reason for that that really only two parties stood in most constituencies, because the Liberals had been destroyed as a result of their involvement in a previous coalition?
Lord Lipsey
The noble Lord is, of course, completely right historically, although he makes a wholly irrelevant point. In the political circumstances of those days, in a two-party system, first past the post was great. Once you do not have a two-party system and you have a multi-party system—with nationalist parties in Scotland and Wales, a complicated situation in Northern Ireland, and a resurgent Liberal Democrat Party—first past the post does not work any more. It is as simple as that.
I do not want to go full circle by going for a fully proportional system—partly because I have never seen the advantage of it. I do not very much like the additional member system, which applies in Germany, because it too much erodes constituency loyalties. I do not like STV, loved by the much-mourned kind of Liberal who went around in sandals. STV again breaks the constituency link. In any case, in our constitution, we prefer to proceed by evolution rather than revolution. That is why we should have AV now and then in a few years, we could take stock again, or go further, stay where we are or, if you like and you can make your case, go back to first past the post.
I want here to confront a paradox. We AVers argue that AV is a relatively modest change and that it would be a change significantly for the better. How can we ride both these horses at once? As Jimmy Thomas said, if you cannot ride two horses at once, you should not be in the political circus. The resolution is like this: it will not make an enormous difference to the results of elections. At the general election in 2010, according to the academics David Sanders, Paul Whiteley, Marianne Stewart and Harold Clarke, it might have led to 22 fewer Tory seats, 10 fewer Labour seats—sorry about that—and 32 more Lib Dems. The effect, if there were to be a general election tomorrow, according to Professor Patrick Dunleavy, would be much less. Even changes of this magnitude would of course have mattered in a close election such as that in 2010, but they are scarcely seismic. However, there would have been far more seats in which the result was genuinely in doubt—so more MPs would have had to work harder to reach out to more people to win them.
I come finally to the main argument that I hear used against AV; namely, that it would help to create a situation where we had permanent coalition government and disproportionate power was given to the third party. I hear this complaint mostly from Conservative politicians. I am not sure how they square their enthusiastic support for the present coalition with the belief that coalition government is by definition a bad thing. It must be understood that in the new political geography of Britain, the strong probability is that coalition will be the norm. It is true that the eight general elections up to 2005 all produced majority Governments, but psephologists have compared this to tossing a coin that comes up heads eight times in a row—unlikely, but it happens. I often back eight even-money shots in a row at the races and they all lose.
First past the post has lost its potency to deliver majority Governments in most circumstances. There has been a very sharp decline in the number of seats that are marginal. According to Professor John Curtice of Strathclyde University, the number of marginal seats has fallen from 166 in 1955 to just 85 in 2010, so a given swing is much less likely to bring about the number of changes in seats that will deliver a majority to one party or another. There will be fewer majority Governments under first past the post in future.
Lord Rennard
My Lords, I am arguing that if people do not turn out to support an alternative, it is equally valid to say that their vote could be counted in favour, as it is to say, as other noble Lords have argued, that they should simply have their vote counted as a no. It is in the interests of democracy always to encourage high turnouts and that is why I believe that the first Thursday in May next year would be a good time to hold the referendum.
I also want to address briefly the issues of boundary reviews.
Lord Forsyth of Drumlean
My Lords, I apologise for interrupting the noble Lord, but perhaps he can help me. Is not one of the problems the fact that the question that is being put is between AV and first past the post, with no mention of STV, for example? Might there not be many Liberal supporters who support STV who might abstain because they were not getting any of the choices that they wanted?
Lord Rennard
My Lords, there are other noble Lords who favour a two-horse race between the Labour Party and the Conservative Party. In an ideal world, I would not favour a two-horse race between AV and first past the post, as many noble Lords will know, but in the practical politics of not having won the general election and having to make compromises, the overarching principle is to allow the voters to have some say in how their representatives are chosen. People have been appalled in recent years that MPs were able to fix effectively the benefits of being in Parliament. A much more important issue is the means by which MPs are chosen and allowing people to have some say on that is of paramount importance. Risking giving them a further choice, which would be my first choice, may mean that they get no say whatever.
Lord Forsyth of Drumlean
My Lords, at this late hour I shall avoid the temptation to repeat many of the arguments that we have already heard, but I should perhaps declare one interest. When I was in the other place it was as Member of Parliament for Stirling, having been elected in 1983. Leaving aside the birth of my children, my marriage and other personal events, arriving at the House of Commons as a Member of Parliament was my proudest day. I think that I did so with about 35 per cent of the vote when we had four parties fighting that election, so getting 50 per cent of the vote would have been quite an achievement.
At subsequent elections, without the split in the Labour Party and the SDP, it became harder for me to hang on and my majority dropped to around 700 and then to 500. By then, I was Secretary of State and I had to sign the order produced by the Boundary Commission to take Bridge of Allan out of my constituency and put it into another; that was probably about 4,000 Conservative votes. I did so without any concern at all, other than for me, because it was a fair process with a proper adjudication and inquiry. By the way, it was not just the political parties which put forward their views: views were expressed by the local community and, in the end, the right decision was taken. The result was that I got kicked out of Parliament —there were one or two other factors in that as well—and I found myself in this place.
This place has a very important role to play. It is the backstop; that is our whole purpose. A Question was asked in the House the other day of my noble friend Lord McNally as to the purpose of the House of Lords. If nothing else, it is to protect the constitution. I feel that the Bill is not Parliament’s finest hour. There has always been an understanding and a convention that on constitutional matters we should try to proceed with consensus and by agreement and, if we cannot do that, we should go through a process where matters are properly discussed and evaluated, whether by a Speaker’s Conference or something of that kind.
I understand, of course, the deal that was done after the election but I wonder at the reasons being given for this Bill and for some other Bills which are yet to come before us that are being put forward by the Deputy Prime Minister in his new role. One of the things being said is that it is about restoring trust in Parliament. In my opinion, a number of the best speeches tonight have been made by former Members of the other place. I say “best”, because they convey that sense of relationship which Members of Parliament have with their constituents, whether they voted for them or not, and which they have with the area that they represent. Even when you have been out of Parliament for a long time—I live in my old constituency —you still go around and remember that that was the place where there was this or that problem, and you have that feeling of identity. You come to Parliament as the champion of your constituents. Yes, you are there as Labour, Conservative or whatever, but you are also there as the man or woman for your area.
That is a real and powerful identity, so if you depart from that principle and if Members of Parliament start to be seen as the representative of the party for this block of population in this part of the country, something disastrous will have gone wrong. Thinking back to 1983, one thing that was very sad was that I was a Tory; a third of my constituency had never had a Tory since the Twenties; a third had never had a Tory since before that; and a third had never had anything else. There were bits of my constituency where Tories, particularly with the miners’ strike and so on, were not very popular. Yet you were respected as the Member of Parliament; you had standing and status. The expenses scandal and other things have damaged that, and I find the extraordinary notion that we can repair that damage and restore the status of Members of Parliament with this kind of Bill and this kind of reform a little unnerving.
My experience, going around canvassing during the election, was that people said, “You’re all the same. You’re in it for yourselves. We only see you at the election. You say one thing at the election and then do another”. If we want to counter that kind of cynicism and distrust, one of the things that we might do is keep the promises that we put in our manifestos. The Bill fails miserably on that count. The manifestos made promises about the voting system and the size of Parliament. The Conservatives campaigned for first past the post and against AV. The Liberals campaigned against AV. The Labour Party campaigned in favour of AV. Now we have a Bill that puts forward AV, produced by the Conservatives and the Liberals in coalition, being opposed by the Labour Party, which campaigned on having AV.
Lord Forsyth of Drumlean
Sorry, they campaigned on having a referendum on AV. To be fair, it was a post-legislative referendum.
Lord Forsyth of Drumlean
A pre-legislative referendum, rather than the post-legislative referendum that is proposed in the Bill. The ordinary voter being faced with the clips that will be shown during the referendum campaign of the Deputy Prime Minister describing AV as “a miserable little compromise”, while at the same time he is promoting the Bill, will do nothing to restore trust in Parliament.
If trust in Parliament is to mean anything, it must mean trusting the voters. The noble Earl spoke eloquently in favour of giving the voters a choice. I would prefer to have the status quo; first past the post seems to work perfectly well. If you are going to open up the issue of changing the voting system and consult the people, however, it seems strange to choose one system and not allow the voters to express a view on it. I look forward to amendments to the question in the referendum that will enable the inclusion of STV.
The Deputy Prime Minister, as part of this exercise in increasing trust and the accountability of the Executive, set up the Political and Constitutional Reform Select Committee. It was specifically set up to look at the work of the Deputy Prime Minister in respect of the constitutional reforms. Its first report repudiates the Bill and the process by which it is being carried out. How does that help to restore trust in Parliament?
The coalition Government have resolutely refused to reduce the size of the Executive in line with the proposed reductions in the size of the House of Commons. I have put down a Written Question, which I have not had an Answer to, asking how many people are now members of the Government or Parliamentary Private Secretaries, and what the size of the payroll is. I have the feeling that it has gone up substantially. That is not increasing the authority and standing of Parliament.
In a number of speeches today, people have made the point that it seems bizarre that we have Members of this House sitting in the Gallery that is meant for the public because there are not enough seats to accommodate us, but we are increasing the size of this House while at the same time justifying a reduction in the size of the House of Commons on the grounds of expenditure.
There is another thing: it was my party’s policy to reduce the size of the Scottish Parliament. That has 129 Members. It is hard to believe that you need 129 Members of the Scottish Parliament if you are proceeding on the basis of having 55 Members at Westminster. The public will find it difficult to understand why, having previously been in favour of reducing the size of the Scottish Parliament, we now want to keep the Scottish Parliament at its present size while reducing the size of Westminster.
I am conscious of the time. It has been suggested that this is all being done for political advantage. I have a cautionary tale. The Members opposite may not recognise this view of events. I remember the noble Lord, Lord Robertson, who I am sorry is not in his place, telling me that devolution would kill nationalism stone dead. I remember people believing that, if they had a Scottish Parliament, Labour would dominate Scotland’s politics for ever. It did not quite work out that way. Constitutional change to secure party advantage seldom does. The unexpected has a habit of happening.
On AV itself, I thought that the 1997 defeat for us was an absolutely catastrophic rout. However, the information I have seen suggests that if we had had AV it would have been even worse. AV tends to reinforce the big shifts of the kind that have taken place. We should be very careful about making huge changes to a system that works perfectly well. It is true that there are anomalies in the system. However, the Bill has not been properly discussed in the country. It is the product of a political deal and that is no basis on which to amend the constitution of our country.