Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill

Lord Lipsey Excerpts

Wednesday 12th January 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Lipsey]

My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Campbell-Savours, has made a powerful case for why his amendment is in the interests of the Liberal Democrats. I shall make a case, probably not quite as powerful, for it being in the interests also of the Conservative Party. The Conservatives to whom I talk are all absolutely confident that AV will be defeated in the referendum. I do not happen to agree with them, but they are very confident.

Let us just think what the situation would be if the Campbell-Savours amendment, or “Jessica’s law”, did not apply and the Liberal Democrats were defeated in the referendum. What would then be the situation of the Liberal Democrats? They would have lost AV, which they are relying on to deliver them extra seats at the next general election, as everyone agrees it would. However, coming along the line will be the 5 per cent rule and the equalisation, and what is also agreed is that those rules will hit the Liberal Democrats much harder than any other party. According to Democratic Audit’s calculations, they would lose 11 of their 57 seats, whereas Labour and the Tories, with many more seats, would lose 18 and 17 respectively. It would be a real reduction in the proportion of Lib Dem representation in the House of Commons.

I do not know what bedlam the coalition will be in if and when we get to such a stage. I do not expect that the coalition will be very politically popular; it will need to last to have any chance of regaining its political popularity. In those circumstances, what will the Lib Dems do? If the Boundary Commission review comes into force, as it will in 2015, they will be faced with a loss of seats as a result not only of losing votes but also of the redistribution. The sensible thing to do, therefore, would be to find the nearest and quickest excuse to bring this coalition Government to an end and to adopt a sauve qui peut stance in a general election where they might preserve more seats than they would in a general election eventually to be held under the new system proposed by the Government. It would not suit the Tories to have a general election in the middle of this Parliament, because they would be extremely unpopular, and no doubt deservedly so. I come to the conclusion that it is very strange indeed that this side is arguing for the amendment, although I see no nods of agreement on the other side with any of the arguments that we have put forward.

[Lord Falconer of Thoroton]

The amendment would mean that you would get the constituency boundary changes only if the AV vote was yes. I do not support that, but it is an inevitable consequence of the loose language in which the coalition puts this. On 20 December, the noble and learned Lord, Lord Wallace, said:

“Indeed, as my noble friend Lord McNally has said on a number of occasions, this Bill is about fair votes and fair boundaries. It shows that the two are, in fact, linked. It shows how the two will be linked because it will shape the way in which the other place will be elected in 2015”.—[Official Report, 20/12/10; col. 882.]

My understanding of this Bill is that, if the AV vote is no, you still get your constituency boundary changes. Am I wrong? Please confirm that. If I am right, why did the Minister say that on 20 December?

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Moved by

[Lord Lipsey]

58ZA: Clause 10, page 8, line 39, leave out “may” and insert “must”

[Lord Lipsey]

Perhaps noble Lords may take this as a sign to take their tea break—at this time of night, they might require something a bit stronger—as Amendment 58ZA is really a probing amendment. The amendment seeks to probe what to me is a puzzle.

If the Boundary Commission makes proposals for a change to the draft order in council, would it not be right to say that the Minister “must”, rather than “may”, accept the Boundary Commission’s proposals? In all our efforts on the Bill, one of the great things that we are trying to protect is the independence of the Boundary Commission. However, the Bill is drafted in a way that suggests that Ministers would have the discretion—the word used is “may”—on whether to accept the Boundary Commission’s recommended modifications. I suspect that the word “may” is used by accident, but if its use is deliberate it is disgraceful.

[Lord Wallace of Tankerness]

My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Lipsey, for Amendment 58ZA. When I first read the amendment, I immediately identified what he was driving at and had some considerable sympathy for it. He is absolutely right that, if the Government could simply disregard a modification that the Boundary Commission suggested, that would not be acceptable.

I am afraid that the issue comes down to textual analysis. Amendment 58ZA proceeds on the assumption that Clause 10(6)(5B) confers a separate discretionary power whereby the Government may decide whether to include a modification that has been requested by a boundary commission. However, we do not consider that to be the effect of new subsection (5B) of the Parliamentary Constituencies Act 1986. Rather, new subsection (5B) explains how the modifications referred to in new subsection (5A)—the two subsections need to be read together—can come to be included in the order in council. On that basis, the inclusion of requested modifications is part and parcel of the requirement to give effect to the Boundary Commission’s recommendation, as provided for in new subsection (5A). Therefore, the Bill requires the Government to include such modifications in the order in council.

I should perhaps also point out that the noble Lord’s amendment might make it less clear that the Government are not permitted to make any modifications other than those requested by the boundary commissions.

I hope that the noble Lord is satisfied with that answer. I readily acknowledge that the matter is textual. After reading the subsection several times, I was persuaded that new subsections (5A) and (5B) need to be taken together and that there is nothing malign intended. No doubt the noble Lord will want to read what I have said, but I am certainly prepared to consider—although I am already satisfied with the wording, which we have discussed through—satisfying myself further on the matter. However, on that basis, I ask the noble Lord to reflect on what I have said and to withdraw the amendment.

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[Lord Wallace of Tankerness]

That is perhaps a good reason for us to examine it again. I have indicated what the intention is and I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Lipsey, for flagging this up. It will give us an opportunity to be satisfied that the wording reflects the intention.

[Lord Lipsey]

I am most grateful to the noble and learned Lord and if I gave any impression that I seriously thought that there was an attempt to get away with anything, I withdraw that unconditionally. I accept that it is, as he says, a textual matter. In fact, he has kindly promised to reread the clause and check that he is satisfied with it, as will I. Actually, I have found it more effective than taking two Sleep-eze to get off at night—so, after tonight’s debate may be a very good time for him to apply his mind to it. After I read his remarks, I will return to it on Report if I want to. In the mean time, I thank him for considering this so carefully and beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment 58ZA withdrawn.

Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill

Lord Lipsey Excerpts

Monday 10th January 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Lipsey]

My Lords, with this clause, we reach Part 2, which is a more technical part of the Bill—

[Lord Campbell-Savours]

My Lords—

[Lord Lipsey]

I am sorry. I thought that the noble Lord had resumed his seat.

[Lord Campbell-Savours]

I thought that I was taking an intervention. I hope that the noble Lord will forgive me. The Government will not get off that lightly.

The Government should be reminded of the relevant sections in the very well written report of the House of Lords Constitution Committee on the Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill. I understand that the report’s recommendations were carried unanimously by the membership of that committee. All parties subscribed to the principles set out in paragraph 11, which states:

“We regret the fact that this Bill has not been subject to either pre-legislative scrutiny, or to prior public consultation”.

That is to say, Liberal Democrat and Conservative Peers all support that statement.

The report continues:

“We conclude that the Government have not calculated the proposed reduction in the size of the House of Commons on the basis of any considered assessment of the role and functions of MPs”.

My noble friend’s proposed inquiry would do precisely that. It is fair to ask the question: why 600? Why not 590? Why not 500, as my noble friend Lord Rooker has suggested? Why not 550? Why not 700 or 800? All the coalition Government have done is pick figures out of the air and say, “Yes, the Liberal Democrats want 500; the Conservatives want 600. Let’s settle on that figure”. That is not the basis on which the size of what is perhaps the most important Parliament in the world should be decided.

We then have to consider the whole issue of Lords reform. Until we know what the arrangements for an elected House will be, how can we even begin to comprehend the nature of the relationship that will develop between individual constituents—because there may well be individual constituents—and Members of an elected House of Lords, and the extent to which that will impact on how many MPs there should be in the House of Commons? That matter has not even entered into the discussions that have taken place prior to the introduction of this legislation.

There is also the whole question of population, on which I intervened during my noble friend’s speech. I have pondered over the Christmas Recess on why population should not be taken into account when, particularly in the inner cities, many of the people who come to MPs’ surgeries would be excluded from the electoral register. I cannot see why those groups who are excluded should not be taken into account when one is deciding the workload of a Member of Parliament and the size of any constituency.

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[Lord Thomas of Swynnerton]

My Lords, I speak as an independent who usually supports the coalition Government, but I must say that I am very much influenced by the speeches in favour of a committee of inquiry and of delay on this matter. Again, I speak as a completely independent Member, and there is one thing that should be considered. If there is a committee of inquiry, there is the fact that the other place made one major change during the course of the 20th century which was not legislated for and was not really discussed either in this House or in the other place. It is the very large increase in the number of governmental supporters who receive some kind of emolument or support from the Government of the day. In the case of the last Government the figure went up to about 100 Members as a matter of course. There has been no parliamentary approval of that, it has just happened. Perhaps we should not allow such a monumental change to happen again without discussion.

[Lord Lipsey]

My Lords, with this amendment, we move from Part 1 to Part 2. I shall make one important observation relevant to the case that my noble friend Lord Wills has made. In the case of Part 1, there was an inquiry—I know, because I sat on it. It was the Jenkins inquiry. It is perfectly true that the referendum will be not on the recommendation of Jenkins but on half of it; namely, the alternative vote. That inquiry did not completely crack the problem, but it moved the debate forward. As we found when we debated Part 1, all the speeches made were informed by the famously articulate report of Lord Jenkins and the analysis that it contained. Some agreed with it and some did not, but it shaped the analysis and therefore enabled us to have a much better debate.

The second advantage to flow from having a prior report is that, between the setting up of Jenkins and the introduction of this Bill, many people, whether mostly or wholly, changed their minds. There are many people, particularly in my own party, who are adamant first-past-the-posters and can still see the arguments for it today, but they are prepared to contemplate the argument set out in Jenkins for moving a little way in the other direction by having the alternative vote, which is an improvement on first past the post in the view of many of them.

[Lord Tyler]

My Lords—

[Lord Tyler]

I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Lipsey, for giving way. He was a very distinguished member of the commission that was set up and chaired by Lord Jenkins of Hillhead. Why does he think that, 10 years afterwards, we have had no action on its report? Does he not share our cynicism that the proposal of his noble friend is simply a way of privatising, pushing out and delegating responsibility for these important decisions so that nothing should happen? The experience that he and I have had of the complete failure of the Government whom he supported to do anything on the basis of that commission’s recommendation, makes us very cynical about asking somebody other than Parliament to take decisions on this matter.

[Lord Lipsey]

The noble Lord was very grateful that I gave way, but I am even more grateful to see him popping up to speak. The silence is broken—omertà is finished with. I am sure that we will have many contributions from him in the future.

There is no intention among anyone, I think, to stop this legislation, as considered properly, going through. Let us be clear that what will destroy the legislation is not the danger of delay but the danger of haste. The danger is that this ramshackle legislation, half considered, will be forced into law and that a subsequent Government, seeing that it is half baked, will force it out of law and we will have achieved nothing. That is the plan that the noble Lord, Lord Tyler, is urging on the Committee. I beg this House, which is a great example of the benefit of the rational consideration, to reject that way forward.

I was saying before I gave way to the noble Lord that many first-past-the-posters have been converted to the alternative vote, but I take more pleasure in another form of conversion that has taken place. There were many people, and the Electoral Reform Society was in their hands, who believed in wholesale, immediate electoral reform and full-scale proportional representation. I have never been persuaded of the case made for proportional representation; I do not believe in it and I do not agree with it—nor did Jenkins. However, during those years since Jenkins, and in months and years of debate, those people have moved their position so that now the Electoral Reform Society is a very strong backer of the yes campaign in this referendum. I think that it sensibly sees that a consensus reform that goes half way is better than a wholesale reform that later gets reversed, and that it is more likely to get reform by settling for a halfway house than by holding out for ever for the whole cake.

Through the post-Jenkins process has emerged a greater level of consensus on where we are going. It is not a wholesale consensus—that would require the verdict of the people in a referendum—but there is a greater level of consensus and a greater clarity on the arguments. That makes a hugely strong and powerful case for proceeding by reflection.

[Lord Desai]

Is my noble friend suggesting that the first part of this Bill is all right and the second part is causing problems, and that therefore we should hive the two things off and think more about Part 2?

[Lord Lipsey]

I made my criticisms of Part 1 during its passage. We have another chance to consider it on Report. I think it can be improved but I am broadly in favour of everything about it except the referendum date. That is my broad position. It is also my position that Part 2 needs much more improvement than Part 1. I am grateful to my noble friend for giving me the chance to make that point.

Without absorbing too much of the Committee’s time with interventions, perhaps I may be forgiven if I take one example of the kind of issue drawn from the long and comprehensive list in my noble friend’s amendment on which really considered inquiry and judgment is needed. That is the number of MPs. The figure was snatched out of the air. Half the time Ministers admit that. It should not have been snatched out of the air. There are lots of facts that are relevant. It is true that since 1950 the number of MPs has grown by 3 per cent. It is also true that the electorate have grown in the same period by 25 per cent. That is to say that every MP has 22 per cent more constituents to service. On the servicing of constituents, I have never been in another place but I did work for a Member of another place, Anthony Crosland, in 1972, and if we received 30 constituency letters per week we were astonished. They were dealt with by his constituency secretary and his local party without difficulty. Now I am told that 300 letters is the average and there is much more communication in other ways.

The research think tank, Democratic Audit, has produced some other facts that should be weighed. For example, it turns out not to be true, as the Government have argued, that we have vastly more representatives than other countries. We have barely more than France and practically the same as Italy. But other countries benefit from having far more local elected representatives to deal with a great many other things that our Members of Parliament have to deal with themselves. Whether we should go down that road is another matter but that is what was concluded. Then there is the question that has been raised briefly in this debate about the danger of cutting the number of MPs but keeping the number of Ministers precisely as it is. The Executive become even more dominant in our politics and in our political culture and even more able to get their way with the minimum amount of criticism and fuss.

I do not say that these arguments are conclusive and that the number of MPs should stay as it is, be reduced or increased. I understand the populist wave of emotion that causes people to think that the number of MPs should be decreased. It may be that an objective inquiry concludes that that is right. I do not express any opinion on those matters at this stage. All I say to the Committee is that it is surely reasonable that arguments and facts such as these should be independently weighed and considered before a final verdict is reached and before legislation making it the law of the land is forced through Parliament.

[Lord Touhig]

The Committee should be grateful to my noble friend Lord Wills for his amendment because it gives it and the coalition partners the chance to take stock and reflect on this seventh day in Committee on the Bill. If they were to adopt the proposals in the amendment that my noble friend has moved perhaps we would start to move towards some consensus on major constitutional change. That would be the common-sense approach, although I well remember as a teenager, my mother used to say to me, “Son, in life you’ll find that sense isn’t that common”.

My brief remarks all relate to subsection (2)(b) of the proposed new clause, which says that this inquiry would take,

“into account the need to maintain the Union”.

This is a matter I referred to at Second Reading because I believe that the Bill as constructed is a threat to this precious thing we have: the union of the nations in these islands. The noble Lord, Lord Elystan-Morgan, briefly referred to the Bill’s impact on Wales, where it would reduce the number of Members of Parliament by 25 per cent. If the Parliament of the United Kingdom treats Wales in this way, it will have an adverse effect on the view, Wales takes of the Union.

Welsh is the first language of the majority of people in five parliamentary seats in Wales—Ynys Môn, Arfon, Dwyfor Meirionnydd, Ceredigion, and Carmarthen East and Dinefwr. Wales is the only part of the Union where a substantial number of people—some 20 per cent of the population—speak two languages. If my noble friend’s amendment were accepted, it would at least give an opportunity to look at the impact that this legislation has on the representation of people whose first language is Welsh in this Parliament of the United Kingdom. Only Wales has a big linguistic issue so far as the rest of the union is concerned.

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[Lord Wallace of Tankerness]

The noble Lord, Lord Harris, is absolutely right about the Civil Service. It would be improper for it to do this, and it has not done it. Nor are the noble Lord, Lord McNally, and I aware of any special adviser who has done it. I cannot speak for the Conservative Party, and while I may be able to speak for the Liberal Democrats, I honestly do not know what the answer is. I simply reaffirm the point that the principle here is one vote, one value. It would be a rash person who would predict the political fallout from this reform.

[Lord Lipsey]

How does the noble and learned Lord square what he is saying about this part of the Bill being about one vote with one value, with the argument that he and his Lib Dem colleagues have put forward for years that the only votes in our system that have value are those in marginal seats, because in all other seats the votes do not count at all because of the huge majorities?

[Lord Wallace of Tankerness]

We are debating the earlier part of the Bill and are not going to debate electoral systems. That would be beyond the scope of this amendment. What we have done in Part 1 of the Bill will lead to a better system. That is my personal view, and the view of my party. The Government as a whole will not take a view in the referendum. I have a number of important points to make and would like to do justice to them.

Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill

Lord Lipsey Excerpts

Monday 10th January 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Howarth of Newport]

I certainly share the noble Lord’s hope that that will indeed be the case, and it is important that it should be, because it will be more difficult for the regime which this amendment envisages to operate if local authorities do not have registration officers in place doing their work energetically and with adequate resources. It is something on which we will need to keep a careful eye. I do not have quite the confidence that he does that that will necessarily be the case.

I should like to make just one observation on paragraph (b) in Amendment 54A, in which my noble friends have proposed that the Boundary Commission should submit reports every sixth year, rather than every fifth year, after 2013. That is wise for a number of reasons, but at this time of the evening I shall mention only one of the reasons. If constituencies are to be redrawn—and perhaps quite radically redrawn—at pretty frequent intervals, it creates problems for political parties. If political parties have to be re-formed election by election—and we know that they will all have to be re-formed in the period between 2013 and 2015, if the election is postponed for that long, and at quite frequent intervals thereafter—that creates a lot of difficulties for political parties.

We know the problem—I suspect that all political parties share this problem—of securing an adequate membership. We need a degree of stability to ensure that political parties can perform their role. Healthy, thriving political parties are a precondition for healthy, thriving local government and for healthy, thriving parliamentary democracy. So I do not think that we want to cause upheaval in political parties any more frequently than is really necessary. Of course the Boundary Commission reviews need to be of sufficient frequency and of a regularity to ensure that they adequately reflect the changing composition of the population of this country. That is essential and we all acknowledge that. It is a question of judgment and of striking a balance between that imperative and what I think is also very desirable, which is not to keep on throwing the system up in the air and destabilising political parties. For that reason, the modest change that my noble friends have proposed—having reviews every six years rather than every five years—makes good, practical sense.

[Lord Lipsey]

The nearest that any noble Lord comes to being economical with the truth is when they stand up and say they are going to be brief. Let me try, for once, to ignore that rule and be brief.

First, we all agree that we need a better electoral register—that is common ground. Secondly, and slightly less obviously, the accuracy of the electoral register matters far more under the system that the Government are proposing for constituency boundary drawing than it does at the moment. The Boundary Commission now has reasonably wide discretion. If there is an extra elector here, the commission can make an adjustment there. It cannot do that under the Bill. If there is one voter more than the 5 per cent threshold, all the boundaries of that seat, and in consequence the boundaries of all the surrounding seats, need to be redrawn. An upheaval can rest on whether a single voter is registered.

I have a third point, and given that we are at Committee stage, perhaps we are allowed to inject new ideas into the debate. I can see why the Government are reluctant to go along with the excellent amendment moved by my noble and learned friend, because they think that it will delay the process. However, there is an alternative. Instead of the Boundary Commission trying to equalise the actual number of registered electors, it should try to equalise something different: notional registered electors—that is, the electorate as it would be if there was 100 per cent registration everywhere. That is perfectly achievable.

[Lord Foulkes of Cumnock]

That is exactly what my Amendment 89C proposes. The easiest solution would be for the three wise men on the Front Bench opposite to agree now to accept that amendment later when I move it.

[Lord Lipsey]

The noble Lord has led me to be even briefer, because I was about to refer to his Amendment 89C and to a similar amendment that I myself proposed. It is quite easy statistically to equalise notional electorates. It depends on, for example, the proportion of rented tenure in the given constituency. Perfectly good equations can be developed that pretty accurately project the notional electorate from the actual electorate. Equalise those within whatever limit the House may decide and you have a much more sensible approach than that which is in the current draft of the Bill.

[Lord Tyler]

I am grateful to the noble Lord for giving way. Will he accept, even if some of his colleagues would not, that one of the disincentives to registration is that people—perhaps particularly if they are transient through the area—think that if it is a very safe seat, their vote simply will not matter? It is the correlation between safe seats under the first past the post system and the disincentive not just to register but to bother to vote even if they do register. I think that at least he will accept that that is one other reason. How does he propose to tackle that problem if, as seems to be his colleagues’ wont, they want to resist any improvement to the electoral system?

[Lord Lipsey]

I am proposing to tackle it in the very same way as I hope he is proposing to tackle it—by voting yes to AV whenever we get round to the referendum, whether on 5 May or, as I hope, a later date.

[Lord Phillips of Sudbury]

I know that it is a shock to see somebody rise from this side but perhaps I, too, may make a speculative intervention following what the noble Lord, Lord Lipsey, has said. I have not thought this through, but it seems to me that if it were possible to take the number of potential electors—let us call them that—as the governing yardstick for the size of constituencies, then Amendment 54A becomes unnecessary because one would then be in the position that all one needed to be satisfied about is that the local authorities had done their work properly in time for the election concerned. If, however, you take the system as it currently prevails, then the amendment of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Falconer of Thoroton, is the way to go. But, as I say, it would take away one of the time constraints if one was to go down the Lipsey-Foulkes line, if I can call it that.

The other thing that is worth not forgetting—because a lot has been said about the difficulty, or more than difficulty, of having everything sorted out by 1 October 2013; a number of noble Lords opposite have made that point—is that paragraph 37 of the report of the Select Committee on the Constitution, to which a number of noble Lords have referred, states:

“The Boundary Commissions have confirmed that this timetable is achievable”.

That is to say, things will be sorted out by 1 October 2013. It, after all, should know what it is talking about. With that assurance, and with a new method of calculating the mean, it seems to me that Amendment 54A may not be necessary.

Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill

Lord Lipsey Excerpts

Monday 20th December 2010 Lords Chamber

Moved by

[Lord Lipsey]

45: Clause 8, page 6, line 7, leave out paragraph (b)

[Lord Lipsey]

My Lords, I apologise for my eagerness to get on with the House’s consideration of the Bill. I know we have a lot of work to do and that the House is eager to do it. With this amendment, to which my noble friend Lord Bach and my noble and learned friend Lord Falconer have appended their names and added a complementary amendment, we come to the political heart of the Bill. This is the buckle that ties together the two bits of the Bill—the AV referendum on the one hand and the reduction of MPs and redrawing of constituency boundaries on the other. The first bit is the fervent wish of the Lib Dem partners in the coalition; the second is the fervent wish of the Conservative partners in the coalition.

Before I explain why I believe that to be misguided, I will get my retaliation in first to an intervention that I would otherwise expect. My objection is not to both measures being in one Bill. I know that there is a case to be made that the Government I supported included many more than two measures in their Constitutional Reform and Governance Act before the general election. It is interesting to speculate about what the full purpose of that Bill was since it clearly could not pass before the general election. Partly, no doubt, we felt that the wise British people would be very appreciative of all the proposals that we were putting forward, but we were particularly interested in the reaction of the Liberal Democrats. We realised that we might have to form some kind of agreement with them after a general election and we wanted to show that we shared their views. After a few months of observing the Lib Dems in government, I think we were totally wrong about what their views were. We thought they were constitutional and economic liberals; it turns out that they are constitutional conservatives and economic reactionaries.

I will pass swiftly on. What I object to is not that the two measures appear in one Bill but that they are conditional. They enter the concept of conditionality into our legislation. You can only do the one if you do the other, too. This seems wholly wrong. Either these two proposals—the AV referendum and the constituency redrawing—are justified on their individual merits or they are not. There can be no case whatever for saying, “We’ll only do one if we do the other”, in logic or constitutional parlance, although we understand the political realities of this. It says a lot about the nature of the coalition and, in particular, the atmosphere in which it was formed. This stuff is here because the two coalition partners, when they were negotiating their agreement, did not trust each other. They could see that there was a grubby deal to be made.

The Lib Dems could make some headway on electoral reform. They did not want AV and there was a system they liked more but they understood the realities. The Tories were trying to change the number of constituencies and their boundaries so that they won more seats at the next general election. The deal that was made between them was that they would do both. Because one proposition was likely to lead to fewer Conservative seats and one to more Conservative seats, they decided to bung them together—all that I understand. What is sad, and does not increase one’s confidence in the long-term viability of the coalition, is that the parties so distrusted each other that they wanted it incorporated into legislation in the subsection before the House at the moment.

This is a more political speech than I would like to make in Committee but this is a political clause. We have to understand it. Some bits of the Bill are technical. We will come to those and deal with them in a technical way but this is a political clause. My next observation about this provision is that it says a lot about the balance of power within the coalition. The Lib Dems did not say, “Our condition for giving you the boundary changes that suit you is that we get the electoral system that suits us”. They feebly said, “Our condition for your getting the boundary changes you want is that we get not AV but a go at AV through a referendum”. However, if the referendum is lost, which, as a strong supporter of AV, I hope it will not be, the Conservatives can still have their boundary changes and reduce the number of MPs.

We will come to the substance of the case about the number of MPs later in our debates. Suffice it to say that no case of merit has yet been put forward for reducing the size of the House of Commons. It may be that there is such a case to be made—I look forward to Ministers developing it—but we have not heard a word about it yet. So far we have just heard the Government admit that they got a figure straight out of the air and incorporated it into a Bill. We have seen no case made—not for greater constituency equalisation, which I would grant—for the figure of 5 per cent included in the Bill, which, as we shall see when we get to it, is not a sensible figure for the variance in the size of constituencies. Nor has the case been made that the exemptions in the Bill get anywhere near meeting the very strong case that can be made for further exemptions.

The suspicion must be that the measures in Part 2 of the Bill are entirely designed for the sole purpose of increasing the number of Conservative seats at the next general election. If the Government can produce a statistical analysis from a reputable team of psephologists that says that it will not have that effect, the House will be delighted to see and discuss it. However, I say with no little confidence that they will not be able to do that because the effects are as I have described them.

I do not want to detain the House for too long on this but my third point is about how much the Government must regret the need to link these two measures. How sorry they must be. In any sensible world, if it is true that the coalition wants the referendum to take place on 5 May 2011, it would have introduced two separate pieces of legislation. There would have been one on the alternative vote, which might well have concluded its stage in your Lordships’ House if not tonight then in the first session in the new year, after the good examination that we have given it. The Government could then go ahead with the AV referendum. They could then take a more measured approach to the constituencies bit of the Bill. They could even have allowed it to be subject to some measure of joint scrutiny, without prejudicing their timetable to get it into effect by the next election. They could have allowed, as we propose later in the Bill, that there should be some conference—a royal commission or Speaker’s Conference—on the number of MPs to take a rational view as to what should happen. That consideration could have moved in parallel to your Lordships’ House considering the AV bit of the Bill.

Where are we? Your Lordships have an awful lot of the Bill to consider as yet. We are to do so against the looming timetable; the Electoral Commission has made clear when it requires the Bill to be passed to allow the campaign for 5 May to occur on an orderly path. We are struggling to meet this wholly artificial timetable, imposed by the Government solely because of the political deal that they have done and the fact that neither party trusts the other to abide by its words.

[Lord Anderson of Swansea]

Is it not even worse, from the Liberal Democrat point of view, that they are clearly not very good negotiators? The deal that has emerged is wholly lopsided, as the chances are that their part of the deal—they wanted AV—will not happen and therefore they will have nothing to show for it at the end of the day.

[Lord Lipsey]

My noble friend would say that, but I cannot possibly comment because I believe of course that AV will win a referendum whenever it is held.

[Lord Campbell-Savours]

They would have something to say if the amendment that I tabled was accepted. I have tabled an amendment that would be extremely helpful to the Liberal Democrats on that very issue.

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[Lord Lipsey]

When we table amendments from this side of the House we do not consider their partisan impact; we merely consider their impact on the constitution of this country. I am sure that if my noble friend’s amendment meets that test, it will be given proper and due consideration by the House.

In moving this amendment I give the Government and the House an opportunity to say that each of the two propositions—the AV proposition and the number of MPs/seats proposition—should have separate consideration. They should be taken on their constitutional merits as a whole and treated in that way. I deeply regret, and what is more I believe that the Government will have reason deeply to regret, that the reality of the way in which they have chosen to proceed will make consideration of the issues on their merits more difficult for the House.

[Lord Bach]

I will speak to both amendments. The first is in the name of my noble friend Lord Lipsey, who has moved it so ably, and the second is in my name and that of my noble and learned friend Lord Falconer of Thoroton. Clause 8(1)(b) is an astonishing paragraph of this Bill. It is very remarkable. It was overlooked in debates in the other place, which perhaps makes it all the more important that we debate it properly in this House and in this Committee.

Clause 8 informs the Minister what to do following the result of the referendum being announced. If more votes in the referendum are cast in favour of the answer yes than in favour of the answer no, the Minister must make an order that brings into force provisions to change our voting system for elections to the House of Commons from first past the post to this type of alternative vote system. However, that is not the end of it. An affirmative result in the referendum is not sufficient according to the Bill. The changes in the boundaries detailed in Part 2 of the Bill, particularly in Clause 10, must also have taken place before the alternative vote system can take effect.

In Committee last Monday the Committee was delighted to hear the noble Lord, Lord McNally, tell the House that he and the Leader of the House, the noble Lord, Lord Strathclyde, were joined at the hip on this Bill. I wondered what it is that joins them at the hip on this Bill. I now believe it sincerely to be Clause 8(1)(b) that joins them thus. It has been clear from the introduction of this Bill that this clause is the glue that holds the Government together. Part 1 of the Bill, as was said at Second Reading, is clearly and plainly the Liberal Democrat part of the deal. However AV may have been described by their leader in the past, the Liberal Democrats have decided that it is worth the candle and that it is best not to go searching for some sort of proportional representation, or certainly not at the moment.

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[Lord Lipsey]

My Lords, the Minister stood up to speak 25 minutes ago and he has been most courteous in his responses to the many interventions. He said rather wryly that it seemed to have been a long time since I stood up to move the amendment in my name. I did not manage to speak for as long as he did. I do not think that I spoke for more than 10 minutes, and I was trying to make a substantive case, on which we have had a good debate.

However, I think that the debate was thrown off course at one point by the speech of the noble Lord, Lord Deben, whom we all greatly admire. The noble Lord made a partisan attack on ex-Members of the House of Commons on this side of the Committee in a speech made by an ex-Member of the other House. I do not think that we progress best in this House by swapping partisan insults of that kind. Perhaps this should be a warning to us to keep them to a minimum. Unlike the noble Lord, Lord Deben, I was never a Member of the House of Commons and so I have not adapted to the kind of things that I understand from this debate go on there.

It is important to get away from the partisan, and I do so, as part of my concluding remarks, by referring to the non-partisan committee of this House— the Constitution Committee—which examined the Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill and had many prominent Conservatives in its ranks, including the noble Lords, Lord Norton, Lord Crickhowell and Lord Renton of Mount Harry. It said:

“In general, we regard it as a matter of principle that proposals for major constitutional reform should be subject to prior public consultation and pre-legislative scrutiny. We recognise that there may exceptionally be good reasons for departing from this principle, but the perils of doing so are well illustrated in the present Bill. The case for proceeding rapidly with one Part of this Bill is far stronger than for the other”.

In other words, the non-partisan examination of the buckle in the Bill said that it should not be there. However, it is there—the noble and learned Lord, Lord Wallace, was commendably frank about this—and it is there for purely political reasons. Therefore it is right that we in this House, with our responsibilities to the constitution as a whole, should examine whether those reasons are convincing.

The noble and learned Lord, Lord Wallace, was a little less convincing when he tried to explain the reasons for it being there when he said, “Of course, if the AV referendum is lost I would not want to push ahead with it”. With great respect, that is not the point that we on this side of the House are seeking to make. Our point is different: it is that the two sets of proposals are not treated the same. Of course, if the AV referendum is lost, noble Lords should not proceed with an AV proposal, but there is no such conditionality on the proposals for constituency and boundary changes—they are to go ahead nevertheless.

Before the House has even started to examine these proposals—and before the Boundary Commission has started on the extremely onerous, some people believe impracticable, task it is being set—the noble and learned Lord, Lord Wallace, says that the boundary changes and the change in the number of MPs will go ahead. If they do not go ahead—and all kinds of happenstance could prevent them from going ahead—neither will AV. As my noble friend Lord Bach points out, AV could be prevented from going through even though it had the overwhelming support of the British people. That cannot be right.

I do not propose to force this issue to a Division today. I hope Ministers will think carefully about the situations, that wiser counsels will prevail, and that even now they will find a way of separating the two bits of the Bill so that each can be taken on its merits. I withdraw the amendment hoping that Christmas cheer will suffuse the Government’s approach when next we turn to these matters on 10 January.

Amendment 45 withdrawn.

Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill

Lord Lipsey Excerpts

Monday 20th December 2010 Lords Chamber

[Lord Foulkes of Cumnock]

Waldorf and Statler, my noble friend says. I should say that they are distinguished ex-Chancellors of the Exchequer. As they have been around a great deal longer than I have, they will recall—I saw this when we were in opposition in the House of Commons, even when Margaret Thatcher was Prime Minister, and I saw it again when Labour was in power and Tony Blair was Prime Minister—that, as one of my noble friends said earlier, when we went through these kinds of debates in Committee, week in, week out, the Minister would say, “That’s a very good point; I’ll take that away and look at it and come back on Report”. On this Bill, we have had one occasion when the noble Lord, Lord McNally, has said that—one miserable occasion. Even then, he did not say that he agreed; he said that he would take it back and have a look at it without any guarantee, sympathy or consideration.

I think that we could make even better progress through the Bill if, day after day and week after week, the Minister were to say, “That’s a good point. The noble and learned Lord, Lord Falconer, has made a good point on this”, or, “The noble Lord, Lord Campbell-Savours, has made an excellent point on that; I’ll take it away and look at it and see what can be done about it”. So far, though, one such response in six sessions is a very low batting average. It makes the English cricket team look good in comparison. I hope that the noble and learned Lord, Lord Wallace, whom I have known for a very long time, will recognise the validity of the argument that if you are to have a fair election and fair boundaries, you need to ensure that everyone over the age of 18 is taken account of in drawing up those boundaries.

[Lord Lipsey]

My Lords, what a good point my noble friend has just made; I am sure that we shall all take it into account. What a good contribution, too, from my noble and learned friend Lord Falconer, and what an interesting intervention from the noble Lord, Lord Rennard. It is that last to which I want particularly to address my remarks. The noble Lord made a point that was completely impossible to dispute: in the past, constituency boundaries have been based on registers, registers by and large have been getting better—at least, we have worked on getting them better; we do not ever have a completely firm idea of how many people are not registered—and the Bill is therefore soundly based.

That, however, is not reality. The reality is that with the Bill, for the first time, we are treating electorates as part of a rigid mathematical formula—5.1 per cent over, you have to be cut down; 5 per cent under, you have to cut back. There is a strict limit of 5 per cent within which the Electoral Commission has to work, and some good examples of the effects of that have been brought before noble Lords by outside advisers. But what we are trying to equalise is not some actual number, a number in reality—it is an extremely approximate guess at the number of electors. Yes, it is the number of people who appear on a list, but we have no idea how that relates in each individual constituency to the number of people who actually should be on that list.

I can guarantee that, under the provisions of the Bill, some seats will have bits cut off them because they are thought to be over the 5 per cent limit whereas in fact they are not; they will be well within the limit, but they will have a very high registration number. More importantly, you will have other seats which are having bits added into them. They have got a perfectly normal number of people living there but an inadequacy in the register means that they are not all counted. This is perfectly all right under the existing way in which the Electoral Commission works. It works in a way where size is only one of the factors it takes into account. It adjusts for such matters as natural boundaries, geography, local authority boundaries and so on, and it comes by and large to the most sensible view on the most sensible set of facts that are available to it. That does not work for a rigid mathematical formula of this kind.

Half of the solution to this should be to be less rigid about mathematical formulae, both in terms of allowing a greater flexibility around the size allowed to constituencies and by giving a greater weight to the other factors which the Electoral Commission can take into account when deciding the boundaries of a particular seat. We will come later to amendments which are designed to do both those things.

While this provision of 5 per cent remains, however, at least we have to make sure we are doing the best job we can with the electoral register, a job which is now vastly more important because of its vast mathematical significance in the scheme of things laid out by the Bill.

[Lord McAvoy]

Does my noble friend agree with my findings, not on a scientific basis, that during and after the poll tax fiasco the importance of people wanting to be on the register was undermined because a whole strata of people found there was a financial advantage not to be registered and somehow there was something lost in the community about the importance of wanting to register? No matter how allegedly better the registers are now, there must be a residual effect of the poll tax. So it may be better but there is residual damage.

[Lord Lipsey]

I entirely agree with my noble friend. Indeed it is not just the poll tax; there are a number of factors the whole time that cause people to avoid anything that identifies them as individuals and which they think the authorities could catch up with. It may be for bad reasons: they may perhaps be illegally in the country or fear they are here illegally; or good reasons: that they fall for some of the liberal myths about the nature of the modern state and think that they may all end up in prison if they are identified. I do not take it by any means for granted that the improvement in the electoral register will continue over time.

It is rather like opinion polls. Opinion polls measure less and less because fewer and fewer people are willing to answer the questions because they are frightened that they may be held to task for the answers they give. There is therefore a serious risk of the deterioration of the electoral registers, which makes it all the more wrong that this Bill should have the exact number on the electoral register and the exact number of people in each constituency as its target and also makes it right that, in so far as we can improve these things at all, the amendment moved by my noble friend should be adopted to make them as good as they can be. But that will never be very good.

[Lord Touhig]

My Lords, I should like to share with noble Lords my own experience of the problems of electoral registration. Prior to the 2005 general election, when I was in the other place, my honourable friend Wayne David, my neighbouring colleague and MP for Caerphilly, and I were absolutely staggered to find that the new register had come out and our electorates had dropped by thousands—I think more than 8,000. We had a meeting with the electoral returning officer who was an official of his association and he explained to us that across the country electoral registration officers were pursuing different approaches to compiling the electoral register. Some were doing canvasses, some were sending out letters, some were sending out post cards and so on and so forth. The real top and tail of it was this: the council was simply not providing sufficient money for the electoral registration officer to carry out an annual canvass.

With the best will in the world, rolling registers have helped but they are more of a convenience. I do not think there is a great deal of evidence to show that many more people have actually registered. I am a bit concerned about individual registration—

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[Lord Wallace of Tankerness]

It is indicated that voting age may not always mean eligibility to vote, because there might be occasions when people may not be United Kingdom citizens, or be Commonwealth citizens or citizens of the Republic of Ireland, and would thereby be ineligible to vote.

The two important points are, first, that that 91 per cent figure is reasonable and compares well with other countries and, secondly, there are still within it groups where the registration rate is not, by any stretch of the imagination, satisfactory; and I believe that there is an obligation to address these issues.

[Lord Lipsey]

My Lords, it is very helpful to have this information from the Minister, but the real point is that it is not what the overall level of registration is, or what the level of registration within groups of the population is; it is what the variation is in the level of registration between constituencies. It is constituency sizes that you are trying to equalise on the basis of these registration figures, and 91 per cent overall could easily hide a difference between 80 per cent at the lowest and 99 per cent at the highest.

[Lord Wallace of Tankerness]

It follows on from what I have said that I have implicitly acknowledged that point, because clearly there are some constituencies where the kind of groups that I have indicated have a lower registration rate tends to be more concentrated. To be fair, the noble and learned Lord, Lord Falconer, alluded to the information on that from the reports from the Electoral Commission that have been referred to.

[Lord Lipsey]

The noble and learned Lord says that it is possible on the basis of knowing what groups are in which constituencies to make a pretty good estimate of the percentage of registration in each constituency. It would be helpful if he published for the House a document setting that out, so that we can see what the variance is. It is not on the variance that these equalisations will happen; it is on the basis that they are all plumb right.

[Lord Wallace of Tankerness]

My Lords, I hope that there is no dispute between any parts of the House that it is important that we try to improve voter registration, and I can assure the House that the Government are committed to ensuring that the electoral register is as accurate and as complete as possible. That is why we are taking forward and progressing towards individual registration. I know that the noble and learned Lord agreed that we were taking along what had been set in motion by the previous Administration, although I understand that there are disputes about that on his own Back Benches. In addition, we are introducing measures such as data-matching schemes to help local authorities gain as complete a picture as possible of eligible voters in their area.

The noble Lord, Lord Rooker, and the noble Lord, Lord Foulkes, made reference to the census. It was a helpful suggestion. In a previous incarnation in Scotland, I had some ministerial responsibility for the census, and I am only too aware of the sensitivities attached to that. I rather suspect that the Office for National Statistics has thought about the degree to which it would be practical to mix the census with another exercise and the effects that that could have. I do not have the information to hand on whether the ONS has made that analysis, but I would nevertheless be happy to look into that issue. It might also be possible, although I cannot give any definitive answer, for the information from the census to inform us in the future. As the noble Lord, Lord Rooker, indicated, there are sensitivities about data protection, but perhaps it may be possible for that information to be available for informing further efforts to improve voter registration.

I confirm that we are piloting data matching between electoral registration officers and public authorities to identify people who are not on the register and target them for registration. We have just run a process for applications and the pilots will occur next year. I say to the noble and learned Lord that the boundaries have always been drawn on the basis of the register, and, as he correctly pointed out, the review date will be in two years and 10 months. As the report is due on 1 October 2013, the review date would be 1 December which has just passed, which, in answer to the noble Lord, Lord Foulkes of Cumnock, would be too late. However, I hope he will agree that it is not too late to try to encourage people to get on to the register for the purpose of voting in the referendum and in the other elections which are due to take place next year.

I also make the point to the noble and learned Lord that, if his amendment were to be carried and the next election in 2015 were held according to a register where the review date was some 10 years ago, the distortion might be even greater. I also point out that, under the Bill, we are seeking to have a review every five years. That would allow us the opportunity every five years to improve and, it is hoped, to take advantage of the improvements to which we are committed and which I know the Administration of which he was a member subsequently supported. My noble friend Lord Rennard paid proper tribute to the work that was done by the previous Administration to try to increase voter registration with a rolling register. These are worthwhile initiatives and we want to continue with them.

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Moved by

[Lord Lipsey]

47: Clause 8, page 6, line 17, leave out subsection (4)

[Lord Lipsey]

Can the Minister tell me why subsection (4) is there?

[Lord Wallace of Tankerness]

The noble Lord, Lord Lipsey, asks a very reasonable question. My understanding is that it is a common provision in the context of a power to commence primary legislative provisions by order. It only allows a limited provision to be made where it is genuinely necessary for the purpose of commencing the AV provisions, and the transitional saving power cannot be used to amend either the Bill or any other piece of legislation.

It was included simply to provide for unforeseen circumstances which might affect the implementation of provisions in the event of a yes vote. As the noble Lord and, indeed, your Lordships may be aware, the Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee has published its report on the Bill and recommends that the power in Clause 8(4), the one which the noble Lord seeks to delete, should be subject to negative procedure. We have noted the concern of the committee that this power might enable the Government to determine which form of voting system should apply in the case of a particular parliamentary election.

--- Later in debate ---

The noble Lord has raised the point. The Government take the view that the best approach therefore is to remove the power in Clause 8(4) and instead provide explicitly for the situation as regards the elections prior to the first general election on AV. That makes the Government’s intention very clear and removes any room for doubt about how that power might be used. The effect of Amendment 47 on its own would be undesirable. It would remove any power to make the saving provision that we think is sensible in secondary legislation without placing that saving provision in the Bill in its place. It would certainly be our intention to bring forward an appropriate amendment on Report.

[Lord Lipsey]

The noble and learned Lord has sent this particular noble Lord home happy for Christmas. At last we have changed the Bill in some small regard. I am very grateful to him for his open-mindedness and his very clear explanation. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment 47 withdrawn.

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Moved by

[Lord Lipsey]

51: Clause 9, page 6, line 30, at end insert—
“( ) Where a voter marks a ballot with a cross against the name of a candidate, that cross shall count as if the voter had placed the number 1 opposite the name of that candidate.””

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[Lord Lipsey]

My Lords, this amendment is in my name and that of my noble friend Lady McDonagh, who is sorry that she cannot be in her place at this stage of the evening. I was rather amazed to have had an impact with my previous amendment and I very much hope that the Government will be able to accept this one.

It is a perfectly simple amendment. It does not go to the heart of the Bill, the core of the coalition agreement or anything like that. It simply says that if someone marks just one preference when they go into the polling booth and, instead of putting 1, they mark it X, that should count. I do not want to labour the point because I see the noble Lord, Lord Strathclyde, nodding encouragingly. We are in agreement on a lot of things here—we want the maximum number of valid votes in the referendum, as does he—so it is good from that point of view.

[Lord Rooker]

I do not understand this. My noble friend is a supporter of AV. Those of us who have been in the other place—that is, those who have been to an election count, and I do not know whether my noble friend has—know that, under the present first past the post system, if someone puts a 1 against a candidate, that counts as a vote because it is a clear indication. So it is bound to be the case under AV that if you put an X against a name, it will count as a vote; the normal rules allow for that.

I thought that the idea of this was to persuade people to use second choices. This is where the con comes in of it being the “optional” AV system. There will be a campaign out there of people saying, “You don’t have to bother with all these numbers—just put an X against my name”. That is what it is all about. The argument that AV gets rid of tactical voting is fraudulent, as I hope my noble friend will admit.

[Lord Lipsey]

I enjoyed listening to the speech that the noble Lord, Lord Rooker, made under the guise of an intervention, but I am making a perfectly narrow point. In the Bill as drafted an X would not count, and under the amendment that I would like to make an X would count. I must say an X is about the only bit of our electoral system that is truly traditional. It goes way back to the times when many people could not write numbers. First past the post is not the only system that has been in use in Britain. If you look back to the last century there were the university seats and two-member seats in the cities. Nothing else is traditional except the use of X. I am here in the guise of a traditionalist trying to preserve the tradition of the X. The final thing I would say is that, although most people have no difficulty with 1, 2 and 3, older voters and others have perhaps become accustomed to a certain way of casting their vote, and I do not think there is any need to force them to change their mind if they just want to put an X in the right place.

I do not think this amendment will benefit the cause that I hope to see prevail at the election when it comes. People who use X may well not be the best informed voters, and certainly the best informed voters will vote for AV, whatever the noble Lord, Lord Rooker, may say. It may not benefit my cause but I do think it is a democratic advantage to allow an X and I cannot see any argument why not.

[Lord Hamilton of Epsom]

I hope that my noble friend the Leader of the House will find it possible to accept this amendment. It does seem to be eminently sensible in that people have been putting Xs on ballot papers for a very long time and it is conceivable that they might continue to do so. I am not totally reassured by the intervention of the noble Lord, Lord Rooker, that there is all this flexibility among returning officers. You might not find that this flexibility is there. I would be more comfortable if this was in the Bill and it was made absolutely clear that an X was just as valid as a 1 and vice versa. This is a very sensible amendment which all sides of the House should feel very comfortable about supporting.

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[Lord Rooker]

No, because no words are allowed. That is part of the rules. A tick will do if it clearly indicates a preference, but words are not allowed so it would not count.

[Lord Lipsey]

If my noble friend wants to go home, he should not intervene in the debate. If he would care to read new Section 37A(1)(a) in Clause 9(1), it changes the present situation whereby returning officers can take any old mark and says that there has to be a 1, which is all I am trying to change.

[Lord Rooker]

Well, I do not agree with it.

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[Lord Wallace of Tankerness]

I do not think that anyone is advocating this—in fact, the opposite is true. We want to make sure that there is a proper advertising campaign for the system. I hope that I have said sufficient and that what is already in the Bill is enough—that is, if someone places an X against a candidate’s name, the intention will be clear. It will be taken as being the equivalent of putting a 1 and the vote will count.

[Lord Lipsey]

The Minister is in such a jolly mood that I am reluctant in any way to spoil his anticipation of hogmanay by cavilling at his remarks. However, I should say that the last time a Minister pointed to a schedule to the Bill as being the right place to deal with a certain issue, I read that schedule for the first time and found that five amendments badly needed to be made to it. They now feature on the Marshalled List and will be debated by us in the new year.

I have heard what the noblea and learned Lord has said and I have looked at the schedule to which he referred. I cannot help thinking that there is a bit of a clash between the words in the first part of the Bill and those in the schedule. A helpful way forward—I suggest this to the Minister with due humility—might be if the Association of Electoral Administrators were to write to him and he made available to the House a statement saying that the association would interpret the Bill as it stands with those two provisions in the way that he has suggested they should be interpreted—namely, that a mark against one candidate will be accepted. If he were able to make that small concession, I would happily drop this amendment and not resurrect it on Report.

[Lord Wallace of Tankerness]

The noble Lord is inviting the electoral registration officers to write to me and clearly, if they do, I shall make what they say available. The schedule states:

“A ballot paper on which the voter makes any mark which … is clearly intended to indicate a particular preference for a particular candidate”—

I think I would include within that putting an X or even a tick against a person’s name—

“shall be treated in the same way as if the appropriate number … had been marked”.

I hope that the wording there is clear but obviously the electoral registration officers may wish to clarify that. I suspect that it will be a while before we get to Schedule 10, although perhaps not as long as might otherwise be the case.

[Lord Wallace of Tankerness]

I am very doubtful about that last one but I could not possibly make a decision on it.

[Lord Lipsey]

I think that the noble and learned Lord would do well to try to get something that nails this point once and for all before we reach the schedule. We have been discussing it for 26 minutes tonight and we can discuss it for another 26 minutes at a later stage, whereas it is well within his powers to deal with it by getting in writing from the appropriate electoral registration officers a clear statement of how they read the Bill. I think that it can be read in two ways, although I accept that his way of reading it is one. With that, and given the hour and the imminence of the festivities, I beg leave to withdraw my amendment.

Amendment 51 withdrawn.

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[Lord Hamilton of Epsom]

I accept that there will be great difficulty explaining to the country what the implications of the AV vote will be, but that is why the referendum should be held on a separate day. I am convinced that it will be extremely difficult to explain to the country what the AV vote is about. If it is held on the same day as the local elections and all the other elections, it will be virtually impossible. People will not understand the implications of any different voting system if we stick it in on the same day as the local elections. However, that is what the House has decided to do, in its wisdom, and we are therefore in a very difficult situation, making the whole business of what the vote is even more complicated than it was already.

I am just amazed at how calm everybody seems to be in this House, collectively, about allowing the Bill to go through and allowing the referendum to be held on the same day as the local elections, which will fundamentally change the whole way that this country votes, when I think that we mostly agree that people will not really understand the implications of what they are doing when they vote in that referendum.

[Lord Lipsey]

My Lords, this is by no means the first time that I have been not asleep at this hour due to the joys of debating the merits of AV and so on, but there is something still more exciting to come, because before the Bill is finished I confidently predict that at one or two in the morning we shall get on to the relative merits of d’Hondt and Sainte-Lague and the three Imperiali largest-remainder formulae, a matter on which my noble friend Lord Campbell-Savours will no doubt illuminate the House as he has on this. I cannot support, however, the amendment put forward by my noble friend Lord Rooker any more than he could support the one put forward by me earlier.

It takes me back to the days, the happy days indeed, when I was sitting on the Jenkins committee. We got many, many proposals on the Jenkins committee for various systems of weighted voting. D’Hondt as the noble Lord, Lord Henley, with his great knowledge of these matters surely knows, is not a weighted voting system. All the many proposals on weighted voting systems had one factor in common; they were invariably written in green ink and therefore we on the commission did not have to spend as long considering them as we might otherwise.

There are two reasons of substance why this amendment should be rejected. The first is that Churchill’s neat phrase does not reflect the reality in many voters’ minds. It is not true that the most important choice for voters is who they put first and who they put second and they do not care who they put sixth and who they put seventh. If you take my case, in a constituency where there were some serious candidates and towards the bottom of the ones with a chance there was the Democratic Socialist Crosland Labour-affiliated candidate and, on the other hand, the British National Party candidate. I would feel extremely strongly that I preferred the first of those options, whatever I was doing further up the list between those candidates who really had a chance. In reality, there is no way of measuring the strength of people’s preferences, or the amount of thought they have put into them, and it is therefore better to treat all preferences, as AV does, as of equal weight.

The second argument has been touched on and it concerns complexity.

[Lord Campbell-Savours]

When my noble friend goes into the polling booth and casts his first preference for Labour and he might be tempted to cast his third preference for the Liberal Democrats, is he, in his own mind, giving that third preference the same weight, when he votes for the Liberal Democrat as he would to Labour, his first preference?

[Lord Lipsey]

It depends on the circumstances in the particular constituency. In my own constituency of Brecon and Radnor, there are very real choices to be made, due to the fact that the Labour candidate, alas, is not a front-running candidate in that seat. That is a choice that I hope to avoid having to make when AV has come into being and I can put my first preference first and then my other preferences in their order without any danger of defeating my preferred second choice by voting for my preferred first choice.

I was going on to say that I think the complexity of the Rooker system and the sheer difficulty of explaining it counts very heavily against it. I do not take the view that voters need to understand absolutely everything about voting systems in order to cast their vote, any more than, when I get into my car and turn the key, I require to know all about how the engine works before I drive off. I need to know certain things, such as how to steer, but I do not need to know how the engine works. There are degrees of complexity and, frankly, the Rooker system would be simply impossible to explain. I do not think many people would buy the explanation that was being given. I am sure my noble friend did not have this even in the back of his mind, but one is tempted to think that a complication of this kind is a well-designed sabotage bomb to make sure that the referendum on AV is lost. Therefore, I cannot support the amendment and hope that the House will not support it tonight.

[Lord Foulkes of Cumnock]

One of the advantages of the Leader of the House effectively throwing the Companion to the Standing Orders out of the window is that we have this extra time to contemplate voting systems. My understanding has always been that you think what outcome you would prefer and then choose a voting system to get that outcome. That is why the Liberals have always campaigned and pushed for PR and the single transferable vote, because they want to have more power and influence.

While my colleagues have been talking about the theory, I have been looking at what might happen in practice if we had an election for the leader of the group of Labour Peers on this side of the House. There are five candidates, Campbell-Savours, Falconer, Foulkes, McAvoy, and Rooker. Those were the only five candidates put forward. Alphabetically, Campbell-Savours is number one, Falconer is number two, Foulkes number three, McAvoy number four and Rooker number five. There are 40 electors. Some of them are not here tonight. They are around somewhere and will come in if necessary. If we were to carry out this election under first past the post, the result might be Campbell-Savours 10, Falconer nine, Foulkes eight, McAvoy seven and Rooker six. In that case, Campbell-Savours would be elected and would be our leader. That is the system that we all know. Campbell-Savours would be welcome and we would accept him as our leader and worship him and follow his every lead. He would carry out that leadership with his usual kindness, wisdom and grace.

However, we could have accepted one form of the alternative vote, which from my recollection of what my noble friends Lord Campbell-Savours and Lord Rooker said in previous speeches, is the Australian federal system in which everyone has to vote one, two, three, four, five. Then we might get this result: 10, nine, eight, seven, six on the first vote. Then Rooker is eliminated and all of his votes would naturally go to Falconer. Noble Lords have seen that in the debates that have taken place. Falconer would now be leading with 15 votes. Campbell-Savours would have 10, Foulkes would have 8 and McAvoy would have seven.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Baroness Harris of Richmond)]

I must inform your Lordships that if the amendment is agreed, I cannot call manuscript Amendment 52AA, by reason of pre-emption.

[Lord Lipsey]

My Lords, I can understand the case that my noble friend Lord Beecham is making and it is seductive. However, it removes some of the most desirable features of the AV system, which is designed to produce a much wider choice for voters. That includes, for example, the possibility of voting for a party that really has no chance and which you know will come bottom of the polls, without at the same time wasting your vote. There might be, for example, a local campaigner with a specific goal which you strongly support, but you do not necessarily want to waste your vote entirely by supporting that candidate if there is a danger that it will be eliminated. The amendment means that it is less likely, rather than not likely, that the winning candidate will get 51 per cent of the vote. As we know, under the present system, only a third of Members of the House of Commons received as much as half of their electorate’s votes. We do not have an exact figure as to what that would increase to under AV, but if you said 86 per cent or 90 per cent, you would probably be right. The amendment would reduce that back down again nearer to the present third. For those reasons, I cannot support my noble friend in his well meant amendment.

[Lord McAvoy]

My Lords, I support the amendment of my noble friend Lord Beecham but only in the context of where we are with that system. I believe very strongly that the first past the post system should stay and I do not want anyone to say—although, of course, I cannot stop anyone saying it—that supporting the amendment in the context of where we are necessarily means that I am deserting my support for first past the post.

This is a modest amendment. On the other hand, romantic candidates, Official Monster Raving Loony Party candidates and the “independent with a cause” candidate can all sound okay but, in a serious parliamentary democracy, is it right that such a small proportion of the vote should be used elsewhere? We are running serious elections for serious and responsible elected positions and, although having the freedom to stand for election and to campaign and so on is an absolute right, I do not think that that type of candidate who polls less than 5 per cent of the vote should be allowed to distort the electoral system and the democratic process. Then again, I keep asking myself why people get involved in that kind of party when it is all a lot of nonsense. Nevertheless, speaking as a realistic politician, I have to say that the amendment is before us and it needs to be discussed. However, if anyone wishes to use their charms on me, I am still willing to be convinced by an objection to my noble friend’s amendment.

My noble friend Lord Lipsey is great to listen to and I admire him. He is a formidable person but I do not think that he came up with any reason why the amendment should be opposed. He came up with an intellectual reason, and it is right and proper that that is aired. However, we have to take the real world into account and I do not think it is right for a party with a small percentage of the vote to distort the vote. In the context of what we are discussing, I have no hesitation in supporting my noble friend’s amendment.

Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill

Lord Lipsey Excerpts

Monday 13th December 2010 Lords Chamber

[Lord Lipsey]

My Lords, perhaps I might intervene as a supporter of AV. I agree with nearly every word that the noble Lord, Lord Hamilton, said. There is a slight Alice in Wonderland feel about today. I have popped in and out of the Chamber and on many occasions when I came in, I heard the noble Lord, Lord McNally, saying that this was a simple Bill. Every time I hear him say it, I look again at Clause 4—Clause 4 stand part is part of this grouping—and find so much legalistic rigmarole that, despite having many years of experience of parliamentary draftsmen, I find it extremely hard to comprehend. Given the compelling case that has just been made both by my noble friend and by the noble Lord, Lord Hamilton, it is very hard to understand why on earth the Government continue to want to hold the referendum on 5 May. I find that particularly hard to understand of my noble friend Lord McNally—I call him my noble friend because we have been friends for many years. Like me, he is in favour of a yes vote in the AV referendum. The Liberal Democrats, who seem to want this vote to be held on 5 May, are in favour of a yes vote in the referendum, but the one thing that will make it very difficult for proponents of AV to win that vote is to hold it on 5 May.

I have heard only one argument with any force that it could be to the advantage of AV campaigners to hold the referendum on 5 May and it is that turnout in Scotland and Wales will be higher on that date because there will be regional elections on the same day and that will help. However, that is conceptually ridiculous. Let us suppose that the Scots would be 10 per cent more likely to vote AV than people in the rest of the country, and let us suppose that, as a result of having the two elections on the same day, the turnout would be 10 per cent higher. If those two extraordinary assumptions were true, it would make a difference to the national vote of something like 0.1 per cent. Any advantage that might be gained from a higher turnover would be absolutely negligible in terms of the outcome of the referendum. However, why look into the crystal ball when you can read the book? We have YouGov polls, so we know what the level of support is in each part of the United Kingdom. Support in Scotland is precisely the same as that in England and more or less the same as that in Wales. Therefore, there is absolutely no reason for a differential turnout to favour those in support of the alternative vote system.

However, there is a major reason to suppose that it would be bad news for AV if we had the referendum on 5 May, and it is this. When it comes to the battle over the referendum, supporters of AV have one enormous advantage. Unlike in this House, where most active Members—I freely concede this—are opposed to AV, there is a network of supporters, most of them in the Labour Party or the Liberal Democrat party, who are prepared to work their socks off for a victory for AV on whichever day the referendum is held. They are networking and phone banking and so on. I doubt whether there is a similar organisation of people opposed to AV, although I am sure that a very sophisticated campaign will be run by the nice Mr Elliott who runs the TaxPayers’ Alliance, and I am sure that they have done very well to get him on their side. However, we will cast this huge potential advantage to the wind if we hold the referendum on 5 May. If you think that Liberal Democrats campaigning in a local election are going to be able to turn their attention from supporting their candidates, who are whipping them on, to manning the phone banks for AV, you are mistaken.

More powerfully—and I can say this with a great deal more authority—the idea that Labour supporters fighting Liberal Democrats up and down the country, condemning Nick Clegg for the disgraceful abandonment of his election pledge on tuition fees, and trying to eliminate the Liberal Democrats as a party in this country will at the same time on the side go out and hit the phones, saying “Would you mind voting for AV? It might help our little Lib Dem friends”, is a complete absurdity. The result is that, if the referendum is held on 5 May, we who are in favour of AV—and I do not claim, and never have claimed, that our task is an easy one—will have cast aside our greatest advantage and will have handed a greater chance of victory to those who would block what we are trying to do.

I can understand the Conservatives supporting that way forward and I can understand those on my own side who do not share my view about AV supporting that point of view. However, I was greatly cheered to hear the noble Lord, Lord Foulkes—whom I hugely admire and whose performance throughout our debates on this Bill has been so remarkable—cheering and nodding at some of the analytic remarks that I made, even if he would not necessarily support the conclusion to which they were directed. The noble Lord, Lord Strathclyde, too, could share the preference for 5 May. But I have to ask: what is the noble Lord, Lord McNally, up to? Does he not want to see the result for which he—like me—has worked for so many years? I am mystified by the coalition’s stance, purely because of the realpolitik involved; that leaves aside the whole argument that I have developed on other occasions about what I almost call the “immorality” of combining different sets of issues, including sub-national Parliaments, Assemblies, local government, a change in the voting system for national elections all on the one day, which is a cruelty to inflict on the willing but sometimes confused electorate, who although willing may be confused by such shenanigans.

I beg the noble Lord, Lord McNally to think again and to look at the analytic case both in terms of the result he wants and its merits. I know that as he is a good and clear thinking man, he will conclude, whatever he may say tonight, that the right thing is to abandon 5 May and to have an early but separate referendum so that the British people can concentrate on resolving this issue for the good of the nation.

[Lord Campbell-Savours]

My Lords, I do not want to detain the Committee but, until I read the Marshalled List, I was unaware of the issue that my noble friend Lord Foulkes of Cumnock was going to raise.

The more I think about it, the proposition in the Bill is utterly ludicrous. The Liberal Democrats must understand that the idea that we will have joint platforms either for or against the question being answered positively does not arise. The Liberal Democrats more than any other party should know of the bitterness that often exists at local level during campaigning. How is it possible to have a full, honest, open and participatory debate if the people at the heart of it are factionalised and arguing among themselves about the greater issue of who will be in Parliament and who will be on the local authority? I cannot understand the logic.

Who is driving this on? Where is all the pressure coming from? After four days of listening to these debates, have not Liberal Democrats and the coalition realised that there might be something wrong with the way in which we are proceeding, particularly when some of us are passionately in favour of electoral reform? We are worried that it will all go wrong. The only way forward, it seems to me, is for the parties in the coalition to sit down privately, without telling anyone, and to think through again whether there is a need to further amend the proposed legislation, perhaps even against the new timetable.

What is the pressure for the timetable? Why in the first year are we faced with a Bill for a five-year fixed-term Parliament? Why are we so preoccupied in this year one in getting through the legislation in this form? Can we not afford another 12 or 18 months? What will be lost by delaying and getting the question and the process right? We would then have a chance of a successful resolution. We are being stampeded into a decision. It is like a panic-based decision, which will result in it all coming apart. If it does not come apart, we will end up with the wrong system. The Conservative element of the coalition will be faced with an electoral system for which it will be held responsible historically. Why cannot the coalition just sit down for perhaps a matter of months to reconsider this part of the legislation with a view to coming back following the inquiry that a number of us have asked for, having decided on a proper system and process?