Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill

David Davis Excerpts

Monday 6th September 2010 Commons Chamber

[The Deputy Prime Minister]

I am aware of the popularity of the current Member for the Isle of Wight, and he will know better than I do that the number of MPs representing that area has changed quite dramatically through the ages. I believe that the Isle of Wight once had eight MPs. I understand that this proposal is controversial there, but equality of size as a general rule—with the two exceptions I mentioned—seems to us to be a cornerstone of the Bill.

[Mr David Davis (Haltemprice and Howden) (Con)]

I thank my right hon. Friend for giving way, but even those who are on side in respect of what he is trying to achieve through equalisation of the size of parliamentary seats are somewhat concerned at the speed and perhaps the brutal simplicity of the approach. Will there be scope for judicial challenge of any of the individual decisions taken by the boundary commissions?

[The Deputy Prime Minister]

As the right hon. Member will know, anyone can seek judicial review in normal practice, but on the criteria given to the boundary commissions, it is worth stressing that they will retain their existing ability to refer to local links, geography, county boundaries and so on, but subject to a principle of equality. That is a simple—yes, it is simple—straightforward principle of equality that we are enshrining in the legislation.

By having more frequent boundary reviews—one every five years—constituencies will be kept more up to date, reflecting changes in where people live. In order to make that possible, we are changing the consultation process. Consultation is, of course, vital, but as leading academics concluded in a report published just last week, local inquiries have become “the playthings” of political parties and have had, in practice, little impact on the commissions’ final recommendations, so we will abolish local inquiries. Instead, we will triple the time that people have to make representations to the commissions to have their say—from one month to three months. Residents will have—

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[Mr Straw]

I entirely agree with the hon. Gentleman. I recall that when that point was put to the Deputy Prime Minister in the debate on the Queen’s Speech and he was asked whether he accepted that there should be a pro rata reduction in the number of Ministers and aides, he refused to give any commitment at all.

Let me return to the issue of public inquiries. Back in 2003, when the present Prime Minister supported the system, he had an opportunity to have his case put before a local inquiry. Under the Bill, no such right will exist in the future. Instead, all that the public are offered is a longer period for written representations, which is no substitute whatever for a proper examination, including oral evidence, before a judicially qualified chairman.

The Deputy Prime Minister said in the House a few minutes ago that there was no evidence that such local inquiries had changed the original proposals from the Boundary Commission. Again, he is not woefully ill-briefed, because he has a fine set of officials, but he is woefully ill-informed. The Boundary Commission’s fifth report for 2007 reported that local public inquiries had led to change in the original recommendations in 64% —two thirds—of the cases where proposals had initially been made. The right hon. Gentleman shakes his head. That happens to be the case, and the source for that is the Boundary Commission.

[Mr David Davis]

I put exactly that point to the Deputy Prime Minister earlier. If we are not careful and the Bill goes ahead as it is currently drafted, instead of public inquiries, will we end up with a series of local judicial challenges on the basis of reflection of community interests?

[Mr Straw]

Yes, I agree.

Let me pick up on something that the Deputy Prime Minister mentioned parenthetically when he said that the timetable motion had been agreed by the usual channels. I am not responsible for negotiations with the usual channels, but I can tell the House that we are adopting the same approach to the programme motion that was always adopted by the Conservatives when they were in opposition. We do not believe that sufficient time has been allocated to this Bill, and we shall vote against the programme motion.

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[Mr David Davis (Haltemprice and Howden) (Con)]

The Deputy Prime Minister, when he opened this debate, presented this Bill as something designed to increase people’s respect for the political system that we work under. The people might respect us more if we admitted the real reasons for what we are doing. Of course party advantage is implicit in what we are talking about—with an electoral system, it would be surprising if it were not—and I am sure that the proposal has come about, in part, as a result of the political grievances of each component of the coalition Government. On the part of the Conservative party, the grievance is that it takes a 10-point lead over Labour to get a majority in the House. That seems a perfectly legitimate grievance. The Liberal Democrat party has a grievance that, as the long-term third party in this country, it does not get a share of power very often. Now is an exception.

So, there are understandable grievances, and there is nothing wrong in our political system with parties doing things that are to their advantage and in their own interest, but we must do such things with open eyes, and in a way that subordinates party interest to public interest, and that is where I have a problem with the Bill, because we must recognise that we are proposing to change a system that has worked extremely well for well over a century. Arguably, it has worked better in this country for our democracy than in any other country and for any other democracy in the world. We have avoided extremism and, in general, had good outcomes throughout that time.

We are going to replace that with the alternative vote. The Deputy Prime Minister quite rightly said that it was very difficult to predict the exact outcome of an alternative vote. We do not have to do our own calculations, however. The Blair Government asked Lord Jenkins to chair a commission on proportional representation, and one thing that he considered was the alternative vote. Interestingly, Lord Jenkins rejected it, and one of his grounds was that it was too anti-Conservative— Lord Jenkins, let alone anybody else, said that. More importantly, he rejected it also on the ground that it was not just not more proportional than first past the post; in many cases it was actually less proportional—more disproportional—than our current system.

In that report, the most telling thing of all was a minority report by Lord Alexander, one of the great legal brains of his day, who took a case study of an alternative vote in a constituency with the Tories on about 40% of the vote and Labour and the Lib Dems neck and neck on 30%, plus or minus one percentage point. He showed very clearly and simply that what decided who won was who came third. The result had nothing to do with the primary preferences of constituents; it was the accident of who came third. That is the system that we are talking about putting in place.

[Stephen Williams (Bristol West) (LD)]

Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?

[Mr Davis]

If the hon. Gentleman will forgive me, I will not. I have only six minutes, unfortunately.

This House has many characters with very interesting differences, and the other thing about AV is that it acts to create a coalition of antagonists, picking the least unpopular rather than the most effective Member. I think of AV as an anti-Carswell system. It is a pity that my hon. Friend the Member for Clacton (Mr Carswell) is not in the Chamber in order for me to tell him that. AV disadvantages bold and unconventional Members, those the House should treasure, and that is an important side effect.

We are measuring that system against a first-past-the-post system that has been very effective throughout history. It has been decisive, radically and ruthlessly so when it needed to be. When it brought in the Attlee Government after the second world war and the Thatcher Government in 1979, it recognised times of crisis and responded to them. At other times of crisis, when it decided that none of the major parties had all the answers, it created a coalition, and that is what it has done this time. That is what it did in the 1930s and the 1970s. That system actually works well and it has done so without creating the gap between the electorate and the ruling elite that we have seen in countries with proportional systems. The system has delivered outcomes that are in the tenor of the times and that have given an answer to the problems of the times.

We should be very careful about replacing that system. As has been said, this is a major constitutional change, greater than many that we have considered down the decades. It should be a choice for the people—I agree with that—and it should be an informed and deliberate choice. The hon. Member for Nottingham North (Mr Allen), the Chairman of the Select Committee, is no longer in the Chamber. He complained because insufficient thought and analysis went into the assessment before it was presented to the people. Let us compare these proposals with the Scottish referendum, which followed a constitutional conference, a White Paper and manifesto commitments.

What we need to make sure is that we inform the people and give them enough notice and enough knowledge to make the decision properly, and to have it resolved clearly. What I fear is that instead we shall have circumstances where perhaps only 30% of the population will turn out, so only 15% or 16% will vote for the system, and on that basis, we shall have the biggest change in our constitutional history for half a century.