Government of Wales Bill

My Lords, indeed we do. We have it at that level—I forgot about that in my summary of the matter. We have and have had STV at district council and regional level. I was drawing the distinction that it is undesirable at the parliamentary level. As for having it for the European Parliament, that tempts me to make comments about the nature of the European Parliament, its effectiveness and whether it is ever capable or likely to approach being capable of supporting or maintaining a Government. There is too much to say about that. I was making a point about how STV encourages fights within parties. If you have a multi-Member constituency with, say, five Members and you get 30 to 40 per cent of the vote, or think that you will, you have two quotas. The conventional wisdom is that you run two existing quotas plus one in such a situation, because you cannot make gains if you do not run an extra quota. For those three candidates, who know that two of them will certainly be elected and that one has only a chance of being elected, the most important thing is to be among the two who will certainly be elected. It is easier to persuade existing party members to vote for you rather than for another member of the party, rather than converting persons who are not part of your party’s support to support you. You then get considerable fights within parties. Parties can make some efforts to control that but it is not easy, because the other thing that happens is that the STV gives the elected Member much greater independence vis-à-vis the party itself. There is a benefit to being out of line with the party and to taking an independent line, because you gather publicity as a result. There is a comparative penalty to being a loyal party member. This is bad for political parties and for the health of democracy. Our democracy depends on political parties. We do not elect Parliaments or bodies of independent members. That ceased to happen hundreds of years ago. If you undermine parties, you weaken our democratic process. The system also promotes parochialism. It becomes necessary for people to maintain their base and constantly to cultivate their grass roots. I can understand Liberal Democrats thinking that it is a good idea to do that, but that has impacts on what you do. One criticism that you might make of the Northern Ireland Assembly is that more than 80 per cent of the Members elected are also councillors. You dare not leave council under an STV system. In the Irish Republic, most TDs—I do not know the exact figure—are also councillors. I can hear something being muttered at the end of the Chamber. I shall take an intervention.