Constitutional Reform and Governance Bill (Money) (No. 3)

Last week, Lord Turnbull, who knows the Prime Minister particularly well, having served as his permanent secretary at the Treasury for four years, delivered his verdict on the Personal Care at Home Bill. He said in the other place that it was"““a classic Gordon Brown dividing line. It is not drawn on merits but has been chosen to set a trap for the Opposition””.—[Official Report, House of Lords, 1 February 2010; Vol. 717, c. 67.]" That was a devastating indictment of the Prime Minister from a former Cabinet Secretary who did not choose those words lightly. Exactly the same verdict applies to the measure before us this evening. At Prime Minister's questions last week, my right hon. Friend the Leader of the Opposition brilliantly exposed the cynicism of the Prime Minister's deathbed conversion to electoral reform. According to the previous Prime Minister, whenever a previous attempt was made when he was in office to reach agreement with the Liberal Democrats in order to introduce electoral reform, the present Prime Minister was what Mr. Blair described as the ““primary block””. Later last week, the Prime Minister told the Liaison Committee that it was not possible to introduce reform in 1998 because there was no consensus, but the reason why there was no consensus at that time was that the Prime Minister himself blocked it. No one should be under any misapprehension about the Prime Minister's motives in bringing forward this measure today. As Lord Turnbull said, it has nothing to do with the ““merits”” of the case as its only purpose is to ““set a trap”” for the Opposition. Let me turn to the merits. When it comes to electoral systems, a clear choice is available. On the one hand, we can choose a system that conforms to some abstract notion of ““fairness””—a concept that should perhaps be placed in inverted commas in this context, because of its many disadvantages. On the other hand, we can choose a system that is likely to deliver effective government provided by a single majority party. We cannot have both and we cannot have perfection. It is possible to have a system that is perfectly proportional—a system that gives parties a proportion of seats in Parliament that corresponds exactly to the proportion of votes that they obtained at the preceding election. Thirty per cent. of the votes will give a party 30 per cent. of the seats; 5 per cent. of the votes will give it 5 per cent. of the seats, and so on. That is the system that is closest to the abstract notion of fairness that I described earlier, and it is the system that corresponds most closely to the needs of proportionality, which the hon. Member for Cambridge (David Howarth) has said is at the heart of the debate. Here are some of the disadvantages of that system. First, it is completely inconsistent with any kind of constituency link—it is impossible to combine a constituency link with perfect proportional representation. Secondly, every Member elected under such a system must be elected on the basis of a party nomination, so the influence of the party at the expense of the individual Member of Parliament is immeasurably increased. That is not a consequence that would necessarily gain unanimous or even majority support in the House of Commons or beyond. Thirdly, when such a system is in force, it tends to give wholly disproportionate influence to small, often extremist parties. As the hon. Member for Birmingham, Sparkbrook and Small Heath (Mr. Godsiff) has pointed out, the state of Israel has exactly that system. Its Government, throughout their existence, have been bedevilled by the influence of small and extremist parties, and I do not think it an example that we should follow.