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

We have heard this afternoon a lot of party political advantage masquerading as high principle, but nobody has done it better than the right hon. Member for Suffolk, Coastal (Mr. Gummer). I do not buy the argument that the public are not interested in how we, as Members, are elected to this place. I think that, at the next general election, there will be two key questions. The first will be on the trust that the public have in us, as Members, and in the House and Parliament as institutions. Secondly, they will be interested in accountability—how they, as the public, can make Members of Parliament, especially those in safe seats, more accountable to the electorate. That is why the public are pressing for things such as primaries to select candidates, the recall of Members, greater transparency through the publication of expenses and Members' commercial interests. I believe that the alternative vote increases accountability, because it encourages Members of Parliament and candidates to listen to, and seek to gain second preference votes from, supporters of other parties. For a long time—more than 20 years—I have been a member of a Labour campaign for electoral reform, and I used to argue for proportional representation, but I have to say that I have been won over to the case for the alternative vote, principally because it preserves the constituency link, which I believe is a key issue as far as accountability is concerned. Over the past decade and more, we have introduced non-first-past-the-post voting systems for a number of institutions, including the additional Member system for the Scottish and Welsh Parliaments. Twenty years ago, I would have favoured that system, but I do not think that it has worked particularly well because it has broken the constituency link and encourages bickering between parties. For example, there might be two MSPs from different parties claiming different mandates from the same group of people. The party list system, which the House approved for the European Parliament, like STV, which the Liberal Democrats support, uses multi-Member constituencies that are so big that they break the link between the constituent and the Member of Parliament, leave the public unclear about who represents them and, as we saw at the last election, allow extremists, such as the British National party, to be elected when they have nothing like the support of a majority of members of the public. The London Mayor—I say this nervously, with my right hon. Friend the Member for Holborn and St. Pancras (Frank Dobson) sitting behind me—is elected by a modified form of the alternative vote. That system has worked quite well. Over three elections, we have had three changes. We had an independent Labour Mayor elected, a Labour Mayor elected and a Conservative Mayor elected. That shows that the alternative vote does not lock in an unfair advantage to the left or the right, or to the two largest parties at the expense of others. Opponents of electoral reform ask, ““Why bring the proposals forward now? What has changed?”” Three things have changed. First, there is greater public mistrust in the system than ever before. Secondly, there has been a fragmentation of the vote. In 1951, 582 MPs—94 per cent. of the total—won with an absolute majority, with more than 50 per cent. of the votes in their constituencies. By 1979, when Margaret Thatcher came to power, the proportion was down to 68 per cent. By 1997, in Blair's landslide, the figure was down to 53 per cent., and at the last election it was down to 34 per cent. Barely one third of the Members of this House enjoy the support of a majority of their voters, let alone a majority of those living and entitled to vote in their constituencies. The first-past-the-post system works fairly well in a two-party race and reasonably fairly in a broadly two-party system, but the United Kingdom no longer has a two-party system. We have three broadly left-of-centre parties: the Labour party, the Liberal Democrats and the Green party. In addition, we have two broadly right-of-centre parties—the Tories and the UK Independence party—and some other parties too, which are represented in the Chamber this evening. In York in 1987, which was the first time I stood, there were four candidates. In the last election there were eight candidates. There has been a fragmentation of the political parties, too. In 1987, I lost the election by 147 votes. The Green party took 637 votes. The Liberal Democrats, who had a particularly strong candidate—a Social Democratic party candidate, as he was in those days—in the form of the person who is now the hon. Member for Twickenham (Dr. Cable), took 9,898 votes. I would not be human if I did not wonder whether I might just have scraped ahead if those votes had been redistributable to other candidates. The same question occurs to Conservatives who lose by a whisker because their vote is split by UKIP or some other right-of-centre party. In a constituency where 40 per cent. of the voters vote for candidate A and 40.1 per cent. vote for candidate B, should not the remaining 20 per cent. of the electorate have a say over whether A or B should represent them? [Hon. Members: ““No.””] We are hearing the self-interest now. Under first past the post, everyone in that 20 per cent. is disenfranchised. They have no say one way or the other between the two leading candidates. The alternative vote would enfranchise them. As the hon. Member for Foyle (Mark Durkan) argued so eloquently, the public have the right to decide whether they want to make a change. We should put our trust in the public and have a referendum on the issue.