Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill

A pre-legislative referendum, rather than the post-legislative referendum that is proposed in the Bill. The ordinary voter being faced with the clips that will be shown during the referendum campaign of the Deputy Prime Minister describing AV as ““a miserable little compromise””, while at the same time he is promoting the Bill, will do nothing to restore trust in Parliament. If trust in Parliament is to mean anything, it must mean trusting the voters. The noble Earl spoke eloquently in favour of giving the voters a choice. I would prefer to have the status quo; first past the post seems to work perfectly well. If you are going to open up the issue of changing the voting system and consult the people, however, it seems strange to choose one system and not allow the voters to express a view on it. I look forward to amendments to the question in the referendum that will enable the inclusion of STV. The Deputy Prime Minister, as part of this exercise in increasing trust and the accountability of the Executive, set up the Political and Constitutional Reform Select Committee. It was specifically set up to look at the work of the Deputy Prime Minister in respect of the constitutional reforms. Its first report repudiates the Bill and the process by which it is being carried out. How does that help to restore trust in Parliament? The coalition Government have resolutely refused to reduce the size of the Executive in line with the proposed reductions in the size of the House of Commons. I have put down a Written Question, which I have not had an Answer to, asking how many people are now members of the Government or Parliamentary Private Secretaries, and what the size of the payroll is. I have the feeling that it has gone up substantially. That is not increasing the authority and standing of Parliament. In a number of speeches today, people have made the point that it seems bizarre that we have Members of this House sitting in the Gallery that is meant for the public because there are not enough seats to accommodate us, but we are increasing the size of this House while at the same time justifying a reduction in the size of the House of Commons on the grounds of expenditure. There is another thing: it was my party’s policy to reduce the size of the Scottish Parliament. That has 129 Members. It is hard to believe that you need 129 Members of the Scottish Parliament if you are proceeding on the basis of having 55 Members at Westminster. The public will find it difficult to understand why, having previously been in favour of reducing the size of the Scottish Parliament, we now want to keep the Scottish Parliament at its present size while reducing the size of Westminster. I am conscious of the time. It has been suggested that this is all being done for political advantage. I have a cautionary tale. The Members opposite may not recognise this view of events. I remember the noble Lord, Lord Robertson, who I am sorry is not in his place, telling me that devolution would kill nationalism stone dead. I remember people believing that, if they had a Scottish Parliament, Labour would dominate Scotland’s politics for ever. It did not quite work out that way. Constitutional change to secure party advantage seldom does. The unexpected has a habit of happening. On AV itself, I thought that the 1997 defeat for us was an absolutely catastrophic rout. However, the information I have seen suggests that if we had had AV it would have been even worse. AV tends to reinforce the big shifts of the kind that have taken place. We should be very careful about making huge changes to a system that works perfectly well. It is true that there are anomalies in the system. However, the Bill has not been properly discussed in the country. It is the product of a political deal and that is no basis on which to amend the constitution of our country.