Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill

I am very pleased to follow the noble Lord, Lord Hamilton, who was introduced into this House on the very same day as me. One of his introducers was the noble Baroness, Lady Thatcher, the former Prime Minister. She and I had an interesting conversation that day. I doubt she would be very enthusiastic about what we are doing today and the noble Lord, Lord Hamilton—I was going to call him ““Archie””—represents her. It is bizarre, is it not? This whole thing is bizarre. All these debates are unbelievable. This Clegg project—because that is what it is—is being pushed through. We know that all the Tories—all the Conservatives whom I know—do not believe in the alternative vote. They are nodding. I have yet to come across one who thinks that it is the right way for the people of Britain to vote in a referendum. Yet, they went through the Lobby just a few moments ago and will go through the Lobby again and again—today, next Monday and next Wednesday—pushing through something that they manifestly do not believe in. Then there are the Liberal Democrats. They do not really believe in the alternative vote; they want STV. Some of them, of course, see this as a Trojan horse—as a thin end of the wedge. The next Bill that will come up will be to move towards single transferable vote or something similar. However, no less a person than the Deputy Prime Minister described the alternative vote as ““a miserable little compromise””. Imagine campaigning and people listening to the Churchillian tones over the loudspeaker: ““Turn out and vote for our miserable little compromise!”” That is why my noble friend Lord Rooker is right about the turnout. I cannot see that there will be any great enthusiasm. I will move an amendment later about the date, which is another very worrying issue. So the Tories do not really support it. The Liberal Democrats are not really in favour of the alternative vote. Apart from my noble friend Lord Lipsey, who made an interesting speech at Second Reading in favour of it, there are not many people on this side who support it. Most of my colleagues are in favour of first past the post. We have heard my noble friend Lord Grocott expand on this eloquently—I was going to say ad infinitum… ad nauseam—on so many occasions. I am right behind him. There are some on this side who, I must admit, favour proportional representation but not alternative vote. We have had that discussion within the party. So what are we doing? We have this Clegg project: this Bill must be pushed through. It has gone through the House of Commons without amendment. Now it must be pushed through the House of Lords without amendment using the coalition’s built-in majority. If they do not have the majority, they pack in more Peers to ensure that it goes through. So, by the next election, on 5 May, we will vote for a system that will help the Liberal Democrats a little bit on new boundaries, as we heard earlier, but the proposal will not be considered properly or in the democratic way that we have looked at boundary changes in the past; no one really wants that —certainly none of the Conservatives want that, even though they will have pushed it through. It seems outrageous and bizarre that we are moving through with this. As a number of noble Lords have said, this is a major constitutional change. In my 26 years in the House of Commons—and there are people here who I respect on the other side, like the noble Lord, Lord Howard, who spent years in the Commons as well—I never saw even the noble Baroness, Lady Thatcher, push through a constitutional change like this in such a fashion. It never seemed to happen and yet she was no shrinking violet, as we know. My noble friend Lord Rooker illustrated much more eloquently than I could the kind of result that might come out. I think it was the noble Lord, Lord Alton, in an excellent speech at Second Reading, who pointed out that, if the turnout is relatively low—we will come to that threshold later—a handful could be voting in favour and a slightly smaller handful voting against. However, because there is no threshold and it will have been pushed through on the votes of the built-in majority, it will go through. Members opposite should think about what they do. Cross Benchers should think about what they do. This is a major constitutional change. Do not vote for something that is so major that you will regret it when you wake up tomorrow morning.