Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill

If I digressed, I apologise to the House and stand rebuked. Specifically on the amendment, its Achilles heel is the one the noble Lord, Lord Campbell-Savours, alighted on—namely, that it gives as an alternative this broad category of a proportional system. Proportional systems vary enormously. Some of them, like the German mixed system, are not so different from our system. They are different but they are not very different. And there is a world of difference between PR on a national list system, as it used to be at one time in Italy and as it is in Israel, and the German system. It is a huge variation, so much so that it would make the question, if it was put in this form in a referendum, completely nonsensical. I do not think one can follow the noble Lord, Lord Campbell-Savours, and say, ““We will have a referendum in which two or three of the outcomes may be definite but if a rather vague outcome is voted for, then we will have another inquiry””. This seems to be a slightly unbalanced and rather strange way of proceeding. The second objection that I have, which is the reason I called it a rather strange amendment, is this device of using AV in order to determine which electoral system we have. It would be extraordinary on something as important as our choice of electoral system, which could have profound effects on the way we run politics in this country, to say that again the result should be determined by the second preferences of the system that people least wanted. The arguments that I put forward against AV seem to apply equally strongly to a referendum. To revert to the point I made earlier, I do not think one could leave PR as a choice just defined as PR. If one tried to answer that, as the noble Lord, Lord Campbell-Savours, was suggesting, by putting the supplementary vote system, or STV, or any of the many different systems of PR, that would make the whole referendum meaningless. So I am afraid that, although the noble Lord, Lord Skidelsky, made a very interesting speech, I think this is a completely unworkable amendment and should be rejected.