Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill

There you are. A confession—good for the soul. It is an awful system, but those of you who live in England have first past the post for elections to the House of Commons and first past the post for local government. You know where you are and you know the system. People understand it. It is tried, tested and trusted. We in Scotland suffer a wild plethora of electoral systems. We have an electoral system, that we share, for the European elections—the list system where there is no choice whatever. It is a great pity that we accepted that. Try to name your MEP. We were talking about going down the streets of Stockport earlier when my noble friend Lord Snape was speaking. Go down the street and ask people who is their MEP. They do not know who they are as they do not relate to local people or have the same kind of contact, accountability or responsibility of other elected Members. Let us turn to the Scottish Parliament. The noble Lord, Lord Lamont—I am pronouncing his name properly for a change—said that he liked the German system. The system for the Scottish Parliament elections is akin to the German electoral system. I warned him and others against the alternative member system. When he comes back up to Scotland, as I know he does from time to time, he will see a bastard of a system, if noble Lords will excuse the phrase. We have 73 constituencies elected by first past the post in Scotland. We used to have 72 constituencies. Why are there 73? It is because Orkney and Shetland have a constituency each—another concession to the Liberals that was a dreadful mistake. The good bit is that 73 are elected by first past the post. However, on the basis of the regional vote, 56 members—seven members in each of eight constituencies—are added members according to the vote of each party in each constituency, which produces the most unexpected results. In 2007, in Lothian, I was unexpectedly elected by that very strange system. It produces coalitions, the first of which we had with the Liberal Democrats, in which we conceded—I think foolishly—single transferrable votes.