Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill

Yes it was. First past the post was mentioned in both referendums even though when people were asked in the first referendum, ““Do you want to change from first past the post? Yes or no?””, the yes vote won. They then chose what I call, in shorthand, the additional member system as the preferred option from the family. A year later, there was a run-off between a detailed additional member system and the status quo, the first past the post. You could not complain if you were a first past the poster that you did not get a fair crack of the whip in New Zealand, because there were two opportunities. That is what cemented the change, because on two occasions first past the post lost. It lost on the indicative referendum to start with, when the choice came; and then it lost on the binding referendum. So, on the second referendum, first past the post was back. It was incredibly sophisticated, modern and democratic, and this was 1992-93. The system worked, and it is one on which I wanted to model this kind of operation. They did it and it works, so there is somewhere in the world that we can point to—somewhere that is English-speaking, first past the post, democratic. We are scratching around because no one can find a place where the type of alternative vote proposed in the Bill actually works in reality. I was going to use Canada as an example, but it was not a national election when they used it there, when it all went dramatically wrong for lots of people. It was always in the provinces. If you google Canada and the alternative vote you will come up with a textbook of how to smash the alternative vote. It was not a national election, however, so I am not going to use it. It was a two-stage question and a two-stage referendum, but my amendments do not cover the second stage. I just wanted to deploy the case and give at least a positive push—or a nudge, in the language—to the effect that it can work, because it did work and there is a classic example for it. There are a couple of points I did not speak on in the last debate—I showed enormous restraint, as I said to the Leader of the House—because I have got nothing new to add to what I am not going to say now. One of the reasons that I never joined the Electoral Reform Society after I became a convert just over 20 years ago was this issue about STV. That is why I never joined. I have worked very happily with lots of people on joint platforms and would be happy to do so again, but I will never join because it has this thing whereby if you join, people will say, ““Oh, he is in favour of STV””. It is the one system I do not like because it forces party people to fight against each other. I do not think that is a clever system. It was also dissected by the Plant commission, which I will come to in a moment, which was chaired by my noble friend Lord Plant back in the 1990s. On AV, you have to ask yourself what you are trying to do. Are you trying to elect the most popular person for a constituency and then as a by-product get a popular Government, because it is slightly more proportionate? The question that should be asked on this referendum is: do you want a majoritarian system or a proportional system? That is the question to ask. First past the post and AV are both majoritarian systems; there is no argument about that. They are not remotely proportional, so they are in the majoritarian family. But if you want to elect the most popular person, AV will not do that. The noble Lord, Lord Lamont, raised an issue which I have covered later in Amendment 52, so I will not go into it in detail now, about what you do with those preferences for the bottom candidates. It is unfair; there is no question about that. The sixth candidate gets chucked out. That second preference is worth exactly the same as the first vote for the first candidate or the second preference for the second candidate. It is very unfair that someone’s vote should have that value. Amendment 52 gets us round that. But there is not a system that will deliver the most popular candidate. The noble Lord, Lord Strathclyde, gave us a seminar on the last election. I want to read a bit from page 66 of the Plant report, which was a long time ago, about how to get the most popular person elected. You certainly cannot do it by ranking and kicking people out; that does not work. For example, as I tried to explain in a previous debate, the supporters of the first three candidates in a list might all hate each other equally, but each of the supporters of the first three would vote for the fourth. That is what is known as the Condorcet winner—which is defined as the option that beats every other in an exhaustive series of pair-wise contests. I raised this with some academics upstairs and they gave me a good example of someone who would have been a Condorcet winner, although it did not happen because of the system that was used. Noble Lords will remember the French election when Chirac ran up against Le Pen and Jospin came third. Jospin was the Condorcet winner because, in a run-off with Chirac, he would have beaten Chirac and in a run off with Le Pen, he would have beaten Le Pen, but because he was third he got knocked out. He would have been the Condorcet winner in that case, but he was not because of the way the system worked with the two-round ballot, so the most popular person did not win. That is a good example from recent history and we all know what happened in the French election. The alternative vote system will not give you the most popular candidate. I did not want to interrupt the noble Lord, Lord Skidelsky, earlier—that would be far beyond my pay grade—but he repeated the canard about the winner securing 50 per cent plus of the votes. It is not true; it cannot happen under the system in this Bill. In order for it to happen every voter would have to use every single preference on the ballot paper and that will not happen because of what I said last week. I can guarantee that some Liberal Democrat candidates will go around the country saying to their supporters, ““Don’t vote and use your second preference because they will work out what might happen if that second preference all goes wrong””. People will not be encouraged to use all their preferences. There are some problems with the system. I digress because I wanted to point out that every system has its defects; nothing is perfect. You can make an electoral system do exactly what you want it to do. You can put constraints on turnout; you can put constraints on the additional Member system; and you could say to a party, ““You cannot have a top-up candidate unless you have won at least one constituency””. I was accused of being antidemocratic when I said that. You do not need a percentage turnout. If you cannot win a constituency, you are not entitled to a top-up. They said, ““All that is bad for the Greens””. I said, ““Let them go and win a seat””, and they have done that now, so they would qualify. You can do all those things; it is all techie. I refuse to let my eyes glaze over, but when I am faced with the situation presented in this Bill, it makes me so angry because, at the end of the day, I will have to vote for first past the post, which really sticks in my throat. I am being forced to vote for first past the post because of what is in the Bill: the preference system, the turnout and all the issues which we discussed last week on which we can go into detail when we come to other amendments. Those matters make the situation more perverse and worse than the present system. That is a change I am not prepared to vote for. I am not prepared to vote for something on the basis of, ““Vote for this and if we get it right at the next election, we will come back and get a bit of PR, AV+””. Give me AV+ and I will vote for it. The noble Lord, Lord McNally, would vote for AV+ but he cannot get the person sitting next to him in the Cabinet to support him. That is a bit like the Labour Cabinet. We were presented with exactly the same in the Bill that came to the House in March. People were not asked if they wanted to change. It was put together by a Cabinet, most of whose members did not want change at any price; they just stuffed AV in and thought they could get away with it because it is so close to first past the post. There were the same problems and I made the same speech when sitting on the Bench opposite. I am annoyed because, at the end of the day, unless there is a major change to the Bill, I will have to vote for first past the post, which I do not think is very good. Also I think people will be misled during the referendum. Perhaps I can give an example: somewhere in the world it worked in a mature democracy and I think it could work here if we asked the people. I wish we were brave enough to do that. I realise this was all cobbled together in a rush in the six days after the election. I understand that the pressures to get a deal were enormous. I will support the fixed-term Parliament, although I think four years is better than five but I will settle for five years. I accept that the only deal in town was the deal I am looking at now, but that means we should be mature enough to say, ““Look, if there is something intrinsically wrong with the system, let us put the case to the people and ask them if they want a change””. Think of the mandate you would have from that Front Bench, if you could persuade people that, yes, there is demand for a change. The first-past-the-posters would be run out of town and we could get to work on getting a change that people would accept and it might last for the 132 years that the noble Lord, Lord Rennard, keeps saying that first past the post has lasted for. I freely admit that you can all go home because I do not intend to push any of this to a vote, but I wanted to put it on the record that there is an alternative way of doing this. I beg to move.