Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill

My Lords, I very much support the noble Lord, Lord Foulkes, on this amendment. I have always taken the view that we should be working overtime to ensure that the referendum vote on the alternate vote system is not held on the same day as the local elections. I have never really understood that anybody can argue that the two issues, as the noble Lord has pointed out, would be completely confused. One thing that we have established on the debate that we have had on the alternate vote is that it is not just a simple change in how we carry out voting. It is incredibly complicated, and we need an extensive debate to clarify these issues. I am not saying that the British electorate are made up of people who are so extraordinarily thick that they do not understand. Let us face it—many of us in this House have been on a seriously steep learning curve as to what the alternate vote is about. When I came here, I thought that there was only one alternate vote; I find that in fact there are four different variations of the alternate vote. It is extremely complicated and a very major change in our constitution. It is a serious change in how we carry out our elections, and not something that should just be thrown in as a referendum at the same time as local elections. It is something that the country should debate and consider very seriously, because it will in perpetuity change how we hold elections in this country and change, also, the outcome of these elections. I had great discussion with my noble friend Lord Tyler, who claimed rather interestingly that if we had the alternate vote, it would make what he described as a balanced Parliament—which I have always more pejoratively described as a hung Parliament—less likely. That is a very profound statement for my noble friend to have made, because he is actually saying that the Liberal Democrats are advocating an electoral system that will disadvantage them in general elections. That shows an altruism that I did not think existed in the Liberal Democrats. It has really opened my eyes. It has also changed where I come from, because the reason why I am trying to delay the alternate vote referendum is because I want to see the alternate vote soundly defeated. On the other hand, if the alternative vote system will make it less likely that we will end up with coalition Governments, I should be supporting it. I have a problem with this. I saw some statistics that I am now having checked. They show that if we re-ran the last election on the alternative vote system, the Conservatives, instead of getting 305 seats in the House of Commons, would get 280-something, and Labour and the Liberal Democrats would get more. We have been talking about a hung parliament; it would have been more hung under the alternative vote than it turned out. These issues are profound. We must have a debate in the country about whether we want to system that produces more coalition Governments. We see today exactly what the problems of coalition Governments are. The country votes on the manifestos of two different parties and ends up with a manifesto that nobody has voted for, which has been cobbled together, albeit not in a smoke-filled room, because you do not get Liberal Democrats in smoke-filled rooms any more. We do not know quite what the negotiations were. I do not know what the red lines of each party were: what were the things they stuck on and what they were prepared happily to give away. Perhaps historians will be able to find this out. In the mean time, have ended up with a coalition agreement—effectively a government manifesto—for which absolutely nobody has voted. We must have the debate in the country. I do not know how we will have it if at the same time we are trying to fight local elections. As the noble Lord, Lord Foulkes, pointed out, we will be battling for our candidates to defeat the candidates of the other parties. How then will we say, ““Hold on, there is another very important—perhaps even more important—issue on which you have to vote on 5 May””? I argue that this issue is more important and much more complicated; it will change permanently the constitution of the country if we go for an alternative vote. However, at the same time we are mixing it up with the local authority elections. I do not see how this can be done. If anybody is interested in seeing this issue properly debated in the country, they should be talking about having the referendum on a separate day. I am not saying that it should be delayed interminably; I would be quite happy for it to be held in June, a month after the local elections. However, it should be held on a separate day so that we will have the opportunity to debate the issues and for everybody in the country to clarify in their minds what is at stake, which is fundamental. Having talked to many noble friends on the Conservative Benches, I know that they share many of my concerns about this. I hope that they will think about what they are voting for, because this is a fundamental change that is not to the advantage of our party—it is only to the advantage of people who believe that, de facto, coalition Governments are a good idea. The fact that we are in a coalition Government is all to do with necessity. We should not change the constitution of this country to make coalition Governments more likely for the indefinite future. That is my concern, and I am very pleased to support the amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Foulkes.