Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill

My Lords, perhaps I might intervene as a supporter of AV. I agree with nearly every word that the noble Lord, Lord Hamilton, said. There is a slight Alice in Wonderland feel about today. I have popped in and out of the Chamber and on many occasions when I came in, I heard the noble Lord, Lord McNally, saying that this was a simple Bill. Every time I hear him say it, I look again at Clause 4—Clause 4 stand part is part of this grouping—and find so much legalistic rigmarole that, despite having many years of experience of parliamentary draftsmen, I find it extremely hard to comprehend. Given the compelling case that has just been made both by my noble friend and by the noble Lord, Lord Hamilton, it is very hard to understand why on earth the Government continue to want to hold the referendum on 5 May. I find that particularly hard to understand of my noble friend Lord McNally—I call him my noble friend because we have been friends for many years. Like me, he is in favour of a yes vote in the AV referendum. The Liberal Democrats, who seem to want this vote to be held on 5 May, are in favour of a yes vote in the referendum, but the one thing that will make it very difficult for proponents of AV to win that vote is to hold it on 5 May. I have heard only one argument with any force that it could be to the advantage of AV campaigners to hold the referendum on 5 May and it is that turnout in Scotland and Wales will be higher on that date because there will be regional elections on the same day and that will help. However, that is conceptually ridiculous. Let us suppose that the Scots would be 10 per cent more likely to vote AV than people in the rest of the country, and let us suppose that, as a result of having the two elections on the same day, the turnout would be 10 per cent higher. If those two extraordinary assumptions were true, it would make a difference to the national vote of something like 0.1 per cent. Any advantage that might be gained from a higher turnover would be absolutely negligible in terms of the outcome of the referendum. However, why look into the crystal ball when you can read the book? We have YouGov polls, so we know what the level of support is in each part of the United Kingdom. Support in Scotland is precisely the same as that in England and more or less the same as that in Wales. Therefore, there is absolutely no reason for a differential turnout to favour those in support of the alternative vote system. However, there is a major reason to suppose that it would be bad news for AV if we had the referendum on 5 May, and it is this. When it comes to the battle over the referendum, supporters of AV have one enormous advantage. Unlike in this House, where most active Members—I freely concede this—are opposed to AV, there is a network of supporters, most of them in the Labour Party or the Liberal Democrat party, who are prepared to work their socks off for a victory for AV on whichever day the referendum is held. They are networking and phone banking and so on. I doubt whether there is a similar organisation of people opposed to AV, although I am sure that a very sophisticated campaign will be run by the nice Mr Elliott who runs the TaxPayers’ Alliance, and I am sure that they have done very well to get him on their side. However, we will cast this huge potential advantage to the wind if we hold the referendum on 5 May. If you think that Liberal Democrats campaigning in a local election are going to be able to turn their attention from supporting their candidates, who are whipping them on, to manning the phone banks for AV, you are mistaken. More powerfully—and I can say this with a great deal more authority—the idea that Labour supporters fighting Liberal Democrats up and down the country, condemning Nick Clegg for the disgraceful abandonment of his election pledge on tuition fees, and trying to eliminate the Liberal Democrats as a party in this country will at the same time on the side go out and hit the phones, saying ““Would you mind voting for AV? It might help our little Lib Dem friends””, is a complete absurdity. The result is that, if the referendum is held on 5 May, we who are in favour of AV—and I do not claim, and never have claimed, that our task is an easy one—will have cast aside our greatest advantage and will have handed a greater chance of victory to those who would block what we are trying to do. I can understand the Conservatives supporting that way forward and I can understand those on my own side who do not share my view about AV supporting that point of view. However, I was greatly cheered to hear the noble Lord, Lord Foulkes—whom I hugely admire and whose performance throughout our debates on this Bill has been so remarkable—cheering and nodding at some of the analytic remarks that I made, even if he would not necessarily support the conclusion to which they were directed. The noble Lord, Lord Strathclyde, too, could share the preference for 5 May. But I have to ask: what is the noble Lord, Lord McNally, up to? Does he not want to see the result for which he—like me—has worked for so many years? I am mystified by the coalition’s stance, purely because of the realpolitik involved; that leaves aside the whole argument that I have developed on other occasions about what I almost call the ““immorality”” of combining different sets of issues, including sub-national Parliaments, Assemblies, local government, a change in the voting system for national elections all on the one day, which is a cruelty to inflict on the willing but sometimes confused electorate, who although willing may be confused by such shenanigans. I beg the noble Lord, Lord McNally to think again and to look at the analytic case both in terms of the result he wants and its merits. I know that as he is a good and clear thinking man, he will conclude, whatever he may say tonight, that the right thing is to abandon 5 May and to have an early but separate referendum so that the British people can concentrate on resolving this issue for the good of the nation.