Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill

My Lords, I reassure noble Lords that it is not my intention to divide the House at this hour, but my intention may well be to divide the House on Report on this amendment. It simply tweaks the supplementary vote system whereby, instead of using two Xs, it requires the use of numbering of first and second preferences on the ballot paper. I have tabled it as a probing amendment to establish whether the Government accept that my wording meets the high standards of legislative language that the law would require if the Bill were passed with those words included within it. A fair criticism of my amendment is that it reflects my unyielding persistence in belief in, and pursuit of, a credible electoral system as an alternative to first past the post. That is true, because I remain deeply concerned about the system which the Government have used, the Queensland AV system—the optional multipreference voting system. The advantage of this proposal is that while it might look like the supplementary vote, it is not a classic supplementary vote. You can call it the alternative vote. It gets around the language references to AV already embodied in the Bill. For those who have not been present during the course of our many references to SV and to how the system would work, for ease of reference, I refer them to col. 194 of House of Lords Hansard of 8 December. I would be ill-advised at this time of the evening once again to set out the case for my proposed system. However, I would refer the House to the contributions of Mr Christopher Chope, the Member for, I think, Chichester or Chislehurst.