Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill

The noble Lord, Lord Rooker, has a powerful point, which I shall attempt to put into two sentences. The noble Lord, Lord McAvoy, is not right; this is not complicated. It may be complicated for the people who count the votes—a point which I expect the Minister to comment on—but it is not complicated for the voter. It is the same as it would have been under the system put forward by the Government—you just put your preferences. The noble Lord said that when the votes are counted they will be given a weighting. This goes to the heart of what is wrong with AV. It is completely wrong that the winner of an election may be determined—and he used the quote from Churchill that I used—by the least worthwhile votes of the least worthwhile candidate. They may well be votes for the BNP or for an extremist party, but it is wrong that in some cases the outcome should be determined by the second preferences of the bottom candidate. The system put forward by the noble Lord, Lord Rooker, for addressing this by weighting the votes according to where they come on the list seems a logical answer. Whether it would be workable, I do not know—no doubt we will be told that it would be too complicated for the counting officer, and that may be so—but it illustrates what is so grotesque and ridiculous about the system that is put forward.