Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill

My Lords, like most of your Lordships I do not go to bed dreaming of the alternative vote. In fact, at this hour and having got up today at 6 am to come here I have rather forgotten what going to bed is like at all. Like the noble Lord, Lord Deben, I am a recent entrant to this House. Unlike him, I was never a Member in another place. I do not find the debates we have had on this Bill, particularly today’s debate, in any way calculated to bring this House into disrepute. It has been a thoughtful, if somewhat protracted debate. Whether the Faustian compact which the parties opposite have entered into might bring politics into disrepute is of course another matter. One thing that surprised me today—as it has on previous occasions—is the remarkable claim that this Bill is somehow the greatest constitutional Bill ever brought since the Great Reform Act of 1832, which we celebrate in Newcastle by having a statue to Earl Grey who promoted that remarkable piece of legislation. Surely it is not to be compared with the extension of the franchise, first of all to all male voters and then eventually to all women voters, let alone the Parliament Act of 1911 which the noble Lord, Lord Strathclyde, expatiated on with some passion during a previous debate. Nevertheless, we are where we are and we certainly still have much to discuss. I could not possibly compete with my noble friend Lord Campbell-Savours and his mastery of the electoral consequences of a variety of systems, nor could I imagine acquiring the extensive knowledge that his research has produced. I would however suggest that he slightly errs in saying that Liberals and Liberal Democrats have opposed AV. In fact, 80 years ago this very month an agreement was reached between the then minority Labour Government and the Lloyd George Liberals to bring forward proposals for an alternative vote. I think they were overtaken by rather more dramatic events even than we have experienced recently within a few months of that date. It may have been a different system but it was AV. The noble Lord, Lord Foulkes, who has spoken about theoretical elections among Members on these Benches, will know as I do that the Labour Party has most of its elections conducted on the alternative vote system. Indeed, the use of that system deprived me of the opportunity of joining the noble Lord, Lord Deben, in another place some 35 years ago. I maintained the same vote in three ballots for a selection in Newcastle East, whereas the successful candidate eventually, one Michael Thomas who will be known and remembered fondly by some on the Benches opposite, succeeded in garnering the votes of the unsuccessful candidates. I do not complain about that. In fact, I remain in support of the alternative vote. I do that after 51 years of engagement in elections. I have been a candidate in council elections 16 times— 15 times successfully and once unsuccessfully in a parliamentary election. I have been an instructing solicitor in public inquiries into boundaries and I have given evidence at public inquiries into boundaries—an opportunity which will of course be denied me in future if the Bill goes through in its present form. It will be denied not only to me, which is hardly relevant, but to many other people as well. Nevertheless, I support the principle of the alternative vote. However, we come to the method. Under my amendment, we are back to the business of thresholds, which we discussed in another context earlier. Reference has been made by the noble Lord, Lord Lamont, and others, today and previously, to Churchill’s dictum. Others more recently have also pronounced their concern that votes for very fringe-party candidates may then be redistributed. I heard David Blunkett, for example, expressing that concern on the radio, and others have made that point. The amendment tries to minimise that effect. It points to a threshold only above which votes would be redistributed and votes for candidates receiving very small percentages of the vote would not be redistributed. That seems to be a simpler way of dealing with matters. It is comparable to the position of the deposit in parliamentary elections and is preferable, if I may say so, to the amendment of my noble friend Lord Rooker, because, on his formulation, in a three-way marginal such as Oldham, the votes, as it turned out at the last election, are split almost exactly three ways. On the formulation of my noble friend, someone who is only 2,000 votes behind the successful candidate, but very close in percentage terms to achieving a third of the votes, would have had their votes transferred, with only one third being valid, despite their votes having been very close to the candidate with the highest number of votes. That does not seem to be a sensible approach. My amendment would in this case not have affected the outcome as between those three candidates, but it is a way of meeting at least some of the objections to the proposition that Monster Raving Loony Party candidates, or the BNP or whatever, might unduly influence the outcome of an election, having achieved only a small percentage of the vote. That is a way of improving the AV system. It is simpler for the electorate, it is simpler also in terms of the count and does not do any violence to the principle of the alternative vote. I beg to move.