Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill

This is the first amendment I have moved on this Bill this year, for those who keep count of our proceedings. I kept clear of amendments relating to Part 2 of the Bill. I will not be long in speaking to this amendment. Neither the Electoral Commission nor anyone else, for that matter, has ever carried out an exercise across the United Kingdom to explain officially the mechanics of voting systems, whatever they may be. In this case, they are the alternative vote as proposed in the Bill and first past the post. The Electoral Commission might decide to explain about the alternative vote and might need to indicate that there are at least three alternative vote systems, none of which is proportional. It might decide that it has to counteract the media referring to the alternative vote inaccurately—as, indeed, we in this House have agreed that the Deputy Prime Minister did when referring to it as a system guaranteeing that MPs would be elected by 50 per cent of the electorate, which of course is not what will happen under AV in the Bill. That simply cannot happen in every case. It is true that I tabled this amendment a long time ago and that a lot of water has gone under the bridge. My noble friend Lord Lipsey has two amendments of substance in this group. My simple view is that it should not be left to the complete discretion of the Electoral Commission as to whether or what information it puts into the public domain. There should be some kind of constraint in the Bill, hence the modesty of my amendment and, indeed, the amendments of substance which my noble friend has tabled. He will go into those in much greater detail than I intend to do. I intend to be brief. As I have said, I wanted to raise the issue about the discretion of the Electoral Commission over this enterprise which, I repeat, no official body has ever undertaken in the United Kingdom. It is fraught with some difficulty and, in some ways, excitement, as the project has never been undertaken. However, it is one where we in Parliament should say that the Bill should have a little more detail, rather than simply leaving it to whatever steps the commission might think are appropriate or inappropriate. I beg to move.