UK Parliament / Open data

Elections Bill

My Lords, this is a particularly difficult issue for me. I strongly support the deletion of Clause 11; it is no more than an attempt to abolish an electoral system that has stood the test of time so as to secure an electoral advantage for the Conservatives. The Government are effectively seeking to corrupt a system that is fair and, in the absence of full proportional representation, more proportionally reflects the opinion of the wider electorate.

The Conservatives have always opposed the supplementary vote system since its birth as it challenges the Conservative bias built into the first past the post electoral system—nothing more and nothing less than that. They have opposed it for over 20 years. I know, because I designed it, researched it, named it, wrote the original paper advocating it, gave evidence to the Plant commission advising its introduction, and saw it through to its introduction by the Labour Government. I brought in Professor Patrick Dunleavy from the London School of Economics—a world-renowned academic known for his independence of mind—to approve it as it developed. At every stage, to validate it, we did thousands of runs under different scenarios on a computer in the House of Commons Library when I was an MP. We spent 12 months working on it; Patrick Dunleavy gave it the academic approval and credibility that I lacked.

The driver behind all the work was that any system that totally ignores the centre vote in British politics, essentially a Liberal Democrat vote, will inevitably favour the minority right. First past the post helps in the election of Conservative Governments. If the Conservatives thought for one moment that there was some electoral advantage in AV, SV, AMS, STV or any form of this system, I believe they would support reform of the electoral system.

There was a very interesting article in a recent issue of Prospect magazine on mayoral elections by Stephen Fisher, associate professor in political sociology at Trinity College, Oxford. He carried out research into the use of the supplementary vote. He noted first that 41% of the people in England now live in areas where SV is now in use for one election or another.

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He also found that Conservatives suffer under systems where second preferences influence results: they rarely pick up more second-preference transfer votes than their rivals. As he put it in the article,

“Conservatives were typically trounced on transfers.”

The response to all that from Mr Rees-Mogg, the Member of Parliament, was characteristically disingenuous, when he stated that

“first-past-the-post is better for democracy because the most popular candidate wins.”

Tell that to the people of Inverness, who, in 1974, elected an MP on 32% of the vote. Even the Liberals, who were the winners, were discreetly embarrassed by that result, although to be fair, they went on to win substantial majorities in subsequent elections in other Scottish seats.

Stephen Fisher’s succinct response to all this is more honest, when he states:

“What is clear … is that unless a lot changes in the structure of party preferences, a switch from the supplementary vote to first-past-the-post would benefit Conservative candidates in England and Wales.”

Therein lies the truth. The whole supplementary vote reform agenda is being driven by political advantage to the Conservatives. I hope that the next Labour or coalition Government have the courage to reverse this act of gerrymander and corruption of the electoral system.

I see no merit in arguing the merits of the system in today’s debate. They are well documented, and many researchers have carried out a lot of work over the last 20-odd years on the system as it has developed. However, I will say a few words about the Government’s preliminary response at Second Reading, and I call in aid the work of two academics, Professor Alan Renwick of University College London, and researcher Alejandro Castillo-Powell, both of whom have considerable reputations in this area. In a paper published by the Constitution Unit, they challenged every assertion made by the Government on the efficacy of the system.

The Minister, who is in his place today and who will answer this debate, set out a very carefully drafted critique at Second Reading, which I will quote. I presume that it was written for him—he probably did not do a lot of work to establish to what extent it was a correct interpretation of what is happening. He said:

“The Electoral Commission added that the rejection rate in May 2021 was 0.8% for local council elections; for police and crime commissioners, it was 2.7%; and it was 4.3% for the Mayor of London. In the 2021 London mayoral elections, conducted by supplementary vote, almost 5% of the total votes in the first round were rejected—114,000 ballots. In the second preference, 265,000 votes were invalidated. That is more votes than were validly transferred to the leading two candidates”.—[Official Report, 23/2/22; col. 315.]

The response of the academics to all this has been very carefully laid out. How do they respond? Their view is this:

“The most detailed explanation for the change given so far appeared in a press release”—

from Ministers—

“which gave five arguments for the switch: (1) SV increases the number of spoilt ballots; (2) it allows ‘loser’ candidates to win; (3) FPTP improves accountability by ‘making it easier for voters to express a clear choice’; (4) FPTP ‘is the world’s most widely used electoral system’; and (5) SV is ‘an anomaly’ and ‘out of step with other elections in England’.”

Let me take those one by one.

Does a supplementary vote lead to more spoilt ballots? We admit that elections using SV in the UK have typically high numbers of spoilt ballot papers, compared with those using first past the post. The response from the academics who have researched this in detail is that SV showing higher rates of rejected ballots does not mean that SV itself is necessarily the culprit.

The jump in such ballots in this year’s London mayoral elections points to another factor: ballot paper design—an issue I was always on about. The Electoral Commission notes the use in that contest of a new untested design, split over two columns because of the large number of candidates, which voters described as being confusing and complex. Poor design similarly led to more spoiled ballots in the 2007 Scottish local and parliamentary elections. Another factor may be the deliberate spoiling of ballot papers. The Electoral Commission noted anecdotal evidence of this in the 2012 PCC elections.

I have argued since day one, right back to the days of the Labour Government, that there were problems with the design of ballot papers. I put up an alternative model. The academics supported my view of the simpler model, but it was decided to proceed on the basis of the ballot paper that was subsequently approved. SV elections see more spoiled ballots than FPTP elections, but improved ballot paper design and clearer guidance for voters would ameliorate the problem.

Does the supplementary vote allow loser candidates to win? This is the other accusation that was made. The Government’s second argument is that under SV loser candidates can win on second preferences, but that argument is circular. Such candidates are losers only under the rules of first past the post. Take this year’s north Wales PCC election. On first preferences, the Conservative candidate won 32% of the votes, the Labour candidate won 29% and the Plaid Cymru candidate won 28%. With such numbers it is quite possible that most voters preferred either the Labour or Plaid Cymru candidate over the Conservative. The latter was not the self-evident winner. In fact, under SV many Plaid Cymru voters expressed a second preference and two-thirds of them chose the Labour candidate, giving them the victory. It is not obvious why that was wrong.

Would the Government be happy if a candidate with 32% won the election? I do not think so. I do not think it is credible and I do not think the electorate think it is credible when a candidate with 32% of the poll wins the election.

In reality, the choice between SV and FPTP does not actually affect the result very often. Alan Renwick’s analysis suggests that the allocation of second preferences has affected the result in 8% of SV elections since its introduction in 2000. In other words, it removes the results that lack credibility, which are on the margins, and replaces them with results that are credible.

Does the supplementary vote harm accountability? Ministers in their press release last month said that first past the post would improve “accountability” and

“make it easier for voters to express a clear”

preference. The academics respond that under first past the post electors have to work out who has the greater chance of success. It is not obvious how forcing voters into such difficult calculations empowers them to express a clear choice.

I will deal with the claim that

“First Past the Post is the world’s most widely used electoral system”.

That is just plain wrong; it is just not true. For national legislative elections, first past the post is the second most common system, used in only 28% of countries, behind list proportional representation, used in 39%. The great majority of countries with elections to executive offices eschew first past the post in favour of a system that allows second preferences to be counted.

Then there is the claim that the supplementary vote is an anomaly in the UK. The government press release described the use of SV for mayoral and PCC elections as an “anomaly.” That is true, in the sense that these are the only public elections in England to use this system. However, all the main political parties

use preferential voting systems to choose their leaders: Labour and the Liberal Democrats use AV; the Conservatives use an exhaustive ballot, whittling the candidates down to two before a final run-off. Why such voting systems are right for these elections but not for public elections is unclear.

Finally, I turn to the discussion of the AV referendum result. The Government’s final argument is that the reform reflects that transferable voting systems were rejected by the British people in the 2011 nationwide referendum. Voters did indeed vote against the introduction of AV for elections to the House of Commons by an overwhelming 68% to 32%. But that was AV. AV is not SV. I have never supported AV. It works in a completely different way from SV. It gives weight to overdiluted preferences—one, two, three, four, five, whatever—which, in my view, the public will never accept. That was why SV was designed: to avoid that very problem.

I refer to the final comments of the authors to whom I have been referring:

“SV elections in the UK are associated with slightly higher rates of rejected ballots than are FPTP elections. But no other plausible argument for switching to FPTP has been given. Indeed, the case in terms of clear accountability runs the other way. In this circumstance, it would be better to seek improvements to the operation of SV, rather than abandon it.”

In other words, look again at the format and design of the ballot paper, which is what I have argued for 20-odd years.

Furthermore, unilateral adoption of electoral reform by one party is always problematic. The risk is that the party will fix the rules to suit its own interest—and that is exactly what is going on in this debate. Let the public out there be in no doubt: this is an electoral fix by the Government to have an electoral system which they know positively favours them. Some form of independent review, such as the citizens’ assembly posited by an amendment previously defeated in Committee, should always be held first. That should be followed by thorough parliamentary scrutiny, which has always been curtailed in this case by the late introduction of proposals through amendments, to which my noble friend Lady Hayman referred in her very interesting contribution.

The Government’s actions have been reckless—are reckless. They have produced no evidence whatever of the need for change. The only complaints I have ever heard in 20-odd years have come from Conservative councillors who have found it difficult to come to terms with losing their seats on minority votes, where, clearly, they simply did not have the votes to win.

The Government are destroying a system that is credible and which works. As I said, I hope that one day, a Labour or coalition Government will bring it back, because it is what the people want and like.

Type
Proceeding contribution
Reference
820 cc988-991 
Session
2021-22
Chamber / Committee
House of Lords chamber
Subjects
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