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Electoral System

My Lords, I thank my noble friend Lord Lipsey for bringing this debate forward. However, I do not think that it will come as any surprise to him when I say that I totally disagree with what he had to say. I approach the debate not in an academic sense but in a practical sense as someone who for nearly 40 years has been active in politics and in campaigning. For 15   years, I have run the elections for the Welsh Labour Party at all levels. Some people feel that the relatively low turnout at the general election and the share of the vote gained by the Government could be improved by having a different method of electing Members to the House of Commons. Some will argue that there are more democratic ways that would better reflect the wishes of the electorate. However, there are other elements of democracy that could be lost. I am in favour of the first-past-the-post system, especially for elections to the House of Commons. There are many reasons why that is the case. The link between the elected member and the constituency is just one. The system is familiar to the public. Votes are simple to cast and to count and it usually leads to a one-party majority government. The system enables electors to vote for a local representative but also to vote for the party that they wish to form a government. The system gives each Member of Parliament a direct relationship with a particular geographic area and enables the electors to have a Member of Parliament with whom they can identify. That link is not available in any other method of which I am aware. During the first direct elections to the European Parliament in 1979, Members were elected on the first-past-the-post system. They were accountable to their electorate and to their party, and the electorate were able to vote for a named person. That was changed in 1999, when the election was conducted under a form of PR. The electorate voted for a political party and not for a candidate. The constituencies were enlarged. For example, Wales is now a European constituency, and electors vote for a party on the party list and not for a named candidate. Much direct contact with the electorate has been lost. It can be difficult to enthuse party members to work in those elections. They do not feel a sense of ownership for a particular candidate. For the Welsh Assembly, a different form of elections was tried that had not been attempted before. In the Welsh Assembly elections, 40 seats are elected on a constituency basis and 20 on a list system. It is interesting to note that the candidates on the list do not have a particular role to play in the election campaign. At the first such election we wondered what to do with the list candidates. We had to find a role for them. The role for constituency candidates is clear: they work in their own constituency with their own party to get elected. There is little specific campaigning for the list candidates. There is no clearly defined role for them, whereas the first-post-the-post system clearly defines the candidate to a constituency. The electorate can identify who they are voting for. The list gives the elector the opportunity of voting for a political party on a closed list, with the ranking order determined by the party, sometimes with the involvement of local party members. I give an example from the Welsh Assembly elections that in Wales we call the Clwyd West question. The four main parties fielded candidates for that constituency. Labour won the seat. The three failed candidates still got elected as they were on their parties’ lists. They turned up at the Welsh Assembly at the first meeting. That totally confused the electorate, as they believed that they had voted not for the other three candidates but for the Labour candidate. Is that a good form of democracy? My noble friend talked about the Martians, but what would the Martians make of a situation in which the electorate voted for one candidate but three other failed candidates still got elected? As has been said today, some people say that one of the merits of a PR system is that it would be a way of getting more women elected. That has not been the case in Wales or in Scotland or in the European elections. For example, in Scotland out of 51 women elected to the Scottish Parliament 30 were elected in the constituency section out of 73, and 21 were elected out of 56 on the list system. In Wales, 22 were elected in the constituencies out of 40 and eight on the list system out of 20. In the European elections, in the UK, 19 women were elected out of 78. Some who advocate a form of PR say that it is a good way to increase the number of women being elected. Women are elected when political parties use methods such as all-women shortlists or twinning, as used by the Labour Party. Those methods get results for women. The only way that women can succeed in getting election in any form of PR is when their party places them high on the list in seats that the party will win or has a good chance of winning. Therefore, I do not believe that any form of PR is bringing democracy to women by getting more women elected. The first-past-the-post system is more likely to do that, provided political parties ensure that women get selected in seats that the relevant party has a good chance of winning. Political parties provide a great service to the democracy our country. In my experience, the involvement of party members and supporters plays a vital role in informing the electorate. Election campaigning, as those who have been involved in it will know, is never-ending. We have just finished one election, and my party is already preparing for the next round of elections in two years’ time for the Welsh Assembly. Election campaigning is at its most effective in general elections; commitment is at its greatest. Local government elections also provide a high level of involvement of party members. Those two elections are fought on the first-past-the-post system. They are much more exciting; more interest is created for the elector; and party members are more likely to take part   in campaigning because they have been actively involved in selecting their candidates and in all the preparatory work such as raising funds, agreeing on the type of election materials and planning the day-to-day campaign. They have ownership of their local campaign and feel pride when their candidate gets elected or despair when they lose. The successful candidate has a sense of pride in and duty to their constituency. The electors can rightly feel that they can expect their elected MP or councillor to work on their behalf. That is what democracy is all about. First-past-the-post is not perfect. It has flaws, but it is the best of all the different voting systems that we use in the UK. It produces strong government, rather than coalition or compromise. The electorate understand that they are electing a government. We need to examine ways to encourage more people to participate in elections and by implication change the share of the vote among the parties. Changing the method of voting is not the answer. Where changes have   been made, there is no evidence to show greater enthusiasm to vote in greater numbers. We should have a method of voting that makes it easy for people to vote. We know that there have been a lot of experiments with that. We may tinker around the edges, but we should not lose the valuable elements of the first-past-the-post system with the direct involvement of the electors.