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Electoral System

My Lords, I too am very grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Lipsey, for introducing this debate and for giving us such a strong start. Perhaps I   may air a thought following the noble Lord, Lord   Corbett. Before we are much older, we might, from time to time, see something in the other place that looks quite like a hung Parliament. Following—amateurishly, I fear—in the footsteps of my noble friend Lord Norton of Louth, I recall that over the past 85 years Prime Ministers have been members of one of two parties. Yet, crunching one last number, in this election those two parties, added together, received only 45 per cent of the available votes. What happened expresses in some sense the will of the people and they have declared a form of stalemate, although of course the Government will do their best to show that that is not so. In part explanation of the low vote in the election, it may well be that the electorate has two characteristics which do not immediately spring to mind. First, many   people—perhaps the great majority—have a disenchanted view of those who, for lack of a better description, we may call in charge for the time being. The more distant the people, the greater the disenchantment. Secondly, people, as they consider how or whether to vote, may well have a significantly more mature sense of what is happening in their world than is often thought. The Greeks would have called it nous. Those two characteristics—disenchantment and good sense—are related. Both have been much enhanced during the 85 years by rising prosperity, by the arrival of universal suffrage following World War I and, indeed, by that war itself. As we move on through the Second World War with the National Government, we come to 1945 and the rejection of Churchill. The collective memory of the electorate called for a change in direction. As a more personal illustration of disenchantment and good sense, I would recall a steel foundry in 1956. The noble Lord, Lord Rodgers of Quarry Bank, was our Member of Parliament. Whether it was the Suez crisis or just mundanely my interpretation of the order book, the foundry men would look at me with sympathy—they did not doubt best intentions—and say, ““Well enough, but it will be different—things always are””. They were not to be shaken from their opinion. They did not want to tell the politicians what to do next; it was just that matters could not be expected to go as planned. Errors would be made and be criticised with no hard feelings because that was what life was like. We have moved on, but only, I believe, to reinforce the views of 1956; we have not seen a change in the ground rules. All will—still—not work out as it is planned and presented to us at election time. As a consequence, I believe that many, perhaps most, of the people who did not vote in May know why they did not vote. Their good sense and disenchantment will have played a part. Those who did not vote Labour or Conservative also know why. There was not some random disengagement from the political process which could be corrected by making voting easier—if that is what postal votes do. What can be done to re-engage the electorate to achieve, say, an 80 per cent turnout? First, a much more open discussion is needed about the limitations to the political power which can be effectively exercised by government. Alongside that it would be helpful if Ministers exercised restraint over repeated claims to have achieved advances which in reality have resulted from forces much wider than those controlled by government. Secondly, we need to decentralise in order to take locally as may decisions as possible. There is no substitute for peer group pressure. That would require that we turn the well known phrase ““No taxation without representation”” on its head so that it becomes ““No true representation without taxation””. The duty to raise revenue and to stand for election and re-election ensures a good measure of accountability. This need to revitalise our democracy at both national and local level is urgent. I hope that this debate is one contribution to the way forward.