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Electoral System

My Lords, it is a privilege to respond to the debate. I join noble Lords in thanking my noble friend for raising such important issues. I was reminded by the noble Lord, Lord Rennard, who cannot be here, that this was a classic example of a debate in which one might put on one’s anorak. Indeed, he promised me that, were he to appear, he might wear such a garment. I, of course, do not possess one. My view is that we have been privileged with much expertise. These are important fundamental issues of democracy, and I know that all noble Lords who have spoken take them extremely seriously and have a variety of backgrounds, knowledge and expertise. We would need a day-long seminar on the issue; there is not enough time to address it in your Lordships’ House, given the level of expertise. I recognise immediately that I shall not do credit to all the speeches made. I declare an interest: he is called my husband. He sat on the independent commission on PR and is chairman of YouGov. In some ways, I would prefer him to respond to the debate; so would he. Some of the conversations—dare I say, rows—in my house this week about how I might approach this would be worthy of the telling, but perhaps not at the Dispatch Box. I will try to address the specific questions raised, not least those of my noble friend Lord Lipsey, who gave notice of his points. I shall respond to him at the end. We have touched on a range of subjects from political engagement to voting, particularly postal voting, raised by the noble Baroness, Lady Hanham, and others. It is a subject in itself. I shall not dwell on it today, but I take seriously the points raised. Other issues raised include the Boundary Commission, on which I shall say more; the rules on what happens when somebody dies, which I shall touch on later; and   the possibility of change. A range of views were expressed on the different voting systems; I shall try to deal with those mentioned. I believe firmly in the legitimacy of the election process that we have gone through. We are a duly elected, legitimate Government: we won. The turnout was up by around 2 per cent on the previous election; we have a working majority. Of the previous 17 elections, only seven have given a government a higher majority. It is very important that Parliament sends out the message that we recognise that we have a Government. I shall start from a philosophical point, looking at what general elections are for. There are three key functions: first, to choose an executive; secondly, to choose a legislature that represents the full range of political views; thirdly, to choose a legislature that represents different localities. For some people, there is a fourth legitimate concern: keeping out what one might describe as extremists. The core problem in this country and in electoral systems generally is that no single electoral system fully achieves all those objectives; therefore, some kind of compromise is needed, depending on which of the issues that I raised one values most. For example, first-past-the-post and the alternative vote (AV) achieve the choosing of an executive and a legislature that represents different localities, but they are not as good at achieving the second objective of representing the full range of political views. PR systems can achieve that second objective, but they are not as good at achieving the first or third. If you take the view that keeping out extremists is important, the alternative vote is the best way of doing so. Noble Lords talked about how PR systems could be designed, in a sense, to support the extreme elements—they referred to Israel, which has the purest PR system—or to hinder them. Any extremist party with more than a tiny amount of support is likely to gain a toehold under some form of proportional representation. The noble Lord, Lord Goodhart, talked about the variety of voting systems that already existed in this country. As our priorities vary from institution to institution, our choice of electoral system could also vary. The preference for a clear decision on which party or person should form the executive might matter more when choosing a national government than when choosing, for example, a regional assembly or local council. In that case, one might advocate PR for London, Scotland and Wales but perhaps not for Westminster. There are various options, but when looking for a system it is important to start by asking what we seek fundamentally to achieve. Unsurprisingly, noble Lords talked a lot about the first-past-the-post system. My noble friend Lady Gale, the noble Lord, Lord Norton of Louth, and the noble Baroness, Lady Hanham, talked about it in more glowing terms than others. Many regard   it as unfair, but it depends on what we mean by ““unfair””. Of course it is unfair to smaller parties with geographically dispersed support. Interestingly, it is not unfair to minority parties with concentrated support, so the Welsh nationalist and Ulster parties do not suffer in the same way from first-past-the-post. There are other kinds of fairness: to localities, as single-member seats are incompatible with proportional representation; to social groups defined by gender or ethnicity; and to very small parties, because under most systems of proportional representation parties must cross either an explicit threshold, normally of around 5   per cent, or an implicit threshold before they can achieve representation. For example, it is very hard to win seats under STV with much under 15 per cent support in any given area. So, if we are concerned about fairness to minorities, why should fairness apply to fairly small but not very small parties? The question can also be considered important by those who want a government that can be held to account on manifesto pledges. It is impossible to do that under PR coalitions.