---

Electoral System

My Lords, that is a fair point and one that we shall pick up on at the meeting. The essence of the remarks made by the noble Viscount, Lord Eccles, was the whole question of revitalising democracy, which is a big subject in itself. The Hansard Society has undertaken quite a lot of interesting work on this, such as looking at why young people can get engaged in certain voting systems on TV programmes—not least in my house, and at great expense to their parents—and why people become involved in particular campaigns. There seems to be no lessening of momentum among people to become engaged in the small-p political process, rather it takes place at the transference of that engagement into the party political process. Politicians bear a huge burden because they can become political-junkie types when what we really need is something much more populist. The latest work done by my noble friend Lord   Puttnam in his commission on Parliament in the Public Eye is quite interesting in what it has to say about the communication of Parliament. I commend those recommendations to noble Lords, but I do not have time to read them out now. Perhaps the noble Viscount will take up those issues with my noble friend because some interesting work has been done. The noble Lord, Lord Jacobs, asked me a direct question, but I do not have an answer that I am prepared to give at this point. I shall take it up separately with him. It is not that my officials are not very good—they are—but that we simply cannot provide a sufficiently satisfactory answer that I am prepared to put on the record. The noble Lord will have to forgive me. For the record, the two questions he put to me concern parity with the Conservative Party and the proportion of Liberal Democrats within your Lordships’ House. I will endeavour to respond and put a copy of my reply in the Library. As ever, the noble Lord, Lord Shutt, made an excellent point about the value of the vote and the importance of people feeling that their vote is not wasted. That does not always come from introducing a different electoral system; it is more about participating in democracy, even if your party does not win. A much wider debate is to be had about how we engage people in democracy so that they want to participate. That in turn goes back to the role of the MP. Even if people do not vote for the MP, he or she is their representative and should be used as such. The noble Lord, Lord Goodhart, talked about the alternative vote and the Jenkins report. I have seen AV   in operation in Australia and personally I think that it is an interesting approach. It fulfils my test of simplicity in that people can understand it, but for those who seek greater proportionality, it does not provide anything in that direction.