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Electoral System

My Lords, the noble Lord has pre-empted exactly what I was going to say. I am conscious that the noble Lord pointed out that the much-missed Lord Jenkins sought to establish a system that would achieve both of the aims we are looking for. However, it is a complex system and Lord   Jenkins was the first to say that it would take a long time to set up, given its complexity. That is one of its difficulties. I agree with the noble Baroness, Lady Hanham, about the importance of vision and accept absolutely that all parties have a real responsibility to think about vision and engagement. I was asked when legislation is to be brought forward. The noble Baroness will not be surprised to hear me say, as soon as parliamentary time allows. I do not know at this point where we are on the legislation since I do not have policy responsibility for it. However, I shall let the Baroness know. Briefly—I am going over my time only because I have been interrupted; I hope that noble Lords will allow me to do so—I want to deal with the specific question put to me by my noble friend Lord Lipsey. He asked me what the Government’s review will do next. We have an internal piece of work under way which will feed into a new ministerial committee on constitutional affairs, the composition and terms of reference of which we have ensured were made available on the website this morning. Again, for the   record, its terms of reference are to co-ordinate the Government’s policy on electoral issues and the democratic process, and to report as necessary to the Ministerial Committee on Constitutional Affairs. The sub-committee is chaired by the Deputy Prime Minister and has serving on it a range of representatives from different parts of government. A copy of the members will be placed in the Library and I shall send one to my noble friend. Also, my noble and learned friend the Lord Chancellor referred to a piece of work being undertaken by officials to bring together all the information we need so that it can be fed into the committee. My noble friend also asked about the words of my noble and learned friend about the groundswell for change. I went back to check this and found that the most extensive study of public opinion undertaken was conducted in 2003 for the Independent Commission on PR. In its conclusions it found that surveys revealed that attitudes were highly dependent on the way the question was asked. On the whole, electoral systems are not something on which most people have definite views. Respondents were shown examples of different ballot papers, first past the post, party lists and so forth, and asked to rank them. First past the post got 41 per cent, AMS 29 per cent and party list 25 per cent. So there is a majority preference for PR, but if people are asked about a second-choice run-off, first past the post secured a clear majority. When my noble and learned friend referred to that, he was quoting from the latest detailed research that has been undertaken. Again I declare an interest in that my husband served on that committee and that YouGov commissioned the poll. However, my husband did not deal with it. So I do not think that my noble and learned friend was incorrect when he described it in those terms. My noble friend also asked about how people will become involved in and consulted on this exercise. I do not yet have an answer because the new ministerial sub-committee has not yet met. I am not able to pre-empt its deliberations. We have indicated that a referendum would be the way forward and we remain absolutely 100 per cent committed to that. I conclude by saying that democracy is probably the most precious thing we have. The prerequisites for change are that we have to understand through serious analysis exactly what we are seeking to do. I tried to outline at the beginning of my remarks where the objectives might lie. We need absolute clarity of purpose and outcome for the system; that is, what would be achieved by change, and what would not. The system has to be understandable and should command a high level of support because the watchword for this, more than anything else, will be public confidence in what we are doing. Each of the systems that have been put forward and those currently in use present different challenges, result in different outcomes, and offer us different things. So having a coherent vision is crucially important. While I know that some noble Lords are impatient, and I can understand why, this is something we must get right. I am grateful to my noble friend for initiating this debate.