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Elections: Voting Systems

My Lords, I too pay tribute to the noble Lord, Lord Tyler, for initiating the debate. I should say at the outset that my remarks are likely to be minority remarks on these Benches, with the noble and notable exception of my noble friend Lady Kennedy of The Shaws. I was slightly disappointed that the noble Lord, Lord Tyler, said that he felt that the first past the post system may have been appropriate in what he called the bipolar political atmosphere of the 1950s but that it is no longer appropriate. I agree with his conclusion but not with the means by which he gets there, because his argument seems to a great extent to pander to the accusations that the Liberal Democrats have self-interest at the heart of their arguments and that the fact that they are doing rather better than the Liberal Party in the mid-1950s is the reason for changing the electoral system. That in no way advances the noble Lord’s case. None the less, I, like the noble Lord, Lord Steel, have had experience of two elected Parliaments as well as your Lordships’ House, and I have come around to the view, particularly after experiencing the Scottish Parliament, that a proportional system—or, rather, a more proportional system; there is no ideally proportional system, although the STV is probably the most proportional—has, despite the Government of Scotland at the moment, served the people of Scotland well. I say that without any question of party advantage in mind. The Government of Scotland have served the people of Scotland well because they have enabled them to say, ““We want a change””. This is what happened in May 2007. Other noble Lords have argued that first past the post is the only means of calling a government to account on election day, and if people do not like them collectively, they can force them out and bring in a government of another hue. The question is whether it should be a government of just one hue or two, or perhaps even a rainbow coalition of parties, but that is the will of the people and if the people say, ““You’re all minorities. We are not willing to give power to any one of you. You get together in any way that you see fit and come to a majority position where you can find a means of running the country””, that is in the interests of the people and will not necessarily be, or be perceived to be, in the interests of one particular party. Proportionality is not a new idea. The Jenkins commission in 1998 recommended changing from first past the post, although disappointingly only to AV+, which is a little like the French system, which is not proportional. The Power commission of my noble friend Lady Kennedy in 2004 said simply that we needed a more responsive electoral system. That was difficult, because it was not within the commission’s remit to go further than that, but the message was fairly clear. I disagree fundamentally with my noble friend Lord Maxton—and he is a friend—who said that first past the post is better than any alternative. I do not agree—the noble Lord, Lord Steel, referred to this—that, following the Scottish Constitutional Convention, of which I was also a member, Donald Dewar, the then Secretary of State for Scotland, should have gone back on a commitment in the 1997 election manifesto for the Labour Party and resorted to a first past the post system for the Scottish Parliament. That would have been disastrous, and I must say to my noble friend that I do not think that that is something that Donald Dewar would have ever seriously considered, given the way in which he conducted politics. I understand why my noble friend said that, possibly in the light of events since then. We are now in the third Session of the Scottish Parliament. The first two were Labour/Liberal Democrat coalitions, and the third is an SNP minority. The situation has been similar in Wales, with coalitions and minority Administrations. Neither Scotland nor Wales has ground to a halt in the past eight and a half years, despite the fact no one party has been in power for that time. I know very little of Wales, but it seems that there has been a feeling that this is different from Westminster in that it is a different way of having a level of government. The question then is: if you accept that a more proportional system is appropriate at the local government level or the ““regional”” government level, is it appropriate at the national level as well? I would say that it is. The noble Lord, Lord Steel, referred to the not unimportant issue in proportional systems, particularly those that use the additional member system, of the friction between the constituency Members and the list members. I encountered that as well. The noble Lord may recall from his days as Presiding Officer of the Scottish Parliament that he established a committee, of which I was a member, to look at how best we could finesse the emerging problems in the early days of the Scottish Parliament, whereby, as he suggested, unsuccessful candidates could appear across the Chamber from directly elected Members who had seen them off at the ballot box. My view is clear; the Welsh have gone down the right road—you should not be able to stand in two categories. You make your choice wherever you think you have the best chance of being elected and you are stuck with it one way or the other. That gets over that problem. However, I did not encounter list members trying to take over the duties of the elected Member to any great extent. Nor did I find list members falling over themselves to take up constituency cases or campaigning particularly actively. One of the recommendations of the committee to which I referred and which the noble Lord, Lord Steel, chaired was that list members must demonstrate that they were active in more than one of the constituencies that formed the region which they represented. If that were to be followed through and firmed up, that would ensure that they represented a larger part than just one constituency, although that is very much for the Scottish Parliament or the Welsh Assembly to tackle. How those issues are approached is very much a question of practice. They are certainly not insuperable problems. There is no evidence in countries such as Germany or Spain that those issues have sustained for a number of years. That leads to me a comment made by, I think, the noble Lord, Lord Norton of Louth, that first past the post was uniquely effective in changing a government. If you were a voter in recent years in Spain, Germany or Sweden, you would feel that you had pretty effectively changed your government fairly dramatically in general elections under proportional systems. I understand the noble Lord’s comments, but it is perfectly possible under proportional systems to have a fairly dramatic change of government, particularly in Sweden where the Social Democrats lost power after many years. I shall say a little about proportional representation and the way in which it impacts on voters. I notice that the review found no voting system to be inherently more confusing than another for the voter in terms of casting votes correctly. I think it was the noble Lord, Lord Tyler, who said in his opening remarks that, despite a lot of reports in UK newspapers that the electoral system in Scotland confused voters to such an extent that there were many spoilt papers in Scotland in the May 2007 elections, that has been shown to be completely untrue. It was not the new system of the STV that confused people, as one might have thought it would the first time it ever applied in Scotland, but the system that Scotland had also used in 1999 and 2003. The problem was that the system had moved from two separate ballot papers to one ballot paper. The independent Gould report, which looked into those issues, reported that there were two major ways in which confusion could be avoided. One was to have a much longer lead-in time to explain the changes to people. The second was not to combine local elections with the Scottish Parliament election on the same day. It is interesting that the Scottish Parliament has since legislated for that, and there will be no recurrence of it. That is an important aspect. The link between a member and the constituency is important but can be overstated. Noble Lords have referred to the fact that often under first past the post a small number of voters decide the outcome for the whole UK election. Not only do a large number of people not have a say in the ultimate outcome of a general election in the UK under first past the post but also the three major political parties tailor their election manifestos to a small, narrow number of people—a clearly unrepresentative part of the electorate. Parts of the electorate get a disproportionate amount of attention when it comes to drawing up those manifestos. These key people—perhaps as few as 10,000, about 3 per cent of the electorate—have to be catered for because they are believed to hold the outcome of an election in their hands. That is not particularly health for democracy. Better to be able to make a broader approach to different parts of the electorate in a more positive manner and hope that they will in turn vote positively because they can see that there is something in it for them. There is nothing wrong with the way the electorate votes being influenced to some extent by what will benefit them personally. They will also vote because it will actually influence the outcome of the election. It is clear that we are some way yet from a change to the method by which the other place is elected. As far as this House is concerned, I would not like to say how long it will be—if at all—before change comes about. I echo the position of the noble Lord, Lord Steel, in that I voted a year ago for a fully elected House of Lords. That is the way forward. Yet what is to be decided in the other place is of greater urgency. It should hold primacy but, if you have two elected Houses, ultimately there has to be some means found of reconciling them. That will have to be done before we move towards thinking about what method of election is utilised. It is often said that nothing stands still, which is not always true at all. Yet it is true much of the time in politics and political parties are constantly renewing themselves, their approach and polices. It seems illogical then that the way they are elected at UK level should not be capable of being renewed. It is instructive to note that while the other place has firmly maintained first past the post as the means of its election, electoral systems elsewhere in the world and other parts of the UK have moved on. They have done so significantly in the various parliaments and assemblies that noble Lords have referred to. It is hard to maintain why the two Houses here should not move on, too. The question of renewing and reenergising democracy that the noble Lord, Lord Norton, raised with my noble friend Lady Kennedy is important. If people feel more involved they are more likely to think that voting is important. That is particularly true in young people. We know the way in which the level of voting in young people is going at the moment. Though it is not my own view, it is clear that first past the post will continue for the foreseeable future. Yet the sands will shift sooner rather than later and when they do they will shift decisively.