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Elections: Voting Systems

My Lords, many of us will remember the end of the apartheid regime in South Africa, when folk had their first opportunity of casting a vote. I remember a television clip of a polling station in Soweto. The polling lasted at least three days because there were so many people waiting to vote. There was one old lady who had been there for two days. On the second evening, when she was just about to enter the polling station, it closed—it was the end of polling for the day. A television reporter asked her whether she did not feel sad that she had lost a chance to vote after two days in the queue. She said, ““No, I’ve waited 60 years for the opportunity to vote. What is one more night? This lady represented so many people who had been disenfranchised over so many years. To her, having a vote was something to be treasured, something precious. Every vote deserves its recognition, to be given a value and the best opportunity possible to exercise some influence. We speak sometimes of ““strong government””. I have spoken to the Minister about this before. That lady in Soweto had experienced strong government. She had experienced the government of apartheid. The people of Germany experienced Adolf Hitler’s strong government. Mussolini, Franco, too, had strong governments. Is government just to be strong or is it to be representative? I suggest, particularly to those who have doubts about changing systems, that government must be representative of every person. Those ladies in Soweto, and the people who were disenfranchised for so many years in Russia and other places, now have the opportunity of making their views known. When governments are elected on the present voting system, we know that 38 per cent of those who vote can return a government. Some 62 per cent of votes are then not of the same value. Those votes are largely dismissed. Strong government is said to be more important than representative government. I strongly argue that that must not be the case. When we speak of coalitions and so on, we must learn that we are living in a different generation where people must live, work and discuss together. That is a mature approach. Any voting system must be fair and give fair representation. There, first past the post is a failure. When there were only two parties you could say that first past the post largely worked, though electorates in different constituencies meant that some people elected somebody with a larger number of votes than in another constituency. In the election of 1906, only two constituencies in Wales—Gower and Monmouth—had more than two candidates. It was a straight fight everywhere else. In the election of January 1910, there was only one three-cornered fight in Wales, in Swansea Town. In December 1910, there were only two three-cornered fights. Straight fights or unopposed returns were the norm. Since then, of course, there has been the emergence of third and fourth parties. In 1910 there was one three-cornered fight. In 1918, with the emergence of the Labour Party in Wales, there were 11 three-cornered fights. Now you get elections in Wales with four candidates—Plaid, Labour, Conservative and Liberal Democrat. Under first past the post, a Member can be elected with less than 30 per cent of the vote. That happened in Scotland, in Inverness about 30 years ago, with a Member elected with just 26 per cent of the vote. First past the post is the system of the dinosaur. It worked yesterday but does not work today. It is not representative today. This is true not only of individual consistencies but also of Wales as a whole. In 1997, Labour polled 43.2 per cent of the vote but elected 34 of the 40 Members of Parliament. That has been the same story since 1970—less than 40 per cent of the vote gave a majority of the Members. First past the post does not produce a representative result. We have the top-up system for Wales, Scotland and the London Assembly. In Scotland, with 32 per cent of votes Labour won 37 constituency seats. The SNP, with one per cent more, 33 per cent, won 21 constituency seats. Is 37 to 21 a fair result? It was the introduction of the top-up system that changed that situation and the result was 47 seats for SNP and 46 for Labour. Otherwise the Government of Scotland under first past the post would have been very different from what we see today. At the most recent elections for the Welsh Assembly, the Labour Party had 32.2 per cent of the vote and won 24 out of the 40 seats. The system changed with top-up and now there is a different sort of government. The type of electoral system changes governments. In Scotland and Wales, it will be different. Until now, we know that the Conservative Party and the Labour Party have supported the first past the post system. They merely say, ““Over my dead body””. But the internal elections of those parties use a proportional system. If some sort of proportional system is not acceptable in the country at large, why is it used by the Labour Party and the Conservative Party for their internal elections? About two years ago, the Conservatives elected a new leader. The MPs had the first say on voting for a new leader. In the first round, David Davis got 62 votes and David Cameron got 56 votes. Under the first past the post system, David Davis would have been elected as leader of the Conservative Party. A few months ago, the Labour Party elected a deputy leader. In the first ballot, Jon Cruddas won 19.39 per cent of the vote and Harriet Harman got 18.9 per cent. So Jon Cruddas is the deputy leader: but, no, he is not, because what is right for the country is not accepted by the Labour Party itself. That is rank hypocrisy. Will the Minister explain why? I could go on, but I must not because I can get very passionate when I see injustices of this nature. Referenda will become things of the past if you have a fair representation of the views of people. They must because, under a representative system, you will have the voices and opinions of people. Why do the Government not move after this substantial, in-depth review of a very unjust system?