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Elections: Voting Systems

My Lords, I, too, am very grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Tyler, for giving us the opportunity to discuss electoral systems or, more specifically, to discuss this report. We also should congratulate the Government on setting up the report and for it being available as a textbook. I agree entirely with the noble Lord, Lord Steel, that people will not flock to the bookstalls to buy a copy. In fact, I dare say that noble Lords taking part in this debate probably represent quite a significant proportion of those who have read the volume. None the less, it is of great advantage to have this document before us. I speak as someone who has always supported the system of first past the post, and my support has grown. That perhaps is in denial of my own experience, because few people in this House have lost as many elections under the first past the post system as I have managed to do. I think that I could have been forgiven for embracing any other electoral system that might have put my name at the top of the results. But, no, I am a passionate supporter of the first past the post system and I shall spell out some of the reasons later. I am keen on this document because, despite supporting the first past the post system, I have always historically felt at a disadvantage in this kind of discussion. It has always taken the form of one group of people saying that proportional representation is wonderful for all sorts of reasons. People like me have had the job of saying, ““Well, the first past the post system—with which everyone is very familiar and therefore familiar, as I certainly am, with its disadvantages—is an aspiration against a reality””. That is the form of the debate. The great joy of this document is that it gives us a wealth of evidence on the strengths and weaknesses of practical systems that have been adopted in this country for the past 11 years. We need no longer talk about the wonders of proportional representation; we can talk about the precise experience of how it is operated in a number of different systems. The noble Lord, Lord Steel, was frank, as usual, in acknowledging that other systems have their disadvantages as they have performed in practice in this country. As I expected, it is a joy to have this discussion now and not have to be on the defensive all the time; to be able to point out from this document, which I am sure we have all read, the failings as have been exhibited in a number of systems that have been tried. They were tried for good reasons, and I supported their introduction, as a supporter of the Government, but they now have serious weaknesses. What are my conclusions about the practical experience, as evidenced by this report? Obviously, it demonstrates beyond any argument that all systems have clear weaknesses. That is unarguable. It is logically inevitable that the only person who can represent me or anyone else is me or anyone else. Any system which tries to reduce an electorate of 60 million, as in Britain, to—let us say for the sake of argument—600, is bound to have distortions between the one and the other. At least we can start with the clear agreement that all systems have faults. We can also agree that far from solving or concluding the debate about the merits of different systems, the series of proportional systems that we have had in the past nine or 10 years has, if anything, extended the debate and created a greater uncertainty, assuming that there was an uncertainty before. The electoral systems I hear criticised most frequently—indeed, in this debate—are the system for electing the European Parliament—people have a lot of criticisms of that proportional system—and, as two or three noble Lords have mentioned, the dual system in Scotland and Wales. We hear endlessly about the discussions and debates between the people on the list and those who are elected directly. But I make a lateral comment about it: in Scotland and Wales you have the two sides of the argument within one electoral system. There are those like me, who favour individual Members representing individual constituencies, and those like many other speakers in this debate who prefer lists. I put this question and I leave it in the air: is anyone suggesting that the people on the list in those systems are more legitimately representative than the people directly elected in the individual constituencies? I would say that the evidence is overwhelmingly the reverse. If we are talking about the legitimacy of elections and the legitimacy of people speaking on behalf of others, there is no doubt, in my view, that the people directly elected in an individual constituency are seen as the most legitimate and, I would guess, even by supporters of proportional representation. Obviously, there are better experts on Scotland and Wales than me here today, but, as I understand it, if there is any movement from an elected representative being chosen by one mechanism rather than the other, there is no movement whatever from people representing constituencies saying, ““No, I want to abandon the constituency. I want to be on a list because that is more legitimate””. I have not heard that argument. The other thing that we can learn from this document goes to the heart of a lot of the discussion. There is no evidence here that will encourage people to think that there is a magic solution on turnout and on engaging the electorate as a result of the methods of proportional representation used in this country. On the contrary: the noble Lord, Lord Tyler, quoted from the same paragraph that I am about to quote from, although he inadvertently did not complete the sentence. The noble Lord, Lord Tyler, quoted from paragraph 23, on page 12. He quoted: "““International evidence suggests that proportional systems have around five percent higher turn-out””." I shall complete the sentence which continues, "““but this has not been the experience of the new systems introduced in the UK””." That is the evidence of the document. In past debates, I have had a kind of inferiority complex about how to handle the argument—and it has been deployed in this debate—that there are lots of people itching to vote in safe seats for the other party who will be liberated if there is a proportional system so that all votes count. I seem to remember from the past that there is a phrase in there somewhere. There is no evidence whatever that that has happened in the European, the Scottish or the Welsh elections.