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Elections: Voting Systems

My Lords, I disagree with my noble friend on that. I am pretty wary of making comparisons internationally. Similar systems operate differently in different countries. The best comparisons are those that exist in our own country. To complete one or two statistics on this, in the first European elections—and the first experiment under proportional representation—24 per cent turned out to vote. For the London Assembly elections, 32 per cent and 36 per cent turned out. The figure was a bit higher in Wales and Scotland, but there is no evidence to support the contention that a proportional system will make more people come to the polls. These papers also demonstrate that it does not improve the involvement of the electorate with their Member of Parliament, elected by whatever mechanism. We knew that—or should have—from the earlier report on electoral systems, published in 2003. It said about the European elections: "““Few MEPs felt that their constituency workload had increased, despite the move to larger multi-member regions. The vast bulk of MEPs admitted that their constituency workload had not increased (a mere 8% claimed that it had); if anything, the amount of constituency work has declined””." That is only one measure of the link between the elected representative and the electorate, but it is a pretty important one. It seems that first past the post is reflecting the truth accurately when it says that it provides a link with the electorate that other mechanisms do not. Finally, I move to my own thoughts on the first past the post system, though I could have said that it is all in the report: there is no great public support for a change in the electoral system. The link between the Member and his or her constituents is at the heart of our democracy. I find it slightly paradoxical when I look at the Liberal Benches because they are always, quite rightly, very proud of their constituencies. Although I disagree with them on many things, I acknowledge freely that the majority worked assiduously on behalf of their constituents. They get their sustenance from that. When I was doing constituency work, it was for my benefit as much as for the constituents. It is where you recharge your batteries and have your values reinforced. Breaking that link by having bigger constituencies, as the noble Lord, Lord Steel, has said, would remove something precious. We should be extremely careful about that. In conclusion, far from this report giving us evidence that might help us to make a decision to change the electoral system in the House of Commons, which was part of its remit, it has given an awful lot of evidence why we should not change the electoral system in the House of Commons. Although I would not recommend vast changes quickly, it raises serious questions about the claims made in the abstract for proportional representation in the various systems that have been tested and how they worked out in practice. They have almost completely, it seems to me, failed to live up to the dream. I hope that my noble friend can reassure me that no drastic changes down the other end will be proposed imminently.