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Constitutional Reform and Governance Bill (Money) (No. 3)

No I will not—[Interruption.] No. I will not do so because I do not believe in proportional representation, and I am now going to explain to the hon. Gentleman why it is wrong. One must begin with the assumption that no electoral system is perfect. We must also say that the electoral system in a parliamentary democracy is to elect both a Parliament and a Government. One must therefore balance the need for proportionality and an exact mathematical reflection of votes cast, and the need for a Government with a firm mandate. The first-past-the-post system has a huge advantage, because it means that there are coalitions before, rather than after, elections. I therefore believe that that system is more democratic than any system of proportional representation, because voters know precisely what they are getting. A Conservative voter votes for a range of people, from me to a number of my colleagues who are rather more to the right; and a Labour voter knows perfectly well that they are voting for a coalition that stretches in a different direction, but which gets quite close in the middle. Liberal Democrat voters have no idea what they are voting for—and they are the sort of people who do not mind that. I have therefore always thought that the Liberal Democrats are the one party that have no right to talk about the electoral system, because what they propose is determined by where in the country one lives.