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Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill

I support my noble friend in this amendment. I do not want to repeat what I have said in previous debates, but we are given an opportunity here to deploy once again—certainly, it will be deployed if and when a referendum takes place—the fact that the proposal in the Bill is fraught with difficulties. What is more, untruths are told about it. It will be the case that every time someone appears on a platform or a television station and says, ““Oh, they have got to get more than 50 per cent to win””, someone will pop up and say, ““Not true””. It is not true under the system in this Bill that every MP will be elected with more than 50 per cent of the votes. It cannot happen with an open system. It is impossible. Every time it is said, whether by the Deputy Prime Minister or anyone else, it is not the case. The public are being misled. We have to look at which system of AV is being used. I know that it is the case—it was the case with the previous Cabinet and will be with this one—that there has been no proper discussion in the Government. There has been no seminar in the Cabinet Room for Cabinet Ministers to say, ““There are three ways of doing AV. Which one do you want in the Bill?””. There has been no discussion at all. That is why we have a Bill based on ignorance. I am not saying that people are personally ignorant; I am saying that there is ignorance of the system. It would not be so bad if the Government were offering up the system and telling the whole truth about it or if they said, ““Well, this is the system we have got. It is not perfect, but none of them is. Most MPs will be elected with more than 50 per cent of the vote, but some of them won’t be. So we won’t make the claim that they all will be””. But the Government are not saying that, because they cannot say it under this system. They must know that by now because their advisers must have told them about it. As I have said, there is ignorance and lack of party discussion. It was the same with the last lot—no one was ever consulted and it just turned up in the Bill earlier in the year. Part of the reason why there has been no discussion is that there are never any discussions because the Government never meet. The public think that they do, of course, but they do not. That is a difficulty and it is where the Government face a problem. I want also to confirm briefly everything that my noble friend has said about the start of the supplementary vote. To my certain knowledge, it is true. I was involved in the beginning of the campaign; it was the time when I turned away from first past the post and moved to AV. In fact, I do not know anyone who has moved from first past the post to PR who did not stop off for a few years while they supported AV. That is the case and it was the same for me. I supported AV for four years, then the penny dropped that AV would still leave hundreds of square miles of this country where there would be millions of Tory voters without a Tory MP and millions of Labour voters without a Labour MP. I thought, ““That’s not fair””. That turned me to PR, having been convinced by the geography specialists from Sheffield who published the book A Nation Dividing?. I stopped off by supporting AV because it was seductive. It seems to be fairer than first past the post until you realise that it does not do what it says. The other thing that I want to point out is the issue of second preferences. I am very glad that the noble Lord, Lord Lamont, is in the Chamber because he was absolutely right to raise this last week. I do not know all the ways of dealing with this, but why should someone win on the second preference of a person who voted for the sixth or seventh bottom candidate? That is preposterous. I have put down Amendment 52 to try to deal with this, but we certainly will not reach it today. It provides that the vote will not have the same value. If someone comes sixth, then the second preference would be worth one-sixth of a vote to be transferred, not a whole vote. However, with the supplementary vote, you avoid that completely. By the way, people can still vote using crosses. It is a majoritarian system, not a PR system, and no one is claiming that it is. The Tory part of the coalition Government does not want a PR system, but this proposal does not offer it a PR system. This offers a majoritarian system, which is exactly what AV is. The supplementary vote is majoritarian and people can vote by making two crosses in two columns. It is actually simpler than ranking in numbers, so you really cannot go wrong, and people can vote in the way that they are used to, with a cross. But it produces a result whereby a constraint is built into the system so that the votes of the bottom candidates—the second preferences may be from the bottom candidates—do not distort the overall winner. The votes are not worth the same. Why should they be when they are at the bottom? They have value and they are used as a vote, but they should not have the sort of value that could swing the result. My noble friend was right to say that we have not seen the localism Bill yet, but we keep hearing about it. It would be quite useful to have it brought forward because I understand that it is going to deal with mayoral referendums. Presumably that will explain the voting system to be used, which I assume will be the same as that used for the mayoral votes that take place now—that is, SV. The argument will be this: if the Government are putting forward a Bill for electing mayors using SV, why are we talking about AV for the other place? SV is more convenient and more efficient and it is less open to misconceptions and telling porkies about what the outcome might be, which is the case for the AV system proposed in this Bill. Also, it is majoritarian. Let us have an AV system that is honest and clear and where people have a choice. I say again that it would not be my first choice, because I would go down the PR route, but if I am faced with the supplementary vote or first past the post, I will vote for the supplementary vote. If I am faced with the AV system in this Bill or first past the post, I am forced—and that is why I resent it—to stick with first past the post. SV is a much better system. It is one that the Government use now for mayoral elections and which I suspect they will propose in the localism Bill currently chugging its way through the machinery of government. My noble friend has made a valid case and the Government would be well advised to heed it. As I have said, it is never too late to avoid making a bad decision. SV is in use in Great Britain and millions of people have used it—not across the country, I accept, but only in areas where there are elected mayors. It is tried and tested and it is British. AV, as proposed in the Bill, is not a British way of doing things, notwithstanding what happens in by-elections in Scotland. My noble friend’s positive approach to this issue should be supported.