---

Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill

My Lords, I was rudely interrupted by the usual channels, who adjourned the House just as I was on the point of delivering my remarks. I shall try to pick up the morale of the whole debate by opening out this time. We are debating whether Clause 1 should stand part of the Bill. What I really want to say, perhaps more than anything else, is that any observer watching the debate on this clause so far would have noticed one thing above all else—that there was absolutely no real detectable enthusiasm whatever for having a referendum: and if we did have a referendum, there was certainly no enthusiasm for the choice of having the alternative vote. We are having a debate about a flagship Bill of this Government. It is more than a flagship Bill; it is a major constitutional Bill. Indeed, as Nick Clegg has said, it is part of the most ambitious programme of constitutional reform since 1832. Three members of his party at the moment want to be part of this great constitutional Bill, the greatest since the Great Reform Act. I am absolutely certain that if my Government had brought forward a great constitutional Bill, not only would a fair number of people have wanted to take part in the debates, they would do so enthusiastically. It does not happen very often—we have the statistics and it happens only once every 170 years, or however many years it has been since the last huge reform, according to Nick Clegg. That has been noticeably absent. The overwhelming majority of the speakers have either been very strongly in favour of first past the post, as I am, or else they have been people like my noble friends Lord Campbell-Savours and Lord Rooker who, while not being supporters of first past the post, have given so many good reasons why the option that is being delivered to the electorate is a very bad one. That is something that any neutral observer would have to report on. I do not know whether that will change during the passage of the Bill, but I doubt it. I have to say that I was slightly fearful of contributing a lot to this debate, because I acknowledge that I am one of life’s anoraks when it comes to looking at electoral systems, and I really do not want to be labelled as an anorak, although I have not got past first base on being an anorak. Another thing was really noticeable in, for example, the exchanges between my noble and very good friend Lord Campbell-Savours and the noble Lord, Lord Greaves. It scrambled my brain, and I do not know what it would have done to the electorate in the course of a referendum. That is one of the many, many reasons why this is a bad Bill and this clause is a bad clause. Although the debate is important and significant, it has been in some parts almost unintelligible, certainly incredibly detailed. Now, if that is the case when we are discussing it among people who acknowledge that we are in a tiny minority of the electorate who are actually very interested in these things, how on earth will that be a substantial debate in the country? You can just imagine the near impossibility of getting some of these arguments over to the electorate. Of course I am not saying that it is because the electorate are dim, of course I am not saying that. I am saying that it is of no great concern to people, and if it is of no great concern to you, you do not apply yourself to the arguments. That is what I confidently expect will happen as and when this referendum takes place. We all know that we have the authority of the Electoral Commission in its report, which is in a pile of documents in my office. I am sure that Members on the Front Benches will have read it cover to cover. The report states clearly that the public simply do not understand AV. Noble Lords may check it. If any of the proponents of AV are happy, as my noble friend Lord Snape has said, to go down any road that they are familiar with in any part of Britain, in any constituency, they should ask the public what they make of AV, let alone the single transferable vote or whatever else is on the menu.