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Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill

This amendment would amend the referendum question to read, ““At present, the UK uses the ‘first past the post’ system to elect MPs to the House of Commons. Should that system be changed and a different system of electing MPs be introduced at the next general election?””. This is a particularly important amendment because it goes to the heart of the question that I believe will be in the minds of the electorate. I start from the position that we are entering a period of entrenched multiparty politics in the United Kingdom. We have at least three major parties and a number of other parties on the fringe. At this stage, we should all stand back and consider the work of Professor Patrick Dunleavy of the London School of Economics and Professor Helen Margetts of the Oxford Internet Institute, who have repeatedly pointed to the break-up of the two-party system. In their 2005 paper, they pointed to the fact that in 2005 the two-party share of the vote fell below 70 per cent for the first time. At a meeting held in the Jubilee Room some three months ago and attended by a number of Members of this House of all political and Cross-Bench persuasions, Patrick Dunleavy set out the basis on which he was arguing the splintering of party support within the United Kingdom. It seems to me that Maurice Duverger’s law that plurality rule systems induce smaller numbers of parties is now being turned on its head. The fact is that plurality systems are increasingly turning in chaotic results, and this is now drawing us into a period of proportional representation and alternative systems. I also believe that we are now undergoing a period of prolonged transition with the Scottish Parliament, the Welsh Assembly, the European Parliament, the London Assembly, the Northern Ireland Assembly and the mayoral elections all introducing new systems to British electoral arrangements. I believe, too, that the whole process is unstoppable. Indeed, when the debate on Lords reform comes to this House, it will no doubt be dominated not only by the issue of powers but by the question of which electoral system will apply in our case. The question is: how can we manage change in relation to the House of Commons? Against the background of a break-up in the way that the electorate cast their votes, the multioptional, preferential voting scheme now on offer in this Bill can only be described as a grubby little compromise, in the sense that it is the ill-considered product of a backroom deal which in my view electoral reformers will live to regret. The fact that the Labour Government, in their dying days, tried to introduce this system in the Constitutional Reform and Governance Bill is no justification for its introduction in this Bill. Indeed, I am convinced that it would have been similarly treated if they had tried to introduce it here in this House. I have reflected objectively, as many others will have done, on why the Liberal Democrats did the deal that they did. They probably thought that they had no option, but I believe they were wrong and that they made an historic miscalculation. They were clearly desperate to secure a deal on electoral reform at any price. There was an alternative and I think that they completely underestimated their clout during the coalition talks. What should the negotiators have done during those discussions? First, they should have recognised that the Conservatives needed them as part of the coalition; secondly, they should have sought assurances as to continuity of the coalition, as indeed they did with the Fixed-term Parliaments Bill; and, thirdly, they should have sought and secured a May referendum but with the much simpler question that my amendment provides. The advantage in asking my question in the referendum is that the public will not get hung up on AV. In my view, AV is a complicated system which the public will never understand. Furthermore, by asking a simpler question, we will be able to avoid rubbishing the AV system as currently proposed. If in the referendum the answer to the question I ask in the amendment was no, that would end the debate. If the answer was yes, that would mean there would be another system at the next general election. A no answer would mean that the issue was dead; a yes answer would open up every possibility imaginable. If the answer was yes, all alternative systems would have to be evaluated by some kind of inquiry and Parliament would be required to approve a new system for the next election—but, crucially, not the first past the post system, which would have been ruled out by a yes answer to the question in my amendment. Parliament could not duck the decision as it would have been mandated by the electorate in the referendum. All we need to know is whether the electorate want to end first past the post. So who would do the evaluating and what would they evaluate? A Speaker’s conference could evaluate the system or systems in the event that the referendum was to provide a yes vote. A similar form of committee inquiry—and, in certain circumstances, even the Electoral Commission if its remit was widened—could evaluate the various systems. What would they evaluate? They would evaluate AV and its variants—that is, SV and the Australian federal system—AV plus, SV plus, AMS and STV—and they would also evaluate first past the post plus, which has never as yet featured on our agenda and which, in reality, was the system that formed the background to the Jenkins commission’s inquiry. As to the timetable, under the question in the amendment the referendum would be in May 2011; an inquiry would be established in July 2011; and the report to Parliament would be in November 2011. It would be a factual report based on the various systems and the arguments both for against; it would not necessarily make recommendations. The legislation could be introduced in the Session beginning April 2012, which would be three years before the end of the five-year fixed-term Parliament and two years before the end of a four-year fixed-term Parliament in the event that that was approved by Parliament. The Parliament Act would not apply because the people would have mandated the Government to introduce a system based on the inquiry, which would be approved by Parliament before the next general election. The programme could be allowed to slip six months. The referendum could be held in October—which I would prefer and which was proposed in the Labour Government’s original legislation of early last year. Parliament would take the final decision, and even then there would be an opportunity for pre-legislative scrutiny. From a Liberal Democrat point of view this has one huge advantage: once the people say yes to ending first past the post and introducing a new system by the next election, the least you will get is AV. That is the least you get, because the mandate from the people requires a change in the system prior to the next general election. Therefore, automatically, the minimum change would be to AV and, because all options are open, the real debate would then take place. My amendment puts everything back on the table, but in a way whereby, in the event that there was a yes answer to the referendum question, all systems would be evaluated, so we might have the opportunity to introduce a system which, in my view, is more likely to deal with the problem that exists within the United Kingdom of disproportionality in representation. This is the last chance saloon. I hope that, although we are late in proceedings on the Bill, Ministers will consider the issues that I have raised.