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Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill

I remember the vote very well. This House voted most emphatically, and the Government have listened. We also listened on the matter of the date of the referendum and incorporated into the Bill the other famous amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Rooker. On public hearings, we agreed with the spirit of the points made and changed the Bill. The other place having considered our amendments, two issues remain outstanding. The first is a decision by the other place, in relation to Amendment 1 and subsequent Amendment 8 that were successfully moved in this place—the former on Report and the latter at Third Reading—by the noble Lord, Lord Rooker. As the House will recall, the purpose of those amendments was to make the referendum result not binding, or indicative, should the turnout fall below 40 per cent. The Government resisted the noble Lord’s amendment on principle and because of the practical difficulties that it posed, to which I shall return a moment. Following that debate on Report, the amendment was carried by 219 votes to 218. At Third Reading, the noble Lord, Lord Rooker, tabled Amendment 8, which sought to remedy some of the defects in his earlier amendment. As I made clear in my response then, the Government appreciated the making-good spirit behind the noble Lord’s amendment, which the Government accepted pending consideration of the whole issue in the other place. That consideration took place last night. Our colleagues in the other place voted to disagree with the noble Lord’s amendment by 317 votes to 247—a majority of 70—which, I hasten to add, was a majority that comprised not only the coalition parties but Members from the SNP, Plaid Cymru, the SDLP and the Green Party. This House must now decide whether to insist on the amendments that it passed or to accept the message from colleagues in the elected Chamber. Before we do so, let me return to the key arguments. I acknowledge that we will hear, as we did on Report, some strong and persuasive arguments from those who favour thresholds. I understand why many in the House found those arguments compelling, but I believe that, in the context of this Bill, they are misplaced and I shall do my best to explain why. I understand that, when considering this issue previously, many of your Lordships felt that the proposal of the noble Lord, Lord Rooker, was reasonable because, unlike most turnout thresholds, his proposal would not definitively have prevented the referendum from being implemented if the threshold was not met. Indeed, the noble Lord suggested that his proposal did not even amount to a threshold. However, I cannot believe that this is quite right. The amendments would make the referendum result indicative, should the turnout fall below 40 per cent, rather than rule out implementation altogether—I hope that that is a fair assessment of it. However, that seems to me to set a threshold for interpretation of the result. In every real sense, it is a threshold. As the Minister in the other place said yesterday, it would mean that when people go to the polls on 5 May, they could not say that they would get what they voted for if the majority favoured changing the system. By definition, there would have to be further consideration of the matter. We would be saying that people might get what they vote for, provided that Parliament does not overrule or disregard the vote. That is a somewhat dispiriting message to give to the public. One of our objectives in this and other constitutional reform legislation is to bring back into the political process members of the public who have lost faith. People have become disengaged not least because they feel that the process lacks the ability to deliver what they want. I want noble Lords to consider that, if we imposed a threshold which left in any sort of doubt the effect of people’s votes cast, people might well lose faith because they would not know what the outcome would be if the people delivered a majority yes vote.