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Mr. Straw: I regret to say that if the Bill is passed unamended--it will be open to my hon. Friend to move amendments to the schedule laying out the regions--that will not be the case. I understand my hon. Friend's concern, but if there are standard regions, it is important, in order to maintain people's confidence in the system, that we should adopt them without trying to change them.
Had I sought to move Cumbria into the North East--although I understand the arguments for that--I would have ended up in dispute with some but not all of the local authorities in Cumbria, and I would also have been open to accusations that we were doing that for the wrong reasons. I hope that my hon. Friend will accept the reasoning behind the schedule.
Mr. Patrick McLoughlin (West Derbyshire):
May I re-emphasise a point made by the hon. Member for Workington (Mr. Campbell-Savours)? Is the Home Secretary aware that under the proposals that he is presenting to the House, the Peak national park will fall into four regions--four counties? There is therefore a case for him not to follow dogmatically the areas corresponding to the regional offices. It is nonsense that the area of the Peak national park should fall into the East Midlands, the North West, the West Midlands, and Yorkshire and The Humber, and thus have no voice at all.
Mr. Straw:
I am sure that they will write a good line about the hon. Gentleman in his local paper--and I am sure that he needs it. I have been in this place longer than him, and I never heard him speak, while a Minister, against the boundaries devised by his predecessors.
The only exception that we propose is Merseyside, which we shall combine with the North West region for electoral purposes. That is simply a recognition of the fact that Merseyside alone would be too small to return enough MEPs to make the system work effectively. The number of MEPs for each region depends on the number of registered electors in that region. As nearly as possible, the ratio of electors to MEPs will be the same in each region. The Bill contains provisions for the numbers to be adjusted to take account of population shifts, as schedule 1(4) makes clear. The initial number of MEPs for each region is set out in the table in schedule 1.
Under the Bill, parties will be able to put forward a list of candidates containing up to as many names as there are seats to be filled in that region. In addition, any independent candidates who wish to stand may do so--including lots of independent Conservatives if the Opposition have arrived at that position by then. Under the proposal on the face of the Bill, voters will vote either for a party's list or for an independent candidate. They will not be able to vote for individual candidates on a party list. As now, the process will be simply to mark a single cross on the ballot paper.
Mr. Gill:
How will the electorate get rid of an MEP whom the people dislike and who they believe is failing them under the new system?
Mr. Straw:
They will do that in the same way as they get rid of any politician: by not voting for him. I shall deal with the gravamen of the hon. Gentleman's point in a moment.
Under the system, the number of votes cast for each party and each independent is counted and the seats allocated. The seat allocation process, which is set out in clause 1, is as follows. The first seat in a region goes to the independent candidate or the party with the highest vote. If the seat is allocated to a party, it goes to the first candidate on that party's list. The remaining seats are allocated, one by one, in the same way except that, at each stage, the parties' original totals are divided by the number of seats that each party has won, plus the number one. That gives me an opportunity to say more about another scintillating subject.
Mr. Straw:
I shall give way to the right hon. and learned Gentleman, but I ask him to hold back until I have dealt with d'Hondt and Sainte-Lague. I shall then give way to him immediately.
I know that this question has gripped many people: they talk of little else at open-air meetings in Blackburn. The divisor is the set of numbers by which party votes are progressively divided to take account of the number of seats that a party has already won. The divisor used in the Bill is known in Europe as the d'Hondt divisor. It was devised at the end of the last century by Victor d'Hondt, a Belgian. I hope that hon. Members will take careful note of Monsieur Victor d'Hondt, as it is not often that a Minister of the Crown offers them a chance to improve their prowess at that popular Christmas parlour game, "Name 10 famous Belgians". I have contributed greatly to Christmas disputes and to the sum of human knowledge in that area by naming at least one famous Belgian.
Lest anyone think that the d'Hondt divisor is a highly complex mathematical calculation, I shall divulge the first few numbers in the series: one, two, three, four and five. In other words, a party's total vote is always divided by the number of seats that it has already been allocated, plus one. There has been some suggestion that the Bill should use a different divisor--specifically, the Sainte-Lague divisor. The numbers in the Sainte-Lague--
Mr. Straw:
He is not Belgian. The right hon. and learned Gentleman may be interested to know that divisors are used for council elections in Cambridge, Massachusetts. However, the d'Hondt system is called the Jeffersonian method and the Sainte-Lague system is called the Webster method.
I must give the House more information about this interesting subject. The numbers in the Sainte-Lague divisor are not one, two, three, four and five--as under the d'Hondt system--but one, three, five, seven and nine. As I am sure hon. Members will have worked out already, the effect is that, when allocating seats, a party's total is always divided by twice the number of seats that the party has won, plus one.
To complicate matters, there also exists a modified version of Sainte-Lague--which is generally used in Scandinavia--in which the initial number one, the divisor, is replaced by 1.4. I know that hon. Members will ask--even I did--why 1.4 is used. Those hon. Members who have studied art history will know that 1.4--which is approximately the square root of two--is the golden number that was much admired by Leonardo da Vinci, and is embedded deep in European architectural history.
Mrs. Dunwoody:
It sounds logical.
Mr. Straw:
My hon. Friend, for whom I have always had high regard, expresses some dissent about the use of the modified Sainte-Lague system. I am pleased to say that she and I are at one in rejecting it. We shall ensure that it is not used in Britain. There is a serious point to this--as there often is. Different divisors can produce different results, and there may be arguments as to which is the most truly proportional.
Mr. Straw:
I promised to give way to the right hon. and learned Gentleman.
Mr. Hogg:
I am most grateful. I think that hon. Members have enjoyed the right hon. Gentleman's presentation of the various formulae, but will he now return to the question posed by my hon. Friend the Member for Ludlow (Mr. Gill): how will the electorate in a particular region get rid of a candidate whom the people do not like? In reality, the people will simply choose one or other party and the party will appoint the MEP.
Mr. Straw:
I shall come to the issue of voter preference later. I assure the right hon. and learned
Mr. Hogg:
They can vote against me.
Mr. Straw:
Yes, they can--indeed, we tried to ensure that they did so, and it is one of the few constituencies where we failed in that endeavour. The electors of Sleaford and North Hykeham could vote for candidates from another party, and exactly the same situation arises in principle under any of the other systems.
Mr. Straw:
I must continue but, if time allows, I shall accept more interventions--and give way to my hon. Friend--on the fascinating issues of divisors and the kind of list system that we should introduce.
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