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Mr. Bermingham: If we introduce a regional system that produces, say, four MEPs for one party, two for another and two for yet another in a 10-seat area, whom should the local council--for example, the metropolitan
borough council of St. Helens, which I represent--approach for assistance in obtaining inward grants for roads and other infrastructure projects? Whose advice should be sought? At the moment, the council has an MEP who very adequately performs that service.
Mr. Curry: That is exactly one of the points I shall address. The council might find that there is no one it can approach, because no one has been elected who has the faintest interest in St. Helens, which would be the worst possible scenario from the council's viewpoint. If individual constituencies are so ineffectual and unable to establish some sort of identity with their MEP, it is curious that our remedy is to base the system on a region with which there would be no identity of any description.
We ask what those regions will consist of, so let us take as an example the south-west. Everybody knows that someone who lives in the Thames valley or in Wiltshire is light years from the preoccupations of the residents of Devon and Cornwall. The hon. Member for Stroud (Mr. Drew) will know that people who live in Cornwall think that the other side of the Tamar is a different country. Being lumped together in a south-west region with no MEP who is identifiable and linked to that part of the world is, as my hon. Friend the Member for Aldridge-Brownhills (Mr. Shepherd) said, a negation of representative democracy.
We are told that the new system will boost the turnout, but turnouts for elections to a European Parliament will be lower than those to a national Parliament, because nothing is at stake in the same sense as it is for a national Parliament. One votes in a national Parliament election to produce a Government; but the rules of the European Parliament and its constitutional position require weighted majorities, resulting in a need for the major parties to get together across the spectrum to build a consensus. Therefore, the impact of choosing different parties is less obvious, and the incentive to vote is a lesser one, irrespective of the nature of the electoral system.
Mr. George Howarth:
The right hon. Gentleman has made interesting and valid points about the reasons why we might have lower turnouts, but in what way does that argument add to his defence of constituencies?
Mr. Curry:
At least in a constituency, electors are voting for a specific Member of Parliament, who will retain that constituency link and to whom they can go. I shall outline shortly how, under the regional system, constituents will not have the faintest idea who is supposed to represent them, and will have to take pot luck as to which MEP they end up with.
How are we to get proper coverage in a region? The hon. Member for St. Helens, South (Mr. Bermingham) mentioned the possibility of the people elected--the top few in each list--representing only a particular part of a major region. In my own area, I would be fearful of all the MEPs elected tending to represent only the interests grouped around the large metropolitan areas of West and South Yorkshire; I would fear for the fate of North Yorkshire.
The hon. Member for Workington(Mr. Campbell-Savours) asked the Home Secretary about the particular status of Cumbria. Cumbria is
wholly different from the regions that lie to its east or its south. It has a strong sense of identity. Its people need to feel that one of theirs is representing them in the European Parliament and is able to respond to their particular needs. How would proper coverage be achieved?
How would the candidates be selected? That is the crucial issue. Is it to be one man, one vote? Are 30 or 40 candidates from Yorkshire and Humberside or the south-east to parade around moots throughout the region offering themselves to the electorate? Will there be party hustings? If there is a restriction on those who can present themselves to be chosen, who will choose the people who are eligible to present themselves to be chosen? Will the party apparatchiks choose them? That is what we all fear, of course. Will the electorate somehow choose them? Will electors spend a whole week interviewing person after person? Will they listen to 15, 20 or 30 candidates? Once candidates are elected, whole parts of the region could find themselves without someone to represent their interests.
How is the order on the list to be determined? Once the list is drawn up, most of the election will be over. One might as well be realistic about it. I know that the Labour party wishes to indulge in some ethnic cleansing of its MEPs. We know that some of them have been rather difficult. Perhaps the Government will devise a system that will enable that purge to take place.
Let us take the south-east, which has the largest number of MEPs--11 are to be elected. In the normal course of events, the first four to five Conservatives on the list will be elected. The first two or three Liberal Democrat and Labour candidates on their list may well be elected. Those at the top part of the list will be able to spend the entire election on holiday in Barbados, or go ahead to Strasbourg to sniff out the best restaurants and offices. They will not need to campaign, because they will be certain of being elected.
Nor will the ones at the bottom of the list need to bother turning up, because they will not be elected. They may as well not take the time off work and lose pay. The only contest that will matter will be between the two or three people in the middle of the list. The real argument will be about them. Everyone else will have been elected by the party apparatchiks who decided where people were placed on the list.
Mr. David Lock (Wyre Forest):
Is not the argument that the right hon. Gentleman makes precisely the same as that which used to apply to his party in the south-east of England? I appreciate that that is a long time ago--we have had several events such as Winchester since then.
If a candidate was selected for the Conservative party for the constituency of South Downs West, he might as well go out and buy the restaurant guide for Strasbourg. The same applied in south Wales. If someone managed to get the Labour nomination for a single-Member constituency, the result was a foregone conclusion. Is not the precise defect of single-Member constituencies the fact that the power resides with the selectocracy--the people who put forward the candidate under the party name--not the people doing the voting?
Mr. Curry:
There is a difference that the hon. Gentleman has not identified. At one minute to 7
The Home Secretary did not answer the question that was put to him by my hon. Friend the Member for Aldridge-Brownhills and others. If I happen to like very much the person who is first on the Conservative list and dislike the person who is second on the list--the same applies to the Labour or Liberal Democrat list--how do I ensure that I get my man elected, not t'other one? That is the crucial issue. The Home Secretary may have given us some way forward, and we wish to explore that.
Mr. Hogg:
Is there not another answer to the question put by the hon. Member for Wyre Forest(Mr. Lock)? The constituency associations--for example, in Westminster seats, but also in Euro-seats--choose the candidate they think is likely to be most attractive to the electorate in that constituency. Accordingly, if there is considerable antipathy to a candidate, it is likely that either the candidate will not be selected in the first instance or that he will be elbowed out by the association responsible for choosing him.
Mr. Curry:
I agree with my right hon. and learned Friend. The associations are often very particular in the requirements that they lay upon their candidates. Even if the candidate is not an original of that part of the world, they make jolly sure that he quickly establishes an identity with it. That is such an important part of the relationship.
The Government are setting up a complicated paraphernalia to govern the way in which the vote is to take place. There is a much easier solution, and the Home Secretary hinted at it. It is to let each party compile a list of as many candidates as there are seats available, and let each elector have that number of votes. If necessary, the elector could vote the ticket as well.
Such a system would not be particularly complicated. The elector could vote across the lists if he wished to do so. Instead of the cabal choosing the people who were elected, the electorate would choose them. That would still be far from perfect, because the problem would remain of who represented which part of the region and with whom people would identify, but at least it would get us off the bizarre, mechanistic approach, and would allow the electorate to make the ultimate decision, which is what our politics should be about.
When I looked in my files, I discovered that the Home Secretary had written to colleagues a little while ago a letter with a breathtaking arrogance to it. It says:
"The Government believes that this system is the most appropriate".
Always beware the word "appropriate". It is the word that people use when they cannot think of any other word. In my years as a Minister, I refused to sign any letter that included the word "appropriate". Perhaps the Home Secretary meant that it was the right system.
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