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Mr. Gill: I ask my right hon. and learned Friend to consider another proposition. A great strength of the British democratic system is that Members of Parliament are not dependent upon their party, but are sustained by the people who elect them. My right hon. and learned
Friend will be aware of the circumstances surrounding the withdrawal of the party whip from me and several other colleagues which, under the party list system, would have been the end of our careers. However, we were sustained by our constituents. The great strength of the British democratic system is that there is belt and braces to ensure that the people's voice is heard.
Mr. Hogg: I agree with my hon. Friend's point. I do not conceal from the House the fact that he and I have had the most appalling rows; we disagree quite a lot. However, I believe that parties need diversity, and I welcome broad churches. Diversity brings independence and independence brings quality--or, to put it differently, if we remove diversity and independence, we shall not attract quality. People will not offer themselves as party candidates if they will be under the thumb of the party bosses, on whichever side. It is disruptive.
Mr. Drew: I am confused by the right hon. and learned Gentleman's argument. It is surely for the parties to choose the most democratic method of selection. The Labour party believes in exhaustive ballots: we ballot for the national executive committee and for parliamentary candidates. Who is to say that the Labour party will not decide to conduct regional ballots in order to choose its candidates? That is the proper democratic method, and it is far better than some of the stitched-up processes that existed in the past.
Mr. Hogg: That may or may not be so, but we are discussing the Bill. The Bill severs the territorial connection between the elected representative and those whom he or she represents. What is more, it gives absolute power to the party machine as to the choice of candidate. It may be that parties will choose to temper that absolutism through some system that they dream up. However, I have been in the Whips Office and I know that elected representative bodies want a safe pair of hands who will do what he or she is told. I am sure that the Government Whip agrees: the parties want Members of the European Parliament who will do what they are told. However, the electorate do not want that because it undermines democracy fundamentally.
Why has the Labour party produced a Bill that is so obviously untenable? My right hon. Friend the Member for North-West Cambridgeshire (Sir B. Mawhinney) suggested one reason: there has been a deal. Most Liberal Democrats have gone home, but that is one explanation. There are two other possible reasons. The first is that the Labour party knows that it will be humiliated in the 1999 election under the first-past-the-post system, and it can temper that result through proportional representation based on the single transferable vote. It can do a great deal more to reduce that potential humiliation through the list system. That is gerrymandering.
Mr. David Lock (Wyre Forest):
It is a great pleasure to follow the right hon. and learned Member for Sleaford and North Hykeham (Mr. Hogg) and his flights of fancy. If we strip away the layers of his argument, we find the cri de coeur of an unreconstructed Whip who sees the opportunity of controlling the system and having no democracy in his own party. He knows perfectly well that, unlike other political parties, the Conservatives would impose regional candidates if they were given that opportunity. As the right hon. and learned Gentleman said, it will not be up to the associations or the Members. We shall see a rerun of the Conservative leadership election in which the Leader of the Opposition was elected by a mere 169 votes--he has even less support now, as the hon. Member for Leominster(Mr. Temple-Morris) no longer sits with the Opposition.
Mr. George Howarth:
He had the whip withdrawn.
Mr. Lock:
That was another act of an unreconstructed Whip. Some of us have slightly more faith in the structure of our parties and the way in which they will exercise their power and responsibilities under the Bill.
Much has been said today about the identification of MEPs with their constituencies. I must disagree with those who suggest that, when MEPs walk down the average high street, they are instantly assailed with concerns about 5b status, European grants and the like. The truth is that there is limited identification between the 500,000 people in a Euro-constituency and the MEP, however hard he works, and I come from a region with an exceptionally hard-working and effective MEP. I am sure that, despite all his hard work, he would be the first person to agree with me.
I have a column in my local newspaper through which I regularly communicate with my electors. Every timeI say anything remotely controversial, I receive a lot of mail in response. So there is communication. The MEP does not have and cannot have that. I pick up on the point made by the right hon. Member for Skipton and Ripon (Mr. Curry), who explained that an MEP focuses mainly on working with institutions, businesses and schools.
There is nothing wrong with having a panel of MEPs who represent a region. That provides the answer to the question that hon. Members raised about how electors get rid of an MEP. At present, with the first-past-the-post system, it is extremely difficult, but if electors have several MEPs and one is particularly knowledgeable on grants, that is the MEP to whom electors can go to ask about grants. If they have a problem in the agricultural sector and an MEP within their list is particularly knowledgeable about agriculture, he or she will be their port of call.
A Member of Parliament has to be a jack of all trades, and that is not a reflection on my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary. We have to deal with everything. Under the proposed system, MEPs will have the opportunity to provide a better and more specialised service for constituents in a larger constituency, so the criticism levelled against it does not bear proper analysis.
There is a further reason why the system is to be preferred. The first-past-the-post system forces all parties to target their resources on that small group of marginal seats where control is likely to change, as happened at the
general election. In some places, votes do not count. Under the proposed system, the vote will count everywhere. That is a considerable improvement on the present system.
It is a feature of British political life that support for proportional representation tends to rise and fall in inverse proportion to a party's strength. The more seats a party has in the House of Commons, the more converts it has to the first-past-the-post system. On that basis, and following the results in Winchester and Beckenham, I expect many Conservative Members to convert to proportional representation. However, I suspect that they have not quite grasped the position that they are in.
The Bill makes a considerable stride forward in one particular respect. It provides for the first time for the registration of political parties. Political parties are powerful creatures in our democratic society and theyare largely unregulated. It is one of the ironies of the previous Government that they provided for excessive regulation of trade unions but for no regulation whatever of political parties. The political party regulation system, which, under the Representation of the People Act 1983, is largely ignored, is more like a system designed to regulate a tennis club than a system to regulate a vital organ of democracy. The time has come to recognise the position of political parties within our legal and democratic structure.
That will get rid of the scandal whereby if a "Literal Democrat" candidate runs and confuses the electorate, there is no remedy because there is no legal registration of political parties, and whereby, at the last election, Madam Speaker, not being opposed by any of the major parties--as is traditional--was faced by a "new Labour" candidate and could do nothing about it. The registration of political parties to provide clear descriptions will go some way towards alleviating that problem.
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