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Mr. David Winnick (Walsall, North): I am not in favour of the closed-list system, I have never voted for it and I do not intend to do so tonight. However, in a contest between the two Houses it would be inconsistent for me to argue that the views of the House of Lords should prevail over those of the Commons. Although I will not be in the Lobby tonight, I believe that where there is such a contest it is right and proper for the elected Chamber to have its way. It would be inconsistent with all that I have said about the other place for me to argue differently.
Nevertheless, I am not persuaded that the closed-list system is desirable or democratic. In fact, it is heavy in democratic deficit. I listened carefully to the speech of my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary, which was persuasive. If a good case could be made for the system, he undoubtedly made it, but I do not accept the premise of his argument in the first place. Lord Evans has been quoted in this debate and, like him, I have great admiration for the Home Secretary. I do not say that so as to stand a reasonable chance of getting to a higher place should there ever be a ranking system for election to Westminster. I have a genuine admiration for my right hon. Friend and I hope that I will not make him blush when I say that he is one of the best Home Secretaries that we have had in the post-war period. However, that does not mean that he is always right and I believe that he happens to be wrong today.
The ranking system is undesirable, despite all that my right hon. Friend has said. There is a difference between the way in which we are selected as parliamentary candidates for the Labour party and the way in which the system would operate for the coming European elections. We have been selected by the local party membership, with no intervention--as far as I know--by party headquarters or the regional office, and in my case that is just as well. The closed-list system, which would rank people first, second, third or fourth, is different. The choice may be made democratically and fairly and those deciding the ranking may well consider gender and ethnic minorities, which is desirable, but it is important not only that the system should be fair but that it should be seen to be fair.
Undoubtedly, there is a feeling in various regions that people have been placed at a disadvantage--they have been placed well down the ranking system not because they have done a bad job as Labour Members of the European Parliament but because their views have been unorthodox. One case has been cited. It has been said that that person has been ranked low because, about two years ago, she committed the cardinal sin of signing a newspaper advertisement that stated that the old clause 4 of the Labour party constitution should be retained. Some people may criticise her for that, but my own view is that it is not an offence for which she should go before the international war crimes tribunal.
If that MEP has been criticised for placing such an advertisement and has therefore been ranked low--that may not be the reason--so that her chances of being re-elected are that much smaller, I wonder about my own position. I not only may have signed an advertisement
about that clause: I argued for it--and I think I won the day--at the 1994 party conference. [Interruption.] I do not know what the right hon. Member for Sutton Coldfield (Sir N. Fowler) is muttering, but it may not be complimentary.
My right hon. Friend the Home Secretary said that an open-list system has all sorts of disadvantages. It will come as no surprise to those who know my views that I am not in favour of proportional representation. If the closed-list system is an example of PR, let us hope that we never have it for elections to Westminster. For one reason or another, a commitment to proportional representation was in our manifesto. If we are to have PR, with all its disadvantages, we should nevertheless have an open system. If the Government are saying that that is not possible and that there is no point in pursuing that line of thought, what is the purpose of the review? Admittedly, it is to be held after the European elections next year, but surely it is intended to reconsider the matter and, if there is no purpose in that, there is no point in having a review.
During our last debate on the Bill, I said that this is an on-going controversy. It will not go away. The system will come into operation--unless the Lords decide that they will not accept the Government's proposal. If they do not accept it, we will be in a totally different situation. We are all aware of the Parliament Act, the 12 months' delay and all the rest, but as I said the views of the elected Chamber should prevail.
Mr. Douglas Hogg (Sleaford and North Hykeham):
Hon. Members will be interested to hear the hon. Gentleman say that a majority of the Labour party are not in favour of the closed list. It follows that there is not a majority in the House in favour of the proposal. If that is the case, why is the hon. Gentleman unhappy about the other place insisting on its view?
Mr. Winnick:
My answer is simple and I thought I had made my reasoning clear. In a contest between the two Houses, the views of the elected Chamber should prevail.
Mr. Hogg:
They are not the views of the elected Chamber.
Mr. Winnick:
If the Government get a majority tonight, which they undoubtedly will, whatever the private views of the majority of my colleagues, that is how the House operates. That was true for the poll tax. The majority of Tory Members may well not have been in favour of that tax, but the Government had their way. The right hon. and learned Member for Sleaford and North Hykeham (Mr. Hogg) voted for the tax when he was a member of that Government.
In conclusion, and I hope that my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary will bear these words in mind, the Labour party has a long tradition of favouring every form of democracy, not least internal democracy. I do not want to
antagonise Conservative Members since they have probably agreed with me, but the Conservative party did not even get around to electing its leader until 1965, following an election defeat. We have elected people to national and local party posts from the very beginning. Whatever blemishes the Labour party has and whatever criticisms could be made against it, it is a democratic party and it saddens me that we do not have tonight the most powerful case on this issue. Although the European elections will almost certainly go ahead under the closed-list system, I must tell my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary that I hope that his review will be no charade. It must not be a means of saying that as there is a row, we must satisfy the other House.
Many of us are deeply uneasy about a system that gives too much authority to people in a party who have not necessarily been elected. It gives too much authority to people who will be able to decide whether or not a particular candidate's views are orthodox. That is not democratic, and it is therefore impossible for me to support the Government in the Division Lobby tonight.
Mr. Richard Allan (Sheffield, Hallam):
The right hon. Member for Sutton Coldfield (Sir N. Fowler) has made us a seductive offer in asking us to join the Conservatives in sustaining the amendments proposed by their hereditary peers. We confess openly that we are caught between a rock and a hard place. We have stated our support for the single transferable vote system used in Northern Ireland, which is the best possible form of proportional representation. During the early stages of the Bill, we also argued for an open-list system along the lines of the Belgian model, and that led to a vote in June, to which I am sure Conservative Members will refer, and which was lost in the other place by 15 votes as it did not have the support of the same Conservative peers who turned out to support the amendment that we are discussing now.
There are three paths before us. First, we could proceed with the closed-list system and the review, as the Government suggest. Secondly, we could reach agreement on the open-list system proposed by the Conservatives, with all the problems that that would entail. Thirdly, we could fail to resolve the dispute so that the Bill runs into the buffers at the end of the Session. I am pleased that the right hon. Member for Sutton Coldfield has come out as an overt and unashamed first-past-the-poster, because the debate should be seen in the light of that fact. We believe that every Conservative Member, and most Conservative peers, would prefer the third option--the buffers--rather than the other two more desirable options. We could then return to a closed-list system of one, as the Home Secretary elegantly described the first-past-the-post system. As the debate has proceeded, more and more light has come from the Home Secretary, and more understanding of our criticisms over many years of the current system.
The open-list system proposed by the Conservatives suffers several problems. It has a certain arbitrariness, particularly if it means that people are simply listed alphabetically, which would give highly random results. As my name begins with A, I should be all right, but I might find that aspiring young politicians were changing their name to Mr. or Ms Aardvark. The alphabetical soup of selection that might result is a substantial problem.
My right hon. Friend the Member for Berwick-upon-Tweed (Mr. Beith) has pointed out the further problem that it would theoretically be possible
under the Conservative system for someone to be elected without any votes at all. If a single popular candidate received all the votes for his party, but that party received a substantial chunk of the total vote, some of the candidate's votes would be distributed to other candidates who had received no votes. The Belgian system seems preferable to that Finnish system with all its vagaries.
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