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Mr. Andrew Robathan (Blaby): The hon. Gentleman makes an interesting case with which I disagree. The Conservatives lost about 4.5 million votes at the general election, for a wide variety of reasons. Why did the Liberal Democrat party lose 800,000 votes--quite a crash--if its policies were so popular?
Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order. We are not discussing any party's policy tonight.
Mr. Allan: I am grateful to you, Mr. Deputy Speaker, for preventing me from entering a debate into which I did not want to go and which would not be germane to the subject in hand.
Sixty per cent. of the electorate voted in favour of fair votes for the European election. A much smaller proportion voted against. Several of the smaller parties, such as the nationalist parties, shared our platform. We have a clear mandate, and the other place goes against that mandate at its peril in seeking to advance retention of the first-past-the-post system.
I have listened with interest to Labour Members. I do not seek to intrude on private grief, except to say that much of the criticism of the closed-list system is not criticism of the system in principle but of the practice
used by Labour in implementing it. The debate within the Labour party has saddened us. It does a disservice to PR in general when the public see Labour Members pulling each other apart over a system that the Liberal Democrats would not adopt. Our members would not have the closed-list system, and they would turf us out if we tried to introduce such a candidate selection process. Our party rightly demands one member, one-vote, and that is what happens in our selection process.
Labour's selection battles have done a disservice to the closed-list system. The system itself takes us no further back, but to accept it would be to miss an opportunity to extend voter choice. The Conservatives offer no such opportunity by introducing tonight's debate at such a late stage in the Bill's proceedings. The European elections will not give us all that we want. We would have liked to extend voter choice, and we shall press that point when we come to the review. However, we shall support the Government tonight to bring in the closed-list system now before we move on to argue our case at the review. Warm and welcoming though the offer was that we should join Conservative Members, we believe that they are clinging to an outmoded system that would deny UK electors the real worth of their votes next June. We do not support that system, and that is why we shall support the Government.
Dr. John Marek (Wrexham):
My hon. Friend the Member for Walsall, North (Mr. Winnick) argued, with good grounds, that there is no majority in favour of the closed-list system in the parliamentary Labour party. Yet, he also argued that the Government would have a large majority tonight. I ask the House to think about that contradiction. If there is no majority in the Labour party, but the system is such that the Whips and the Patronage Secretary can dragoon Members through the Lobby--and I admit that I will be dragooned when the time comes--what legitimacy does the elected Chamber have in comparison with the unelected Chamber whose Members may, by and large, vote according to their own judgment on the right course of action for the country?
Mr. Hogg:
Does the hon. Gentleman agree that there is a second difference? In the other place, most Lords actually listen to debate, but we will have a Government majority although there are no more than about six Labour Members in the Chamber at the moment.
Dr. Marek:
I understand what the right hon. and learned Gentleman is saying, although I would not entirely go along with it because I am often working in my room with the new television system on, so I listen to many of the debates without being seen in the Chamber that often. Under the present system and the way in which we organise the House of Commons, it is not necessarily always right to say that the elected Chamber is superior to the unelected Chamber and must prevail.
I, too, have the highest regard and great admiration for my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary. He is often right, but on this occasion he is not. He has got it wrong. This policy was decided not by any vote within the parliamentary Labour party; it came down from on high, from the leadership, that there would be a closed list. Something may have been said about receiving opinion. It certainly received my opinion, but to no avail; we still have a closed list. There is no democratic system within
the Labour party for deciding by discussion and a vote whether an issue such as this should go one way or the other.
Mr. Grieve:
Would the hon. Gentleman care to enlighten the House as to any reason that he can think of why the diktat came down from on high in the way that it did?
Dr. Marek:
I shall not be sidetracked. Clearly there are issues central to Government policy where the Government will have to say that if we want them to govern, we have to support them. But my contention is that this is not an issue where the Government have to pronounce what they want and how they intend to achieve it and then use the Whips to dragoon their side through the Lobbies. This would have been an excellent example of where we could have had options A, B and C and a free vote of the House. I do not see what difference that would have made to the Government. We could have had the Belgian system, the House of Lords' system and the Home Secretary's closed-list system, and we would have had a much fuller House. The House would have been packed if we had had three options. That was done in the previous Parliament and it could have been done in this Parliament. It would make the House a better place if we empowered Members on both sides to use their judgment rather than be dragooned through the Lobbies.
My right hon. Friend the Home Secretary put forward a few arguments. He said that the authority of the House must prevail over the other place, then 10 minutes later he said that the Government consider that the closed-list system is right. He cannot have it both ways. It is perfectly right to argue the case as a member of the Government. I would have been happier if he had done so, having at least obtained the vote within the parliamentary Labour party. That is what happens in countries such as Australia and New Zealand. In most Commonwealth countries such matters go to a particular caucus. I do not know what happens in the Conservative party, but they do not go to any caucus in this party. However, my right hon. Friend cannot claim in aid the authority of the House and his authority as a member of the Government.
My right hon. Friend talked about the closed-list system of one. I thought that I was elected by an open-list system of one. It could have been ordered in any particular way. It was a list of one and it was completely open. Is my right hon. Friend trying to pull the wool over our eyes? Have I been labouring under a delusion? I have always thought that it was an open list; if people did not want to vote for me, they did not have to. If I am wrong in that logic, perhaps my right hon. Friend or the Under-Secretary will intervene and put me right. At the moment, I do not think that they intend to do that.
The last bit of obfuscation that we had from my right hon. Friend was that open-list systems are complicated and the British people are too stupid to understand them and do not like them. We hear that from all those who have an unsound case and want to pull the wool over people's eyes. It is not true. There are systems whereby one can vote for a particular party on the top row, and then have the opportunity to order candidates if one so wishes.
I think that I could have lived with the closed-list system if my own party's procedures in selecting candidates had been open, above board and honest,
but clearly they have failed to be so. For example, I took part in a vote, with many of my fellow members of the north Wales Labour party, for those whom we thought should be on the list for the Welsh constituency of five members. We voted for our sitting candidate, Mr. Wilson, by, I think, about 98 per cent., yet, at the last stage, after the matter went to Millbank tower, where heaven knows what happens, a candidate from across the border in England appears on our list in Wales in third position--[Interruption.] That is not a criticism; he could have been from Ethiopia. However, he came from outside the area; we in Wales had no knowledge that he was interested in being on the list in Wales; and he was not considered as one of those in contention for a place on the list by the Labour party members in north Wales. Yet there he is in third position and the candidate for whom 98 per cent. of Labour members in north Wales voted is in fourth position--an unlikely winning position for the Labour party in the elections.
That cannot be right. It is not open. There is no doubt about that. It is not democratic because 98 per cent. of Labour party members voted for somebody else. They did not vote for the candidate who was put in.
I fear that my party has sabotaged its argument for the closed-list system by the way in which it is selecting its candidates for the European elections. At the end of the day, if I have the choice, I am an open-list person.
Mr. Tim Loughton (East Worthing and Shoreham):
I am following the hon. Gentleman's argument with great interest. Would he demur from what the Home Secretary was saying earlier and agree that by far the most democratic selection of candidates in his area of Wales will have come from the Conservative party in Wales or any other region of the United Kingdom, where every member had an equal vote in the selection of those candidates? Does he agree that that is by far the most appropriate system?
8.30 pm
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