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Mr. Clifton-Brown: I will give way to my next-door neighbour.
Mr. Drew: I honestly do not understand what the hon. Gentleman is saying. The whole point of the proposal is that it gives the opportunity for a full review. That was said on Second Reading, and is now explicit in the House.
Mr. Clifton-Brown: That is a question for the hon. Gentleman's colleague, the Under-Secretary, to answer
later. I understood from what the Home Secretary said in opening the debate that the option of the first-past-the-post system was not to be considered under the review. If I have misunderstood the system, no doubt the Minister will either intervene now or, when he winds up, make the position entirely clear. The electorate deserve to know.
Is the Minister going to intervene? If not, we must assume that we do not have a full and open review, and that the first-past-the-post system will not be an option.
In short, what we are asked to decide on this evening is a pig in a poke. The electorate will have their say. I believe that next June's elections will be a thorough muddle, and I hope that one day my own party, when re-elected, will consider changing the system back.
Mr. Lansley:
I am pleased to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Cotswold (Mr. Clifton-Brown), who eloquently presented some of the difficulties posed by the Government's proposals.
In a sense, the debate differs from our earlier debate on this House's disagreement with a Lords amendment. The Government are now proposing an amendment in lieu. Nevertheless, the motion strikes me as a transparent effort to cause their Lordships to change their minds about an important amendment that they have tabled, and I think that it has much more shadow than substance. Effectively, by virtue of the review, the Government are merely setting out to say to the Lords, "Give us an excuse to move from your resistance to the closed-list system."
As was made clear in the opening exchanges with the Home Secretary, the review itself could not give rise to a change in a subsequent electoral system, except by virtue of future primary legislation. The Home Secretary said, in response to an intervention, that, if there were a need for a review, it would arise from great public anxiety about the result.
The issue is this. Must we go through the process of an election through a closed-list system, with all the difficulties that will ensue when voters go into the polling booth and are presented with a ballot paper that gives them no opportunity to choose between candidates standing for a party? I confidently predict that there will be a great deal of public anxiety after that; but we have to have a review, and the prospect of taking on the burden of primary legislation, in order to make a change.
I know, and the Government know perfectly well in their heart of hearts, that the process of securing primary legislation is long and difficult, as the Bill amply demonstrates. They will not readily concede that, and--as I am sure Ministers, in their hearts, understand--they are not contemplating changing the electoral system after the European parliamentary elections next June; they are merely offering a device through which they can continue to send the proposals back to the Lords. This is not a realistic review. In truth, we are thrown back on arguments that have been rehearsed here previously, and have been amply argued in another place: the arguments for a closed list and for an open list.
When I read the debate that took place in the Lords last Wednesday, I see that their lordships did us the service of reading carefully the arguments presented in the House of Commons. Lord Shore explicitly said that he had looked carefully at what the Home Secretary had had to say before, to see whether there was a new argument that
would justify his changing his mind. He did not find one then, and I submit that he will not find one when he comes to read this debate.
We should examine very carefully the Home Secretary's arguments in favour of the closed-list system. Even in our earlier debates, the right hon. Gentleman has got away with a few arguments that he should not have got away with. Let me take the first one, which I think is the most important. On that occasion, and on previous occasions, the Home Secretary has argued that a perverse result can arise from the open-list system--that it is possible for someone to be elected with fewer preferences than someone who is not elected. It is undeniably true that, statistically that can occur. However, two arguments wholly countermand the Home Secretary's argument. The first is this. In the open-list system, we can at least see what the preferences of voters are as between the individual candidates of a party.
Mr. James Clappison (Hertsmere):
Within a party.
Mr. Lansley:
Within a party. My hon. Friend rightly corrects me. In a closed-list system, we cannot see what the voters' preferences are between candidates within a party. Therefore, some highly perverse results may occur under a closed-list system: candidates may be elected who are deeply unpopular with the voters who support a given party. Indeed, the arguments that we have been hearing from hon. Members in previous debates suggest that that may be the case--what the hon. Member for Cardiff, West (Mr. Morgan) referred to as the Mickey Finn slipped into the system is precisely that sort of person. However, it is important that we understand that the closed-list system, far from being without perverse results, simply hides the perverse result.
Mr. Swayne:
Will my hon. Friend accept that, although it is not an edifying sport, the British electorate like to pick off unpopular candidates in an election?
Mr. Lansley:
I am grateful to my hon. Friend. I am sure that he is right. He may want to elaborate exactly that point.
The second point is that the fact that, under an open-list system, a candidate with relatively few preferences might get elected, arises from the fact that another candidate on that same party's list attracts a large number of preferences. We are dealing with a proportional system. I am not here arguing the merits or otherwise of a proportional system, but it is a proportional system. The Home Secretary argues that most voters are guided by party rather than personality, as it were--that they vote for party first. Indeed, it will be true that, by some mechanism, under an open-list system, the parties will contrive to present perhaps well-known candidates, or candidates to whom they give the greater part of their publicity, and that there will be a candidate on that party's list who secures the greater number of preferences. It may be a much greater number than some other candidates on the rest of that party's list.
Out of the fact of proportionality, arises the fact that that party has to attract a certain number of seats. It may be that individual preferences within that party for that candidate are relatively few, but the fact that that party attracts a large number of votes gives the reason why it
attracts that seat, so the result is not wholly perverse. The individual preferences for a less preferred candidate on a party's list would not necessarily lead voters to conclude that another candidate on another party's list is in fact preferred to someone who has relatively few preferences within the list of the party to which they subscribe.
I am sorry that that is a slightly elaborate argument, but I see that the Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department, the hon. Member for Knowsley, North and Sefton, East (Mr. Howarth) at least understands my point. Therefore, it seems that the first and, in fact, most often repeated argument that the Home Secretary has presented against an open list is not a good argument.
The second argument that the Home Secretary now presents is that to change would be disruptive. He will know that party machines often try to persuade one that to change things, especially to change things when they have started down a particular track, is highly undesirable. The more determined a party machine is to have its way, the more likely it is to argue that to change now would be disruptive.
The fact is that party machines can be surprisingly flexible when the occasion demands. The last thing that we should do is to change the view of what is the most acceptable electoral system by the standards of the voters just to meet the demands of party machines that find it inconvenient at a late stage to move from this proposed system to another one. It is perfectly clear what voters would prefer. Way back in February, the Electoral Reform Society undertook some research with the McDougall Trust. The findings showed that
The Home Secretary said that voting for a party is not an alien system--in a sense he is right because most voters choose a party--but not to have an opportunity to vote for a candidate of choice is an alien system in this country. Let me repeat a point that I made during a previous debate on the subject: for voters to be presented with a choice of party but not the ability to vote for the candidate whom they recognise as a personality seeking their vote, is an alien system. The divorcing of candidate from party would be new and would be regarded as wholly undesirable by the electorate. So the argument about disruption is not true.
Other hon. Members have rightly said, that to argue that voters would be confused, and the way in which they cast their vote arbitrary, is dismissive of voters' behaviour. In fact it is wrong because, if an open list demands it, party systems will be extremely good at presenting the electorate with information about candidates. As it happens, that is an argument for an open list. Under a closed list, one has to tell the voters not about the candidates, but only about the party. Under an open list, one has to tell voters about candidates and give them information. There may be a relatively small turnout at a European election, but it is likely to be an informed turnout. Voters are more likely to be informed of the respective merits of candidates under an open-list system.
"although voters claim to vote on the basis of a party, they react strongly to the removal of the right to select a candidate for themselves."
9.15 pm
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