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Mr. Patrick McLoughlin (West Derbyshire): Does the Home Secretary believe that the low turnout had anything to do with the fact that, in the Scottish and Welsh elections, people had two votes for the two different kinds of representatives and in the local elections people had a vote for each representative, but in the European elections people had only one vote and no choice, even though people in the east midlands were electing six Members of the European Parliament?

Mr. Straw: I shall come on to the research work that we intend to do because it is important that we find out the answer systematically and scientifically. We need more evidence before we decide. I am aware of the arguments about the voting system and I shall come on to my old friend Victor d'Hondt in a moment.

The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department (Mr. George Howarth): I cannot wait.

Mr. Straw: I know that my hon. Friend will enjoy my remarks on the subject.

I have not seen any evidence, although that does not mean that there is none available, to suggest that the decline in turnout was caused principally or exclusively by the use of the new system. I am disappointed because the decline in turnout marks a reversal in a gradual, if small, upward trend in turnout for European parliamentary elections, which had increased from 31 per cent. in 1979 to 36 per cent. in 1994. However, it is worth pointing out that, in 10 out of the other 14 member states--all of which have systems of proportional representation that, as far as I am aware, did not change between previous elections and this one--there was a decline in turnout. The decline in the percentage of electors who voted was more severe in Austria, Finland and Germany than in the United Kingdom.

Mr. Christopher Gill (Ludlow): I remind the Home Secretary that the essential justification put forward by the Government for proportional representation was that it might improve the voting figures. Clearly, that has not happened. I hope that the right hon. Gentleman will not be offended if I call him a professional politician, but why do professional politicians never admit that they are

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wrong, even when they are proved to be so? Why cannot they come clean, say they made a mistake, and scrap the new system? Why do they have to say that what happened was because more needed to be done, or because the system needed to be refined? The right hon. Gentleman has a perfect opportunity this afternoon to say, "We got it wrong, we made a mistake, our judgment was faulty, we'll scrap the idea."

Mr. Straw: Perhaps the hon. Gentleman was not present at 3.30, but one dose of confession of error is enough for one day.

Sir Patrick Cormack (South Staffordshire): It gets easier each time.

Mr. Straw: I thought that the hon. Gentleman was a good member of the Anglican Church, but he says that confession is easier each time. I shall leave that to those of an alternative denomination.

Mr. John Bercow (Buckingham) rose--

Mr. Oliver Heald (North-East Hertfordshire) rose--

Mr. Straw: I want to answer the question posed by the hon. Member for Ludlow (Mr. Gill) and make some progress. The hon. Gentlemen can intervene then.

I have the text of the lengthy and fascinating debates on the merits of the new regional list system. I cannot recall on any occasion being rash enough to say that that system would increase turnout. What I said was that we were involved in creating horses for courses, and that a move to a regional list system would lead to a more representative outcome--and one in which the Labour party almost certainly would get fewer seats than under any other system.

Mr. Simon Burns (West Chelmsford): Will the Home Secretary give way?

Mr. Straw: Of course, as I fancy that the hon. Gentleman is going to educate me about what I said.

Mr. Burns: I remind the Home Secretary that, on 25 November 1997, he told the House:

"It is difficult to argue that the current electoral system has gripped the electorate. It has not. My guess . . . is that turnout will improve under the proposed system."--[Official Report, 25 November 1997; Vol. 301, c. 816-817.]

Mr. Straw: I was wrong. However, I was right in the first part of what I said.

As the House knows, we will conduct a full review of the European Parliamentary elections, and I shall write to the opposition parties shortly about that. As part of that review, we shall include questions in this month's Office of National Statistics omnibus survey--and commission NOP to do research--to discover how the electorate reacted to the new system. That research will produce interesting results, which will be made available to the House.

However, we should avoid hasty judgments about the new system, and about the turnout, as many other things were going on at the time, including the Kosovo war.

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Moreover, European institutions had become a lot less popular in the five years since the 1994 elections, which I remember well as I was drafted in as campaign manager for them. That unpopularity was due not least to the resignation of members of the Commission, as the right hon. Member for North-West Hampshire mentioned. That has to be accepted as true, regardless of which side of the argument one may be with regard to the euro and other matters.

Sir Patrick Cormack: Can the Home Secretary say how much the survey will cost, and how many of the 23 per cent. who voted will be surveyed?

Mr. Straw: No, but we shall obviously consult the Opposition about both those questions.

The House needs no reminding of our many long debates to secure the passage of the European Parliamentary Elections Act 1999. I said several times that the European Parliament was a representative body rather than one from which a Government are drawn. That being so, we considered it important that the composition of the UK delegation should be as representative as possible. The number of MEPs representing each of the major parties reflects how well the system worked.

I have immense respect for the right hon. Member for North-West Hampshire, whom I have known ever since I came to this House. It is always possible to change one's mind; I have certainly done so. It was therefore a tad surprising that the right hon. Gentleman omitted to mention that he was once a great supporter of proportional representation. In 1977, PR was discussed for the European Parliament elections, and, following an extremely interesting debate, the then Government provided a free vote--a tradition that we have sometimes followed--on whether to have a regional list system, albeit an open-list system, or to use the first-past-the-post system.

I have looked up the voting lists for that debate. Among the Ayes--those who voted for first past the post--were many luminaries of the Conservative party, including the then Leader of the Opposition, now Baroness Thatcher. However, given the current thinking of the Conservative party, the list of Conservative Members who voted for proportional representation reads like a rogue's gallery of Euro-fanatics. The right hon. Member for Old Bexley and Sidcup (Sir E. Heath) voted for it. So did the right hon. Member for Saffron Walden (Sir A. Haselhurst), and the former Conservative Member, now my hon. Friend, whose constituency I have temporarily forgotten--[Hon. Members: "Leominster."] Thank you. My hon. Friend the Member for Leominster (Mr. Temple-Morris) voted for PR. The point is that the then hon. Member for Ealing, Acton, now adorning the Front Bench as the right hon. Member for North-West Hampshire, also voted for PR.

The right hon. Gentleman strongly supported PR at that time, and the system under debate was identical to the one that we have used, except that the list was open, not closed. He could have offered us some explanation of why he has or has not changed his mind since then.

Mr. Bercow: The Home Secretary has been both consistent and right in supporting the Westminster

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electoral system, and I hope that he will not sell out at the 59th minute of the 11th hour. Can he confirm that the Jenkins dog's breakfast fails even on its own criterion of proportionality? Has the Home Secretary studied "Making Votes Count", a document published by the democratic audit at the university of Essex, a fine institution from which I myself graduated? It confirms that, at the 1997 election, Labour would have received 68 per cent. of seats on 44 per cent. of the vote, while the Conservatives would have won 17 per cent. of seats on 31.5 per cent. of the vote. Even on proportionality--a ground beloved of the hon. Member for Enfield, Southgate (Mr. Twigg)--the Jenkins proposal manifestly fails. Will the Home Secretary say so?

Mr. Straw: Funnily enough, I had flagged the section of the Jenkins report that deals with that point, on page 46 in paragraphs 155 to 157. Lord Jenkins and his colleagues must argue the point, but I think it difficult to argue that the alternative vote top-up system produces a more proportionate result. We can leave aside 1992, when the Conservatives won the election. It is fairer to consider the last election, when they were roundly beaten. What would have happened in that case is that the number of Labour seats would have gone down from 419 to 368, which would have made the result more proportionate. The number of Liberal Democrat seats would have risen from 46 to 89, but the number of Conservative seats would barely have moved. That number is disproportionate to the Conservative share of the vote, as it also is at present, so I understand the point that the hon. Gentleman makes.

I am aware that time is short, so I should like to make some progress. When we discussed the European election system, one issue that was raised was that it would lead to a large proportion of spoilt ballot papers. In response to the point made earlier on that matter, I point out that that was not the case. In total, there were about 25,800 spoilt ballot papers on 10 June. That compares to about 32,000 at the previous European parliamentary elections on a slightly larger turnout and to about 90,000 at the 1997 general election, both of which were conducted under the first-past-the-post system.

I will provide a little more information about our favourite, and now famous, Belgian, Mr. Victor d'Hondt, because I realise that hon. Members on both sides of the House are waiting on my words on that subject. Hon. Members may recall that he lived in the second half of the last century and was professor of law at the university of Ghent and a Christian Democrat. He was one of the leading lights in the Belgian equivalent of the Electoral Reform Society, and wrote a seminal paper in 1882, in which he set out his now famous divisor. He was instrumental in persuading Belgium to introduce a proportional voting system, which it did in 1899--making it the first nation in Europe to do so. That fact is to be added to the quiz on 10 things one knows about Belgium.

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