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Mr. Hood: Is it a half-closed list or a half-open list? The hon. Gentleman has just proved the point. It is confusing him and it is confusing me. The election before the previous one was first past the post. Then we went on to a PR system. Now we are on the new system. Turnout was 24 per cent. in 1999. Here is a wager. If turnout is more than 24 per cent. in the June election—and I will try to ensure that it is—the tea in the Tea Room is on me. That is how confident I am.
Mr. Hood: I ask hon. Members not to tempt me. I do not intend to speak for too long. I just want to make a few points, and the more I am tempted, the longer I will be. The constitutional convention got consensus. Everyone was okay. We went for a referendum and thankfully all the parties got together then and we got the vote.
I remember that there was a huge row. I do not know what the rows were like in the Opposition parties but in the Labour party it was quite difficult. In fact, a Front-Bench spokesman resigned when the Prime Minister announced that we were going to have a referendum to entrench the will of the Scottish people.
I remember going to the Scottish executive committee of the Labour party to hear the Prime Minister when he came to put his case—I was on the Scottish executive committee then. I supported him then overwhelmingly. The biggest reason for supporting the referendum was that one of our greatest concerns during the whole debate in favour of a Scottish Parliament was what guarantee we had that what we gave the people of
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Scotland with one Government could not be taken away by another Government. In other words, we were worried about the Tories. If we gave Scotland a Parliament, would the Tories take it away or change it? The biggest argument for a referendum was that it would entrench the will of the Scottish people. Once that was done, no Government would try to amend it. However, the first attempt to amend it has come from our own Government.
Mr. Mark Lazarowicz (Edinburgh, North and Leith) (Lab/Co-op): My hon. Friend is arguing strongly that the Scotland Act should not be changed with regard to the 129 MSPs. However, his name is attached to every single amendment that effectively calls for an end to the PR system for the Scottish Parliament. Surely there is some inconsistency. On the one hand he does not want to change the number of MSPs; on the other, he is happy to call for the abolition of PR.
Mr. Ian Davidson (Glasgow, Pollok) (Lab/Co-op): He is just a lawyer.
Mr. Hood: He is a courageous lawyer to intervene on me to ask about PR. It was my hon. Friend the Member for Edinburgh, North and Leith (Mr. Lazarowicz) who used his casting vote to give us PR when the Scottish Labour party would not have supported it. Perhaps we would not be having this debate were it not for my hon. Friend. We would have had the Scottish Parliament, because we had a big enough majority in 1997 to deliver it. We would have had first past the post, and a Labour Government in Holyrood. I admire his gall in intervening on that subject.
Mr. Lazarowicz: I realise that, eventually, my casting vote will be engraved on my hon. Friend's heart: he seems to remember it long after everyone else has forgotten. If someone had to use a casting vote, it suggests that at least half of those involved were also in favour of PR at the time. Leaving that aside, will my hon. Friend answer the question that I posed in my previous intervention?
Mr. Hood: It should not be difficult for my hon. Friend to work it out but, as a lawyer, he may be confusing those who were for, those who were against and those who were in between. He may have found out on his travels that I have been, am and always will be for first past the post. I have never been seduced by any proportional representation system. If it had been left to me, the Scottish convention would not have gone for PR. Had I been in my hon. Friend's position, we would not have had PR. I think that we are being pushed towards a full PR system, away from the compromise of part first past the post, part PR. If so, I am on the side of first past the post and I will do what I can to argue that case.
Pete Wishart:
I am always interested in the views of the hon. Gentleman on PR. For the comedy value, will he give us his view on the decision of his colleagues in Holyrood to adopt PR for local government so enthusiastically?
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The Chairman: Order. I may be able to help. The debate is moving into much more generalised matters. I ought to remind the Committee of the amendment that I hope the hon. Member for Clydesdale (Mr. Hood) will propose. If we go too far afield—I have allowed the hon. Gentleman 22 minutes of background—the Chair may take a niggardly view on the stand part debate.
4.45 pm
Mr. Hood: Thank you, Sir Alan, for rescuing me from myself, if nothing else. The amendment seeks to delay the enactment of something that will have consequences for local government. Many of my hon. Friends—although not too many of them, because we could never have enough—are experienced in local government. I am fortunate to have been in local government for 14 years and I know the value of local government from having been in it and seen what it can do.
As hon. Members know, I do not make too many party political points, but during the years of the Thatcher Government we had two institutions that we could go to for defence. We had the trade unions, which were important at the time, although Baroness Thatcher was set against them, and we had local authorities, which protected us in some good measure. It took the Thatcher Government a long time to damage the local authorities, although they abolished the metropolitan councils and did away with the Greater London council. It was important that we looked to our local authorities and that is why I value local government; I have been in there and I value it. The people who value it more, however, are the people who rely on it more. As I said earlier, we do not want to have a situation where no one goes and knocks on people's doors to get them to respond. PR would do away with all that in local government.
John Barrett (Edinburgh, West) (LD) rose—
Mr. Brian Wilson (Cunninghame, North) (Lab) rose—
Mr. Hood: I am going to move on, but I will give way to my right hon. Friend the Member for Cunninghame, North (Mr. Wilson).
Mr. Wilson: I want to support my hon. Friend and bring him back to his amendment. There is unnecessary division here, because there seems—I wonder whether my hon. Friend will agree—to be a remarkable degree of consensus in the Chamber. The consensus in favour of maintaining coterminous boundaries has extended, not decreased, since our last discussion. The nationalists, who tended to ridicule the principle last time, are now signed up to coterminous boundaries. No one on our side supports what is going through. The Tories oppose it. There is remarkable consensus, which my hon. Friend will want to build on. The only people who support the measure that is going through might be a couple of Liberals and perhaps the Minister. Everyone else regards it as a load of old rubbish.
Mr. Hood:
I thank my right hon. Friend for those helpful and supportive comments. He is absolutely right. Coterminosity is the key to anything that we do. Without it, I do not know where we would be. Perhaps
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it is difficult to get our heads around the issue, and perhaps we are just using figures and not thinking it through, but we should seriously try to imagine life as a Westminster MP with 10 councillors and 20 MSPs, with everyone going down different roads on the same subject. What we have is a war between the political classes, with members of the chattering classes starting to score points off one another.
If we have gone into politics to do anything, surely it is to serve—to serve our communities and to help our constituents. They seem to be well down the pecking order when we discuss this constitutional reform and we need to put them back up it. The No. 1 priority on our agenda should be how we serve them, not how we find a political fix that suits all parties.
Mr. Peter Duncan (Galloway and Upper Nithsdale) (Con): I am trying to get to the root of the hon. Gentlemen's amendment. If, as the right hon. Member for Cunninghame, North (Mr. Wilson) suggests, the Bill is a load of old rubbish and there is little support for it across the Chamber, why is it being introduced and what does the hon. Member for Clydesdale (Mr. Hood) think that that says about the power balance in the Scottish Labour party?
Mr. Hood: I shall resist the temptation from the hon. Gentleman, but I shall say this: the Bill deserves the criticism that it has attracted and my right hon. Friend was right to say that there are not many people who argue its case, although a few loyal souls have put their heads above the parapet. Perhaps that tells the story better than any speech in the House of Commons.
To seek enactment of the Bill before the commencement of section 16 of the Political Parties, Elections and Referendums Act 2000 is evidence that the Government are in difficulty and are seeking shortcuts to cement this political fix. I commend the amendment and the new clause to the Committee.
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