Formal Minutes
Wednesday 27 January 2010
Members present:
Mr Greg Knight, in the Chair
Mr Ian Cawsey
Mr Christopher Chope
Ms Katy Clark
Mr Mark Field
Mr Roger Gale
| | John Hemming
Mrs Siân C James
Mrs Linda Riordan
Sir Robert Smith
Sir Peter Soulsby
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Draft Report (Election of the Speaker and of the
Deputy Speakers), proposed by the Chairman, brought up and read.
Ordered, That the Chairman's
draft Report be read a second time, paragraph by paragraph.
Paragraphs 1 to 53 read and agreed to.
Paragraph 54 read, as follows:
"In keeping with the principle that the electoral
system should be swift and efficient, we narrowed this down to
two options, both of which involve Members marking their ballot
papers only once, allowing the counting system to take care of
the result. These were: multi-X voting and STV. Following further
discussion with the Electoral Reform Services on how these systems
would work in practice, we conclude that both would serve our
purposes but that STV has unique advantages in that it would ensure
that no votes are wasted; that all successful candidates have
a significant level of support; and that it is less likely to
result in a lower placed candidates taking a post with far fewer
votes than several candidates with a higher shares of the vote.
We are also advised that STV would make it far more difficult
for the system to be manipulated by majority parties in order
to thwart the opposition in its choice of candidates. We recommend
that the House adopt STV for the purposes of electing the Deputy
Speakers, with constraints that of those elected two candidates
must come from the opposite side of the House to that from which
the Speaker was drawn and one from the same side, and that at
least one man and at least one woman must be elected across the
four posts of Speaker and Deputy Speaker combined."
Amendment proposed, in line 5, to leave out from
"purposes" to end of the paragraph and insert "We
recommend that the House should be given a choice between these
two options."—(Mr Christopher Chope.)
Question put, That the Amendment be made.
The Committee divided.
Ayes, 3 Noes, 3
Mr Christopher Chope John Hemming
Mr Mark Field Sir Robert Smith
Mr Roger Gale Sir Peter Soulsby
Whereupon, the Chairman declared himself with the
Noes.
Paragraph 54 agreed to.
Paragraphs 55 to 90 agreed to.
Summary agreed to.
Resolved, That the Report
be the First Report of the Committee to the House.
Ordered, That the Chairman
make the Report to the House.
Written evidence was ordered to be reported to the
House for printing with the Report.
[Adjourned till Wednesday 3 February at 2.30 pm
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