Written evidence submitted by Nicola Prigg
(PVSCB 15)
SUMMARY
The main points I would like to make to the
Committee are:
— Referendum should ask whether we want
a change in the electoral system. — First-Past-the-Post
leaves voters disenfranchised.
— FPTP leaves people wondering how to vote
and therefore there's an argument to directly elect the Prime
Minister.
— First-Past-the-Post isn't the best system
for throwing a government out.
— FPTP has led to a political environment
where you can "win" in a democracy.
— AV is better than FPTP but still undemocratic.
— STV empowers the electorate.
— Putting in law what democratically valid
means in reference to constitutional change, questions the validity
of past changes to the constitution.
— Thresholds aren't the right way to go
about making a referendum democratically valid. Parliament doesn't
have thresholds neither should referendums.
— Equal-sized constituencies are good but
it's easier to achieve with multi-member constituencies.
— Secretary of State for the home nations
should be a member of parliament from the largest party of that
home nation.
— Nash's equilibrium with respect to the
Union. The debate about the state of the union in the UK and the
state of the European Union are the same at different points in
the scale.
1. To really get a feeling of whether the
electorate want a change to the electoral system, there should
be a referendum first on whether the electorate want electoral
reform instead of offering a change to a system chosen by politicians.
I am of the opinion that if there is a "No" vote in
the AV referendum without asking the electorate whether they want
a change, the two main parties will use the referendum to say
the electorate don't want change when that wasn't the question
put to them. I believe by asking the electorate whether they want
change can then open up a proper debate on what that system should
be. If the electorate want change, then we can use an STV referendum
to decide what the system should be.
2. FPTP is an archaic system. I didn't vote
in the last election mainly because in my constituency, there
is no point in voting unless you vote for the clear winner. It
leaves me as a young voter thinking my vote doesn't count, my
MP doesn't care about representing me because she doesn't need
my vote to get elected. FPTP doesn't lead to a parliament that
accurately represents the electorate's views. In the 2010 election,
the two main parties managed to achieve 65.2% of the vote yet
they have 87% of the seats in parliament. That leaves 22% of the
voters ignored. That doesn't include the third of the electorate
that didn't vote. We need to empower people to vote and to take
an interest in politics. The way to do that is to have a proportional
system of some kind so that no matter where you live you have
the ability to elect someone with your views, who has a character
that you like and will campaign to help deliver real change and
give you a voice in parliament.
3. The single member system of FPTP that
has been in use for the last 50 years leaves many people on election
day wondering how to vote. Many people feel on election day that
they have to contort their views to fit one box. If we leave out
policy for a minute and look at what else people are voting for,
they are voting for a candidate, a party and a prime minister.
The views on who my MP should be, what party I want to support
and who I want to be prime minister can vary from the party line.
I personally don't like my MP and I know others who don't and
I wouldn't vote for my MP regardless of party. Yet if I want to
support my MPs party, then I'm stuck with an MP who I dislike.
Not only am I voting for a party but I am also voting for the
person who I want to see lead the country. There are some candidates
for that job who I would for regardless of party or I would vote
against regardless of party. That's why I believe that we should
directly elect the Prime Minister.
4. One of my main problems with the electoral
system in this country is that we are supposed to vote for a candidate
to represent our community but it has become about who the leader
is and who we want the government to be. Government is a by-product
of people voting for more candidates that represent a particular
party than any other political party. Just changing the electoral
system whether to AV, STV or any other proportional system won't
change that without fundamental restructuring of our electoral
system. No system will let us throw a government out if the government
is just a by-product.
5. Following the recent election coverage,
I got the impression that the parties weren't about changing the
country for the better, they weren't for democracy, they were
for "winning". I seriously dislike this terminology
because if we focus on winning and losing an election or power,
then we lose what democracy is all about. Democracy is about making
your voice heard. I know of a party that calls themselves democrats
but they don't care about democracy because they can't win power
in a democracy, they can't win an election with democracy. In
my opinion, it is FPTP that creates this terminology. FPTP has
created a democratic party that can't stand democracy. Since 1918,
there has only been two elections in 1931 and 1935 where a party
achieved more than 50% of the vote and therefore deserved a parliamentary
majority and even then because of the turnout rates they still
didn't actually manage to achieve 50% support of the electorate.
Only an unfair, undemocratic system such as FPTP would allow 21.6%
of the electorate (35.3% of the vote) to rule over 78.4% of the
electorate (64.7% of the vote). That is not democracy.
6. AV is slightly better but it is still
in my mind undemocratic. It is better because it is a preferential
system but it is still undemocratic because it is not proportional
and therefore cannot accurately represent the views of the electorate.
With AV at least 49% of the voters are left ignored, perhaps more
depending on turnout. AV is majoritarian and therefore I feel
undemocratic because it allows a minority to rule over a majority,
a majority that is divided but still a majority. I personally
feel that any such system is a dictatorship. As with FPTP, AV
only really allows you to hold the party to account and not the
candidate. Whilst you can more easily vote against a party or
candidate by not ranking the candidate. If you still want the
party and not the candidate, you still can't vote for that with
AV.
7. Open list STV is the best system in my
view because you get a choice of candidates and so don't have
to follow the party line and they can make the candidate as well
as the party accountable. Also if like many people your views
don't fit into one box then you can vote for candidates from multiple
parties and you have more of a chance of getting someone elected.
That empowers the electorate—it gives them a voice. STV
is also the best system when it comes to not wasting votes, if
you have a four member constituency then you only waste 20% of
votes or a three member constituency only wastes 25% of votes.
This is so much better as it gives more power to the people as
it actually uses their vote and makes their voice heard. It strengthens
the MP-constituency link because they have an MP they voted for,
whose values they share and who they like as people. It strengthens
democracy because people feel their vote counts. The amount of
people who I have met in Scotland who say they only felt their
vote mattered when they voted in the Scottish elections with the
Additional Member System (AMS). Whilst I like AMS's proportionality,
the FPTP segment still wastes votes and while that part of the
vote is strictly for a candidate, I still feel party politics
still comes into it. AMS also has a purely party politic aspect
in it that I do like because then I can vote on values, what I
dislike about it is that it's a closed list and therefore I could
let in an extremist candidate of the party with which I share
my values.
8. I have watched the two Committee meetings
so far and have noticed that Mrs Eleanor Laing MP has brought
up in both meetings the issue about thresholds and validity. I
agree full heartedly that any change to the constitution should
be democratically valid. I see the benefits of a threshold in
making sure a referendum to a change in the constitution is valid,
although whether a change in the electoral system is a constitutional
change is up for debate because we don't have a written constitution.
I agree with the experts and the Rt Hon Nick Clegg MP that a threshold
will put the power into the hands of the "No" campaign
because any non-vote is a "No" vote, whereas in a normal
election, a non-vote is not a "No" vote to the candidates
and the parties which they represent. I also believe that actually
putting in law what makes a constitutional change valid is potentially
dangerous as we don't have a written constitution. If you say
in law that in order to be democratically valid a constitutional
change needs even a referendum then surely you invalidate past
constitutional changes. Whilst invalidating some maybe welcome
for example in relation to giving powers away to Brussels in the
Lisbon treaty, others are not so welcome for example invalidating
the Act of Union 1707 and Laws in Wales Acts 1535-42. By invalidating
these Acts then the unions between the nations never happened
therefore Scotland and Wales are independent. Whilst it is possible
to say that this democratic validity test is only valid from 2010,
you then create the impression that you know there are parts of
the constitution that are democratically invalid but you don't
want to validate them or you don't believe that you can validate
them ie you don't believe they can pass a referendum. By allowing
a simple majority whether in referendum or in parliament to be
democratically valid then the constitution remains valid. I would
agree with the consensus that a referendum with a simple majority
is democratically valid. Would I agree that a referendum with
a simple majority in which only 15% of the electorate voted in
was democratically valid, no I wouldn't. Would I be willing to
have a threshold in order to make sure that a reasonable amount
of people voted for it, no I wouldn't. That is because it puts
power into one side of the campaign and therefore makes the balance
of power unequal and is therefore democratically invalid. Parliamentary
votes don't have thresholds so why should a referendum? The parliamentary
vote in the Act of Union in 1707 was so poorly attended I believe
that had there been a threshold within parliament, the union would
never have happened. Even in recent parliaments, I've heard voting
sessions have been sometimes so poorly attended that were there
thresholds within parliaments some bills would not be passed.
9. Equal sized constituencies is important
for democracy but will be very difficult to achieve with single
member constituencies. There are already two exceptions and possibly
a third if the boundary commission can't change Charles Kennedy's
MP constituency in order to achieve the average constituency elector
size within the geographical limit. With Shetland and Orkney,
and Western Isles, there is a case as I understand it that if
they were to be joined with the mainland then MPs will be asking
for helicopters just to move around their constituency. Whilst
I agree that their vote shouldn't count more, surely there is
a difficulty in transportation when you start combining those
constituencies with the mainland. This is partly why I feel multi-member
constituencies are a must because it would alleviate this problem.
For example with STV, you could have a 3 member constituency so
Shetland and Orkney joined with a large part of the mainland and
the people of Shetland and Orkney can still vote for a candidate
that is local to them.
10. A big problem with boundary reviews
and elector sizes is that there are students who won't actually
know where they will be living in five years time and there will
be young kids who are not yet on the electoral register but will
be old enough to vote in the next election, some of these kids
will be at university at the next election and there is a question
of where should they vote ie in their home constituency, where
there base is or where there studying (considering that the next
election is being proposed to happen around exam time)? Voting
for a specific candidate is very hard when you know your local
MP is going to change within a few years because you're constantly
moving around the country.
11. Number of MPs matters because the more
MPs, the more views you can represent, the problem with having
too many MPs is that all the vested self-interests then block
each other and therefore can't actually hold the executive to
account properly. What the optimum amount is, I don't know but
600 is probably a good start.
12. I believe that the Secretary of State
for the home nations should be a MP from the largest party in
that country. I believe that the SNP are growing ever larger because
the English keep alienating the Scots along with the rest of the
UK. The English effectively say out of ignorance that Britain
stops at the English border. That says that only the English are
British. Britain is supposed to be a tolerant country that can
integrate other cultures yet after over 300 years of union there
is still England, Scotland and Wales and Northern Ireland. I believe
that by making the secretary of State of a home nation a MP from
the largest party in that nation, we respect that nations decision
on who the government should be and how the government should
be formed. Any Scot can still say that Thatcher didn't have the
right or the mandate to sell of the BNOC. I personally hate that
I can say this but the BNOC was only British on the tin, it was
North Sea Oil and therefore Scottish and seeing as Thatcher did
not have a mandate over Scotland because Scotland voted Labour
therefore Thatcher had no right to sell that company. Having the
Secretary of State for the home nations be a member of the largest
party in that country would go someway to alleviate the lack of
a mandate in those countries.
13. My idea of how the union should be governed
comes from John Nash and his equilibrium. John Nash states that
in order to do what is best for the individual, you have to do
what is best for the group. This should not only be our economic
model but also our governing model for the union. The problem
with this is that England is more populated and so their interests
are always going to come before the interests of the rest of the
union because there are more of them in England and therefore
have more democratic sway. There is even a problem within England
because there is this North/South divide and the South's interests
will always trump the North because the South is more populated
and that will always be the case because there are more job opportunities
in the South and so anyone in the rest of the Union has to move
down South. We need a system of governance that allows no area
of the country's interests to dominate the rest, which unfortunately
means that democracy doesn't work. The majority of the country
lives in South Britain and therefore to give the other areas of
the country and give their interests a voice then their vote has
to count more. If you look at the electoral map of Scotland from
the most recent election, you'll see a country divided. You'll
see the south west and central belt where essentially the majority
of people live in Scotland is almost solid red of Labour and anything
north of the central belt is Liberal Democrat or SNP and the two
remaining constituencies in the south are Liberal Democrat and
Conservative. I'm from part of that red bit and I think it is
deeply unfair that my interests, my issues count more because
I'm in the majority. I have the same problem when it comes to
Britain as a whole but then I'm in the minority and England is
the majority. Scotland, I believe doesn't have an effective say
in UK issues especially the economy which is so important to Scotland
seeing as we have always been the poorest nation in the UK. I
understand that Scotland has 9.07% representation in parliament
and 8.5% of the population so I understand England's point that
it is roughly democratic. My problem with England's point is that
when England becomes part of the minority ie within the EU, the
English can't seem to accept that the rest of Europe is bigger
and we live in a democracy so they deserve to have more power
over Britain. The debate about the EU's power over UK and England's
power over the rest of the UK is the same and should have the
same solution.
26 July 2010
| 
