Examination of Witnesses
Professor John Curtice and Professor David Denver
(QQ 308-332)
Professor John Curtice,
University of Strathclyde, and Professor David Denver,
Lancaster University
Q308 The Chairman:
Thank you very much for coming. You know the scope of this inquiry
and what we are at. Would you like to say something to start off
with, or would you like to launch straight into questions?
Professor John Curtice:
I think we have agreed that Professor Denver will go first. I
have not submitted written evidence. I was asked by the Committee
to appear, so I wanted to make a small statement to give you some
idea of what I am willing to talk to, but we have agreed that
Professor Denver is going to make a rather more wide-ranging statement,
so with your permission, Lord Chairman, I think he would like
to talk first.
Professor David Denver:
I was asked to look at some questions, most of which have been
done to death already, as far as I can hear, but I will quickly
skip through them anyway and give you my perspective on them.
The first question is what is the best form of electoral system.
The answer, of course, is that there is no such thing as a best
system; it all depends on hat you want to achieve. If you want
a broad representation of opinion, you might go for one thing;
if you want the ability to produce majority Governments, you would
go for another; if you want close links between representatives
and the represented, you would go for another. Except, of course,
that the electoral systems do not always produce what even people
such as John and I expect, hence we have in Scotland a majority
Government elected on the Additional Member system, which surprised
lots of people, especially me. And, of course, we have a coalition
in Westminster on the basis of first past the post. So life is
always interesting for the electoral analysts and you never know
what is going to happen.
None the less, in the draft Bill there is a commitment
to PR, and that seems to imply that what the Government—or
the people concerned with this—are seeking is some kind
of broad representation of opinion. It does mention list systems
as a possible option. Personally, I would be deeply opposed to
such a system. It is simply a party stitch-up, because the parties
control who gets elected and non-party candidates are virtually
excluded—well, they are excluded. Party list systems are
awful, in my view.
STV is proposed, as we have heard at great length.
People know the good points. It provides a broad range of opinions
being represented and it confers power on voters rather than parties,
at least in the electoral process itself. It does not take it
away from parties entirely, as we heard, when it comes to nominating
candidates, but it gives a bit more power to voters, I think,
at that point. On the other hand, people have to accept that there
are problems with STV. The biggest one does not apply in this
case, which is that it does not confer decisive governmental power,
and at that point it transfers power from the people to the politicians.
That seems to me to be a dreadful thing, but as I said that does
not apply here. It is also associated with weaker links between
representatives and the represented. I do not think that matters
much here either, because of the very large districts proposed.
Some people talk about elected Lords doing constituency work.
That just seems to me to be bonkers. One disadvantage also seems
to be that STV might seem complicated, but in fact it worked very
well in Scotland when it was introduced in 2007 for the Scottish
local elections.
1.8 per cent of ballots were rejected, which is a
bit more than you would get on first past the post, but it compares
with the Irish experience. They have been doing it since the 1920s.
So you get a wee bit more rejected ballots, but nothing very dramatic—certainly
not as dramatic as the Scottish election produced for the Scottish
Parliament in 2007.
Q309 Lord Trefgarne:
Unless you are part of the 1.8 per cent.
Professor David Denver:
Unless you are part of the 1.8 per cent. But when it gets to 4
or 5, as it did in the Scottish Parliament election, then you
really have got problems. One of the reasons for rejected ballots,
and another problem, is that it requires lengthy ballot papers—very
lengthy if you are going to have seven people, as I will come
back to. There is clear evidence that when people are voting using
STV, there is alphabetical voting. People placed at the top of
the list clearly do better. Many fine Labour councillors in Scotland
were defeated because they happened to be called Young or Wright,
or things like that. That is very clear, and nobody has really
come up with an answer.
Lord
Trimble: There is an
answer. We had a rash of this in Northern Ireland. You change
your name by Deed Poll.
Professor David Denver:
You can change your name, that is right. It is interesting to
note also that, no matter where the level being employed, most
voters using STV give three choices and no more. They go one,
two, three and then they stop. Only real nerds like me go a lot
further. The evidence is absolutely clear. Some people go on—there
are nutters like me who will go on and on—but Ireland is
the case in point, as is Scotland at the last election. After
three, there is a very big drop-off. That is just for interest,
really. I do not know what relevance it has for your deliberations.
Of course, STV requires large electoral districts—very large
in this case, as you know, with only 80 to be elected across the
country.
On the point about timing, the draft Bill proposes
elections at the same time as general elections. I can see the
reasons for this. The point about turnout was made earlier, but
that seems to imply that people would not bother voting for the
House of Lords if it was not on the same day as the general election,
which is a sad assumption. A more realistic reason for it is cost.
It costs a lot of money to run an election, and running a separate
one would be expensive. I accept that, but none the less the Committee
might like to consider the argument that coterminous elections
lead to confusion in the electorate. There are confusing messages
coming across and campaign material, for example. It leads inevitably
to the downgrading of the less important election. We have lots
of experience of general elections and local elections held at
the same time. When that happens, you hear nothing about the local
elections. They are lost, and that seriously downgrades the whole
function of elections, which is to hold people to account, including
on local councils. And, of course, please note that in Scotland
local elections have recently been decoupled from the Scottish
Parliament elections, precisely for these reasons of confusion
and so on.
My penultimate point is about electoral districts.
We have already heard that multi-Member districts are required
and a minimum of three are required for STV to work, really. In
general, if you want more representative people elected, the more
the better. The Bill proposes five to seven. The problem with
the upper limit is quite a simple practical one, which is the
size of the ballot paper. If you have seven, with three parties,
that is 21 for a start, before you go any further. It is always
possible—it is difficult to know how to put this—that
the more representative it is, the greater the chances that people
with, shall we say, eccentric opinions would get elected. You
might say that that is fine, or that it is not fine.
I had a think about making the electoral districts
based on groups of counties. On the whole, I think that is probably
the sensible thing, because parliamentary constituencies are usually
within counties anyway, so it will not complicate the boundaries
too much.
Finally, on by-elections, obviously people will die,
given the 15-year term, but by-elections would be really silly,
because it would be really expensive for not very much, it seems
to me. The Bill proposes to replace whoever dies, or whatever,
with the next person of the same party. This bespeaks a fixation
with party that is contrary to the spirit of STV, and I fail to
see why the replacement should not simply be the next person in
line, as it were, irrespective of party. There, I will stop.
Professor John Curtice:
I was asked to talk specifically about the actual system, and
particularly about the Scottish experience of the single transferable
vote in 2007. A lot of this is probably very familiar to you,
but just so you understand, let me start with a little bit about
the presumptions on which I am operating. The first presumption
on which I am operating—I have heard some debate about this—is
that it is now probably the case that if a body is going to be
regarded as legitimate, by which I mean that it is a body that
most of the public accept has the right to be involved in the
law-making process for the rest of society, that body probably
has to be elected these days. If you want to get some idea of
this, for example when British Social Attitudes last asked people
about their attitudes towards the House of Lords, I have to tell
you that between about a fifth and a quarter wanted to get rid
of it entirely, but among the remainder only 10 per cent felt
that the House of Lords should be entirely appointed. Many were
willing to accept the idea of a mixed House, but there is very
clear evidence from polling data that in today's society, people
are doubtful about a Chamber that does not have an element of
election to it. This is the presumption from which the Government
is starting.
However, I also accept that the House of Lords has
at least developed, perhaps partly by accident, a role that is
now valued as, in some senses, the principal revising Chamber
of the two Houses, and certainly a revising Chamber that occasionally
is willing to tackle the detail of a Bill without necessarily
debating it entirely on party lines, and to consider whether the
technical merits of the Bill are adequate. That rests, in part
at least, on the fact that it is a body that is widely acknowledged
to contain much in the way of renowned professional expertise,
much of which is represented in this Room. There is clearly no
guarantee that once we move towards a system of election, we will
necessarily get the same body of professional expertise among
elected politicians. Therefore, one potential risk of moving towards
election is that maybe we lose, to some degree, the body of professional
expertise. Certainly an obvious danger is that, whatever electoral
system we have, the expectation in most elections is that most
elected representatives are going to be representatives of parties,
so the elections tend to be about party. There is therefore a
clear risk a system of election will increase the partisanship
of the upper Chamber.
In a sense, therefore, I am starting from the basis
of accepting that we probably have to have a House that is pretty
much elected, but if we are to preserve its ability to do the
job for which it has become renowned, we need to try to minimise
the extent to which partisanship becomes a feature and, in so
far as possible, at least not to make it any more difficult than
necessary for those with acknowledged professional expertise to
become Members.
If you come from that standpoint, you can certainly
see why people would want to choose the single transferable vote.
Point No. 1 is that all votes are for candidates, formally they
are not for parties, and if I give a first preference to, for
example, a Labour candidate, that does absolutely nothing to enhance
the prospects of any other Labour candidate being elected. In
this respect that extent it is pretty much unique among systems
that are regarded as proportional. It is very much a personal
system. At the same time, however, as long as you have reasonably
sized districts, it produces a reasonable degree of proportionality.
Almost unlike any other proportional system, the other ingredient
is that it is a system of transferable votes. To some degree,
therefore, it provides an incentive to parties and to candidates
to appeal for lower preferences from those who are not supporters
of their party. To that extent, therefore, both because it is
a more proportional system—therefore it is unlikely to create
a majority in the House—and given the nature of the electoral
system, you can see how, to some degree at least, STV would help
to reduce the partisanship of elections, because you will be looking
at people who to some degree have had an incentive to appeal across
party lines, and because you have a House where it is probably
not true that any party is going to have a majority, so to that
extent the search for consensus is being highlighted.
You can see why you might choose STV. The question
is whether it works in practice. Although STV is not used in many
places, it so happens that the one thing we know about the system
is that it produces very different consequences in different contexts.
In Malta, it is associated with one of the strongest two-party
systems in Western Europe, with very little in the way of willingness
from voters to transfer ballots across party lines. In contrast,
in Ireland it is associated with one of the weaker party systems
in Western Europe and a system in which voters are very keen and
willing to vote on the basis of the personal attributes of candidates,
not least whether or not they have done a favour for them recently.
Therefore, we have to be very careful about making any inference
about the way in which the system might operate if it were introduced
in Great Britain. I have to say here, with due respect to colleagues
in Northern Ireland, that given the very different party system
there, we cannot even infer very much from Northern Ireland about
what would happen on this side of the water in an STV election.
One place where you can gain some guidance is from
Scotland, which introduced the single transferable vote for local
elections in 2007. The other think about it that is interesting,
given the Government's proposals, as David has already referred
to, is that these elections were held at the same time as another
election that most people regarded as more important, and certainly
grabbed the media attention. Therefore, the Government's proposed
context was replicated in 2007 and interestingly is not going
to be replicated in 2012, which I suspect might be important.
We will come on to that further.
There are some differences. I have heard some people
say that you cannot have STV in three-Member constituencies. Oh
yes you can; Scotland has them in spades. The deal between Labour
and the Liberal Democrats meant that we had very small wards.
They are all three or four-Member wards. They are smaller than
those proposed in the Bill. This makes a difference, because,
for example, with such small wards lots of parties put up just
one candidate. That affects the nature of the system and the choice
that is given to voters.
The other thing to say is that Scotland has four
significant parties rather than three. The more fractured the
party system, the more likely it is that voters will cast preferences
for candidates from more than one party. So you need to bear that
in mind.
Given those caveats, this is about as good as it
gets. Given that there was this novel experience, I was lucky
in being able to persuade a funding council to get respondents
to the Scottish Social Attitudes survey in 2007 to complete a
mock ballot paper. We asked them to replicate on a mock ballot
paper, which had the names of all their local candidates, how
they voted in the election. Although you can tell some things
from elections—David has already referred to the fact that,
because we had an electronic count we know that the median voter
only cast three preferences—there are lots of things we
cannot tell from it. But by asking people exactly how they voted
and linking it to other evidence about those people, we can learn
a lot more about how people used that ballot paper and which kinds
of people did so. In doing that exercise, we replicated very closely
a study done of the Irish election to the Dáil in 2002,
so we can begin to get some handle on how similar Scotland is
to Ireland, and by extension how similar England and Wales might
be, too 1-1, or is it to some degree different?
Okay. Let me just give you one or two headlines and
then I am sure you will want to talk more later on. The first
thing that clearly needs to be true if this system is going to
work is that people need to be willing to vote for more than one
party. If that transfer incentive is going to be there, we need
to know that voters are going to use it. 59 per cent of people
who responded to our mock ballot paper indicated that they voted
for more than one party. Even among those who had more than one
candidate standing for the party of their first preference, around
43 per cent of them were not necessarily ranking all the candidates
of that party above the candidates of any other party. So of those
voters who were faced with the possibility of just voting SNP
one, two, three and going home, many did so, but a significant
minority voted SNP one, Labour two, Tory three, or whatever.
The incidence of that kind of behaviour is lower
than it is in Ireland, as you might expect. We are more partisan,
but arguably there is enough there to suggest that there was an
incentive for somebody standing to say, "I am not just a
Labour candidate, but by the way I am a really good Labour candidate
and I have these other personal qualities, and therefore you should
vote for me."
That said, there is undoubtedly a very clear problem,
which again David has already referred to. If we just take all
the people who responded to our survey, we can ask how many of
them said that they gave their first preference vote to a candidate
who was placed higher up on the ballot paper than the candidate
they gave their second preference to. If voters were doing this
intelligently, you would expect that figure to be roughly 50 per
cent. The answer is that among all voters it is 60 per cent. If
you look at those voters who voted Labour one, two and three,
or whatever, they were in a ward where Labour—it was mostly
Labour—was putting up more than one candidate. They were
partisan voters who just wanted to go Labour one, two and three.
It is among that group of voters that alphabetic voting is very
clearly happening. About 70 per cent of those voters voted alphabetically.
This is where I come back to the issue of coupling.
One of the things that is very clear about comparing the Scottish
data with the Irish data is that voters in Scotland were much
less likely to say that they really liked the candidate that they
put their No. 1 against. It was only about a fifth of voters.
We asked them to give the candidate whom they gave their first
preference vote to a mark out of 10 for how much they liked them.
In Scotland, only 19 per cent of voters gave their first preference
candidate a score of 9 or 10. In Ireland, 39 per cent did so in
2002. Undoubtedly, if you have an election in which you have partisan
voters and the candidates evidently have not made that much impression
on the electorate as individuals, you are certainly creating an
environment in which alphabetic voting is likely to occur. I cannot
prove it until we have factual evidence, but this is where I think
Scotland in 2012 is going to be important. One of the potential
risks of having the Lords election on the same day as a Commons
election, in which all the media attention is going to be on what
happens in the House of Commons, is that it will make the environment
in which voters vote more partisan. I have suggested earlier that
you want to minimise the partisanship of the election, whatever
system you use. Secondly, you will arguably make it more difficult
for individual candidates to get the profile that they need to
be able to get votes on an individual basis and you are probably
creating an environment in which you will maximise the incidence
of alphabetical voting. I realise that there are downsides with
not coupling, but I suggest that if you are really concerned to
create an electoral system and an electoral environment in which
voters are voting for candidates, the issue of running it alongside
Commons elections at least needs thinking about. I am hoping to
persuade somebody to replicate this exercise in 2012, which would
give us some idea of whether, when we have a local election that
is not coupled, the incidence of alphabetical voting declines.
If so, I suggest that that would be very strong evidence indeed
against the idea of a coupled election.
There are other ways around this, such as Robson
rotation. But if you are going to have a voting system that gives
voters the chance to say what they like about candidates rather
than about parties, pretty much any preferential system is at
least potentially at risk of suffering from alphabetical voting.
The alternative is of course that parties also have to try to
do something about it. The answer, perhaps particularly in Northern
Ireland and in the South is to say to voters, "This is how
we want you to vote: one, two, three". But arguably, that
is not really voting on the basis of personality either.
Q310
The Chairman:
Thank you very much. Can I start off by assuring you two gentlemen
that, for many of us in this room, "party politician"
is not necessarily a term of abuse?
Professor John Curtice:
I entirely accept that. I am not using it as a term of abuse.
I am pointing out that it is widely accepted that one of the strengths
of the upper House at the moment is that it is somewhat less partisan.
The truth is that partisanship has declined as a force in House
of Commons voting and we now have a very rebellious lower Chamber,
but historically, the upper Chamber has tended to be rather less
partisan, with Peers being rather more willing historically to
vote against the party line. It has been felt that that is one
of the reasons why the upper House is often rather more effective
than the Commons at saying, "Hang on. You may want to achieve
this objective in Government, but this is not a terribly good
way of going about it".
Q311
The Chairman:
I do not want to follow this for too long, because I want to talk
about the details of the electoral system, but I assume that you
would agree that you have got to have parties, even in the upper
House. You have to have a party structure and parties have to
be operative, otherwise you will not get a thing through.
Professor John Curtice:
Yes, exactly. In a sense, the argument that I am suggesting is
that basically you need an ideal mix. Yes, of course you are going
to have to have parties to organise elections and you want parties
to provide a degree of organisation to the House, but you do not
want parties to be so powerful that a single party can say, "This
is what we want. Our chaps are going to vote for it come what
may. End of argument". You want a chamber in which argument
and deliberation potentially have some impact on the outcome.
Q312
The Chairman:
Can I come on to the details? I have two or three questions, one
of which is a slight idiot boy question, which I am sure I should
know the answer to. Why do you have to have five to seven in an
STV constituency?
Professor John Curtice:
A basic rule of electoral systems is that the smaller the district
size—the smaller the number of people elected per district—the
less proportional it is. That is a basic rule, irrespective of
whether it is STV, d'Hondt, Sainte-Laguë, open list, closed
list or whatever. The major text on this, which did a very substantial
comparison of electoral systems across the world, came to the
conclusion that the most important determinant of the proportionality
of the system is district size. If you have a four-Member district,
you basically have to get 20 per cent of the vote to be sure of
getting elected. If you go down to a seven-Member district, you
only need 12.5 per cent to be sure of getting elected. It is just
straight arithmetic. It is a trade-off. It is a question of how
much proportionality you want. Of course, one of the things to
be aware of is that even with a seven-Member district, the de
facto threshold of STV—what kind of share of the vote you
require before you are going to get elected—is pretty high.
It is certainly higher than the de jure threshold that most list
systems enforce, such as the system in Germany.
Q313
The Chairman:
My impression, having heard evidence from both of you, is that
on the whole you think STV would be a good electoral system for
the upper House, provided that you can overcome all the difficulties
about the dates on which you do it, the size of the districts
and the number of seats. Is that fair?
Professor David Denver:
If you want to achieve a broader range of opinions, STV is the
one that does that. But then there are other problems.
Professor John Curtice:
My argument to you is that, given the premises I laid out—you
want a House that is not dominated by one party at any one time,
but which also maximises the incentive for candidates to get election
on the basis of personal popularity, because that may also be
advantageous to the House—STV is certainly not an inappropriate
system. You may regard some other open list preferential systems
as an alternative. If you can get STV to work and you can overcome
the issue of alphabetic voting, it would be difficult to find
a better system. I think that the argument would be whether you
found the problem with alphabetic voting so serious that you therefore
wanted to reduce the degree to which voters had to choose between
candidates in order to reduce that problem. That is probably where
the argument is.
Q314
The Chairman:
Perhaps I can abuse my position and ask one more question. Suppose
that we were to go to the European size constituency and you were
to have elections to the upper House on the same day as the European
elections, which would not synchronise with the Commons elections.
Do you think that would create more or less difficulty? Would
it be desirable to have the Houses elected on different dates
by different systems?
Professor David Denver:
Electors are often brighter than we think. They can cope reasonably
well. In the Scottish case, there was STV and then there was what
is technically called MMP—mixed Member proportional. Most
voters coped with it perfectly well. You get worried if there
are 2, 3 or 4 per cent of spoiled ballots, but that means that
96 per cent are coping quite well. I want more elections all the
time—as many as possible—so my preference is still
to keep them separate, because it gives dignity to the body being
elected. It gives some kind of focus on the body being elected,
rather than people just having to turn up and vote for two things.
Just think what would happen if we had a general election, an
election for the Lords and local elections as well. We have had
local elections in England on the same day as general elections
the last three times, I think. I disapprove of it.
Professor John Curtice:
Given the current election cycle for England and given the Fixed-Term
Parliaments Bill, if this draft Bill were to be enacted in time
for 2015, you would have three elections on the same day in many
parts of England.
Coming back to the question, I would make two observations.
We can have an interesting speculation about whether elections
to the House of Lords would attract more voters than elections
to the European Parliament. Holding them on the same day as elections
to the European Parliament would certainly not do anything to
increase the turnout to this body. It might have some benefit
on the turnout for the European elections. Holding the local elections
on the same day as the European Parliament elections has certainly
done something for European Parliament turnout. The second thing
that I would say, however, is that I suspect it would be true
that if you were to hold House of Lords elections with an open
list system or with STV on the same day as the European Parliament
elections with a closed list system, the debate about the closed
list system for the European Parliament elections would be reopened
and I guarantee that you would have plenty of phone-in programmes
in the run-up to the election saying, "Why can't I choose
my local MEP?". As many Members here will be aware, it was
a somewhat controversial decision, when it was originally made
back before 1999. I suspect it would cause that issue to be reopened.
Q315
Baroness Scott of Needham
Market: I have two questions.
First, for Professor Denver, could you say a word or two about
experience in the Scottish Parliament of having some Members elected
on a constituency basis and some on a list? This question of hybridity
exercises us. The second question is for both of you. You have
both talked about having elections on the same day. Initially,
my concerns were very much along the lines of Professor Denver's
about how you get oxygen for the subordinate election. But as
time has gone on, I think that this is a more important issue
than we are giving it credit for. I would appreciate your thoughts
on this, because it seems to me that in all our talks about primacy
of the Commons we have discussed it in constitutional convention
terms, whereas it seems to me that its primacy comes because the
voters vote for it. They vote, on the whole, twice as much in
general elections because they are voting for the Government.
In a sense, its primacy comes from the people because they jolly
well turn out and vote. Is there, in fact, a question not of weakening
the vote for the second Chamber by having it on the same day,
but almost giving it an importance that the voters would not otherwise
give it?
Professor David Denver:
You heard me talking about MMP, which is the mixed Member proportional
system, which is what politically correct political scientists
want to use instead of the additional Member system, because using
additional Members implies that somehow the additional Members
are kind of extra or not of the same value. That is precisely
what happened in the Scottish Parliament, when it began anyway.
The regional Members, as we might call them—the additional
Members—were kind of looked down on by the properly elected
constituency Members. The constituency Members thought they should
get paid more. I think that actually passed.
Professor John Curtice:
They got more expenses.
Professor David Denver:
The constituency Members got more expenses, because they had more
constituency work. I do not know, but I suspect that as time has
passed, that kind of controversy has gone now and people just
accept the fact that people are Members of the Parliament and
they do not have that kind of rivalry any more.
Professor John Curtice:
The truth is, David, that since the disaster suffered by the Labour
Party in 2011, it will have rediscovered the advantage of allowing
candidates to stand both in the constituencies and on the list—let
alone anything else—because the Labour Party made its situation
even worse when it suffered a disaster in May, because it meant
that large numbers of people were elected on the list who had
not been in the Chamber before, whereas large numbers of its Shadow
Cabinet were out of the door. The days of arguments—most
of which came from the Labour Party—about list MSPs being
second-class MSPs north of the border are over. The Government
of Wales Act was changed to make it impossible for people to stand
in both ballots. I always find that slightly odd, because of course
the reaction of the Conservative Party, which is also rather sniffy
about list Members, was that therefore you had to stand in both.
You pay your money and take your choice, but the truth is that
this argument will now disappear in the light of what happened
in May in Scotland.
Professor David Denver:
The second point was about having elections on the same day. Were
you expressing doubt about whether—
Q316
Baroness Scott of Needham
Market: What I was saying
was that my initial concerns were about the failure of the second
and subordinate election to get oxygen. However, my bigger concern
is almost the reverse—that of having a sort of second-hand
turnout, whereby people are turning out to vote for the Government,
and while they are at it they are casting a vote for something
else. There is an issue of legitimacy that may roll on to the
primacy question.
Professor David Denver:
There is a very subtle point about legitimacy that is very much
opposed to the point made earlier—the fact of getting a
higher turnout would give more legitimacy to the Lords. Your point
would be that, actually, people are not turning out to vote for
the Lords at all and, as happens in local elections, they turn
out to vote in the general election, because that is the most
important one, and while they are there they fill in the local
ballot without perhaps knowing or caring very much. It is different
perspective on legitimacy—albeit a subtle one—from
the point made earlier by our friend here. It is just a different
way of looking at it. In the end, you have to decide. Do you want
elections on the same day or not?
Professor John Curtice:
The truth is that you pay your money and take your choice. Do
you want to ensure that as many people as possible can vote? It
is always worth remembering that Commons elections do not attract
quite as much interest from the voters as they did. The House
of Commons manages only 60 per cent these days, so perhaps we
should not necessarily rely on that too much as a crutch. You
either say, let us get as many people as possible through the
polling station or you say, let us create an environment in which
people actually get the chance to consider the candidates and
the issues. You pay your money and take your choice. Let us be
straightforward; the other obvious downside of a decoupled election
is what happens if the House of Lords comes to be regarded as
not being that important—and there is no guarantee that
it will. We know what happens in local elections, which people
do not regard as important. They say, "That rotten David
Cameron, Gordon Brown or whoever is in Downing Street. I want
to send a message that I am not going to vote for a Tory or Labour
candidate". The whole thing therefore becomes caught up in
a protest vote against the Government. There is no perfect answer
to these things. It is a question of a trade-off. What I would
say, however, is that it comes back to what you want to achieve.
If you want to minimise the partisanship of an election and maximise
the degree to which individual candidates standing in that election
have a chance to impress themselves on the electorate, you probably
would not go for a coupled election; but you may feel that the
other considerations that we are talking about are more important.
Q317 Oliver Heald:
The debate about electoral systems over the years has tended to
be in the context of electing a Government or a body that has
a majority, and it is therefore clear who should be in the executive
positions. That is true of the Scottish elections, the general
election in the UK, councils and so on. However, a
slightly different exercise is required in terms of electing a
second Chamber. If you have an electoral system that is designed
to elect a Government and you apply it to a second Chamber, is
not the effect of that to confer additional legitimacy on the
second Chamber?
Professor John Curtice:
I am not sure that that follows. My view is very simple. I understand
the arguments in favour of majoritarian electoral systems where
a Government is at stake. However, parenthetically, I would say
that I regard first past the post as a rather poor way of achieving
that—but that is another argument. I do not see any argument
for having a majoritarian system where you are not choosing a
Government and where you are indeed choosing a body to represent
the views of the electorate. That would seem to be, in the case
of Lords election, what it is about and that therefore there is
no argument for a non-proportional system. I fully accept the
argument for majoritarian systems where you want to emphasise
the ability of voters to make and unmake Governments, but where
that is not at stake, it is very difficult to think of an argument
against a proportional system. That is the argument.
Q318 Oliver Heald:
That is on a slightly different point from the question I was
asking you. I may have misled you. The point is that the two main
contenders in the normal argument about electoral systems are
proportional representation—often STV—on the one hand,
and on the other you would look at first past the post. There
are competing arguments about that. But is not the question in
the context of a second Chamber rather a different one. It is
how to give democratic legitimacy without affecting primacy.
Professor David Denver:
That is nothing to do with the electoral system. I speak as a
supporter of first past the post. I do not think that people are
going round saying to themselves, "Gosh, I wonder if the
House of Lords is more legitimate than the House of Commons".
I just do not think that that will occur to people.
Oliver Heald:
Let me give an example of what I mean. If you look at the system
in Australia, they have chosen a voting system, STV, but they
allow a group voting ticket, which 90 per cent of electors use,
and the size of constituencies varies tremendously, because it
relates to states. That is a system that does not confer as much
legitimacy as first past the post does here in a general election.
Professor David Denver:
Indeed.
Professor John Curtice:
But the point is that the Australian Senate is partly there to
do a different job. It is much more analogous to the United States
Senate; it is designed to give equal representation to the various
component parts of the Australian federal state. If truth be told,
you could regard that as an objective here, in which case you
would be talking about having equal representation for Northern
Ireland, Scotland, Wales and perhaps the component regions of
England. That would be a different vision for an upper Chamber—perhaps
a vision that we might have to revisit if devolution goes further
in the United Kingdom, and particularly if it were to go further
in England—but at the moment that does not seem to be on
the table. You are talking about an upper Chamber that is in part
designed to deliver a different function. Australia has not only
compulsory voting, but also requires people to go all the way
down the ballot paper. If truth be told, most people think that
that is daft, and that is part of the reason why you have ended
up with a block vote—in order to save voters the trouble
of going 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, and wasting an awful lot of ink and increasing
the risk of casting an invalid vote.
Q319 Oliver Heald:
Let me put my overall proposition to you and then hear what you
both think about it. If your aim was to have a House that was
basically doing the same sorts of things as the House of Lords
does now and you wanted to have in it eminent people with national
standing as well as people with a regional flavour,
you could have a closed list and you could say that it would have
to have certain requirements in terms of balance, and regional
requirements. However, by doing that, you would elect people but
they would not have an individual mandate for an area. They would
be national figures and they would have that standing. That is
a very different proposition to what you would want to do for
the Commons.
Professor David Denver:
The mind boggles, frankly. A national list—it is kind of
like "Big Brother" or "Strictly".
Professor John Curtice:
Of course you could do that. That argument against it is, first,
you would probably find that the public would not be too keen
on it. There were grumblings in Scotland because there was a closed
list system. Leaving that to one side, the argument against is
that it is felt that if you have that kind of system, how will
people get up the list? If truth be told, even if you have some
requirements with gender zipping or whatever, it is because you
are popular among your party membership, and most parties these
days have some form of election for deciding the order of their
lists and, therefore, the people at the top of the list will tend
to be the people whom the party members like and they will tend
to be partisan. I would suggest that that is not the element of
the upper Chamber that you wish to exaggerate any more than you
have to.
Oliver Heald:
But they are the people who would get selected under any system.
Professor John Curtice:
They might do, but if the view of the party's electorate differs
from that of the public in terms of the order of which candidates
would be elected, the same people would not necessarily get elected.
I grant you that there are arguments both ways, but I have come
at it very clearly. I suspect that you probably do not wish to
emphasise the role of the party in order for the House to do its
job effectively.
Q320 Gavin Barwell:
I have two quick questions, the first of which is to Professor
Denver. I want to pick him up on the issue he touched on, and
on which some members of the committee had some concerns, regarding
Members of and elected second House potentially taking up casework.
I think that you rather
colourfully described it as nonsense, or something like that.
In the Scottish context, what evidence is there of list Members
competing with individual constituency Members on that basis?
Professor David Denver:
This caused no end of trouble because when you have a regional
Member and a constituency Member from different parties, the constituency
Member tends to think that the regional Member is trying to pinch
his seat and is spending his or her expenses doing constituency
work in order to prepare for the next election. This causes a
lot of problems, because people are frightened about votes in
the next election. But do not forget that in Scotland there are
eight regions, which are quite small areas. If you are talking
about regions of the UK for this issue, you are talking about
vast regions. I can see that Members elected could try to do some
pro-regional work, if you like—perhaps on behalf of the
tourist board or something. But I cannot see them dealing with
constituents' problems with the Department of Health or social
security.
Professor John Curtice:
That is probably also my view, but I am afraid that I am going
to say something that will probably also be very unpopular in
this Room. Given the extent to which the rest of society is being
told by politicians that competition is good for us, I have no
sympathy for MPs or MSPs who are worried about competition for
their seats. I think that it is good for you too.
Q321 Gavin Barwell:
I personally agree with that. The other question that I wanted
to pick up was about the dates of the elections. You have been
very honest in discussing the pros and cons. I want to put two
points to you. First,
I would be very interested in your view of the likely turnout
if you went for the more expensive option of a stand-alone election.
Obviously it will be just an educated guess. Secondly, Professor
Curtice made the point about the Scottish context and how a separate
election made it much easier for individuals to raise their profile.
I think that you were saying that in relation to the Scottish
council elections and the Scottish Parliament elections. I think
that you were referring to both categories. Would you not agree
that in the context of what is proposed by the Government here,
the potential electoral areas are so big that it would be very
difficult for anyone other than a celebrity, such as the candidates
for the Mayor of London are, to develop any kind of individual
profile in that way? Therefore, to me, those arguments are less
persuasive the larger the geographical area is that you are talking
about.
Professor David Denver:
On the stand-alone election, I would guess that the turnout would
be in the 40s, percentage-wise. It would be difficult, but there
are regional personalities. I do not know what happens in London,
but in the north-west or north-east, and so on, there are people
who have a regional profile. I do not see any reason why they
could not get that across in an election. It would be difficult
because, naturally, the parties would be competing. However, I
think that there is a chance of well known regional figures, such
as the people who were involved in the north-east referendum on
devolution, for example. It attracted big personalities in that
area.
Professor John Curtice:
I have a couple of points. I agree that a turnout of about 40
per cent would be my guess. There are two somewhat separate issues
here. There was a lot of discussion with your previous witness
about Independents. There is no doubt that it will not be easy
for Independents to stand. The truth is that we know from other
elections that there are two kinds of people who can make it as
Independents. One is general practitioners and the other is ex-party
politicians. They can often do it. Margo MacDonald as an ex-party
politician managed to do it on the list in Scotland. I suspect
that there might be a regional TV presenter standing on some big
campaign. But that may be rare. However, a separate issue, among
the candidates for parties, is about how much personality will
matter. It is the argument about whether voters are going to vote
alphabetically or whether they will exercise discretion. Certainly,
in so far as candidates discover that voters do not vote just
alphabetically or follow the advice of their parties—it
really depends on what the voters do—those candidates will
have a strong incentive to say, "By the way, I am so and
so. This is what I do for this region". They will have an
incentive to develop their personal profile. However, it depends
on the electorate. If the electorate do not vote alphabetically
and voters start to exercise their own discretion, then the system
will work. That is why I come back to this: if that is what you
want to achieve, think about not making it too difficult and creating
an environment in which that is more likely to happen.
Q322 Mr Clarke:
There are those who think that the Commons has not dealt with
the West Lothian question. Having looked at the draft Bill, do
you think that we have got that right?
Professor John Curtice:
You are talking about the distribution of seats across the various
parts of the United Kingdom?
Mr Clarke:
That is part of it. My supplementary would be that, assuming that
we have 80 per cent elected in the Lords and they start saying,
"We have been elected from English regions" or whatever,
"but we are not allowed to vote on these issues in Scotland".
In other words, the West Lothian question, which might not yet
have been addressed, could become an issue in a House of Lords
which has an element of election.
Professor John Curtice:
Okay. There are various complicated issues here. One of them is
that it is intriguing that nobody raises the question of Members
of the upper House who might originally have come from the Scottish
Peerage—I do not think that there are any of those still
left in the House—or those who are simply resident in Scotland
still being allowed to vote on English Bills. Actually, the issue
is arguably already before us in this House. Why should someone
who is a Peer from north of the border be allowed to vote on so-called
English legislation? At the moment, the Bill assumes, as is now
the case in the Commons, that all parts of the UK should be represented
on the basis of population. That certainly does not deal with
the West Lothian question. The only thing I will say, and I will
now make myself very unpopular with one person in this room, is
that it could be argued as somewhat curious, if you are going
for a House where the distribution of seats of the elected element
is in proportion with the population of the UK, that one of the
elements of the nominated element will be representative of the
church of only one portion of the UK. That is another issue that
you might want to think about, given the wider spirit of the Bill.
But otherwise, Tom, the answer is that this Bill does not deal
with the West Lothian question. The West Lothian question will
be there, but it is arguably already there at the moment.
Q323 Lord Trimble:
Sorry, but I am going to start with a bit of a grouse, particularly
addressed to Professor Curtice and the way in which, in his introduction,
he regarded Scotland and the Republic of Ireland as things that
we could learn from, but skated over Northern Ireland by saying
that we could not learn from it because, allegedly, the party
system was different. The party system in Northern Ireland is
closer to the system here than that in the Republic of Ireland.
We have got over 30 years' experience of PR there, and it is worth
studying instead of making excuses for not learning about, if
you will forgive me for saying that.
The other thing that I want to focus on is when you
were looking at people transferring votes beyond a particular
party. The dynamic that tends to work here, and I am quite sure
that most of the electorate can work this out for themselves as
soon as they think about voting, is that, with STV, you do a simple
triage. You decide the people who you want to vote for, who you
give your first preferences to. Then there are the people who
you do not want to see elected, who you do not give any preferences
to. Then there are the ones in between, who you give lower preferences
to in order to vote against the other party. It is a simple triage.
The electorate understand this very quickly, and very quickly
follow it. When you say that you got 59 per cent who voted for
more than one party—hooray—a lot of that 59 per cent
might just be voting for the other party to keep out a third group
of people. That is what normally happens in this situation.
Professor John Curtice:
Sure. Absolutely.
Lord Trimble:
The other thing that normally happens is that parties give advice
to the electorate. The electorate generally pay attention to that
advice. That becomes quite a significant factor in this, too.
You can probably only get rid of the alphabetical factor if you
randomise the ballot paper. People talk about that, but I do not
think that it ever has been.
Professor David Denver:
It certainly has not been done in Scotland.
Lord Trimble:
I have a third observation to make. This cannot happen when you
have got boundary commissions, but in the glorious days when you
did not have them, the way in which you gerrymandered STV was
in the choice between three and four seats. You would go for one
or the other depending on the level of electoral support that
you had in the area. It is quite sophisticated but can be done.
I will run classes in that later, if you like.
Professor John Curtice:
There are a few points to respond to. The point that I was making
about the Republic of Ireland is that, actually, we cannot necessarily
rely on it. I was trying to tell you that the evidence from Scotland
is not the same as that of the Republic of Ireland. It is simply
that I would also suggest to you, for reasons that I will come
on to, that there are equally particularities about Northern Ireland.
As you will well know, one of the reasons for introducing STV
in Northern Ireland was in the hope of promoting cross-nationalist/unionist
transfers.
The Chairman:
I fear that there is a Division in the House of Commons.
The Committee was suspended
for a Division in the House of Commons.
On resuming—
The Chairman:
We have a quorum.
Professor John Curtice:
Do you want me to repeat for the record the conversation that
Lord Trimble and I were having as we broke up?
Lord Trefgarne:
No.
Professor John Curtice:
I gave you a chance.
Q324 John Stevenson:
I have two points to clarify on what you were saying, and one
general question. Under the draft Bill, there is a cooling-off
period for Members of the House of Lords to stand for the House
of Commons. I get the impression that you would like to see that
taken out, and I would like clarification on that point.
Secondly, you seem to be supporters
of STV, but am I correct in saying that, if that were to be introduced
for the purposes of the House of Lords, we should also introduce
a rotation system for the ballot paper? Would you want to see
that actually happen?
Thirdly, on the elections being
on the same day, if they are on the same day as a general election,
you would get higher turnout. Clearly, it would be favourable
to the main parties. There would less of a protest vote, and there
would be not be a better mandate to the House of Lords over the
House of Commons. If it were to be held on a separate date, such
as that of the European Parliament, you could start to see quite
a dramatic change in British politics. For example, in the previous
European elections, UKIP got about 16 per cent of the vote. If
you saw that happen, effectively as a protest vote against the
Government, you could have a very different second House from
the first House. I would be interested in your observations on
the possibilities of that and its consequences.
Professor David Denver:
These are very interesting questions. On the first one, I have
no views whatever on the cooling-off period. It is not something
that I have even thought about; it is just not within my competence.
I am not a supporter of STV in general for electing the House
of Commons; I certainly would not favour that. It seems as if
what we are looking for with the House of Lords is a kind of proportional
system. STV seems to be the best. We were just saying beforehand
that it would get rid of a lot of problems if you introduced a
kind of randomisation of the ballot, if you just randomised the
candidates and did not put them in alphabetical order. That would
cure it. There seems no reason to avoid it at all. I cannot see
why you would not do it.
Often I have been able to say to students and others
that it is really nice that the European Parliament elections
come along when they do, because they are nice and conveniently
in the middle of the term and we get something exciting and different.
You get UKIP, and a few years ago you got the Greens getting a
huge vote. It is all good fun, since who cares about the European
Parliament? You may as well have some fun with it. If you had
the Lords tied to that and it was in the mid-term, you would assuredly
get a different kind of vote. You would get more protest voting,
with the mid-term blues. It would become what we call a second-order
election. In second-order elections, people are much more willing
to desert the major parties. They are less likely to turn out,
but they are much more willing to experiment with other parties.
On the whole I do not think that that would be too bad. It would
add to the gaiety of life.
Q325 John Stevenson:
Do you not think it would potentially have long-term consequences
for our system of legislation?
Professor David Denver:
But in the long term we are all dead.
Professor John Curtice:
This, frankly, is outside my remit, but you have asked me the
question. My own view is that I do not agree with term limits.
I would allow people to stand again. It seems to me that it is
up to voters to decide whether or not people are worthy of being
re-elected to the House. One reason for saying that, in the context
of my previous remarks, is that one of the things that would help
to ensure that voters did not simply vote alphabetically is the
presence on the ballot paper of either popular or unpopular incumbents.
To that extent at least, I would not be in favour of term limits.
Why should voters not decide whether or not it is a good or bad
idea for people to stay in the Chamber?
On the rotation system, I think that, yes, it is
probably a good idea in principle, although you will doubtless
get complaints from political parties because it will make their
lives more difficult in persuading their voters to vote in a particular
way.
The third thing I would say is that, we now know
that European elections are an occasion on which UKIP does extremely
well, and there is some evidence that that also spills over into
local elections that are held on the same day. Therefore, to that
extent at least, if I were not holding it on the same day as a
UK general election, I would also probably not hold it on the
same day as the European Parliament elections. The thresholds
are, as we discussed, very much higher and it would not be that
easy for UKIP, the BNP or the Greens to gain representatives—boy,
oh, boy, if I was giving evidence on behalf of those parties,
I would say that it was a wonderful idea to have them on the same
day as the European elections because I would think that that
would be more likely to happen. That said, as I said earlier,
there is no doubt that, even if you had it on a day other than
the general election and European Parliament elections, you will
probably get a certain amount of anti-Government voting. I am
not sure that there would necessarily be any long-term consequence.
Under the current proposals, if we get a Labour Party landslide
in one election, a Conservative landslide in the next and maybe
a close contest in the third, the upper Chamber will not look
anything like the Commons on any of these occasions anyway. It
is almost built into these proposals that the House of Lords will
always be a pale reflection of the current political mood.
Q326 Ann Coffey:
If you wanted the House of Lords to be a bit different and were
trying to achieve that by making it much more diverse, representative
and reflective of the British population, and given that neither
proposal for these voting systems will achieve that except at
the margins—because the parties will still be choosing the
candidates—how do
you think that you could achieve it while at the same time having
some legitimacy as a House with some connection with the people
out there?
Professor David Denver:
I think that you are absolutely right. You were earlier, when
people were going on about diversity and gender, absolutely right
that the parties can do that. I do not think that it should be
done any other way, myself. Indeed, I feel myself to be swimming
against the tide a good deal. I am a real radical in that I think
that the electors should decide who gets elected, not anybody
else. There should be no rules about women or anything else. The
electors decide. That is my view. I do not approve of special
mechanisms to get different groups. Once you start, where are
you going to end? What about Scottish working-class kids? Apply
that and get more of them in the House of Commons?
Ann Coffey:
We can have a very robust discussion on that, but the question
that I am asking is, if you want it—if the aim was to achieve
a House of Lords that was more diverse—
Professor David Denver:
Appoint them all.
Professor John Curtice:
The technical answer, if you wished to enforce that, is to go
for a closed party list system in which, by law, the parties were
required first to zip by gender, alternating the top from one
region to another. You would also require their proportion of
ethnic minority candidates to somehow reflect the local population.
The first is relatively easy to enforce. The second will be much
more difficult because you then get into the question of whether
it is just any ethnic minority or whether it should be a certain
proportion of those of Indian or Pakistani origin etc. Of course,
as our population gets more diverse, not least as an increased
number of people are of mixed origins, this becomes more difficult
to achieve. In practice, what we have discovered is that the greatest
pressure for ethnic diversity is the geographic concentration
of those populations. As a result, parties can find it political
because they have a membership which has said, "Hey guys,
we want somebody from an ethnic minority representing us around
here".
Q327 Dr Poulter:
Professor Curtice, you made a couple of points earlier about a
study you had done of voting patterns in Ireland. Is that correct?
Professor John Curtice:
We mounted a study in Scotland that replicated research that had
been done in Ireland, so that we could compare Scotland with Ireland
and see how different or similar they were. My basic argument
was that voters in Scotland in the 2007 Scottish local elections
were not as candidate-centred as voters were in the Republic of
Ireland. On the other hand, they were reasonably candidate-centred.
Dr Poulter:
My only concern with these studies is that we know that there
is a false recall as well, is there not? If you speak to and survey
voters, there can be false recall. Is it Professor Antony King
of the University of Essex who does this? He did some good work
into this after the previous general election and found that 28
or 29 per cent of people were still saying that they voted Liberal
Democrat, when we know that only 23 per cent of people actually
did. There is that confounder, is there not?
Professor John Curtice:
There is a rather different confounder in this case. We were asking
people to remember how they had filled in a ballot paper that
they filled in some time ago. While most people in this room would
regard it has holy writ that they would easily remember, lots
of people probably did not necessarily remember. Because the votes
were counted electronically, however, we can to some degree verify
the data. For example, the median voter in our study cast two
votes. Casting three votes was not quite at the 50 per cent point;
I think that we had about 45 per cent, 46 per cent or 47 per cent
casting three or more votes. We were slightly short, but only
slightly short. Certainly, on the number of voters in our study
who cast only one preference, which we had as 22 per cent, in
the electronic data it is 20 per cent. There is a bit of an issue
about whether people remembered all the votes on that ballot paper.
There is probably a bit of a problem there, but it does not look
to be too serious.
As for whether the survey matched the outcome, yes,
we were pretty close on all three ballots in 2007. But bear in
mind that I was saying nothing about the partisanship of the voters.
It was about how they were using the ballot paper.
Dr Poulter:
There was another confounder. Correct me if I am wrong, but you
were also saying that, in Scotland, not every party put up a full
list. That also rather confounds and undermines, in my view, the
transferability of that into real practice.
Professor John Curtice:
Absolutely, and I was upfront about that. There is no doubt that
a smaller number of wards means caveat emptor. If I was a Conservative
supporter and my party put up only one candidate, I was more likely
to cast a second preference for a candidate of another party than
if my party put up two candidates. To that extent, at least, the
degree to which the voters are willing to transfer votes across
may be less than was the case in Scotland. However, I remind you
that Alan Renwick, in his evidence to the Committee, has pointed
out that the recall proposal that the Government are suggesting
will create an incentive for parties to put forward candidates.
Therefore voters will have more choice within parties. It will
then come to how far they want to go down that path.
Q328 Dr Poulter:
I have one more question on this point. Lord Trimble made the
point very well that it is actually very difficult to analyse
what may or may not happen. There can be the propensity for agreements
to be made, and so you have more national elections, as in Australia.
For example, we saw in the Australian elections that the Green
second-preference vote was significant. Informal agreements can
be made between parties. It is very difficult to extrapolate that
until voters are informed by their first-preference parties about
where other loyalties may or may not lie.
Professor John Curtice:
Absolutely. If you are an advocate of STV, you regard that as
an advantage of the system. If you are a critic, you regard it
as a disadvantage. The interesting thing in Scotland is that I
do not think that I came across a single piece of evidence of
any of the political parties encouraging or giving any sign that
they wanted their voters to transfer to somebody else. The parties
managed to avoid saying any of those things in 2007. Whether they
will continue to do that, who knows? There is an incentive to
do so. If you can maximise the transfers between parties, as Fine
Gael and Labour have demonstrated in the past, that is to your
advantage. You pays your money, you takes your choice. I do not
necessarily regard it as being a problem. You can argue that it
is a way of enabling voters to indicate whether or not they back
an understanding between the parties or not.
Q329
Lord Norton of Louth:
I have two quick questions. Since we have you here, it would be
interesting to know your views on which method you would prefer
for the allocation of surplus votes. Should the method actually
be on the face of the Bill, given its significance? Secondly,
I want to pursue the point that has been raised about the "no
re-election" rule. Obviously, that sets this system apart
from those that you are mentioning; it puts us on a par with Mexico
in terms of having a "no re-election" rule. Professor
Curtice, you have argued against that, and that the electors should
have the capacity to re-elect. Would it also flow from that that
you would recommend a shorter term than the 15 years that is stipulated
in the draft Bill?
Professor John Curtice:
The answer to your first question is that, as you will be aware,
the Scottish Parliament insisted on the weighted inclusive Gregory
method. It did so after the Local Government Committee of the
Scottish Parliament looked at the practice in both the north and
south of Ireland and said, "We do not like this. It looks
a bit too haphazard". It was advised that if you used electronic
counting it was possible to use the weighted inclusive Gregory
method. The reason why we had electronic counting in 2007, and
weighted inclusive Gregory, is because of a cross-party consensus
that was generated in Parliament. It was not something that originally
came from the Government. Given that electronic counting is possible,
there is no reason why you should not use weighted inclusive Gregory.
On the second question, you are right; I think that
15 years is an inordinately long time to give somebody for a term.
There are some knock-on consequences to that. If you elect the
whole House every five years, and if we accept that seven Members
is probably the maximum for an STV constituency, you would have
to have smaller constituencies. Some things I have heard in this
room suggest you might regard as being an advantage. The Government
were obviously concerned about turnover. If you go for something
like STV, the turnover will be dampened down quite a lot. If you
allow incumbents to be re-elected, you will keep the turnover
down. The funny thing is that, although the Government's proposals
try to dampen down party turnover, on membership turnover you
have got a third of new boys and girls every five years.
Lord Norton of Louth:
Did Professor Denver want to comment on the allocation?
Professor David Denver:
No, I do not. That is way too technical for me. I go for big,
broad brush strokes.
Q330
Lord Norton of Louth:
To pursue the previous point, Professor Curtice, was your argument
against the "no re-election" rule that it limits the
choice of electors? So, if they want to re-elect someone it should
be up to them. Would not the same principle apply in respect of
this limit of four years before you can stand for the Commons?
Is that not also a limitation on the choice of electors?
Professor John Curtice:
Yes, absolutely. Maybe again this is an issue in Northern Ireland.
People complain about people being able to "double job".
I say that it is up to voters. If voters are happy for people
to "double job", that is up to them.
Lord Norton of Louth:
Professor Denver is nodding; I wanted to add that for the record.
Professor David Denver:
Yes.
Q331 Lord Trefgarne:
I share Professor Denver's preference for the first past the post
system. Therefore, I am wondering whether it would not be possible
to devise some sort of system, perhaps akin to the French one,
where you have two elections separated by two weeks, provided
that they have got less than 50 per cent first time. One has to
recognise that Members of our House of Commons are elected by
first past the post and very rarely attract more than 50 per cent
of the vote.
Professor David Denver:
Indeed. The strength of first past the post is to elect Governments,
even though John will say that this is going to happen less and
less. None the less, that it what it is for. In the case of the
House of Lords, we are not electing Governments. It is all right
to have STV for a second Chamber. I think that you would open
up a Pandora's Box if you start bringing in two rounds of elections.
Professor John Curtice:
You now have a straight political problem. The double-Member system
will to many people look horribly similar to the alternative vote
system, which has been decisively rejected by the electorate.
I think that it is probably a dead duck.
Q332 Lord Hennessy of
Nympsfield: David and
John, you are both great experts in watching political markets
in operation all across the world and here. As you have gone on,
I have put down a little sketch, based on what you have been saying,
of what the political market that the Bill wants us to create
might look like if it comes to pass. It will have a second-order
election, particularly if it stands alone, with about a 40 per
cent turnout, to produce what you called a "pale reflection"
House containing a mix of celebrities, eccentrics, UKIPs and very
big tranche of party politicians who are not even household names
in their own household. I may have got you wrong, but that is
what has come out of the picture that you have been painting.
If I was in favour of a wholly or largely elected Chamber, I would
be deeply depressed by that prospect. Have I reflected your views
accurately with these little scraps I have together?
Professor David Denver:
I think that they might be unrepresentative in that they are torn
out of context; in fact, I have no doubt. I did not ask to start
from here, either. If it were up to me, I would not even have
started reforming the House of Lords. But there you are: we are
stuck with it. What do you do?
Lord Hennessy of Nympsfield:
I do not think that we are stuck with it. That is the whole purpose
of being here every Monday.
Professor David Denver:
Really?
Professor John Curtice:
I think the riposte to you is, yes, the public can indeed be rather
awkward at times.
Lord Hennessy of Nympsfield:
That is very profound. Thank you very much.
The Chairman:
Thank you very much indeed. That has been a fascinating, instructive,
almost breezy session, and thoroughly enjoyable for that.
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