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Our constitutional arrangements have never been fixed; nor should they be. Surely a strength of the British approach to these matters is that we evolve to ensure that we continue to meet the needs of our democracy. That is why the first substantive paper issued by my right honourable friend the Prime Minister last summer was about the governance of Britain and about how we can renew and revitalise our democracy. These are critical matters. That is the context in which we ought to see the review of our voting systems.
I very much did not recognise the comments of the noble Lord, Lord Tyler, about political spinning. The review is a dispassionate piece of work and in their approach to its publication Ministers brought with them that same dispassionate approach. All sides of
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What is the outcome of the review? I do not want to repeat what other noble Lords have said in their interesting contributions to the debate. Equally, I do not take the rather, if I may say, complacent view of the noble Lord, Lord De Mauley that everything is right and nothing should be changed. However, we have to look seriously at the advantages of first past the post before making such a fundamental change to our voting system. We should not ignore the critical importance of Members of Parliament representing a smallish defined geographical area. We cannot underestimate the importance of that relationship, which my noble friend Lord Grocott described so well.
I am thinking about my own city of Birmingham. There is a difference between being part of a constituency of 70,000 voters and living in a city that might have 10 representatives—we have 10 MPs—but no direct relationship between my part of Birmingham and the person who represents me. One would have to think very carefully before moving towards that kind of system. Although there is a great deal of criticism about seats where the outcome is always the same, one should not ignore the advantage of a winner-takes-all system, which encourages major parties to maintain a broad appeal, or ignore the fact that the electorate can be decisive about who should be the party of Government.
It is remarkable how often the pundits say that at the next election there is likely to be a balance of power—everyone looks to the Liberal Democrats, as it may be their hour of glory—and how few times over the past 50 years that has turned out to be the case. I submit that the British public know what to do. The system allows them to make a very clear choice and Governments to have a working majority in Parliament. I echo what the noble Lord, Lord Norton, said about core accountability. Whatever the defects of first past the post—I acknowledge that there are defects—one should not underestimate the importance of that core accountability.
Of course, there are advantages to proportional systems. As we know, there are many different proportional systems, but as a general principle the outcomes are more proportionate at national level. Voters have more choice, as more parties inevitably have the chance of being elected. Government tends to be by coalition, which can mean that a wider range of interests are brought into and represented in the Government. My noble friend Lord Watson felt that the experience in Scotland had a proved the positive virtue of that.
The disadvantages seem to be pretty fundamental as well. The prevalence of party list systems, in whole or in part, makes the candidate and representative
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We have heard about the problem of conflict between two types of representative in the UK in similar Parliaments—Scotland comes to mind. I know that my noble friend Lord Watson felt that it was not a particular problem, but the noble Lord, Lord Steel, and many others I have talked to, reflect on the real problem that can happen between the two different types of elected people within a Parliament. The tendency towards coalition or minority governance can have a negative effect. It can take a long time to form a Government. Governments may be indecisive, they may have weaker policy agendas, and they may be more subject to pressure-group influence because of a lowest-common-denominator approach to decision-making.
We should not ignore the problem of coalition being a weaker form of government. My noble friend Lord Maxton had good points to make about that. I pray in aid of Birmingham, where we are enjoying—if that is the word—nearly four years of coalition of the Liberal Democrats and the Conservatives. My goodness, I could not describe a more visible sign of lowest-common-denominator decision-making. Frankly, over those four years I have seen Birmingham lose out time and time again to other major cities because of the indecisive leadership being given.
I recognise that proportionate systems have their merits. I am not going to ignore that at all. In putting forward the reasons for PR and for having a more proportionate system, noble Lords tend to ignore some of the outcomes for quality of governance and for direct accountability of a Government to the electorate.
I understand the strength of feeling that my noble friend Lady Kennedy spoke about. The main parties may not always be providing the choice that individuals want and the emergence of single issue or smaller parties can enhance the democratic process. However, it is not always one way and the emergence of smaller parties can also have a very negative influence on the quality of decision making in Government. As I said earlier, Government can become more susceptible to pressure group politics. We all engage with pressure groups, and they are a part of the country’s democratic health, but their influence needs to be kept in proportion and be balanced.
To be fair to noble Lords on the Liberal Democrat Benches who have spoken about the need for proportional systems, there are different systems. Some would clearly not be suitable for the House of Commons. There seems to be general agreement about the iniquities of the closed list system and it is encouraging that there is such widespread political agreement across this Chamber and, I suspect, in the other place about its problems. These matters will be considered in any review of any voting system.
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On where the Government are going with the review, we made it clear that it was a contribution to the ongoing debate, that the Government are not minded to propose any change to the voting system for the House of Commons and that we believe that the current first past the post voting system works well. We also recognise that there is a range of views on the issue of voting systems. We published the paper as a contribution to that debate.
Lord Goodhart: My Lords, the Minister has not touched on one point that I raised. Does he agree that, given that the role of your Lordships’ House is to scrutinise what the Government do rather than to support them, the first past the post system would not be an appropriate method for electing Members of your Lordships’ House, should elections occur?
Lord Hunt of Kings Heath: My Lords, I was going to come on to the House of Lords. I thought that if we started with it, we would never move on to any other issue. As noble Lords are aware, we need to look at voting systems for a reformed House of Lords. The noble Lords, Lord Tyler and Lord Rennard, feel that the process has been slow but I am impressed by the spirit of co-operation within the cross-party working group on Lords reform—I say that tentatively, knowing that this excites great passion in your Lordships’ House. I hope that it will lead to as much consensus as possible among the political parties, to manifesto commitments and to legislation in the next Session of Parliament. I will not affirm in relation to the point of the noble Lord, Lord Goodhart, because it is very likely that there will be options on voting systems in the White Paper. It would be wrong for me to give a definitive view for the Government. I agree with him on the need for a different system from that of the House of Commons.
I was interested by the intervention of the noble Lord, Lord Sewel. He asked whether having a much more proportionate electoral base for this place would make this place feel more legitimate than the other place. My noble friend Lord Grocott answered that very clearly by referring to the power of first past the post and the direct relationship between the Member of Parliament and constituents. I also point out, in relation to that very important question, that primacy rests on the Parliament Acts, that the Government need to have the confidence of the Commons, that the Commons need to deal with supply and that the Prime Minister and other senior Ministers will sit in the Commons. It is perfectly possible for a mostly or wholly elected second Chamber to sit comfortably with a House of Commons whose primacy is, and will continue to be, established.
The noble Lords, Lord Norton and Lord De Mauley, raised a number of questions about what is probably best described as election administration and individual registration. We discussed that in an Oral Question a few weeks ago. We introduced a range of new integrity measures in the May 2007 elections and all the indications are that they are working well. We are looking at individual voter registration. We must understand that some of the changes made in relation to postal voting, for example, were designed to encourage more people
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This has been an excellent debate. I do not think any noble Lord who has spoken has ignored the challenges that our democracy faces at the moment, such as lower turnout, alienation and—perhaps—detachment of the public from formal parties. The review makes it clear that these matters cannot be solved overnight or by the wave of a magic wand to bring in a new voting system. The review makes it clear that this is not so much about one system being better than another; it depends what you want from a system. Some systems deliver some objectives better than others. The key is the legitimacy of the voting system, which must be believed widely by the public to produce a legitimate outcome.
I am satisfied that the first past the post system, whatever its faults, is believed to produce a legitimate outcome. But we—the parties—have to do very much more between us to encourage public engagement, confidence and involvement and to bring young people into the democratic process. These are all critical matters for us. The noble Lord, Lord Tyler, deserves great credit for allowing us to debate these important matters. There is no complacency. I hope that we will be able to return to these matters over the next few months.
Lord Roberts of Llandudno: My Lords, before the Minister concludes, I want to ask one question. He said that the first past the post system produces a legitimate result. Why does the Labour Party—as well as the Conservative Party—avoid the system in its internal elections?
Lord Hunt of Kings Heath: My Lords, that is very simple. Different situations call for different voting systems. So far as my beloved party is concerned, you vote for a particular office and a particular person. The advantage of first past the post is that you are producing a Government who rest on confidence in the Commons. That is where the first past the post system has its advantage.
2.07 pm
Lord Tyler: My Lords, in the course of one or two minutes, I clearly cannot do justice to a very wide-ranging debate. I agreed very much with the Minister on one point: this has been a fascinating discussion. I hope that the other place will in due course also discuss these issues.
I thank all noble Lords who have contributed. I hope that I will be forgiven for especially thanking the noble Baroness, Lady Kennedy of The Shaws, and the noble Lord, Lord Watson of Invergowrie, who broke from the otherwise rather conservative attitudes on the Labour Benches. At one point, I was wondering who would be more reactionary, but the Conservative Party’s Front Bench came back very well at the end. I am also extremely grateful to my noble friends Lord Goodhart, Lord Steel, Lord Roberts and Lord Rennard. I hope that we have been able to present a geographical spread of evidence to the House.
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I was very impressed by the extent to which the noble Lord, Lord Norton of Louth, in his inimitable fashion, was able to give us yet another tutorial but I was depressed by the extent to which other people seemed to follow him. There are quite different academic interpretations of the so-called disproportionate power theory. It is significant that we had the issue of disproportionate power under first past the post; it is not only under proportional representation systems that minorities can exert more influence than they perhaps should have. I am a relic of the 1974 Parliament, which was elected under first past the post and in which there was no majority. Do not let us fool ourselves about the only circumstances in which you might have a problem of minorities being powerful—it can happen under first past the post. As Professor Vernon Bogdanor of Oxford pointed out, the Ulster Unionists were thought to have disproportionate power between 1992 and 1997, when they had a fulcrum role in the House of Commons. However, because the Liberal Democrats were supporting the then Government over Europe—irony of all ironies—they could survive. Our Parliament is clearly not as incapable of dealing with those problems as we should imagine.
I want to make it absolutely clear that I and my colleagues believe that the best system for the House of Commons—and it may well also be for your Lordships’ House—is the single transferable vote in multimember constituencies, because that gives power back to the citizen. That is what I have found slightly depressing about this debate; all too often, people address these issues as if the only thing that matters is the view of the parties in the Westminster bubble. As the noble Baroness, Lady Kennedy, said so clearly, people look at these issues quite differently outwith that bubble. We are all small parties now; that is the big change since the 1950s, as all parties have fewer members and less natural, automatic support. We must recognise that point of view.
This issue will not go away. All parties and all politicians have to address the disenchantment of the electorate and the extent to which that is due to distortion from our system, which is not working. For those who do not believe that this will be on the agenda in the next few months, I warmly recommend reading No Overall Control?, published by the Hansard Society just a couple of days ago. It points out, for example, that the betting odds—and sometimes the bookmakers are more accurate than the opinion pollsters—are showing that it is much more likely that there will be no overall control in the next Parliament than an overall Labour majority, and much more likely again than an overall Conservative majority. I suggest, then, that we all have to address these issues, as we are going to have a different Parliament in future.
This has been a very interesting and timely debate. I welcome the extent to which the Government are, clearly, going to take advantage of the useful work done by the report; I, too, give credit to its Civil Service authors for being reasonably dispassionate and balanced. In the mean time, I beg leave to withdraw the Motion for Papers.
Motion for Papers, by leave, withdrawn.
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Foreign and Commonwealth Office
2.12 pm
Lord Wallace of Saltaire rose to call attention to changes in the budget of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office and the levels of staffing in embassies and their effect on British foreign policy and on European co-operation on foreign policy; and to move for Papers.
The noble Lord said: My Lords, policy changes often emerge from financial decisions. The immediate context for this debate, then, is to draw attention to the continuing squeeze on the FCO budget, which will fall in real terms over the next three years under the Comprehensive Spending Review—while that of the Department for International Development, in contrast, is set to double between now and 2013. UK subscriptions to international organisations, which fall on the FCO budget and which are beyond the control of the British Government alone, operate to squeeze this already small budget—one of the smallest in Whitehall—further. There comes a point at which a succession of cutbacks becomes a step-change: in the character of an organisation, in its ability to deliver the tasks demanded of it, and in the objectives it is able to serve. I want to pose the question of whether we are now facing such a step-change in the position and capabilities of the FCO, both at home and abroad, and to ask how we should adjust aspirations and objectives to match the more modest resources that the Government have provided.
I raise this not from a sharply partisan perspective, but as someone who has worked with British diplomats over nearly 40 years, and observed their struggle to deliver the objectives that their political leaders have set—very often without anything like the resources needed to achieve them. Sir Hilary Synnott, in his just-published book on post-invasion Iraq, remarks that,
- “there seemed to be a great mismatch between what Tony Blair was saying and how Whitehall was operating”.
That was not for the first time, and probably not for the last.
The history of Britain’s long retreat from empire, since Suez, has been of Governments struggling to maintain their aspirations to be a global power without being willing or able to pay for the means to do so, with the press insisting that we absolutely must maintain our pretensions and not admit our limitations. Harold Macmillan thus famously stressed our role in global summitry; Harold Wilson attempted to maintain our bases east of Suez. There was an outcry from the Daily Mail when in 1968 the Duncan report on the future of the Diplomatic Service suggested that the UK was then a
There was a further outcry, again led by the Daily Mail, when under Jim Callaghan’s Labour Government the Berrill report proposed the closer integration of the Diplomatic Service with the rest of Whitehall.
There has, of course, been a revolution in communications among Governments in the 30 years since then. Secure e-mail is now being introduced, enabling people in posts abroad to comment on and contribute to policy discussions within Whitehall. The number of member states of the UN has continued to
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The work of government as a whole has become more international, and much more multilateral. One official recently offered me the estimate that 60 to 70 per cent of the work of DEFRA and of BERR—the Department of Business, Enterprise and something on regulation, I forget its exact title—is internationally driven, either by the European Union or by other multilateral conferences and organisations. Expert officials deal with expert officials from other Governments within these multilateral organisations, and often also deal there with the transnational lobbies that work to shape policies both here and abroad. It is, therefore, much less clear where bilateral missions fit into this world, or where the FCO stands in the making of overall policy in London. I have been told that different ministries now find it useful to second their own staff, not to UK missions abroad, but directly to the ministries of other important Governments—in Paris, Copenhagen, Tokyo and Brasilia—as well as to the European Commission and to the secretariats of UN agencies.
The Foreign Office, under its new Secretary of State, has done its best to try to fit resources to objectives; “Strategy Refresh” has agreed a reduction of some 25 per cent in home-based staff in European embassies to enable posts in Afghanistan, Pakistan and across the Middle East and Asia to be reinforced. The number of staff working within the FCO in London is also being cut back, as direct communications enable posts abroad to deal directly with other departments across Whitehall. There is a delicate question as to whether these cutbacks have undermined the future of the Diplomatic Service as such, since the FCO may now no longer be able to provide sufficient home-based posts at different levels for people serving abroad to spend sufficient time during their careers at home.
I therefore want to raise several questions about the future of the FCO and the management of British foreign policy. The first is about the co-ordination of British foreign policy and the relationship between the FCO and the other departments involved in international diplomacy, which now means most departments in Whitehall. The FCO, rightly, now defines itself as one of “the three international departments” with DfID and the Ministry of Defence. Since our new Foreign Secretary has defined tackling climate change as one of the FCO’s four strategic priorities, and combating transnational terrorist movements and political and religious extremisms is also a major theme of his, the need for closer and closer co-operation with other ministries—the Home Office, the Ministry of Justice, DEFRA, BERR and so forth—is evident.
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