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11.15 pm
Why should the second vote of the person who has voted for the least popular candidate have the same value as the first vote? This is not original; I read it in some academic text somewhere, although I cannot remember where and I have not been able to go back to it. In my view it is quite simple: why should it have the same value? Why not put the value on it that the voter, or the voters as a whole, created for that candidate? So, if you have five candidates-one, two, three, four, five-and the fifth one is coming out, the second preferences for that candidate are worth a fifth of a vote to whoever they have chosen among the others. If there are only four candidates, you give them a quarter of the vote. If there are eight or nine candidates, and the bottom one finishes ninth, then the second preference is worth a ninth of a vote to the candidate that they have chosen for it. That to me seems fair. You are not giving people two votes, which is what you are effectively doing under the present system, but you are giving them the vote in proportion-that word might not go down too well here at the moment-to where they came on the ballot paper.
I think that has a fairness appeal to it. It is much fairer than giving people two votes. It seems obvious, it is fair, it is practical and it avoids the central criticisms levelled against the alternative vote, leaving aside whether it is compulsory to use all your preferences or not. One of the central criticisms of it is-let us put names on it-if the BNP candidate comes at the bottom. We may have a view about people who want to put the BNP candidate as their first choice, but why should those people's second choice have the same value as their first choice? It does not really matter who came bottom, but that is the reality we are coming to. That is a very serious criticism against the alternative vote. It was made by Churchill, it was quoted in this House and I think it has some value. So let us do something about it.
My suggestion does not affect the Bill, the date or any preparations for the referendum, it does not affect
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Lord McAvoy: My Lords, the past seven minutes have illustrated to me that people who are obsessed by systems really twist themselves into all sorts of knots because they have a flair for it. My noble friend Lord Rooker certainly has a flair: a flair for hard work, a flair for mastering systems and a flair for coming up with solutions to other people's systems. Quite frankly, I understood about one-tenth or one-twentieth of what was said, and I cannot fill in a three cross treble line pool or a betting line or whatever it is. I am just not able to do it.
This is what happens when the pro-systems people think that changing the system is the answer to all democracy's problems. They will twist and turn, go up blind alleys and around corners and all the rest of it. It sounds absolutely brilliant, but despite what my noble friend says, I do not think the average person will understand it.
I have never understood the obsession with PR or AV. The system of first past the post, with whatever imperfections people like my noble friend Lord Campbell-Savours can show in it, is tried, trusted and people understand it. Once you get into different systems, you have unforeseen consequences. It is okay for folk to say "We'll legislate for that the next time" or "We'll iron out that glitch in the system", but all they do is twist themselves into further knots. The elections to the Scottish Parliament had unforeseen consequences because we had the Leader of the SNP, Alex Salmond, wangling away, despite the Minister, the noble and learned Lord, Lord Wallace of Tankerness, being present,
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Alex Salmond was allowed to put himself at the top of each ballot paper-"Alex Salmond for First Minister". The situation in Scotland was that the SNP did not win the election. Thanks to the daft list system, it finished up with one MSP more than the Labour Party, which allowed it to claim under a convoluted and twisted voting system that it had somehow won the right for Mr Salmond to be First Minister. Not satisfied with that, in the 2004 election the Labour Party made the mistake of indulging its Liberal partners in the coalition-what was a genuine coalition in Scotland, not a collaboration like we have at the moment. They were on opposite sides of the Chamber. But the Labour Party allowed itself to be blackmailed, cajoled-call it what you like. Almost within hours of the election result, the Labour Party at Holyrood had caved in and given the Liberals PR for local government.
They have still got that system until it is changed. The candidates are listed in alphabetical order. My understanding of it is tangled because I kept back from Holyrood. I did not particularly want to get involved in MSP matters, but it affected the political party I am committed to. As far as I can recall-again the noble Lord, Lord Wallace of Tankerness, will correct me if I am wrong-the Liberals and others, mainly the SNP, blocked the situation whereby there was a suggestion that the political candidates should be put into alphabetical order within party blocks on the ballot paper. I accept that I am vague on this but I blame the Liberals for everything else so I might as well blame them for this. Folk looked at the paper and said, "There is the Labour candidate and that is the Liberal candidate, so that is who I am going to vote for", instead of starting at the top alphabetically. The debacle of 2007 was confusing. It was caused by exactly the same proponents of systems rather than democracy and appealing to people.
There was a situation in Rutherglen and Hamilton West where a candidate had been a councillor for four years. She was an outstanding candidate, but she had the unfortunate handicap that her surname began with the letter "O". She was at the bottom of the ballot paper and she lost her seat. Even the local Liberals felt guilty, which was quite an unusual occurrence. They said to her that they were sorry that she was the one to lose out to the system. What happened was that the Labour Party won two of the three seats in that ward. The Labour candidate who won was a new candidate in the area, a good councillor in his former area, and he is now a good councillor in his current area. But he ended up with almost double the votes that the poor candidate with the surname starting with "O" got, and therefore she lost out to, I think, the SNP candidate, who has also turned out to be a good ward councillor.
What happened there was an unforeseen consequence of this fanatical obsession for tinkering with systems. I shall not persuade anyone who is PR or AV-obsessed, in the same way as they will not convince me, and that is fine, but, given the convoluted nature of my noble
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I say to your Lordships' House-not in a partisan sense but because I genuinely feel it-that these systems do no service to the public: they confuse people; they are for the anoraks. There is nothing wrong with that as long as they do not win but, when the anoraks start to win and the amendments come forward for AV and for trying to make AV work, you end up in a mess. I am totally opposed to my noble friend's amendment.
Lord Lamont of Lerwick: The noble Lord, Lord Rooker, has a powerful point, which I shall attempt to put into two sentences. The noble Lord, Lord McAvoy, is not right; this is not complicated. It may be complicated for the people who count the votes-a point which I expect the Minister to comment on-but it is not complicated for the voter. It is the same as it would have been under the system put forward by the Government-you just put your preferences.
The noble Lord said that when the votes are counted they will be given a weighting. This goes to the heart of what is wrong with AV. It is completely wrong that the winner of an election may be determined-and he used the quote from Churchill that I used-by the least worthwhile votes of the least worthwhile candidate. They may well be votes for the BNP or for an extremist party, but it is wrong that in some cases the outcome should be determined by the second preferences of the bottom candidate. The system put forward by the noble Lord, Lord Rooker, for addressing this by weighting the votes according to where they come on the list seems a logical answer. Whether it would be workable, I do not know-no doubt we will be told that it would be too complicated for the counting officer, and that may be so-but it illustrates what is so grotesque and ridiculous about the system that is put forward.
Lord Campbell-Savours: My noble friend puts forward an interesting argument. This is an area on which I did some work in 1989 when we were designing the supplementary vote-we called it "weighting"-and a number of the scenarios that we ran through lengthy computer runs were based on a reduced value being given to subsequent votes under the supplementary vote.
I wish to ask my noble friend whether there might be a slight difference between what we were working on and what he was working on. When he moved the amendment, he referred to the value given to these additional preferences being based on the position on the ballot paper. I presume he meant that if a candidate was in seventh position and yet was the third preference of a particular elector, they would have only one-seventh of the value, whereas under the system on which we worked in 1989 they would have one-third of the value. Can my noble friend clarify the position? If he is working on the basis that there are seven candidates and the candidate at the bottom-candidate Peter-is the third preference of the voter but gets one-seventh of the vote for the third preference, I would not be altogether in favour of it. But if it is simply his
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I understand that a number of academics have also worked on AV and supplementary vote systems since 1989 to establish whether weighting votes in this way would work. The only problem that arises if one does that is that the minority candidates-in this case, the Liberal Democrats say that they would gain more seats under AV-would not gain as many seats. Although AV tends only marginally to be more proportional-it some circumstances, it can be considerably more so-the effect of weighting votes in the way being suggested will be to reduce the likelihood of outsider candidates winning seats.
My noble friend Lord McAvoy was worried about the anoraks. I apologise to him for being one of those rather pathetic creatures, but electoral systems is a particularly interesting subject. It is the sort of thing you go to bed at night thinking about. I welcome the amendment moved by my noble friend and look forward to the response of the Minister.
11.30 pm
Lord Hamilton of Epsom: My Lords, I very rarely go to bed at night thinking about alternative voting systems, I must confess. Like the noble Lord, Lord McAvoy, I am a great believer in the first past the post system. It may not be perfect, but I suspect that it is rather better than any other system that anybody might like to introduce. Having said that, I think that the noble Lord, Lord Rooker, has to be right. I agree with my noble friend Lord Lamont that, if you want a fairer system, you should do something to make sure that everybody's second votes under an alternative vote system do not all count for the same and that they are graded.
The problem is that, in its wisdom, the House has decided that we should hold the referendum on the same day as the local elections. I have argued in previous debates that it does not give us a very good opportunity to explain to the country an extremely complex change in our voting system when we are trying to hold local elections and elections for the Scottish Parliament and Welsh Assembly at the same time. I hate to say it to the noble Lord, Lord Rooker, but to try to explain his even more complex way of doing the alternative vote would take even longer. I suggest that, before we even entertain the idea, we agree that the vote should be held on a different day. I was quite relaxed about the referendum being held, let us say, a month after the local authority elections. If we are going to go down the path suggested by the noble Lord, Lord Rooker, perhaps we need an even bigger gap between the local elections and the referendum, because an awful lot of explaining of this major change in our electoral system will have to be done to the country.
Lord Campbell-Savours: Does the noble Lord really believe-I am sure that he does not-that the country will even understand AV as it is proposed in the Bill?
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Lord Hamilton of Epsom: I accept that there will be great difficulty explaining to the country what the implications of the AV vote will be, but that is why the referendum should be held on a separate day. I am convinced that it will be extremely difficult to explain to the country what the AV vote is about. If it is held on the same day as the local elections and all the other elections, it will be virtually impossible. People will not understand the implications of any different voting system if we stick it in on the same day as the local elections. However, that is what the House has decided to do, in its wisdom, and we are therefore in a very difficult situation, making the whole business of what the vote is even more complicated than it was already.
I am just amazed at how calm everybody seems to be in this House, collectively, about allowing the Bill to go through and allowing the referendum to be held on the same day as the local elections, which will fundamentally change the whole way that this country votes, when I think that we mostly agree that people will not really understand the implications of what they are doing when they vote in that referendum.
Lord Lipsey: My Lords, this is by no means the first time that I have been not asleep at this hour due to the joys of debating the merits of AV and so on, but there is something still more exciting to come, because before the Bill is finished I confidently predict that at one or two in the morning we shall get on to the relative merits of d'Hondt and Sainte-Lague and the three Imperiali largest-remainder formulae, a matter on which my noble friend Lord Campbell-Savours will no doubt illuminate the House as he has on this. I cannot support, however, the amendment put forward by my noble friend Lord Rooker any more than he could support the one put forward by me earlier.
It takes me back to the days, the happy days indeed, when I was sitting on the Jenkins committee. We got many, many proposals on the Jenkins committee for various systems of weighted voting. D'Hondt as the noble Lord, Lord Henley, with his great knowledge of these matters surely knows, is not a weighted voting system. All the many proposals on weighted voting systems had one factor in common; they were invariably written in green ink and therefore we on the commission did not have to spend as long considering them as we might otherwise.
There are two reasons of substance why this amendment should be rejected. The first is that Churchill's neat phrase does not reflect the reality in many voters' minds. It is not true that the most important choice for voters is who they put first and who they put second and they do not care who they put sixth and who they put seventh. If you take my case, in a constituency where there were some serious candidates and towards the bottom of the ones with a chance there was the Democratic Socialist Crosland Labour-affiliated candidate and, on the other hand, the British National Party candidate. I would feel extremely strongly that I preferred the first of those options, whatever I was doing further
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The second argument has been touched on and it concerns complexity.
Lord Campbell-Savours: When my noble friend goes into the polling booth and casts his first preference for Labour and he might be tempted to cast his third preference for the Liberal Democrats, is he, in his own mind, giving that third preference the same weight, when he votes for the Liberal Democrat as he would to Labour, his first preference?
Lord Lipsey: It depends on the circumstances in the particular constituency. In my own constituency of Brecon and Radnor, there are very real choices to be made, due to the fact that the Labour candidate, alas, is not a front-running candidate in that seat. That is a choice that I hope to avoid having to make when AV has come into being and I can put my first preference first and then my other preferences in their order without any danger of defeating my preferred second choice by voting for my preferred first choice.
I was going on to say that I think the complexity of the Rooker system and the sheer difficulty of explaining it counts very heavily against it. I do not take the view that voters need to understand absolutely everything about voting systems in order to cast their vote, any more than, when I get into my car and turn the key, I require to know all about how the engine works before I drive off. I need to know certain things, such as how to steer, but I do not need to know how the engine works. There are degrees of complexity and, frankly, the Rooker system would be simply impossible to explain. I do not think many people would buy the explanation that was being given. I am sure my noble friend did not have this even in the back of his mind, but one is tempted to think that a complication of this kind is a well-designed sabotage bomb to make sure that the referendum on AV is lost. Therefore, I cannot support the amendment and hope that the House will not support it tonight.
Lord Foulkes of Cumnock: One of the advantages of the Leader of the House effectively throwing the Companion to the Standing Orders out of the window is that we have this extra time to contemplate voting systems. My understanding has always been that you think what outcome you would prefer and then choose a voting system to get that outcome. That is why the Liberals have always campaigned and pushed for PR and the single transferable vote, because they want to have more power and influence.
While my colleagues have been talking about the theory, I have been looking at what might happen in practice if we had an election for the leader of the group of Labour Peers on this side of the House. There are five candidates, Campbell-Savours, Falconer, Foulkes, McAvoy, and Rooker. Those were the only
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However, we could have accepted one form of the alternative vote, which from my recollection of what my noble friends Lord Campbell-Savours and Lord Rooker said in previous speeches, is the Australian federal system in which everyone has to vote one, two, three, four, five. Then we might get this result: 10, nine, eight, seven, six on the first vote. Then Rooker is eliminated and all of his votes would naturally go to Falconer. Noble Lords have seen that in the debates that have taken place. Falconer would now be leading with 15 votes. Campbell-Savours would have 10, Foulkes would have 8 and McAvoy would have seven.
Lord McAvoy: Does my noble friend realise that he is starting to give me a bigger headache than my noble friend Lord Rooker?
Lord Foulkes of Cumnock: It will all become clear.
McAvoy is now eliminated. His seven votes are distributed. Four go to Falconer and three go to Foulkes because he cannot quite make up his mind. He is hedging his bets and sees the way the wind is blowing. That leaves 10 to Campbell-Savours-he has not attracted any more votes-19 to Falconer and 11 to Foulkes. But supporters of Campbell-Savours, who is a Foulkes fan, give all their votes to Foulkes, who gets 21 and Falconer only 19. The person who was the third preference is elected. That is the sort of thing that can happen with the alternative vote, as my noble friend Lord Rooker has pointed out on previous occasions.
So my noble friend Lord Rooker has come up with the most imaginative suggestion. It may be complicated for the counters, as the noble Lord, Lord Lamont, said. We do not need to worry about the counters, because that will all be done electronically-and we all know how efficient computer systems are at producing election results. Go back to the Scottish elections of 2007 and you will know how really efficient they are. So we do not have to worry about that. We do not really have to worry about having to explain it to the electorate, because they will just vote in the same way-one, two, three, four, five. It is a much more logical system. I agree with my noble friends who have supported my noble friend Lord Rooker-your second preference should not have the same weight as your first preference, and your fourth or fifth preference should certainly not have the same weight as the first preference. On the basis of the amendment proposed by my noble friend Lord Rooker, he would certainly
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I do not think that we need to worry about how complicated it is for the counters-
11.45 pm
Lord McAvoy: I do not want to sound like an intellectual anorak, although I am probably not in any danger of that, but it does not gel with me when people say that the electorate do not need to know. Surely there is an intellectual and principled basis that the public should own, have knowledge of and fully understand all aspects of any system that elects a political representative.
Lord Foulkes of Cumnock: Absolutely. That is why I do not support this system. The reason I support the amendment is because it makes the alternative vote system look so ridiculous that we come back to first past the post.
Lord Falconer of Thoroton: My Lords, one can only think that this is like Heathrow at the moment. First we are told by the Government Chief Whip that we are going to go on till taxis, then we are told that we are going to do the next amendment-and then the Leader of the House says that we are going to go on to the end of this particular clause. So information is short. I look across at the Benches opposite and am glad to see that Ministers are using the seating to try to get a bit of a snooze in while this debate is going on. I imagine that quite shortly blankets will be produced for people across the Benches.
This is quite an important amendment. The need for it comes from the fact that, as a result of it being a compulsory referendum, you need to resolve issues about how the alternative vote system works. My noble friend Lord Rooker raises the question that your third, fourth and fifth preferences may not be treated with the same enthusiasm as your first and second preferences and he deals to some extent-although he eschews this in what he says-with the problem that your third, fourth and fifth preference may include unacceptable extremist parties. We do not want their second preferences to determine the vote in the election. We have to address this issue if there is going to be a referendum. We have to address it on the basis that, whether or not you like AV, if the AV referendum wins, how we deal with the amendment proposed by my noble friend Lord Rooker will determine how we deal with second, third and fourth preferences.
I can see the intellectual force of the position taken by the great intellectual, my noble friend Lord Rooker, but it seems to me to lead to the following problems. First, it says,
- "reallocated ... by the proportion of its preference (that is to say if the candidate was ranked 3 then one third of a vote, if ranked 4 then one quarter of a vote and so on)".
So if there are 12 candidates, as there are in by-elections from time to time, it could go down to as low as one-twelfth of a vote. That is complicated and it leads
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Lord Campbell-Savours: My noble and learned friend says that the system is complicated. How would it be complicated with electronic voting? There would be no manual intervention at all. It would all be sorted out by the computer run.
Lord Falconer of Thoroton: I do not think that the count would necessarily be complicated; it is the explanation of "If you give me your third preferences, I will get one third of a vote". In the course of the counting, fractions of votes will be counted against individual candidates; that strikes me as complicated, lacking in clarity and implausible as far as the electorate are concerned. To be told that I have got two-thirds of a vote more than you seems to me to be an unconvincing electoral system. I do not know of any electoral system in the world where you can win by less than one vote, although maybe there are some. I suspect the reason why there are no systems where you can win by less than one vote-
Lord Campbell-Savours:There is one.
Lord Falconer of Thoroton: The noble Lord, Lord Campbell-Savours, from a sedentary position, is contemplating whether there is one.
Lord Hamilton of Epsom: One of the valuable lessons that we learnt from the previous Government was that new computer systems cost fabulous sums of money and never seem to work properly.
Lord Falconer of Thoroton: I do not think that we needed the previous Government to tell us that. Nor do I think that all computer systems did not work. I do not know where computer systems are involved heavily in counting at the moment, but I accept the basic proposition that eventually they will be.
Lord Campbell-Savours: I think my noble and learned friend has missed one of the merits of the system. If the canvasser goes to the door and says to the voter, "I'm not asking for you to give me a full vote, but if you just vote for me as your third preference, I will get one third of the vote", that is actually an incentive for those people who might worry that if they give their
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Lord Falconer of Thoroton: It is a matter of saying, "How much do you like me?" and being told, "Not enough to give you the whole of my vote". The answer could be maybe a quarter, a fifth or a sixth. The candidate says, "Unfortunately, there are only four candidates in this, so you can't give me a sixth". I do not think that it is realistic. I recognise the problem, but I do not favour the solution. I described the noble and learned Lord, Lord Wallace of Tankerness, as a gem but what I meant was a pearl.
Lord Wallace of Tankerness: I am not quite sure how to take that. I start by reassuring the House that although I have an interest in electoral systems, I cannot recall ever going to bed thinking about them. I doubt I will even do so tonight.
The noble Lord, Lord Rooker, has put forward a system that would involve some fractional vote. As I read his amendment, at first I thought, as the noble Lord, Lord Campbell-Savours understood it, that the second preference got half of a vote, the third preference got a third of a vote, the fourth preference a quarter of a vote, and so on. However, in the light of the comments the noble Lord made on 8 December, his intention may instead be that where there is no winner in the first round of counting, and a further round of counting is necessary, the value of any votes reallocated from the eliminated candidates to the candidates who are still in the count would be determined by the position the eliminated candidate had in the first round of counting. In other words, if the eliminated candidate finished fifth, the value of the reallocated vote would be one-fifth and so on. The fact that there is that dubiety in the amendment-when I first read it, I took it to mean the same as the noble Lord, Lord Campbell-Savours, obviously did-underlines the complexity that arises.
My noble friend Lord Lamont said that the important thing, in terms of simplicity for the voters, is that they are invited to number their candidates 1, 2, 3 and 4 and, if there is complexity, that is for the counters to work out. If we went down the road proposed by the noble Lord, Lord Rooker, there would be some complexity when we were being interviewed by Jeremy Paxman and we were trying to explain where the one-quarter vote and the one-fifth vote came into it. However, I also take the point that the noble Lords, Lord McAvoy and Lord Lipsey, and others made, that although at one level voters are invited to order their preferences as 1, 2, 3 and 4 so far as they wish, there nevertheless is a requirement that they have some understanding. They do not need to know all the complex details, but they need to have some understanding of how the system will work.
The purpose of the alternative vote with the system that we are proposing is that it gives equal weight to votes that are still in the count. That meets the clear, simple and practical tests that the noble and learned Lord, Lord Falconer, suggested that there should be.
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It was said that everyone should have two votes and it is not right that, at the second count, someone has only one vote, whereas the person whose second preference has been transferred has two votes. In fact, at the second count, the person who expressed the first preference and who is still leading has a vote again. The vote still counts as a full vote in the second count.
Lord Lamont of Lerwick: How can the Minister describe the situation where, let us say, the BNP voters' second preferences just push the top person over 50 per cent, as "50 per cent of the votes", when the other preferences of all the other candidates are ignored? That is not 50 per cent in any meaningful sense.
Lord Wallace of Tankerness: It is the preferences of the votes allocated to those who are still in the count, as it were. If someone has been eliminated from the count, it is not the party's vote that is being transferred-it is the voter's preference that is still being allowed to have a value.
Lord Campbell-Savours: I think that the noble and learned Lord has missed the point of the noble Lord, Lord Lamont, which is critical to the operation of AV. The noble Lord has hit it right on the head. The additional preferences, the second preferences, of those voters who voted BNP as their first preference, when transferred, could take the top candidate over the 50 per cent threshold and thereby secure the election of that candidate. At the same time all the other second preferences, or whichever preferences, of all the other candidates would be completely ignored. That is the central flaw in the AV system, which is why Conservatives should be opposing it. The only AV system that gets over that problem is the one that I designed-SV. It is built to avoid precisely that happening, because the second preferences are all transferred in one go to the top two candidates, and you avoid all that nonsense. The noble Lord hit it right on the head.
Lord Wallace of Tankerness: Because of that second count, everyone, other than the person who came bottom the first time, still has their first preference. It is the first preference that counts then, and it may be that the person who came top the first time gets elected or the person who came second takes over. Those people's first preference will still count. Some people say that you might prefer your second preferences over your first; that is a matter for the individual voter. However, this allows individuals to give their first
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Midnight
Lord Campbell-Savours: Why should it be only the second preferences-those cast as the candidate at the bottom-that are the ones to take them over 50 per cent? Why just those? Why not all the others?
Lord Wallace of Tankerness: That is the way that particular system works. It is the system we have used in this House for electing the Lord Speaker. I do not recall anyone challenging the validity of the system working for that purpose. It is the system that works in Scottish local government by-elections and I have never heard any suggestion that it is perverting the result.
What it could do is potentially dissuade voters from exercising the wider choice that is offered by the alternative vote. If it may be suggested that their subsequent preferences are somehow not going to have any weight at all, they may be deemed to be wasted votes. I would hope there was some degree of consensus that, whatever system you wish to adopt, the idea of having a wasted vote is one we should seek to avoid. By the proposal put forward in this amendment, some votes, if they are down to fractions, cease to have the value which I should like to see-
Lord Falconer of Thoroton: What if you have wasted a vote and vote for a candidate who does not succeed?
Lord Wallace of Tankerness: We could go into the merits of the first past the post system and there are a considerable number of wasted votes for candidates who do not succeed. In some cases it can be up to 40, 50 or 60 per cent of votes for candidates who do not win. Under the present system, anyone who votes for a candidate who wins, which is more than a majority of one, is technically described as a wasted vote, too. We are getting into the debate of the first past the post system against the alternative system. That is a matter for the referendum campaign. We could go round the houses debating the relative merits of the system, as I will do during the referendum campaign, but what I am seeking to do for the purposes of this amendment is to indicate that the reallocated votes of the fractional votes imports a degree of complexity and it means that votes do not have full value in subsequent counts, which would happen under the system proposed in the Bill.
Lord Foulkes of Cumnock: Some Members opposite seem to adjust the rules of the House as we go along. Up till now, when someone has got up the speaker goes down. I will watch it carefully in future.
The noble and learned Lord, Lord Wallace, used again the election of the Lord Speaker as an example. Previously it was used by his colleagues who also used the election within a party of a leader. These are not party political elections, however, as between parties, as we saw when we ended up with the noble Baroness,
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Lord Wallace of Tankerness: To suggest that the election of a leader of a party is not political-I understand that it is not party political but maybe it will be factionally political within a particular party and therefore the comparison is apt. Also, as the noble Lord would recognise, Scottish local government by-elections are now conducted on an alternative vote basis and they are very party political.
Lord Foulkes of Cumnock: They are also eccentric and aberrant in some ways because, if you take a four-seat ward, as we have had recently in Edinburgh, you can get a councillor of one party which managed to scrape one seat in that four-seat ward, he retires but it is the party which got the three seats which manages to get the by-election success because it is the biggest party. So it is aberrant.
Lord Wallace of Tankerness: My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Foulkes, is again rehearsing the kind of arguments that we will no doubt exchange in some television or radio studio in the coming weeks and months. I thank him for giving me forewarning of the arguments that he proposes to adopt. With regard to the amendment proposed by the noble Lord, Lord Rooker, as I have indicated, we do not favour an approach that would involve a reallocation of votes on a fractional basis. There are practical considerations. Nor, I understand, does the Front Bench opposite. There could be complications for voters in understanding it. I take the point that all the voter has to do is go into the polling station and write 1, 2, 3, 4. Nevertheless, understanding is required. I am not aware of anywhere else that uses the system proposed by the noble Lord, Lord Rooker. Therefore, I urge him to withdraw his amendment.
Lord Falconer of Thoroton: The noble and learned Lord is right that I do not support this amendment but he is completely wrong to say that we should not debate the anomalies in the AV system that is being proposed. As we keep saying, this is a compulsory referendum so the system that is being adopted must be subject to rigorous scrutiny to see what its shortcomings and anomalies are. The points that the noble Lord, Lord Foulkes, is making are inevitable when you are looking at the detail of a system.
Lord Rooker: My Lords, I decided not to move two earlier amendments today. I wanted to concentrate on the main cause, which is this one and I freely admit is not run of the mill. I came across a reference-only a reference-to the system in a footnote to some text I read recently. I thought it was the solution. One way or another, the central flaw in AV has been explained by the noble Lord, Lord Lamont, and my noble friend Lord Campbell-Savours. It will be incredibly difficult to explain to people.
I am not arguing about the text; I know what I understood and I explained what I wanted. It is the vote for the person who comes last, whether they are third, fourth or fifth, that gets transferred. It is true
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Lord Deben: Does the noble Lord agree, therefore, that there is an advantage in being a Monster Raving Loony Party voter? You automatically get two votes. They are two votes because the first was for the Monster Raving Loony Party and the second is for someone else, whereas every other voter has one vote because he does not change it at all. The argument stands constantly, which is why AV is such a silly system.
Lord Rooker: It is inherently difficult when you are asking people to go into the polling station and make their choices on a ballot paper, whether it is an optional system or not, without knowing what the outcome of the first choices will be. This is why the French have a two-round system. You can see what happens and adjust your vote accordingly. You do not get the chance to do that with this system; it is all or nothing when you put your preferences in. All I am saying is that there must be a fairer system than what is proposed. This will fall apart.
I will conclude on this. Examples have been given of the Scottish by-elections. We have not tried this in 600 or 650 constituencies in every part of the country under the full glare and analysis of every local anorak. I am not an anorak; I resent that term, I must say. This system has not been exposed to what will happen in 2015, assuming five years and assuming this system. That is where it is likely to come apart and there will be a backlash. I am trying to put some more fairness in the system. I made the point earlier about the fairness in the constituencies, the equal numbers. It has to be apparent to people that what is proposed is a fairer system-I might argue about the detail, but I agree with that. This puts a bit of fairness into the way the votes are counted under this proposed AV system. It would not be my first choice but it is genuinely trying to put fairness into the system. I am not saying it is perfect and it would be complicated for the counters. If it is done by computers fair enough; it is not a problem but it might be difficult to explain. I have to say though that it is not half as difficult to explain as the paragraphs the noble and learned Lord, Lord Wallace, read out when explaining the Government's views. I kept thinking, what will that sound like in a television studio?
I can honestly say that I will not be returning to this amendment but I may come back to some of those I did not move. I beg leave to withdraw this amendment.
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52A: Clause 9, page 7, line 6, at end insert-
"( ) Any reallocation of votes referred to in subsection (3) shall only occur if the eliminated candidate received over 5% of the vote in the first round or the round before that candidate was eliminated."
Lord Beecham: My Lords, like most of your Lordships I do not go to bed dreaming of the alternative vote. In fact, at this hour and having got up today at 6 am to come here I have rather forgotten what going to bed is like at all.
Like the noble Lord, Lord Deben, I am a recent entrant to this House. Unlike him, I was never a Member in another place. I do not find the debates we have had on this Bill, particularly today's debate, in any way calculated to bring this House into disrepute. It has been a thoughtful, if somewhat protracted debate. Whether the Faustian compact which the parties opposite have entered into might bring politics into disrepute is of course another matter.
One thing that surprised me today-as it has on previous occasions-is the remarkable claim that this Bill is somehow the greatest constitutional Bill ever brought since the Great Reform Act of 1832, which we celebrate in Newcastle by having a statue to Earl Grey who promoted that remarkable piece of legislation. Surely it is not to be compared with the extension of the franchise, first of all to all male voters and then eventually to all women voters, let alone the Parliament Act of 1911 which the noble Lord, Lord Strathclyde, expatiated on with some passion during a previous debate. Nevertheless, we are where we are and we certainly still have much to discuss.
I could not possibly compete with my noble friend Lord Campbell-Savours and his mastery of the electoral consequences of a variety of systems, nor could I imagine acquiring the extensive knowledge that his research has produced. I would however suggest that he slightly errs in saying that Liberals and Liberal Democrats have opposed AV. In fact, 80 years ago this very month an agreement was reached between the then minority Labour Government and the Lloyd George Liberals to bring forward proposals for an alternative vote. I think they were overtaken by rather more dramatic events even than we have experienced recently within a few months of that date. It may have been a different system but it was AV.
The noble Lord, Lord Foulkes, who has spoken about theoretical elections among Members on these Benches, will know as I do that the Labour Party has most of its elections conducted on the alternative vote system. Indeed, the use of that system deprived me of the opportunity of joining the noble Lord, Lord Deben, in another place some 35 years ago. I maintained the same vote in three ballots for a selection in Newcastle East, whereas the successful candidate eventually, one Michael Thomas who will be known and remembered fondly by some on the Benches opposite, succeeded in garnering the votes of the unsuccessful candidates. I do not complain about that. In fact, I remain in support of the alternative vote.
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12.15 am
I do that after 51 years of engagement in elections. I have been a candidate in council elections 16 times- 15 times successfully and once unsuccessfully in a parliamentary election. I have been an instructing solicitor in public inquiries into boundaries and I have given evidence at public inquiries into boundaries-an opportunity which will of course be denied me in future if the Bill goes through in its present form. It will be denied not only to me, which is hardly relevant, but to many other people as well. Nevertheless, I support the principle of the alternative vote.
However, we come to the method. Under my amendment, we are back to the business of thresholds, which we discussed in another context earlier. Reference has been made by the noble Lord, Lord Lamont, and others, today and previously, to Churchill's dictum. Others more recently have also pronounced their concern that votes for very fringe-party candidates may then be redistributed. I heard David Blunkett, for example, expressing that concern on the radio, and others have made that point.
The amendment tries to minimise that effect. It points to a threshold only above which votes would be redistributed and votes for candidates receiving very small percentages of the vote would not be redistributed. That seems to be a simpler way of dealing with matters. It is comparable to the position of the deposit in parliamentary elections and is preferable, if I may say so, to the amendment of my noble friend Lord Rooker, because, on his formulation, in a three-way marginal such as Oldham, the votes, as it turned out at the last election, are split almost exactly three ways. On the formulation of my noble friend, someone who is only 2,000 votes behind the successful candidate, but very close in percentage terms to achieving a third of the votes, would have had their votes transferred, with only one third being valid, despite their votes having been very close to the candidate with the highest number of votes. That does not seem to be a sensible approach.
My amendment would in this case not have affected the outcome as between those three candidates, but it is a way of meeting at least some of the objections to the proposition that Monster Raving Loony Party candidates, or the BNP or whatever, might unduly influence the outcome of an election, having achieved only a small percentage of the vote. That is a way of improving the AV system. It is simpler for the electorate, it is simpler also in terms of the count and does not do any violence to the principle of the alternative vote. I beg to move.
The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Baroness Harris of Richmond): I must inform your Lordships that if the amendment is agreed, I cannot call manuscript Amendment 52AA, by reason of pre-emption.
Lord Lipsey: My Lords, I can understand the case that my noble friend Lord Beecham is making and it is seductive. However, it removes some of the most desirable features of the AV system, which is designed to produce a much wider choice for voters. That includes, for example, the possibility of voting for a party that
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Lord McAvoy: My Lords, I support the amendment of my noble friend Lord Beecham but only in the context of where we are with that system. I believe very strongly that the first past the post system should stay and I do not want anyone to say-although, of course, I cannot stop anyone saying it-that supporting the amendment in the context of where we are necessarily means that I am deserting my support for first past the post.
This is a modest amendment. On the other hand, romantic candidates, Official Monster Raving Loony Party candidates and the "independent with a cause" candidate can all sound okay but, in a serious parliamentary democracy, is it right that such a small proportion of the vote should be used elsewhere? We are running serious elections for serious and responsible elected positions and, although having the freedom to stand for election and to campaign and so on is an absolute right, I do not think that that type of candidate who polls less than 5 per cent of the vote should be allowed to distort the electoral system and the democratic process. Then again, I keep asking myself why people get involved in that kind of party when it is all a lot of nonsense. Nevertheless, speaking as a realistic politician, I have to say that the amendment is before us and it needs to be discussed. However, if anyone wishes to use their charms on me, I am still willing to be convinced by an objection to my noble friend's amendment.
My noble friend Lord Lipsey is great to listen to and I admire him. He is a formidable person but I do not think that he came up with any reason why the amendment should be opposed. He came up with an intellectual reason, and it is right and proper that that is aired. However, we have to take the real world into account and I do not think it is right for a party with a small percentage of the vote to distort the vote. In the context of what we are discussing, I have no hesitation in supporting my noble friend's amendment.
Lord Falconer of Thoroton: The amendment of my noble friend Lord Beecham basically says that, if a candidate gets 5 per cent or less of the vote, the second preference votes for that candidate are not reallocated. I do not think that it necessarily follows that, if you get a low vote, your second preference votes should be any less valid than if you get a higher percentage of the vote. In certain circumstances, one can imagine
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Lord Wallace of Tankerness: My Lords, I agree with much of the analysis of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Falconer. Just because the total is a small figure, there is no reason why the second preference votes should carry any less value. It is also important to reflect, as the noble Lord, Lord Lipsey, said, that the purpose of a system is to provide a wide choice for voters. Under this system, every vote has equal value and is allocated to the candidate who is ranked highest in the preferences marked on the ballot paper and who is still in the contest. It is only fair to assume that in a second round the person marked as the first preference is the one whom the voter wishes to see come first, and it is important that that vote has full value.
Lord Foulkes of Cumnock: Can the Minister help me? I have had a quick look through the Bill and I cannot find any provision, although it is probably carried over from existing legislation, where candidates have to pay deposits and, if they get less than a percentage of the vote, they will lose that deposit. Is that provision still there? If that is the case, I am afraid my noble and learned friend, Lord Falconer, might have to rethink because, if someone is going to lose their deposit, why should the votes be transferred? The threshold for losing the deposit was set at that level for a particular reason. I do not remember when it was set and what the reason was, but presumably it was that the candidate had failed to convince enough electors.
Lord Falconer of Thoroton: Where you take someone's deposit away because they get less than 5 per cent, you are in effect "punishing" the candidate for standing because he could not get enough support. You would be wrong to punish the people who vote for him.
Lord Wallace of Tankerness: The noble and learned Lord virtually took the words out of my mouth. There is a difference in that, if there is a penalty on the candidate, it does not follow that the penalty should then be on the voter who has in all good faith expressed a second preference. The noble Lord, Lord Lipsey, made the point that it could be a way to penalise
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Lord Beecham: In the circumstances I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendments 52B to 53 not moved.
Lord Falconer of Thoroton: My Lords, this takes us to a wholly new and equally riveting topic: namely, the process of making the results public in the course of an election count.
I refer your Lordships-those who are still awake-to the following:
"If no candidate is elected (as mentioned in rule 45A(2)) at the first stage of counting, the returning officer shall, immediately after that stage, record and make publicly available the following information ... the number of first-preference votes obtained by each candidate ... which candidate was eliminated; the number of rejected ballot papers",
so we will have a very different series of announcements during the course of an election. Obviously what happens now is that the returning officer says what votes everyone has in the first past the post system. We know who has won and who has lost.
On the basis of new Section 45B(1), I envisage after the first round of counting, in which most prospective parliamentary candidates will not get 50 per cent of the votes, that there will be a public announcement in each constituency of where it has got to. I take that from the words:
"If no candidate is elected ... the returning officer shall, immediately after that stage, record and make publicly available the following information ... the number of first-preference votes ... which candidate was eliminated",
and so on. The public will therefore know how the vote is going in each constituency and where it has got to. My knowledge of how the system worked most recently was in the Labour Party leadership election
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12.30 am
First, how do the Government envisage this system will work? In particular, do they envisage that the returning officer will make an announcement after each round of counting? Secondly, what is the purpose of doing it in this way? Thirdly, why not wait until the end of the count to make public how it went at each stage? I should make it clear that I do not for one moment suggest that the individual candidates and their representatives should not be told how each round has gone after each round so that they can legitimately question any aspect of what has happened in that round, but I would be keen to know what the reasons were. That may be perfectly justified, but my goodness me it will make it an extremely complicated and long drawn-out evening and next morning if you insist-I am not saying that this is the wrong thing, I just want to hear the reasons-that at each stage there be a public announcement of where it has got to. This amendment seeks to probe the Government's picture of how this will work, their thinking behind it and how much it will elongate the process.
Lord King of Bridgwater: Do I understand the noble and learned Lord to be actually suggesting that instead of this being made publicly available, it should be given to the representatives of the candidates so that it can be done by leak?
Lord Falconer of Thoroton: A lot of information is given to candidates and their representatives at the moment that is not leaked, entirely legitimately, and not made public. I would like to hear the Government's position on this.
Lord Wallace of Tankerness: My Lords, as the noble and learned Lord has indicated, these amendments provide that if no candidate is elected at the first stage of counting-that is, if no candidate secures more than 50 per cent of first-preference votes-the returning officer would not make publicly available certain specified information about the state of play at that stage, including the number of first preference votes obtained by each candidate and which candidate was eliminated, but would make the information available to candidates and their representatives only. I have a lot of sympathy with the intervention by the noble Lord, Lord King. It would soon leak out, and I think it is far better that it is done publicly.
The clause is not prescriptive, so it is up to the returning officer in each case how he or she will make that information public. The purpose is so that there is transparency. There is no requirement for an announcement to be made, although the amendment in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Snape, that was recently not moved would have required a public announcement to have been made, and the specified information, which would include the details of the number of votes obtained by each candidate and the
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I was not present at any count on the morning of the last Scottish election because I was in radio studios with the noble Lord, Lord Foulkes, but I understand that at least at one count that my wife attended in Orkney the votes-based on a slightly different system-were being shown on a screen as they were being counted, so it is possible for that information to be made available. I can make it very clear that this is to ensure that the candidate, the media, accredited observers and other persons present at the count are aware of the state of play at the end of the counting stage and that the count is conducted in an open and transparent manner. I hope with that reassurance that it is intended to promote transparency, that it is not prescriptive, that it is a matter for the returning officer as to how that information is made public and that there are ways of doing it in written form as well as by making an announcement, that the noble and learned Lord will not press his amendment.
Lord Falconer of Thoroton: I found that a helpful and clear description which, from the sound of it, is a sensible way of doing this. However, I shall read in Hansard what he has said before making a final decision.
Amendments 53B and 53C not moved.
Lord Falconer of Thoroton: Clause 9(4) reads:
"The Minister may by order make any amendments to primary or secondary legislation (whenever passed or made) that are consequential on amendments made by this section or Schedule 10".
It gives the Government a power to amend any section of primary legislation or secondary legislation in order to give effect to these provisions. Normally, we would expect to see the provisions that are being amended so that Parliament has an opportunity to consider them. Why are we not seeing the respective provisions that are being amended, and does this include the power to amend Acts of Parliament made after the passage of this Act? I beg to move.
Lord Wallace of Tankerness: My Lords, I can reassure the noble and learned Lord and the Committee that the breadth of the power is limited to amendments that are consequential to the changes being made by Clause 9 and Schedule 10. It is envisaged that in order to introduce the alternative vote system, should that be the wish of the referendum, amendments will be required to provisions in existing secondary legislation which concern the conduct of United Kingdom parliamentary elections. For example, changes will need to be made to certain forms that are prescribed for use at a UK parliamentary election including the
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I can offer a reassurance to your Lordships' House that, as Clause 9 is currently drafted, before making an order under subsection (4), the Minister would be required to consult the Electoral Commission, which would give an independent view on any change. Such an order would be subject to the affirmative resolution procedure and would therefore have to be debated and approved in each House. I can confirm that it could allow amendments to be made to Acts passed before and after the Bill, but as I have indicated, this is for technical issues and not to change any matters of policy. In our memorandum concerning the delegated powers in the Bill for the Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee, we covered the order-making power in Clause 9.
Lord Campbell-Savours: If, by any chance, the Government were to decide before May that the system they have selected should be tweaked in some way, that would require a change to primary legislation. Does not subsection (4) actually preclude such a change being possible in the event that it needed to be made? Should not subsection (4) be a little looser to allow for the possibility that the Government may want to tweak the system in some way?
Lord Wallace of Tankerness: I do not think that that would be an appropriate use of the power. It is important that when Parliament determines what the system should be, that is the system which is put to the people in the referendum and should not be tweaked. As I have indicated, this makes provision for amendments to primary or secondary legislation to be made that are consequential and necessitated by this clause or by Schedule 10. As I have indicated, they are related to things like the poll card or the information that goes with postal votes.
Just before the noble Lord, Lord Campbell-Savours, intervened, I was going to end by saying that we have not been made aware that the Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee has made any critical or adverse comments in respect of these provisions. We believe that they are necessary and appropriate. In the event of a yes vote in the referendum, they will facilitate the implementation of the alternative vote.
Lord Falconer of Thoroton: I quite understand the noble and learned Lord's position in relation to secondary legislation. Clause 9(7) states:
"An order under subsection (4) may not be made unless a draft of the order has been laid before, and approved by a resolution of, each House of Parliament".
So we will get an opportunity to debate it.
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Does the noble and learned Lord have in mind some provisions of primary legislation? He rather glossed over primary legislation. If changes in primary legislation are envisaged, why are we not being told what they are so that we can address them head on?
Lord Wallace of Tankerness: As I indicated-perhaps I did not make it clear enough-we believe that the necessary primary legislative provisions are in the Bill and therefore we do not have anything in mind. I have indicated some of the provisions which are in secondary legislation, but we believe that the primary legislative provisions are already in the Bill. However, it seemed sensible to ensure that we did not have our hands tied if something was to arise.
Lord Falconer of Thoroton: That is an interesting answer. Does the noble and learned Lord think it would be sensible not to include this power in relation to primary legislation? It is dangerous to include in a Bill a power to amend primary legislation when you have no primary legislation in mind but think it might be useful later on-particularly in relation to future legislation where you think you might have made a mistake and you then want to use the power to amend it. It appears to circumvent the important scrutiny that this House and the other place give to primary legislation. Will the noble and learned Lord think again about primary legislation? I am happy with secondary legislation.
Lord Wallace of Tankerness: I hear what the noble and learned Lord says. As I have indicated, the measure would relate to consequential amendments, but I am prepared to give it further consideration as regards primary legislation. As I said, it is there so that we do not find ourselves in a position where it is discovered that primary legislation could somehow prevent effective implementation of the affirmative vote in a referendum. I shall certainly reflect on what the noble and learned Lord has said with regard to primary legislation and I hope that he will withdraw the amendment.
Lord Falconer of Thoroton: My Lords, on the basis of the generous assurance given by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Wallace of Tankerness, that he will consider what I have said in relation to primary legislation, of course I shall withdraw the amendment.
54: Clause 9, page 7, line 42, at end insert ", Scottish Parliament, National Assembly of Wales and Northern Ireland Assembly"
Lord Foulkes of Cumnock: My Lords, I am pleased that we have managed to get to Amendment 54. I see that the noble Lord, Lord McNally, shares my pleasure. I should declare an interest because I am a Member still of the Scottish Parliament, elected by the bizarre election system of AMS, the additional member system.
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I remind those who are not too familiar with the Scottish electoral system that 73 Members are elected by first past the post-that is 71 for all the mainland constituencies and Orkney and Shetland have the special advantage of having a constituency each. That should please the Minister and the noble Lord, Lord Lamont. So 73 are elected by first past the post based on the votes that individual candidates got in each of the constituencies, and then 56 Members are elected-seven Members for each of eight regions-on a top-up basis based on the vote obtained by the party in that region. I would find it very interesting if someone could explain to me-I ask the Minister because he was the acting First Minister as well as the Deputy First Minister-how I managed to get elected because I could then explain it to the electorate. I am not sure how the votes came to be transferred to me and, ultimately, I was the last person elected on the Lothian list.
I do not think the electorate understood. It was a fascinating campaign. When I used to stand in south Ayrshire, in Carrick, Cumnock and Doon Valley, as a Member of Parliament, I spent right up to-and certainly not beyond-the limit of the election allocation. In spite of the fact that my majority in 1997 was over 21,000, I still campaigned very hard, went around every part of the constituency, and fought a huge campaign putting my name before the electorate in Carrick, Cumnock and Doon Valley. When I got elected to the list in Lothians, I spent nothing on the election campaign. We did not run a huge campaign for me, though we did for the Labour Party and for the constituency members. It is a bizarre system, which even the noble Lord, Lord Steel of Aikwood, who was one of the main architects of the system-it is a pity that he is not here tonight-regrets having introduced and would like to see revisited. I do not know whether the noble and learned Lord, Lord Wallace of Tankerness, has come round to that point of view yet-I hear the muttering of the Leader of the House-but it indicates how unwise it is to go into systems without fully realising their implications, because there are huge, unintended consequences.
12.45 am
I have tabled the amendment because the Scottish Parliament was deeply concerned and offended by the fact that it was not consulted about the date on which the UK Government intended to hold the referendum on the alternative vote. The Scottish Government felt the same way-I am more concerned about the Parliament than the Government, but their response was the same. Here we are dealing with Schedule 10. In it it is suggested that the Electoral Commission, and no one else, should be consulted. Until recently-a few months ago-there was no one on the Electoral Commission with any experience of either elections or referenda. That situation has been improved with the addition of four members, including my noble friend Lord Kennedy, George Reid and the noble Baroness, Lady Browning, who is sitting opposite. The commission's knowledge of elections and referendums has been strengthened; I welcome her and my noble friend's membership of it. However, the Scottish Parliament, the National Assembly for Wales and the Northern Ireland Assembly should
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Lord McAvoy: My Lords, it gives me great pleasure to speak in support of my noble friend's amendment. To one such as me who has been in this House for four or five months, it certainly gives rise to a new experience. It may sound pretentious or boastful, but my instinct tells me that some kind of watershed has been breached tonight, and not for the better. Why are we debating this amendment at this time of night? I do not think that it is the best time to be discussing legislation, and never have done. In the other place, it was one of these things that Oppositions would do to strut their stuff and Governments would do the same. After a decent couple of nights, both sides would behave themselves. Today is unique because we are debating this issue at almost one o'clock in the morning. We have to look at why and how we arrived here. A big chunk of time was taken out today by three Statements. I am not complaining about that, because they were very important, and it was right that the House should have the benefit of listening to Ministers.
As I understand it, there was co-operation, through the usual channels-if I am wrong on this, I am sure I will get pounced upon. Because of the three Statements, and in co-operation with the Government, we waived the right to a fourth Statement. Nobody has pounced upon me yet, so I think that there must be something in it. That shows, in my book, that the usual channels on the Opposition's side was responsible for saying that as there already going to be a chunk of time taken out of today's deliberations, therefore it was a reasonable and fair-a much used, or abused word in here at the moment-to waive the right to the fourth Statement. I think it was right that the Statements were heard; I respected the Government for that. They are under pressure to get the Bill through, yet they have still lived up to their responsibilities as a Government and made these three Statements.
I do not know what has happened since then. I am not party, first hand, to what has been said and done tonight, but I know enough about the place, because traditionalists such as my noble friends Lord Campbell-Savours, Lord Lipsey and Lord Foulkes have drummed into me the importance of the conventions here and of the conventions being honoured and recognised.
The noble Lord, Lord McNally, has commented that I have taken to the place like a duck to water, which means that I have supported the conventions up till now; I agreed with them and saw the need for them because this place is special. I know that he was gently making fun of me and that is fine, that is part of the routine. I hope he was-he did not agree when I said that. I assume that it was said in a jocular way and I certainly accept that. If you are going to poke fun, you have to be able to take some fun back.
However, my understanding, again from the usual channels-my noble friend Lord Bassam of Brighton mentioned this at the Dispatch Box, so I am not breaking any confidences-was that there was an understanding/agreement, that going past 10 o'clock
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Lord Rennard: I thank the noble Lord for giving way, but after listening to him for the last five minutes or so, could I ask him whether his arguments are for or against the amendment of his noble friend?
Lord McAvoy: I thank the noble Lord for that. I am trying to explain the context of why we have reached here and why I intend to take time, without repetition, being boring or whatever.
I have left the Liberals alone up till now, but the noble Lord, Lord Rennard, invites me in. How can any Liberal, with their high sense of duty, their superiority complex over the years, looking down at mere politicians, not only of the Labour Party, but of the Tory Party-they are a cut above, intellectually and spiritually pure-endorse, support and even vigorously lead the behaviour tonight? They ought to be ashamed of themselves, because not only have they endorsed it, they have given enthusiastic leadership to it and it is a breach of the conventions of the House.
My noble friend rightly mentioned the Scottish Parliament. In passing, and he did not get pulled up for it, he mentioned how Orkney and Shetland had two seats in the Scottish Parliament. I remember at the time thinking, "That's okay for them isn't it?" How anybody can advocate and support that position and maintain a credible reputation is beyond me. Certainly, on this side of the House, it is okay for that part of the world, part of my own country, to get preferential treatment on the basis of two seats in the Scottish Parliament and influence the governance of the Scottish Parliament.
The Scottish Parliament is there and it is coming to be respected more by the Scottish people. To be treated in a cack-handed, offhand way by the Westminster Government only gives succour to the nationalists and separatists and those who think that independence will carry a crescent of prosperity for Scotland, the Nordic countries and the Republic of Ireland.
It was said that the Electoral Commission should be consulted/notified and not the Scottish Parliament. The Scottish Parliament was not even consulted about the date of the referendum. That is a complete insult and an offhand way of doing things. It was under the leadership of the Deputy Prime Minister-a Liberal. There is a situation where a Liberal has played a leading role in insulting the Scottish Parliament.
It is not the best kept secret that my personal position prior to Scottish Labour Party decisions and the position of the relevant constituency Labour Party was of complete, total and utter opposition to the
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I can sense from the Scottish non-political public that there is resentment about that. I will be quite honest about this. Scotland is not one homogeneous nation in every single sense of the word. There are different attitudes in each area. I think I am an average west of Scotland person. I would certainly say that I am not Glaswegian. We are a bit contrary in a sense because as an area we might be critical of the Scottish Parliament. We may be critical of some decisions and the way it sometimes behaves. We may even say, "I wish it wasn't there". Sometimes the west of Scotland takes that attitude. But any insult slung at the Scottish Parliament from somebody from outside the area, especially from outside Scotland and-without being racist in any way because I am British and Scottish-especially from England, gets the contrary side of the west of Scotland people. They then start defending the Scottish Parliament and take umbrage and exception to the behaviour of any critical comments or attacks on it coming from outside Scotland, especially from England. They give succour to the Scottish Nationalist Party and separatists.
For the benefit of the noble Lord, Lord Rennard, if he is listening, I fully support my noble friend's amendment. It is right that the Scottish Parliament should be recognised. It has been elected and to me that is above all else. It should be given a place in Scottish public life. Quite clearly, it has not been by this Government and not by the Liberal Deputy Prime Minister. Therefore, I have no hesitation in supporting the amendment.
1 am
Lord Campbell-Savours: I shall very briefly intervene and just make a comment before this debate closes this morning. This amendment would provide for making an order to amend the primary or secondary legislation consequential on amendments made by this clause. Any such award would have to be the subject of consultation with the Electoral Commission and also with the Northern Ireland Assembly, the Welsh Assembly and the Scottish Parliament. The question is, "Why consultation?". I shall address my remarks to the two new noble Lords elevated to this House today, the noble Lords, Lord Lingfield and Lord Dobbs. This is a bit of a baptism of fire for them, really; they must be wondering what they have come into. It is a very good question, and the answer is very simple. We are dealing with a Bill that has been the subject of no consultation whatever. There was no inquiry, no prior scrutiny and no real notice of what was coming, and we object. We are now scrutinising this legislation line by line. Much of this could have been avoided if we had been through a proper process. What those two noble Lords are now seeing is just an abuse of Parliament by way of introducing a Bill in this way. I would advise them-and one hopes that they will stay here for many years to come-that
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Lord Falconer of Thoroton: My Lords, the effect of the amendment is that before making an order under Clause 9(4), which allows the Government to,
- "make any amendments to primary or secondary legislation ... that are consequential on amendments made by this section or Schedule 10".
At the moment, the Minister has to consult the Electoral Commission. Inevitably, amendments made under Clause 9(4) could affect the position in relation to the Welsh Assembly or the Scottish Parliament. As to how they might affect primary legislation-I see the noble and learned Lord, Lord Wallace of Tankerness, looking troubled by that. He has just said very candidly that he has no idea what primary legislation might be amended by using Clause 9(4). His inability to understand that it might affect the Scottish Parliament or the Welsh Assembly is surprising, I have to say.
Before you produce an order that amends primary legislation, which currently cannot be identified-I am not criticising the noble and learned Lord for that-and which may not even be passed, because it may include future legislation, what is wrong with consulting the Scottish Parliament or the Welsh Assembly? We have had read to us the views of the Scottish Parliament and the Welsh Assembly on a number of occasions about the fact that they were not consulted about the date of the referendum, which is taking place on the same day as the Scottish Parliament or Welsh Assembly elections. They were plainly upset by that. What is the purpose of not consulting? What is the anxiety about consulting? We are talking about a national electoral system here, and a national vote. Surely the Scottish Parliament might have views that could be taken into account. I ask the noble and learned Lord to take that position into account. Points have been made about what has happened this evening. It is four minutes past one now. My understanding of how the House operates is that the Government Whip and Leader consult and then decide what to do. The Leader of the House today appeared not even to consult his own Chief Whip about sitting until four minutes past one. The reason I say that is because I am told by the Opposition Chief Whip that the noble Baroness was proposing that we went on for one more amendment. It might well have been sensible to go on to four minutes past one, but we have done it without, for example, giving the staff warning in advance and without there being proper consultation. All I say to the Leader of the House, who is much liked in the House, is please consult before going on till five past one.
Lord Wallace of Tankerness: My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Foulkes, has invited me to give a description of the working of the Scottish Parliament voting system. I will resist that. I do not think that it is necessary. He came to be elected, I suspect, because more Labour members lost their first past the post
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Lord McAvoy: Yes, of course it was agreed at the time, and there were many pressures for it, not least the inducement to the noble and learned Lord-I do not mean illegal or anything improper-as I understand it, made by the leader of the Labour Party, the late Donald Dewar, that Orkney and Shetland would get separate seats; of course that was agreed at the time. But does the Minister still think it fair, in an atmosphere where everything has been quoted as fair, that the area that he used to represent gets special treatment compared to mine?
Lord Wallace of Tankerness: The previous Labour Government did a wonderful job when they brought forward the proposals for the Scotland Bill, which I was happy to support, and which indeed were endorsed overwhelmingly by the Scottish people in a referendum. But the effect of the amendments brought forward by the noble Lord, Lord Foulkes, would be that, before any order was made under Clause 9(4), the Minister would be required to consult the Scottish Parliament, the National Assembly for Wales, and the Northern Ireland Assembly, in addition, of course, to the Electoral Commission. As I indicated in my response to the previous amendment, the kind of changes that are anticipated under this order-making power are for matters such as the information that goes on the polling card; information that would go with a postal voting statement; matters which currently reflect the first past the post system, but obviously would need to be changed with an alternative vote, should that be the will of the electorate in the referendum.
In all fairness, I am not sure that that is high on the agenda of the Scottish Parliament, the Welsh National Assembly, or the Northern Ireland Assembly. Voting systems for UK parliamentary elections is a reserved matter. It was a matter of common ground in the Act that was put forward by the previous Labour Government, which I was happy to support and was supported by the Scottish people; the Government of Wales Act was supported by the Welsh people in a referendum; likewise for Northern Ireland, where it was agreed that UK parliamentary elections are reserved.
It is not necessary, therefore, for the UK Government to be subject to a statutory requirement to consult the devolved Parliament and Assemblies before making an order, which will be of a technical nature. We are not aware of any similar requirement to consult the devolved Administrations in respect of existing aspects of electoral law relating to UK parliamentary elections.
Lord Campbell-Savours: Would they be consulted?
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Lord Wallace of Tankerness: I was just going on to say that I accept that when the United Kingdom Government develop proposals in relation to UK parliamentary elections, it is important that issues affecting Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland are considered as part of the process. The practice of the Cabinet Office, which leads on electoral policy issues, is to work closely with colleagues in the territorial departments-the Scotland Office, the Wales Office, the Northern Ireland Office-on policy proposals. They would be able to highlight any concerns or issues affecting the particular part of the United Kingdom. I have no doubt that, if the Scottish Government or the Scottish Parliament had particularly strong views on the wording of a polling card that would be taken into account but I do not believe that it is necessary given the fact that this is a wholly reserved matter. It has been accepted on all sides that it is a wholly reserved matter that requires a statutory requirement. The Electoral Commission is in a different position, because the Electoral Commission has a host of responsibilities with regard to the material that is published and goes out in association with an election. As I indicated, I am sure that if representations were received from the Welsh National Assembly, they would be considered on their merits, but on a matter which is entirely the responsibility of the United Kingdom Parliament and Government, a statutory requirement to consult is not necessary. I therefore ask the noble Lord to withdraw his amendment.
Lord Foulkes of Cumnock: I am grateful to the Minister for his usual courtesy and for his careful and clear explanation. He mentioned that if the Scottish Government or the Scottish Parliament had particularly strong views, even on a matter that is wholly the responsibility of the United Kingdom, they would be taken account of. I do not know if he was in at Question Time today-no, it was when the noble Baroness, Lady Neville-Jones, repeated a Statement about the immigration bar. The Minister will know from his own experience that the Scottish Government and the Scottish Parliament are very exercised about the particular concerns of Scotland in relation to imposing an immigration bar, but, when I asked the noble Baroness whether the Scottish Government had been consulted, she did not even know.
That goes against the kind of assurance that the Minister has given. I am sure that he is genuine and that he is right, but there are people like the noble Baroness, Lady Neville-Jones-I do not know if she has ever been to Scotland; she certainly seems to know very little about it-who do not really pay much attention to what is happening in Scotland. This is a matter of importance. I hope that the Minister, since he has a wider responsibility than just this Bill, will ensure that some of the departments are taking account of Scottish issues.
My noble friend Lord McAvoy raised a number of issues, particularly in relation to what has happened tonight. I ask him to give some sympathy to the position of the noble Lord the Leader of the House. Can you imagine how difficult it must be for him when every time he goes to a Cabinet meeting or bumps into David Cameron in the Lobby he has to explain why he
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I welcome the new Members. I am sure that they did not know what to expect. One of them has written a novel about this place, which is how I know there is a toilet behind the Throne; but for that, I would not have known. You learn a lot of interesting things, and I hope that he has learnt some tonight. I really am tempted to push this to a vote, to give them the opportunity on their first day to go through the Lobby, get their name down and get their tick to say that they
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I am tempted to vote on this. However, because of the clear and convincing explanation that the Minister gave, and because my noble friend Lady Browning, the noble Lord, Lord Kennedy, and George Reid are on the Electoral Commission now, I have much more faith in it better representing some of our interests. I therefore beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
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