Elections Bill — House of Lords, 2022-03-23
Topic: Civil Rights
Bruce Joseph Grocott (Labour, Centre-left): Well, to bring Dominic Cummings into it sounds like a good argument to a point that I was not discussing and do not intend to discuss The referendum was a condition of the Liberal Democrats’ membership of the coalition Government; they said that there should be a referendum on the voting system in this country. Some 19.2 million votes were cast, 6 million in favour of the alternative vote system and 13 million for first past the post, as specifically referred to. There was a 2:1 majority for first past the post, and a widely held debate right across the country. I am pretty shocked that, having demanded that referendum and having rejected the result, which is not an unusual characteristic, the noble Lord wants, by means of an amendment to a Bill, to change the electoral system away from first past the post, not by another referendum—because referendums keep giving him the result that he does not want—but by an amendment to a Bill. I find that a very unsatisfactory way of proceeding, but I am afraid that it has become a behaviour pattern. I am sorry, because I agree with the Liberal Democrats on a lot of aspects of this Bill, but not on this. It is a very similar pattern to what was followed in relation to the European referendum, whereby they voted for the referendum, did not like the result but knew that it was too big a risk to put it back to the people—so, instead of having another referendum, they proposed to change it without one and back to the original situation I am afraid that this approach of no compromise with the electorate that seems to be being offered by one party to this discussion is really not a satisfactory way for democrats to proceed. Of course, people can change their mind; people might decide, at some future date, that they want to change the electoral system. But, again, I have noticed—and this is why I both enjoy but am frustrated by discussions about the voting system—that one thing that people who are in favour of changing from first past the post always manage to do, whenever you criticise them for anything that they are proposing, is to say, "Oh, that’s not the kind of proportional representation that I’m in favour of—it’s completely different." In fact, of course, they will even argue, although it was more proportional, that the proposal in the 2011 referendum, which was for the alternative vote system, was not proper proportional representation. It is not, but it is much more proportional —and I am quite certain that they see the electoral systems for mayors, police commissioners and everything else just as a stepping-stone towards proportional representation I am the first noble Lord to mention the referendum. The other thing that proponents of proportional representation always avoid mentioning is the test bed that we had for quite a long time—thankfully, no longer —for elections to the European Parliament. They were done on the basis of proportional representation. I remind supporters of the system of the arguments that are tediously repeated about the great merits of proportional representation, the principal point of which is that it reaches parts of the electorate that are ignored at present. It is said that there are tens of thousands of Labour voters, say, in the south of England and tens of thousands of Conservative voters in the north of England who never have their voices represented, and that if you released all that potential by proportional representation, the public would be energised.