Local Government and Public Involvement in Health Bill

moved Amendment No. 112: 112: After Clause 60, insert the following new Clause— ““Voting at elections of elected mayors (1) The Local Government Act 2000 (c. 22) is amended as follows. (2) For section 42(1) (voting at elections of elected mayors) substitute— ““(1) Each person entitled to vote as an elector shall have one vote and the elected mayor is to be returned under the simple majority system, unless there are three or more candidates. (1A) If there are three or more candidates to be the elected mayor, voting shall be by means of preferential voting in which electors may list the candidates in order of preference. (1B) If there are three or more candidates to be the elected mayor, the elected mayor is to be returned under the alternative vote system in accordance with Schedule 2.”” (3) In section 43 (entitlement to vote), omit subsection (2). (4) For Schedule 2 substitute— ““SCHEDULE 2 Election of elected mayor Application 1 This Schedule applies where there are three or more candidates to be an elected mayor of a local authority. Method of voting 2 Each voter shall have one transferable vote. 3 (1) A voter must place the figure 1 against the candidate he or she wishes to vote for (the ““first preference””). (2) A voter may indicate the order of his or her preferences for as many other candidates as he or she pleases by placing against their respective names the numbers 2, 3, 4 and so on. Procedure for counting 4 (1) The returning officer shall examine the papers and shall sort them into parcels according to the first preference recorded for each candidate, rejecting any that are invalid; and he shall count the papers in each such parcel and shall credit each candidate with a number of votes equal to the number of valid papers on which a first preference has been recorded for that candidate. (2) If the vote for any one candidate equals or exceeds the votes of all other candidates combined, that candidate shall be declared elected. (3) If no candidate has been declared elected, the returning officer shall exclude together the two or more candidates with the least votes if the total vote of such two or more candidates does not exceed the vote of the candidate next above, otherwise he shall exclude the candidate having the fewest votes. (4) The papers of the excluded candidates shall be transferred to whichever of the continuing candidates is marked by that voter as the next available preference, and the votes thus transferred shall be added to the first preference votes of those candidates. (5) Any paper on which no further preference is marked, or where there is uncertainty as the voter’s intention, shall be set aside as non-transferable and the total of such papers shall be recorded. (6) When the vote for any one candidate equals or exceeds the votes of all other candidates combined, that candidate shall be declared elected at that stage. (7) If when a candidate has to be excluded, two or more candidates have each the same number of votes and are lowest on the poll, the candidate with the lowest number of votes at the earliest stage in the count at which the candidates in question had an unequal number of votes shall be excluded. (8) If two or more candidates are still equal and lowest, the returning officer is to decide by lot which of them is to be excluded at that stage. (9) ““Next available preference”” means a second or subsequent preference recorded in consecutive numerical order for a candidate who has not yet been excluded, passing over earlier preferences for candidates already excluded.””.”” The noble Lord said: This small group of amendments deals with some important matters. Amendments Nos. 112, 171, 172 and 255, tabled in my name, would replace the supplementary vote with the alternative vote. The other amendment in the group, in the name of my noble friend, is rather more ambitious. She will speak to it in due course. Amendment No. 112 would replace the existing system of the supplementary vote for mayoral elections with the alternative vote. My other three amendments would use the alternative vote, rather than the supplementary vote, for elections which the Government proposed for any elected executives. We have not discussed elected executives yet, so the amendments pre-empt the question whether we will have them, but it seems sensible to discuss the two voting systems together. The third area in which the supplementary vote is used is London mayoral elections. My amendments do not cover them, because they are subject to different legislation, but I would in spirit make the same change in their case, too. The supplementary vote is a rather cack-handed voting system, which the Government cobbled together when they set up elections for mayors and the Mayor of London. It is election by a traditional ““X””-voting system. After the first vote, people are given the opportunity of marking their second preference with an ““X”” in a different column. The two candidates with the most first-preference votes progress to the second round. Any second-preference votes for those two remaining candidates are then transferred to them and added to their total, giving the result of the election. Before moving the amendment, I should perhaps have welcomed the Minister to what I think is her first discussion in Committee on electoral systems. There will no doubt be many more to come. They are all great fun. The supplementary vote differs from the alternative vote in that candidates are numbered one to five by voters and votes are simply transferred until somebody has gained over half of the votes cast. That system is used for the election of the leader and deputy leader of the Labour Party, so it has achieved a certain amount of fame recently. It is used also in elections in your Lordships' House, so it is not without some background. If it is good enough for the Labour Party, it should be good enough for mayors and elected executives; and if it is good enough for the House of Lords, it should certainly be good enough for mayors and elected executives. What are the problems with the supplementary vote, and why did I say it was cack-handed and cobbled together? First, it seems to cause unnecessary confusion. The number of spoiled ballot papers is significantly higher than usual, certainly higher than in normal elections: around 3 per cent in the first-preference count and around 8 to 10 per cent on the second count, not including those that cannot transfer because they would go to the wrong candidate. I had difficulty researching previous elections by the supplementary vote. I asked the Government what the situation was, but they said that they did not collect data. It is time that somebody started. Secondly, the supplementary vote is not efficient, and there is a very high drop-out rate on the transfer to the second round; it can be as high as 80 per cent and is typically 60 or 70 per cent. Although people are offered a second vote, in general most of those votes do not count. They are not used because people use their second preference for somebody who has already dropped out, and the vote is then lost. Your second vote only counts if it goes to one of the candidates in the top two; therefore whether your second vote counts is accidental, which is not an efficient voting system. Thirdly, the supplementary vote distorts choice. As I have said, whether your vote is counted on the second ballot is accidental; therefore, that must distort the result. I have been doing a bit of research and have just two or three examples. The 2005 Torbay mayoral election was unusual because there were 14 candidates, despite which the turnout was only 24 per cent. However, 15,000—62 per cent—of the votes were for candidates not in the top two. Of those, nearly 12,000—almost 49 per cent—were not transferred. As a transferable voting system, it was a flop. In the election for the mayor of Hackney in 2002, 76 per cent of votes did not transfer to the second round; the rate was almost as high in the next election, four years later. There were a huge number of rejected ballot papers in Hackney: 619 were rejected because of voting for more than one candidate as the first preference; 209 were unmarked or wholly void for uncertainty; and 4,400 were rejected in part. The system was not working properly. As I have said, up to 10 per cent of papers tend to be rejected as void or spoilt at either stage. In the Mansfield mayoral election earlier this year, nearly 8 per cent of ballot papers were spoilt. There was a great scandal at the level of spoilt ballot papers in the Scottish parliamentary election; however, the same level seems to apply in these mayoral elections. That cannot be a good thing. Those are typical. I will not detain noble Lords with statistics on lots of other places. Typically a high proportion of votes are not transferred and quite a lot of people who want to vote spoil their papers inadvertently. About 10 per cent of ballot papers are spoilt. Around two-thirds of second-preference votes are not transferred. Therefore, the system is not efficient. The alternative vote is easier to use; it gives maximum choice and is easy to understand because anybody can number. It is an efficient system in that a high proportion of the votes are transferred until somebody is either elected or is named the runner-up. I do not know why the supplementary vote was invented. Most electoral systems are a matter of principle—what they are based on—the purpose that they exist for and the outcomes. We can argue about first past the post, the alternative vote and various kinds of proportional representation but those arguments are about principles, purpose and outcomes. The supplementary vote is a defective system and is not fit for purpose. It does not work, and that is the main argument against it. I beg to move Amendment No. 112, which would introduce the alternative vote instead of the supplementary vote for elected mayors.