Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill

I know that there are a thousand excuses for gutlessness, but that is just another one. The Liberal Democrats are going to have to live on a diet of their own words for the next few months. It was the leader of their party who called the alternative vote ““a miserable little compromise”” before the election. Now it is central to Liberal Democrat policy. The hon. Member for Bermondsey and Old Southwark (Simon Hughes) is mistaken about the referendum in New Zealand. The first referendum, which I have discussed, gave the exact alternatives that would be given in our Bill. I want to make the case for proportional representation. We are working in a system that has become a multi-party one. Fewer people are voting for the two main parties, whose share of the vote has gone down from about 90% to about 60%. A multi-party system is in the process of being born, with nationalists, including Welsh nationalists, Liberal Democrats, the UK Independence party, and all the rest of it. We are trying to fit that within the constraints of a first-past-the-post system that works well only with two parties. [Interruption.] I forgot to mention the Greens—I apologise, but that is another indication of our multi-party system. We cannot fit the burgeoning multi-party system into a first-past-the-post system, which works only with two parties. The question is still why did the Liberal Democrats, in pushing for a referendum—I congratulate them on securing one—not give people the real choice between a preferential system, an alternative vote and first past the post, as that is the choice that they have to make? I would want them to choose the preferential system, but it is not up to us. It is not my views that are important, or those of Government Members—it is the views of the people. That is all that we are asking: let us consult the people on a system, and let them have their say. Every Member here thinks that the system that elected them must be the best system in the world, but that is not important. We are prejudiced witnesses, and we should give the people the power to speak. That is all that our amendment does.