Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill

I believe that the amendment draws attention to something that is at the heart of the debate about AV: the weighting of particular votes. Under our current system, people vote positively. They go out and vote for a particular party. They have one vote, and if they vote more than once they are disqualified. They must make a choice. Under AV—under the system that may be proposed by the Government tonight—it is possible to vote one, two, three, four, five, six, seven times. What the system does not take into account is the strength of people's preferences. A first preference may be outweighed by a second, third, fourth, fifth, sixth or seventh preference. That moves us away from positive politics, and I do not think that the system will be made any better by a second, third, fourth, fifth and sixth choice. We are committed to a form of AV. As was pointed out by my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch (Mr Chope), in the London elections we have supplementary votes. People vote once or twice. In practice, most Members who are elected have well over 40% of the vote, and it would probably take only one count of the bottom candidate, or perhaps the two bottom candidates, before someone would have more than 50%. If we want a system under which people have majority support, I am not sure that we need ““one, two, three, four, five, six””. I think that one or two might produce a better, more efficient, more effective system. We must consider the weighting problem. Under AV, a candidate with 20,000 votes could lose. If two others gained 10,500 votes each, a candidate with twice as much support as the second candidate could come second overall. The weighting element is a weakness of AV, although it is not a weakness of proportional representation, because PR—particularly in its purest sense—involves equality of votes. Under our current system there is some wastage of votes, but people vote positively. Under the additional member system, in both Wales and Scotland, the list provides a balance against first past the post. The more choice people are given, the more likely it is that a second or third choice will outweigh a first choice. I do not think that that is fair or right. People will be allowed to vote many times because they make the wrong choices three or four times.