Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill

I am certainly grateful that we will have a lot of scrutiny in Scotland. I agree that there is scope for confusion even though, as many hon. Members said, we cannot underestimate the sophistication of the electorate. However, one in five people in Britain are functionally illiterate and find it difficult to fill in forms. If they face four or more ballot papers, and a multiplicity of different questions in different areas and zones, it will be confusing. If we want to increase rather than decrease participation—and for people to vote how they intended to vote, and not vote the wrong way—we should make it easy for them by having a coherent system, with the choices being sequential rather than coincident. On the basis of the testimony given to the Select Committee about the immense capacity for confusion and the horrendous administrative challenges, it is likely that several court cases will arise, especially where a small margin of votes decides the outcome. I once lost a seat by 75 votes, having received 20,000. If there are lots of ballot papers that appear to have been put into the wrong box and apparent incoherence in the way in which people voted, with spoilt ballot papers and postal votes, people will say, ““Hold on, we need to take this to court.”” Other people will say, ““We went to this ballot place, but they have changed the boundaries.”” So many changes are being made at the same time that we are asking for problems. These proposals are a backward step for democracy. I appreciate the arguments for equal numbers in constituencies, but what people really want is effective democracy that works. They need to understand what they have voted for and they need to get what they voted for—if most people agreed. They want lines of accountability, so that they can talk to their Assembly Member about health and their Member of Parliament about benefits, for example. They do not want to be told, ““Oh, we have changed the boundaries and they are no longer coterminous, so you can't do that.”” People do not want workers to knock on their door and say, ““We want you to vote in this Assembly election and, by the way, there's also a UK election, and these are the issues—and don't forget the AV vote.”” We have had the comprehensive spending review, and in Wales some cuts will be imposed directly on non-devolved matters, such as the DVLA in Swansea, but some cuts will go through the Welsh Assembly as part of its grant, and it will have to make tough choices. People may be confused about who is doing what and what responsibility different people have for those choices. That undermines the democratic tapestry that we have set out through devolution to bring democracy closer to people, so that local decisions are made more closely to local people. If everything is scrambled up into a confusion overlaid by the mass media that want to get simple points across about the UK situation, thus crowding out more localised concerns, our democracy will be the worse for it. If the administration of the vote is in a state of collapse, things will be even worse.