My Lords, I used to be a full supporter of first past the post, very much in the spirit of the remarks made by the noble Lord, Lord Grocott, and those of the noble Baroness, Lady Noakes, in relation to accountability. However, over recent years I have started to see a problem that I wanted to raise—I am not just doing this as counselling. Because of the whole of Clause 11, we have been invited, in a way, by the Government to discuss electoral systems, and that is one of the problems with the way it has emerged. I would not be discussing it if they had not brought it in, but now that everyone else is discussing it, I will join in.
I was minded to support Amendment 136 until I realised that it was an amendment that would overturn a referendum, which struck me as not a good idea and not likely to fit in with my general position on these things. It is perhaps ironic to those people in this Committee arguing for proportional representation that I was elected using that method in the European elections and came top of the list. I do not know if people think that was a fully democratic system, because a lot of people did not think that I should have been there at all, or elected in that way, when I stood only for very particular reasons, as we know.
These are the problems with first past the post in 2022 that I cannot get my head around. Through this Bill, we want to reassure voters that elections are watertight in terms of fairness and that they represent what they want as voters. In a number of debates, we have discussed our worries about different clauses that might be seen to be disenfranchising voters—sometimes I think these are overwrought worries, but they are worries none the less. It seems to me, however, that first past the post, in lots of ways, makes many people’s votes redundant and represents a frustration with what is happening politically.
I remember that before the 2016 referendum I was invited to a think tank gathering at which most of the people were supporters of remaining in the European Union. They assumed that I was as well, because that is what nice think-tankers did. They said that one problem they had was that the referendum would not be taken seriously if they did not get a big turnout, so what could they do to get a big turnout? The consensus in the room was that it must be emphasised that a vote in the 2016 referendum was a once-in-a-lifetime vote where, for once, every single person’s vote would count. They went out and argued that very successfully and the nation said, “My goodness, for once my vote really will count.” As a consequence, people took it seriously that they were being asked to make a big constitutional decision and that this was one election where every individual vote meant something. In the build-up to the referendum, it led to grass-roots discussion groups being set up around the country, family conferences
and people getting together with their research. People took the whole thing extremely seriously and there was an atmosphere of vibrancy and buzz, with people saying, “What should we do?” as they assessed the pros and cons. People rose to the challenge that their vote counted, an idea which I think really resonated.
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This was particularly true after the 2015 election. Something peculiar happened in that election which should concern us, and that is the story of what happened to the Greens and UKIP, two parties I did not and do not support but they were ill served in that election. One of them won 12.5% of the national vote, nearly 4 million votes, but got only one MP. The other got 1,157,630 votes, and got one MP. If PR had been used, they might have got over 30 MPs. That must mean that millions of people will have felt disfranchised and not represented, because those votes had practically no impact on the political make-up of Parliament. This is not the same as voting Labour and losing to the Conservatives, or voting Conservative and losing to Labour, or loser’s consent. I am talking about parties that cannot find a way of getting represented in a political system because they cannot break through the way that first past the post works. It therefore challenges my commitment to one person, one vote. I am worried about locking people out and neutering their views, telling them that their views do not matter and do not make any difference. I worry that the two-party system permanently ossifies political division into the two main parties. But over recent years we have seen new and real political divisions emerge; how do we allow voters to feel as if their collective democratic clout can represent those different divisions?
One argument that I often hear about PR—I have used it myself—is that it would lead to unstable coalitions and a never-ending process of principle-light horse trading. Having been involved, close-up, in parliamentary politics over the last year, principle-light horse trading is not confined to PR. It seems to me that both main parties are, in a way, made up of coalitions. If you look at the modern-day Conservative Party or the modern-day Labour Party, they are full of factions, and sometimes I do not understand how they get on as they seem to be arguing completely different things. We can all see it. It is a kind of a coalition politics that is not openly acknowledged, but it is there, and on that the noble Lord, Lord Wallace of Saltaire, made something of a point. I do not think they are full of extremists; it is just people with different politics all stuffed into the two main parties. That does not seem to represent what the voters might want.
Regardless of how it is done, it seems obvious to me that if Parliament and local politics are to be properly representative, and civil society is to become more engaged and energised, we need to find ways that allow for the creation of new parties that can break up a consensus and represent new ideas and concerns. I worry about the danger of a zombie Parliament and an electorate who feel unrepresented and who will turn to cynicism and disillusionment if they believe that their vote cannot count in the way that it should. Having an Elections Bill in which we keep talking about the voters and how to make them feel included will be a waste of time. There is a problem here.