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Single Transferable Vote
5.46 p.m.
Earl Russell rose to ask Her Majesty's Government whether they have considered the possibility that the introduction of the single transferable vote might increase the level of public participation in politics.
The noble Earl said: My Lords, I must declare an interest as president of the Electoral Reform Society. I shall speak as much in that capacity as I will as a member of my party. Although there are certain broad similarities between the views of my party and those of the society, it is on behalf of the society that I shall speak today.
There is a general sense of dismay at the lack of value being placed on the vote in many quarters. By contrast, I vividly remember going into my newsagents on the day of the first South African election. My newsagents were Natal Indians and I shall never forget the sense of pride that suffused the whole of their expressions on that day. That has been felt here. It does not seem to be felt nearly as widely now.
The point about the vote is that what is significant is not what happens when you have it but what happens when you do not. It is what my wife used to say about cancer. It does not make much difference if you do it but it makes an enormous amount of difference if you do not. If you do not have the vote, people can oppress you with as much freedom as they like. That does not prove that they necessarily will, but to give them the opportunity is not always wise. So there is a degree of safety in possessing the vote, of which people are not always aware.
At the same time as we are hearing more and more complaints of lack of interest in the vote, more and more people are complaining about the rise of interest
in single-issue politics. Voters have a right to be interested in single issues if they want to be. In a democracy, that right cannot and should not be taken away from them.I admit that those who deal in single issues must at the same time learn that single issues, uncontrolled and unplanned, get a little like driving on the dodgems: you tend to get a rather bumpy ride. The relationship between single issues is something to which people must learn to pay attention, but if single issues are where their interest begins, I do not see why it should not. After all, not every political interest takes the form of a ready-made, off-the-peg commitment to a party philosophy. That is especially true at a moment when the philosophies of all the parties are in the garage for their 100-year service. Political parties will never cease to need that.
It is important that the range of issues on which people feel capable of having an opinion, and on which they are interested in having one, is much wider and much less exclusively national than previously. The debate on GM crops, for example, is much more than a national issue and must be pursued, whichever side you are on, in something beyond the national forum. A single national political party, therefore, is not necessarily the best vehicle for pursuing the issue.
We are getting into a situation in which people no longer take their political parties by inheritance. Even when I started canvassing—not that long ago—people almost always voted in the same way as their families did. I even heard, "I must ask my husband", as recently as three years ago. That was quite a shock three years ago, but it reminded me of how common the attitude used to be.
Hereditary politics are disappearing. Their disappearance must lead to a decline in off-the-peg commitments to party philosophies as a whole, as the two things are logically interlocked. If the interest is individual, it will begin in interest in an individual issue. Issues such as Europe or those arising in some of the recent debates in this House on public morals and the law create alliances on both sides of the argument which create passion across the Chamber far beyond the boundaries of parties. I do not see how one can hope to run a live and vibrant political system that does not allow for those interests which are outside, above or beside parties.
Only one electoral system allows people to express their opinion on a single issue. There are many different forms of proportional representation, with different virtues and different uses. The particular distinctive use of the single transferable vote is that it allows you to vote across party boundaries for the supporters or opponents of a particular cause.
In our recent debates on questions such as the age of consent or gay adoption, for example, one could think of plenty of people who would have wanted to vote perhaps for three people from three different quarters of the Chamber, and who would have wished to do so in all consistency. In a national election, I do not see
why that should not be a democratic right. If it is not a democratic right, it will be much harder to get people interested in participation than it would be otherwise.If we have the individual conscience working on individual issues, I do not see why that should not allow votes for individual candidates in preference to other candidates from the same party. After all, the present system has been described as a closed list of one. There are problems in that description, but I can see perfectly well what it is getting at. If the object of democracy is to discover the opinions of the voters—and there are strong opinions among the voters that go across party boundaries—I do not see why that should not be heard. I am not suggesting that it should be mandatory, and I fully accept the whole of Burke's argument that an MP is a representative and not a delegate. However, I think that before an MP represents, he, or she, should have had the chance to listen to what he should be listening to. I see no way that this can be done except through the single transferable vote.
If it can engage more people in the political process, it can do only good. I think that this will be particularly true among the young, because they are the extreme example of the departure from hereditary politics. The proportion of my own pupils who voted for the same party as their parents was remarkably low. In fact, they were making choices as they went along, often for reasons of which their parents knew nothing and cared less.
Indeed, if we try the parties by the standards of their ancestors, a great many of them fail to measure up. If we want a free-thinking, free-voting, lively and independent democracy, there is a strong argument for saying that the single transferable vote is likely to be the best way of getting it. That way, since the concern about the small number of people voting is deep and genuine, we just might kill two birds with one stone. It is a rare achievement, but it is nice when you can do it.
5.57 p.m.
Lord Norton of Louth: My Lords, I congratulate the noble Earl, Lord Russell, on raising this Question. There have been reports of private discussions between the Prime Minister and the leader of the Liberal Democrats on electoral reform. I therefore welcome the opportunity to put on the public record why changing our electoral system would be detrimental to the health of the British polity, and why the proposal put forward by the noble Earl will not address the root of the problem of declining public participation in politics. Rather, utilising the single transferable vote for parliamentary elections has the potential to make the problem worse. As such, it would constitute part of the problem and not part of the solution.
I shall address first the basic problem inherent in adopting a system of proportional representation for parliamentary elections. One of the fundamental attributes of our present political system is that it delivers accountability. The late, distinguished philosopher, Sir Karl Popper, argued that the most important feature of a political system was not how it
enabled a government to be chosen, but rather how it ensured that a government could be removed peacefully from office. The electoral system of the United Kingdom, he argued, facilitated the removal of the government from office. Election day constituted judgment day. That is something that we should seek to preserve.Under our existing system, one body, the party in government, is responsible for public policy. It is returned to office on the basis of a particular programme. If it fails to deliver, electors know that they can sweep it from office at the next election. Awareness of electoral mortality encourages the government to be responsive to public opinion between elections in a way that is often not encouraged in other systems, where politicians know they can engage in post-election bargaining in order to stay in office. Accountability is thus fundamental to our political system. That, I think, is worth protecting. I believe that electors take the same view. Surveys reveal that, when asked, electors tend to favour electoral reform. However, when asked about the consequences of electoral systems, they tend to favour the consequences that result from our existing first-past-the-post electoral system. I should also record that one should be wary of citing polls that show people favour electoral reform. Some years ago, in a poll where respondents were probed more deeply, it emerged that most did not feel strongly about electoral reform and twice as many had never heard of proportional representation as those that claimed to know quite a lot about it.
Accountability is but one reason why we should retain our existing electoral system. There are several others. The system that we have provides a direct and exclusive link between citizens and Members of Parliament. It tempers party control through giving MPs a local base. The constituency can, on occasion, provide a protective shield against the demands of the Whips. It also provides some degree of proportionality of power.
Supporters of proportional representation define proportionality solely in terms of the relationship of votes to seats. However, if 10 per cent of the votes deliver 10 per cent of the seats, they do not necessarily deliver 10 per cent of the negotiating power in the House of Commons. The result can be disproportionate negotiating power, far in excess of anything justified by the number of votes gained. If proportionality is defined instead in terms of the ratio of votes gained to the time spent in government, the UK system has proved more proportional than many other Western systems. Thus, there is a powerful prima facie case for retaining our existing electoral system.
Are the attributes that I have outlined outweighed by the benefits ascribed to the PR system of the single transferable vote? The answer is an unequivocal "no". One argument advanced for STV is that it retains the link between Members and constituencies. Members are elected in multi-member constituencies. However, that has generated a particular problem. STV in Ireland has contributed to the phenomenon of localism and
Members of the Dail devoting disproportionate time to their constituencies and failing to engage in the collective task of scrutinising the executive.Eunan O'Halpin, in his chapter on Ireland in Parliaments and Governments in Western Europe, which I edited in 1998, records the claim that Members of the Dail play a subsidiary role in policy-making and scrutinising the executive and that,
- "most dissipate their energies in electorally rewarding but nationally futile brokerage (interceding with central and local bureaucracy on behalf of individual constituents or groups of constituents)".
But would not the introduction of a system of STV increase turnout in general elections? That is what the noble Earl is asking the Government to consider. Again, perhaps we may look at the experience of STV in Ireland. What has happened to turnout in general elections there? Turnout has fallen substantially over the past eight or nine general elections, from roughly three-quarters of the electorate voting to two-thirds.
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