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Earl Russell: My Lords, Ireland is one conspicuous exception to the point that I was making about the greater range of issues that concern people. Over there, the whole of their politics is due for a 100-year service.
Lord Norton of Louth: My Lords, I shall come to the point made by the noble Earl about pressure groups, but I must point out that all the experience of STV in Europe is in terms of Ireland. My point is that it does not provide much of a basis on which we can consider going forward.
On that basis, the Government may find that there is not much to consider. But if that does not persuade the Government, perhaps we should look elsewhere. Let us not look at Ireland; let us look at elections to the European Parliament. In Britain, we have moved from the first-past-the-post system to a regional list system of proportional representation. What has happened? Has turnout increased? The answer is "no". Introducing a system of proportional representation has done nothing to increase public participation in politics.
There has been a decline in mainstream political activity over the years. There has been a decline over time in the number of people joining political parties. There has been something of a decline—although not the consistent decline that some critics claim—in turnout at general elections. Voting by young people, a body that traditionally has a low turnout, is even lower now than it was 30 years ago. However, I stress that the decline has been in what I have called mainstream
political activity; that is, people engaging through the political parties and supporting those parties in the polling booths.There has not necessarily been a decline in political activity as such. Rather, people have found outlets for political activity other than through the political parties. As the noble Earl mentioned, they have joined interest groups, including single-issue groups, which enable them to focus on issues of particular concern to them. They have also proved willing to engage in demonstrations and to sign petitions. People will take to the streets if they disagree strongly with a policy, but they appear reluctant to engage in the process by which policy is made.
Why, then, the decline in mainstream political participation? It has nothing to do with the electoral process. I wish to suggest two reasons, one in respect of political parties and the other in respect of power.
Political parties have proved less attractive to people than before, at times because they do not appear to offer electors much of a choice, but more enduringly, I believe, because there are now far more competing attractions than there were in the 1950s and 1960s. There has been a significant growth in the number of interest groups and concerns about public policy are being absorbed by such groups. There has been a burgeoning of attractions outside the realm of the political, facilitated by the expansion of the mass media and now by the Internet. It is difficult for political parties to compete. Catch-all political parties, geared to discussing and generating public policy, can offer little to compete with the quick, easy and transient attraction of "Pop Idol".
Fragmentation of political power is also a problem. Where now is political power to be found? There are competing centres of power. There is what I have termed the paradox of accountability; that is, the more elected bodies you have, the less accountable each one becomes. There is confusion on the part of electors over who is responsible for what. There is a perception—in this case, perception is important—that a great deal of decision-making power has passed to the institutions of the European Union. Organised groups may know how to lobby Brussels effectively, but the ordinary citizen does not. As power flows to different bodies, especially upwards to the European Union, there is the danger that people will feel helpless in the face of this development and turn their backs on mainstream political activity. If power is seen to be flowing to other institutions, what is the point of voting?
What flows from this is that we need to address the causes of declining participation in mainstream political activity and to consider what might, if anything, serve to reverse the trend. The noble Earl, Lord Russell, has noted the problem, but has not come up with a viable solution. Rather, if we have a system of proportional representation—destroying, as it is likely to do, the core accountability at the heart of our political system—that will add to the problem, denying electors the opportunity to call government to account. That is not the road down which we should
be going. Other countries are experiencing similar problems. Adopting one of their electoral systems is not the answer.6.8 p.m.
Lord Greaves: My Lords, it is a privilege to take part in a debate initiated by my noble friend Lord Russell, and I congratulate him. It is also a privilege to follow the noble Lord, Lord Norton of Louth, who has made an extremely eloquent and interesting speech setting out what I would describe as the reactionary Conservative position, which of course he is entitled to do.
Lord Norton of Louth: My Lords, I rise on a point of clarification. To be reactionary is to support the status quo ante. I am being conservative.
Lord Greaves: My Lords, I am quite happy for the noble Lord to describe himself as he wishes. He is certainly a Conservative. While I am tempted to spend all of my time picking apart item by item what the noble Lord has just said, I shall try to resist doing so. However, I am bound to say that when he referred to accountability and the ability of the electorate to boot out the government in power, I am reminded of the general election held in 1951. The electors voted to keep the Labour government in power, but because of the quirks of the electoral system and despite the fact that Labour won more votes than the Conservatives, it was the Conservatives who secured a working majority. I do not consider that to be accountable.
It is also said that because the quirks of the electoral system have now shifted away from a natural bias towards the Conservatives—which existed for much of our lifetime—to a strong natural bias towards Labour, the present Government could receive as little as 37 or 38 per cent of the vote at the next general election and still retain power. So almost two-thirds of the electorate could vote against them but they would still be there. The noble Lord is entitled to believe that that adds up to accountability, but I do not believe that it does.
The noble Lord mentioned the situation in the Republic of Ireland where, at various times, the two largest parties have wanted to move towards a system of first-past-the-post. Fianna Fail is consistent in wanting to do so. Of course it is. If the Republic was to adopt a system of first-past-the-post, Fianna Fail believes it would get an overall majority on a minority of votes.
It is interesting that whenever the political parties in Ireland have tried to introduce the system through a referendum, the people of Ireland have said, "No. We like STV and we are going to keep it. The politicians had better operate under STV because that is the way in which we, the people, can maintain the greatest amount of influence and control over our politicians". As I will make clear later, that is what STV achieves.
Of course this not only concerns Westminster elections. We have local elections and European elections; we now have elections in Scotland and Wales to the Parliament and the Assembly; and there may soon
be elections to the feeble regional authorities that the Government want to establish in certain parts of the country. It is interesting that there is a steady movement towards forms of proportional representation for these different elections. It is quite clear that the Scottish Parliament, the Scottish Executive, will introduce proportional representation—probably STV—for local elections in Scotland. There is a general view there that, if that happens, the Scottish parliamentary elections will not be long following.If that happens, it could be the beginning of what the noble Lord, Lord Norton, would perhaps see as a rather slippery slope but which others would see as the opening of the gates to an idea which has been around for a long time. Those of us who, for a long time, trod the streets on behalf of the Liberal Party—Liberal Democrats seem to have been doing so for the party's lifetime—believe that STV's time is coming and may well come within our lifetime.
It used to be called the "British" system of proportional representation. It is interesting that when we started to adopt proportional representation for various elections we moved instead to non-British systems of lists and top-up lists, where the candidates are listed in order by the political parties. This represents the old political parties trying to exercise control through a system which prevents the people from having the control that STV would give them.
No system is perfect—there are defects with STV as with any other system—but STV gives power to individual voters more than any other system. It not only allows them to cast their votes for individual candidates and, as my noble friend said, to choose between candidates from a particular party according to their views on issues they think important, it forces them to do so. It forces them to put the candidates in order. If they want to vote for the Labour Party, it forces them to put in order the candidates from the Labour Party. If they have strong views about which of those candidates is better than the others, it allows them to do that. Parties do not like that, because they like to keep control of the process and to determine exactly who gets elected when they get so many votes. However, it is an old-fashioned idea that parties should have that kind of control and authority.
The second thing that STV does, as my noble friend said, is to allow people to vote across parties if individual issues are what move them to vote. It is true that individual issue politics has become far more important in recent years. STV would allow them to vote for the candidates who have those views, regardless of which party they belong to. It also allows voters to transfer their preferences from their favoured party to other parties later on, in order to increase the amount of influence that they have over the final result.
In local politics, that gives hope to independents. People say that independents cannot succeed under STV, but that is absolute nonsense. Strong independents will do well under STV. For example, in a five-member STV seat, a strong independent would have to get only nearly 17 per cent of the vote to be guaranteed to be elected. In
practice, if they picked up lots of transfers across the board, they might well be elected with quite a few votes fewer than that. It would make it possible for people who are at the moment kept out by the party system to come in and add variety and interest.Again, political parties do not like that—and I do not suppose that my own political party likes it too much, either. However, that is something that STV does that is very important. It increases dramatically the chances that people's votes will actually count towards the final result. In a five-member seat, probably more than 80 per cent and perhaps much more than 80 per cent of people who vote will have achieved influence over the final list of those who are elected. Under first past the post, the number can be as low as 20 per cent in very safe seats. The question then is whether it is worth people bothering to go to vote or even to send their postal votes back, because it will not make any difference to the result. Under STV, the way in which individuals vote is highly likely to have an influence on who gets elected. Surely, that would encourage people to take part in the system.
STV is surely the system that provides the greatest accountability between the individual voter and those who are elected. That is the most important thing. All the arguments that the noble Lord, Lord Norton, puts forward about electing a national government, even if they are valid, do not apply to any of the other forums.
I should like to end by casting some doubt on whether turnout in elections is going down in a permanent and significant way. Certainly, at the moment, turnout seems to be low. The question is whether it is a short-term phenomenon or something that will affect the body politic for a long time. From a graph produced by the House of Commons Library, in one of its publications, it is clear that in general elections turnout peaked in 1950 and that between 1950 and 1966, there was a gentle decline—if one draws some obvious straight-line graphs at the top of the bar chart. Between 1950 and 1966, turnout declined fairly steadily and gently, and in 1970 it was 72 per cent. Between 1974 and 1992, it is difficult to argue that turnout went down at all. It fluctuated, but there were highs at each end and slightly lower troughs in the middle. The phenomenon of reduced turnout possibly started in 1997—although we could include that in the series. However, it does seem to have happened at the last general election, and it has occurred in other elections.
In local elections, turnout in recent times peaked in 1990. Again, I am taking this information from figures in a House of Commons Library research paper. For those of us who remember campaigning in the 1990 local elections, turnout peaked then for very obvious reasons. It was the time of the poll tax, and that was the election at which the people of Britain rose up and said, "We don't want the poll tax and we're going to vote against it". Regrettably, most of them voted Labour as a result, but not in all places. But it does not matter—the result at that election was caused by the political circumstances of the time, not by the electoral system or anything else.
Although local election turnouts have declined almost year by year since then—there had not been that kind of dramatic local political context in most places—there is some evidence that that decline has now ceased and might be reversing. We will not find out until two or three more years have passed. But I advise against a counsel of despair—people should not say that electoral turnout in this country is going down and down and that this will be the case for ever and a day. It will not. When people really feel angry, and they feel the need to feel angry, they will vote.
Finally, STV provides the opportunity for people to be angry about a much wider range of issues and have more influence on the result. It is therefore, in my judgment, likely to encourage people to turn out to vote.
6.21 p.m.
Lord Alexander of Weedon: My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Earl, Lord Russell, for introducing this debate, not least because it gives me an opportunity to pay tribute to the unfailing contribution that he makes to the work of this House. He combines an unrivalled knowledge of history with an acute sensitivity to contemporary events that enrich our work. It is typical of that sense of purpose that he has raised what is a priority for parliamentary reform.
The Government are planning yet further limited change to this House. They have decided to avoid their initial promise of providing a more democratic and representative House of Lords and their support in their last election manifesto for an elected element in this House. They are tinkering with a niggardly measure which—rightly, in my view—has secured cross-party rebellion. And yet, they are not showing any interest at all in change to the shape of the other place.
This is probably for a simple reason. It is probably because the House of Commons, unlike the House of Lords, is a largely subservient assembly. In the last Parliament, it was totally subservient to the Government. There were 1,000 Divisions, and the Government won exactly 1,000 of them. In this Parliament, there are more stirrings from the discontented and disaffected. But in the end, as over Iraq and foundation hospitals, the Government, after the dramas, get their way.
We have to think of some fundamental questions. How real is parliamentary accountability? How representative are Members of Parliament? That issue is beginning to strike some Members of this House when they consider the difference in attitude to fox hunting between the Members on the Government Benches in the other place and the public. How real is the old claim, going back to 1689, that Parliament is truly sovereign? Or is the reality that we increasingly have what Lord Hailsham famously described more than 25 years ago as an elective dictatorship?
In 1997, the Government had no doubt that the issue should be promptly debated and the people given a voice. They made a clear manifesto promise, as no doubt the Minister will confirm in his response, to set
up an independent commission to propose alternatives to the first-past-the-post voting system. They made an unequivocal promise that there would be a referendum on the outcome of the work of that commission. They then recognised, rightly, that there was a need to offer the voters a choice whether they wished to change and improve the voting system.The commission was established commendably promptly under the chairmanship of the late Lord Jenkins. I was fortunate enough to be asked to be a member. We were asked to report within a year, and we did. We did not seek to be revolutionary. We explored alternative systems, including that in the Republic of Ireland. We were wonderfully entertained on our visit to the Republic and the returning officers took the greatest pride in explaining that whether or not the voters understood the way in which STV worked, the returning officers did and all was well.
Our own suggestion for modest change was that as well as retaining the constituency system we should have an alternative vote within that system to give wider opportunity of choice to those in the single member constituencies, but with a top up, as we called it, of a modest 20 per cent proportional representation. We did not seek to go the full German route of proportional representation. We were concerned to adopt an evolutionary approach that might have some chance of acceptance. We considered that would mean greater fairness to the voters in the distribution of seats between parties and that everyone would feel that their vote would count for at least a little. The cogency of the report and the wonderfully readable style are a lasting tribute to the work of Lord Jenkins. But even—
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