Contribution
My Lords, it is always a pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Sikka, though I must say I think I have heard some of those arguments before.
This is a big Bill, but it misses the big point. Instead of strengthening democracy, it fiddles around the edges. I fought many elections in a career in local government. I often have to remind people that, to become the leader of the council, as I was for nearly 20 years, you have to win three elections very quickly: once in your ward, once among your political friends and the other among the whole council. You have to learn how to count. But the rules are pretty clear; in order to win, you just get more ballots than the next person. The candidate with the most votes win. You can explain that to anyone in a few seconds: plain and simple, done and dusted.
Yet, as I survey the state of democracy in our nation, I see so many complex and contradictory voting systems. There is first past the post, then the supplementary vote for PCCs and mayors in England. We have the single transferable vote in Northern Ireland, although that is also open to EU citizens. There is a hybrid proportional scheme with additional member top-ups of party chums in Scotland. I note that the noble Lord, Lord Foulkes, is not in his place, but he entertained us with his accidental election earlier in this debate. There is a closed-loop system in Wales, where only the chums can win. Thank goodness the voters rejected the alternative vote in May 2011 in that referendum, but somehow that method persists with the Scottish Crofting Commission elections—apparently.
They are not the only differences. Anyone can vote in Wales or Scotland, regardless of nationality, as long as they live there, but not in England. Then we get all-outs or thirds for councils, and single or double or multimember wards, and four or five-year terms in some councils but not others. In London—I echo the points made by the noble Baroness, Baroness Pinnock—it takes 3,108 electors on average across the whole of London to choose a councillor, but it takes 15,000 in parts of Essex. There are more councillors within the M25 than in the entirety of all the county councils of England. We heard from my noble friend Lord Mackinlay, who is not in his place, about overseas territories. With all this complication, are you still with me?
I remember the case a few years ago in Cambridgeshire. On the same day, there were elections for five different layers of local government, with three separate voting systems. No wonder people were confused. We are meant to be a United Kingdom, but in terms of the electoral system, there is more that divides us than brings us together.
Given a choice in 2011 in a referendum, voters expressed a clear preference for first past the post. The problem is that, when you depart from the simplicity and purity of the principle of the person with the most votes winning, you end up with funny business—and nothing is more harmful to faith in democracy, the legitimacy of politicians and trust in our institutions than funny business.
But this Bill does nothing to address that or the abuses. Recently, we had the unseemly rush to pass the supplementary vote regulations in the Manchester mayoral elections in June. There was the attempted cancellation of local government elections last year. Thank goodness that has been unwound for next May. Thanks to the Government’s screaming U-turn, handbrake turn, on LGR last week, we have all been spared the unseemly debate relating to the gerrymandering of Labour councillors in the formerly proposed Lincoln unitary, where there would be three councillors per ward in the city of Lincoln but only one in the rural hinterland around. That scheme would have betrayed and disgraced a banana republic. How the Labour Party considers itself fit to pass this piece of partisan legislation, I do not know.
There are other omissions in this Bill. Where are the guardrails referred to by the noble Baroness, Lady Pinnock, for equality in the value of votes? I am entirely with my noble friend Lord Jamieson that a bank card can just be picked up from the sideboard: there is no security there.
The Bill introduces new jeopardies in the classroom, bringing divisions between teachers and children and among the children themselves. Back in 2018—I am thinking of unincorporated institutions here—the Minister and I together put the Local Government Association on a proper footing. It was previously an unincorporated body. There are plenty of others, such as the Ipswich Suffolk Business Club, a monthly dining club that henceforth would be prohibited from engaging in politics. How many other organisations, clubs and charities would be caught in this crossfire? I do not stand for Reform, but retrospection is clearly wrong in principle.
The Bill puts tinkering before simplicity. It is a missed opportunity that fails to reinforce confidence in the voting system, and it fails to call out the funny business that disavows the principle that you win the election fair and square when you get one more vote than the next man. This Bill should correct it but does not.