HL Deb 30 April 1907 vol 173 cc631-57

[SECOND READING.]

Order of the Day for the Second Reading read.

* LORD COURTNEY OF PENWITH

My Lords, I have, in the first place, to express my regret that this Bill should have appeared several times on your Lordships' Notice Paper and have been put off from one day to another. It will be needless to explain the causes of these several delays. I only hope that none of your Lordships have suffered any inconvenience in consequence. The Bill itself is in its scheme a very narrow, I might almost say a small, Bill, although I believe it is fraught with considerable consequences.

The plan of the Bill is to enable the councils of municipalities in England and Wales and of boroughs in London to be elected, if so desired by the different municipalities and boroughs, according to the principle of proportional representation, so that the governing body of the municipality or borough should contain within itself representatives of the different elements in the life of the district in proportion to their respective strength. In that way the council would be truly representative of the citizens, not, representative of the majority only, not caricaturing the strength of the majority, but representing, according to the proportion of their strength, the different elements which make up the civic life of the community.

The Bill is a permissive Bill. According to processes which are well known and which are authorised by many previous Acts of Parliament, it enables a municipality or borough to make these changes if certain formalities are followed. Those formalities are, of course, matters of detail, and, if necessary, can be criticised in Committee. The only thing to be aimed at is that the change shall not be made without due consideration and without a decisive opinion in its favour, and these guarantees are, I think, secured by the machinery of the Bill. If it is thought that the machinery wants strengthening, any proposal to increase its strength can be considered.

I do not think it is necessary that I should defend the permissive character of this legislation, though I have heard it remarked, in quarters where I should have least expected such an observation, that the scheme of the Bill, if adopted at all, ought to be made universal. Our legislation in relation to civic administration, and all that appertains to that development of social reform which has been so marked a characteristic of our municipal life during the last generation, has almost always proceeded upon tentative lines. Some community has sought for powers for itself and obtained them, other municipalities have followed, and then an Act has been passed enabling all municipalities who desired to do so to follow on the same lines. In this way one branch after another of social reform has been pursued. Almost all the great bodies of legislation with reference to the policing and sanitation of our great boroughs has been thus accomplished; and much of educational work has been carried through in this way.

Every year sees new experiments promoted by municipalities which are very keen in the pursuit of their civic life. Sanction is obtained in one place, and the experiments got copied in other places, until at last Parliament, seeing their value, makes them universal. The older Members of your Lordships' House will remember that the system of county police became adopted in the way I have described, county police forces being at first permissive forces. Therefore, I do not think it is at all necessary to press the point that in this Bill we propose to enable a municipality which so desires it to adopt, instead of the present method of electing its council, the method contained in the Bill which aims at securing on the governing body of the town or city proportional representation of all the elements of life within that community.

I think I must say a word before proceeding further to explain that in submitting for your Lordships' approval this Bill dealing with local representation and the constitution of local governing bodies I do not in the least wish to put aside that greater idea, of which it may be known to some of your Lordships I have been for some time an advocate, of extending the same principle to our Parliamentary representation. It is not necessary to discuss that subject now, and I do not propose to diverge into it; but I may be permitted, perhaps, to say that twenty years' close observation of the course of public life in this country has more and more convinced me that if we wish to have in the future a Legislature which will represent the strength and modera- tion, as well as the movement of the community, in which there will lie men of moral courage and independent character, men who cannot be brought to swear to the shibboleths of one or the other Party, but still remain valuable members of the nation—if we wish to have a Legislature in the future securing us these benefits, we shall have seriously to consider the adoption of some plan of proportional representation.

But I do not wish to embarrass the present subject by entering on that consideration. I propose now to submit to your Lordships only the application of this principle to the election of municipal councils, and in doing this I am following an example furnished in a remarkable illustration elsewhere. I am also acting upon grounds of reason which I think would recommend themselves to your Lordships. I have, as I have said, been persuaded by a close study of our own political history of the necessity of that larger change of which I have spoken The same conviction has been supported by watchful attention to the development of Parliamentary government in some of the continental states. In Belgium for some years past a complete system of proportional representation has been established in the election of the Chambers of its Legislature. The system has worked with extraordinary success in conducting the political life of Belgium through the many difficulties which beset a country divided as that country is between men of different religions, different races, different nationalities, men of the most advanced opinions socially, and men who are wedded even now to some of the traditions of feudal aristocracy. But in Belgium this great change was adopted four years after a similar change had taken place in the election of its communal councils, and I am therefore following the example of Belgium in submitting to you as a field in which the experiment may be tried a proposal to adopt proportional representation in the case of municipalities.

The example of Belgium, I may remark in passing, has had a most extraordinary influence apparently upon opinion in the neighbouring countries of Europe. In France there is at this moment under discussion before Committees of the Chamber of Deputies, two Bills, one for the adoption of proportional representation in the election of the Chamber itself and another for the adoption of proportional representation in the election of the councils of the communes of France. In Holland a Royal Commission, after studying the example of the neighbouring country, has recommended the adoption of proportional representation in the reconstitution of the Parliament of that country; and in Sweden at this moment there is under discussion a Bill, submitted by the Government of that country, for the reform and reconstitution both of the First and Second Chambers in accordance with the principle of proportional representation. So that out of the germ of municipal reform which was adopted in Belgium some ten years ago, there has been developed the larger plan in Belgium, and there is the prospect of its adoption in other countries in Europe.

Now, my Lords, what is it that I wish your Lordships to sanction, so far as sanction is involved in reading this Bill a second time and referring it, as I hope your Lordships will, to a Select Committee? Let me endeavour to direct your attention, first, to what I conceive to be the drawbacks of our present system of electing municipal councils, and the still greater drawbacks which attach to the present system of electing the borough councils in London, and, then to the scheme by which I hope and believe these evils can be removed without any danger of other evils taking their place. Your Lordships will be well aware that in the constitution of the town councils of our provincial municipalities the great majority of the boroughs are divided into wards. Each ward has three, or, it may be, six members on the town council, and one-third of those members is elected every year. If there are three members for the ward, one is elected every year, and if there are six members two are subject to annual election. That scheme was adopted when municipal corporations were formed some seventy years ago, with the idea of securing continuity of life within the councils of the several boroughs, of preventing them passing through those shocks of violent change which would be involved in a complete alteration of the personnel at any election, and also of preventing, if possible, the introduction of political parties and political combinations into the reformed municipal life. The first object has been secured, but the second object has certainly not been secured. Your Lordships are well aware that, in spite of the aims and desires of the reformers who established our municipal corporations in 1835, political motives very largely enter into the election of councillors and are sometimes predominant reasons for choosing one set of members instead of another.

A remarkable instance of the extreme length to which political action can be carried in directing the elections of municipalities was commented upon about thirty years ago, when one of our largest boroughs, containing from fifty to sixty members on its town council, returned a council consisting entirely of Liberals and Radicals. There was not a single Conservative amongst the whole body. I thought at the time, though this was made an occasion of glory by those who had succeeded in securing that result, that it was a matter rather to be regarded with shame, because it meant the ostracism from the civic life of that community of a large number of persons who by inheritance, by education, by family ties, by personal residence, were well qualified to take as they were desirous of taking their part in the government of their city.

That was, I admit, an instance of Party spirit carried to the extreme. But your Lordships are well aware that in too many of our boroughs the system of electing one-third of the members each year has not secured those borough councils from the intrusion of Party politics. Your Lordships know that every autumn, when these elections recur, there appears in the newspapers the next morning a summary of what has happened from the one end of the Kingdom to the other, and the Unionists are said to have gained so many seats in one place and the Radicals so many seats in another, and the majorities are calculated and the political position of the councils stated with the utmost exactness. As I said before, we have not saved our civic governing bodies from the intrusion of political elements which are foreign to their primary purpose, and which, if permitted to intrude as they have intruded with the strength which they have attained, are derogatory to the good action of such governing bodies. The machinery has secured a certain continuity, but on the other hand, it is purchased at a certain loss of advantage.

You are unable by the machinery of election to obtain at any time a decisive view of what may be the opinion of the community on any particular question which is then under discussion. It often happens that there is a considerable question, such as the taking over of waterworks, or of gasworks, or the entering upon some field of municipal activity, or the laying out of a public park, and such like matters, on which it is desirable to obtain the opinion of the whole community; but that opinion cannot be obtained by the machinery which is used in the election of municipal councils. Again, there is this drawback attached to the plan, that each borough has to undergo the annual worry of a municipal, and often a political, election. Parties are kept up in a state of unnatural activity and alertness, and every year there is a strict fight on political issues in the election of one-third of the members who have to take the place of the outgoing councillors.

These are admitted drawbacks in our present system, and it has been more than a question whether the continuity which we have secured is not dearly purchased at the price of these drawbacks, especially when we consider the extent to which political action has entered into the election of municipal councils. Accordingly, when county councils came to be established in 1888—and they were established, as your Lordships will remember, by reference to the Municipal Corporations Act and largely upon the scheme of municipal corporations—it was decided, after considerable discussion, that instead of annual elections by one-third the county councils should be elected every three years, and that counties, at all events, should be spared the worry and trouble of these annual elections. The present Bill does not deal at all with county councils, and I only refer to that fact as leading up to another.

As your Lordships know, in the original scheme of Lord (then Mr.) Ritchie's Bill, London was not provided with a county council at all. That council was introduced almost without discussion. The details of the scheme of London government were arranged in the Lobby, and the scheme was placed in the Bill without discussion, and by a most unfortunate circumstance there was applied to the government of London machinery which may be appropriate enough in the government of a county of mixed rural and civic elements, but which is quite inappropriate to the government of a county like London.

This leads up to the other question to which I was about to call your Lordships' attention. Following on that Bill there came the question of the unification of London, and in 1894 a Royal Commission was appointed to consider that question. I had the honour of being the Chairman of that Commission, and, with reference to the proposed calling into existence of supplementary London boroughs, we then considered the methods of election of councils in municipalities and in counties in order to determine what we should recommend should be the method employed in electing the councils of the new London boroughs about to be created. The Members of that Commission did not arrive at one conclusion on that point, and we rather prudently decided to draw the attention of the readers of our Report to the different methods which had been proposed, to point out the virtues and drawbacks of the scheme of municipal elections, and to point out what had recently been done in regard to county councils. Then we said we thought further experience would be necessary, probably in pursuance of what had been done in reference to county council elections, before any final decision could be come to as to the best method of electing the councils of the London boroughs.

In 1899 Her Majesty's then Government brought in a Bill transforming the vestries so as to create the new London boroughs, and, according to the scheme of that Bill, the members of those borough councils are elected in wards, but are not elected one-third every year, but en bloc every three years; and the consequence is that you have a power every third year of completely changing the members of the borough councils in London. The elections which have since taken place have shown that that power not only exists but has been exercised. There was in the last borough council elections in London the most remarkable illustration of the evil which was sought to be avoided in the Act of 1835—namely, the absolute want of continuity between successive councils in the dismissal en bloc of the members of one council and the installation of a new set of members. In the elections which took place last November three boroughs did not secure a single Progressive member—the boroughs of Fulham, Lewisham, and Wandsworth. On the other hand, the borough council of Bethnal Green has not a single Moderate member.

These are results which, I think, are in themselves greatly to be regretted in the interests of the boroughs concerned. In nine other boroughs the Progressives did not secure as many as six members; in one borough they secured one member only, in another two, in two or three boroughs three members, and so on. Chelsea is one of the boroughs where the Progressives secured three members, and perhaps I may be permitted to refer to Chelsea, as it is the borough in which I have the privilege to live, and with which, of course, I am more intimately acquainted. There three Progressive members were secured, but only by accident. The Moderate organisers did not rightly measure their strength, and did not put up candidates sufficient for all the vacancies in two of the wards. The consequence was that, though the result showed they had voting power enough entirely to exclude the three Progressive members who were returned, those members managed to get in because their seats were unopposed.

I do not think it requires much argument to show that the system is a bad system which enables a borough council to be completely overturned, which deprives it altogether of representatives derived from one or other political party, which produces a discontinuity of its life, which causes it to lose very valuable and tried members and makes the administration of civic affairs largely a matter, not for the control of the representatives of the inhabitants of the town or city, but of the permanent officials. I may repeat admissions which I have heard from one or two members of the victorious party. They have often regretted the consequences by which they have lost men who they knew worked well in the council in previous years, and they gladly would have kept them in had not the force of political passion been too strong. Their followers insisted on running candidates for every possible place, and the result was the exclusion from the council of tried men whose capacity and business powers, whose knowledge of affairs, and whose prudence, were recognised by many of their opponents.

What is the result of this system? I may refer to what I heard quite recently in connection with another matter, where there had been almost as great an upturn of the composition of the civic governing body. A gentleman who had survived a. defeated minority was asked how he got on in his present position, and he said— Oh, I get on pretty well. I am largely alone, but the other fellows who have come in do not know anything about the business, and the expert officials control them. I sit silent, and am well content. The permanent officials are the people who get the control of the municipal bodies, if those bodies are organised in this fashion. I have tried to make out a case that under the ordinary municipal corporation's election you do not keep out of the contest the virus of political action, you fail to secure a means of consulting the community at large, and you expose the community to the worry of annual elections On the other hand, by triennial elections, you avoid the worry of annual elections, it is true, and you are able to consult the community at largo, but you produce such startling changes and such loss of continuity, that the consequences are perhaps worse than those which follow from the older system.

Is there no way of avoiding both these evils, and of securing representative bodies which shall be elected, not annually, but triennially, under a system which shall at the time of the election give a clear and unmistakable evidence of the opinions of the community and yet shall secure in the governing bodies then elected the presence of representatives of all parties, so that, while the majority of the community get the majority in the council chamber, all the different elements of life in the community get their due representation also? That is what I propose under the machinery of the Bill now before your Lordships. I omitted to observe that one reason for submitting a Bill dealing with municipal elections instead of Parliamentary elections is this, that in municipal elections we have got the constituencies necessary for the application of the system ready at hand. In Parliamentary elections we have not, and we should have to create them, or, at all events, to revive them.

In order to obtain proportional representation you must have a constituency returning at least three Members; it may be more, but there must be at least three. In the application, therefore, of the idea to our Parliamentary life it would be necessary to create multiple constituencies, and we could do so very easily by returning to those units from which we departed in 1884. In the municipalities this is not necessary. You now have, in boroughs, wards returning three or six members, one or two of whom respectively retire each year. If the election were made triennial you would then have three members, or six, as the case might be, elected every third year and no alteration would be required.

Now, is the application of this system difficult? Contemplate a ward returning three or six members. It would be understood beforehand by everybody that no party could secure the whole representation, and no party would therefore put out a list of candidates for every seat. For the three or six seats there would be a list of candidates probably not bigger than the present list. The list would be submitted to the voter, and the business of the voter, when he got into the polling booth, would be to take the paper with the list of candidates upon it, as at present, but instead of marking his cross opposite the names of those for whom he wished to vote, he would place the figure "1" opposite the name of the man most to his choice. He need do nothing further. I ask your Lordships, Is that a process too intricate to place before the ordinary elector? The elector could go on placing the figures "2" and "3" opposite the men next of his choice, but he need only mark the figure 1.

In this connection may I diverge for a moment to call your Lordships' attention to this remarkable fact, that in that nation which has most recently, for good or ill, been admitted into the family of civilised nations—thatnation whose power, strength, tenacity, and thoroughness have astonished, and sometimes paralysed, the observer—Japan—they have adopted proportional representation in the election of their representative Chamber, and they have restricted the voters to the initial step of marking with the figure 1 one man, and one man only? They have not gone any further than that. Having taken some years to organise their Constitution, and having sent representatives to many parts of the world to discover what process would be best adapted to their requirements, they have adopted, in the comparatively simple form to which I have referred, the principle I am submitting to your Lordships.

It may be urged that this scheme is intricate, that it is complicated, that it is too abstract for adoption by work-a-day citizens of a work-a-day world. But I venture to think that what is done with advantage elsewhere ought not to be impossible of adoption here. The sole work imposed upon the voter is of such an elementary character, and of such simplicity that it is almost impossible to conceive of any one qualified to exercise the rights of citizenship who is nor, qualified to indicate the first man of his choice on a list of candidates. The most ordinary voter in the most backward constituency in the Empire would be capable of marking the paper in the way directed.

Then I come to the returning officer. The returning officer has, no doubt, a more difficult task to perform, and on paper his duties may seem intricate and even confused. But the work of returning officers has been undertaken and discharged under circumstances of the greatest difficulty, and yet with considerable ease. A noble friend of mine who sits opposite, who has joined with me in this cause for many years, will perhaps give your Lordships some of his experiences in connection with it; but I may say that we have held public meetings, attended by unprepared citizens called together by ordinary advertisement, and we have had elections conducted at those meetings. Persons have attended in hundreds and lists have; been presented for the first time to persons thus collected, and votes have been taken. We have had the papers removed from the hall in which the meeting was held and one of us has gone into an adjacent committee room with improvised clerks to assist, and, whilst the others have held the audience by answering questions and entering into a discussion of what has been going on, the whole process of counting the votes has been gone through, and the result has been announced in a quarter of an hour with complete satisfaction.

We have had considerable experience in testing the possibilities in this matter. We had a very considerable experiment in the first week of last December, with the assistance of a certain number of newspapers throughout the country. We received no less than 12,000 voting papers to elect five Members out of a certain number of candidates. In the course of about four hours the gentleman acting as returning officer, with the assistance of clerks who had scarcely had any drill for the purpose, went through the whole process of counting the votes in the presence of many onlookers and produced the result to the satisfaction of everybody present. There is no difficulty whatever about it. We have gone through it over and over again, and although on paper the actual work of there turning officer may seem to present difficulties, that is not so in reality. I do not know whether all your Lordships remember the explanation of the rules of arithmetic. The reasoning and explanation of the process of arithmetic it is difficult to put into words. So it is with this matter, but the system is, nevertheless, one of great simplicity.

On the system of voting proposed the number of votes necessary to secure the return of one Member is approximately 'the result of a division of all the votes cast by the number of vacancies and is called the "quota." In order to prevent waste of votes provision is made for the transfer of votes in excess of the quota given to any one candidate, and of votes given to candidates whose supporters are less in number than the quota. Such votes are transferred to the candidates whom the voters indicate on their ballot papers as next in order of their preference.

In the earlier part of this very long speech, for which I apologise to your Lordships, I ventured to suggest that the Bill might be read a second time and be then referred to a Select Committee. I am confident that if your Lordships will consent to this course the practicability of the scheme may be demonstrated to the satisfaction of every Member whom your Lordships may choose to appoint to the Committee. I ask for nothing more. Conscious as I am of the conditions under which Parliamentary life is conducted I am quite well aware that, even if your Lordships pass this Bill through all its stages, it will be impossible to get it looked at elsewhere. Every avenue of business there is already encumbered. Therefore I resign nothing in suggesting that I should be perfectly content if your Lordships would read the Bill a second time and refer it to a Select Committee. I am confident that there would result united opinion in favour of the practicability of the plan, and I hope there would result also united opinion in favour of the utility of its adoption in municipal elections.

I will not go further and speak of Parliamentary elections, although I do not conceal that to me, at all events, this is the introduction to the adoption of the idea on a much larger scale. I look to the revivification, I might say the regeneration, of our political life by the new birth which is promised in this form of voting, which will secure, in full strength and full independence, the representation of all the best elements of our national life. But that is something not necessary to be considered here. This proposal for municipal action is entirely independent of further and larger adoption. This is a permissive measure which would naturally be adopted if local opinion were persuaded of the utility of its adoption. It could be tried; if it proved imperfect it could be dropped; but if, as I am convinced it would, it resulted in the satisfaction of those who tried it, their example would probably be copied by others and the system would be extended until it became generally recognised as the best form of securing adequate representation. For the moment I ask your Lordships most earnestly to give this Bill a Second Reading and then let it be referred to a Select Committee, from the ordeal of whose scrutiny I am convinced it will triumphantly emerge.

Moved, "That the Bill be now read 2a.—(Lord Courtney of Penwith.)

* LORD AVEBURY

My Lords, as my noble friend who has just sat down did me the honour of referring to me, I rise to say a few words in support of this Bill. The Bill, no doubt, seems complicated. Perhaps my noble friend might have made his task easier if he had taken a simpler example. I confess I rather wish he had. But his object was to show that even a complex case would present no real difficulty.

Too much has surely been made of the presumed stupidity of electors. There are, however, much greater difficulties in life. After all, what has the elector to do? He has a list of candidates before him, and all he need do is to place the number "1" against the name of the man he wishes to vote for. This is even less than he has to do at present. He may, however, place a "2" against his second choice. It is really the simplest thing in the world. We had an illustrative election a short time ago, and over 12,000 people voted. There were only twenty spoilt papers, and on most of these the voting was correct, but some words were added, which were taken, perhaps too severely, as vitiating the votes. Moreover, of the ten persons who perhaps really made a mistake, most would know better another time. There is absolutely no reason to suppose that there would be more spoilt papers than under the present system.

The second argument is that the supporters of proportional representation are making no progress. This argument is as untenable as the first. Even in this country we are steadily gaining ground. Abroad, the progress has been more marked. So far as Parliaments are concerned, proportional representation is in operation in Denmark, Switzerland, Finland, Belgium, and elsewhere. In municipal and other elections it has made even more progress. In the Canton of Ticino, whether by accident or design, the constituencies were so arranged that, election after election, the minority of the voters secured a majority of the seats. The patience of that majority being at length exhausted, in 1890 they made a revolution, and blood was shed, but the Federal Government intervened, and after consultation proportional representation was introduced, greatly owing, I believe, to the influence of M. Naville. It worked so well, and gave so much satisfaction, that it was gradually adopted by several other cantons, beginning with Neufchatel and Geneva, Soleure, Zug, the Half Canton of Basle, and several municipalities.

In 1895 proportional representation was adopted in Belgium for certain municipal elections. The change gave general satisfaction, and M. Braun, the Burgomaster of Ghent, speaking in May, 1899, described its results in the following terms— During the four years that proportional representation has been applied to the communal elections of Ghent, every one has been able to appreciate the happy effects of the reform. Everybody recognises that, far from being endangered, the material prosperity of the city has increased, and that the ameliorating and pacifying effects of the altered electoral method have even exceeded the expectations and hopes of its advocates. The present representative of Belgium in this country, his Excellency the Ambassador, has authorised mo to say that as regards Parliamentary elections also everybody in Belgium is satisfied with the way the system has worked. In Germany, in 1901, permission was given to elect the members of the associated committees of employers and workmen in accordance with the principles of proportional representation. Sixteen towns, including Frankfort-on-Maine, Munich, Carlsruhe, Fribourg, and Mannheim, have availed themselves of the privilege, and the results have been most satisfactory. In February, 1906, the Labour Party of Victoria conducted an election on these lines for the purpose of enabling its 10,000 members to take part in the choice of the Party's candidates for the Federal Senate. The chief Labour organisation of Canada, the Trades and Labour Congress, has, since 1903, made use of the same proportional method in its annual elections, and its official platform contains the following plank— 14. Proportional representation, with grouped constituencies, and abolition of municipal wards. The Toronto District Labour Council has also employed the single transferable vote in all its elections for about ten years, and this system of voting is finding favour with other Labour organisations, both in Canada and the United States.

The arguments for a change are by no means merely academical. They are serious and practical. Look at the last London County Council elections. In the last London County Council the Progressives had more seats than they were entitled to according to the number of their supporters. This enabled them to carry various proposals which would have fallen through if London had been fairly represented. Now, it is just the other way. A swing of the pendulum, which, measured in votes, would transform a majority of twelve into a minority of seventeen, has had the effect of changing a majority of forty-nine into a minority of forty-one, and it is the more violent displacement which forms the basis of comment in the Press and of action in the Council. I am, of course, myself glad of the change, but it has drawbacks which the proposals of this Bill would obviate.

Such great changes are themselves an evil. Moreover, many Progressives are useful and valuable members of a council. The Bill would ensure the election of most of the best and most useful men on both sides. Violent fluctuations are in themselves a great evil. This Bill would secure greater continuity; it would raise the level of municipal institutions and by securing the seats of the best men on both sides it would render it more easy to obtain and to keep the best possible representatives.

It is sometimes said that proportional representation gives more than they ought to have to minorities. That is entirely a mistake, and I am sure it is not the object we have in view. We do not wish to give the minority more power than they ought to have, but it is perfectly obvious that, under the present system, the minority are sometimes squeezed out altogether, and that at other times they have a great deal more power than they are entitled to. In these circumstances, believing that this system would be a very great improvement on the existing one, and that it is perfectly practicable, I venture to hope that your Lordships will adopt the very modest suggestion of my noble friend and give the Bill a Second Reading.

* LORD BALFOUR OF BURLEIGH

My Lords, I hope that a few words from me will be allowed by the House upon this important subject. I am quite sure that there will be only one opinion throughout the House as to the extremely clear, interesting, and able speech in which the noble Lord who introduced this subject brought it before the House. I think the request he makes is an extremely moderate and reasonable one, and I sincerely hope your Lordships will agree to pass the Second Reading of the Bill, and, if necessary, to have it examined through the process of a Select Committee.

What is the ideal that we all, I think without distinction of Party, profess to set before ourselves in this matter f Our ideal of a governing body in a democratic State is that the will of the people should be made as clear as possible, so that all sections of the community may be satisfied that, whatever their opinions may be, if they are held by any considerable party, those opinions would be reflected in the governing body. After the speech of the noble Lord it is almost superfluous further to attempt to prove that, under our existing system, with all its considerable advantages, that result is not invariably attained. We have been conscious for many years that the present system does not always secure it, because in various kinds of elections various kinds of devices have been tried for the purpose of endeavouring to secure that ideal result.

Many of your Lordships recollect the provision of the minority vote in the three-cornered constituencies. That was an effort to give a representation to the minority which would not have been secured if those large constitutions elected their three Members upon a uniform poll. Then in our school board elections we have had the cumulative vote, a device which was popular when it was introduced, but the practical working of which did not secure all the advantages which were hoped from it. I do not think that the cumulative vote as a device for securing a more exact reflection of the opinion of the constituent body has now many friends.

More recently than that, in regard to county council and borough council elections in London and elsewhere, recourse has been had to the device of single member constituencies, in the hope and expectation that what was a minority in one constituency would be a majority in another, and that, upon the whole, by a sort of rough and ready process a fair result would be attained. But certainly there have been some remarkable instances in which we have failed by that device to secure the object we all profess to have in view. I leave the illustrations which the noble Lord gave of municipal elections where he left them. I do not profess to go into the question of applying the Bill to Parliamentary elections; it is not desirable on this occasion; but one may be allowed to draw from the experience of Parliamentary elections illustrations to show how uncertain the operation of our present system is.

It was commonly made a matter of complaint in the last Parliament, and I am far from saying unreasonable complaint, by the Party to which noble Lords opposite belong that both in the year 1895 and in the year 1900 results were attained in the Parliamentary elections which made the House of Commons elected in either of those years far from an exact reflex of the opinions of those who voted. It is possible to prove that very shortly. In the 1895 election there were in great Britain 481 contested seats—for this purpose I leave out of account the uncontested seats—and in those contested seats there was a difference between the two Parties in the State of only 25,000 votes, and the Conservatives were in that minority and yet they managed to secure 279 seats as against 202 obtained by the Liberal. However satisfactory that may have boon to some of us, no one can say that it was a result which was an exact reflex of the opinion of those who voted, and that is all the length to which for the moment I wish to carry my illustration. But take the last election, the result of which gives more satisfaction to noble Lords opposite There was a difference between the two great Parties of only 600,000 votes in the contested constituencies in England, and yet, whereas the Conservatives secured only 127 seats, their opponents got 338. No one, I venture to assert, will contend that in either of those cases the result was a scientific or satisfactory one.

Then, take the case of Wales. At the last election Wales had a poll of 52,000 Conservatives as against 123,000 Liberals and Radicals; there are thirty Members for Wales, and yet those 52,000 Conservatives are at this moment practically disfranchised, inasmuch as they have not one single Conservative Member in the House of Commons. Take, again, Scotland, with which I am more familiar. At the last election there were 238,000 Conservative votes polled and 374,000 Liberal and Radical votes. The Conservative Members for Scotland in the House of Commons number twelve, whereas the Liberal and Radical Members number sixty. A difference, therefore, which in mathematical accuracy ought to be three to two is five to one; or, to put it in another way, every Conservative Member from Scotland represents 20,000 voters and every Liberal 6,000. Whatever we may think of these anomalies, no one can say that the present is a scientifically accurate system, or one which, even as a matter of practical politics, is capable of reasonable defence. Indeed, the present method of voting emphasises the difference of opinion between one Party and another, and so perhaps creates more bitter feeling than would otherwise be the case.

If in our opinion every shade of opinion ought as far as possible to be represented, then I maintain it is perfectly clear that neither in our Parliamentary elections nor in municipal elections is that result attained. As a mere matter of practice we are not all of us bitter Party politicians. We are not all on one side Home Rulers and free traders, nor are we all on the other side Unionists and Tariff' Reformers. There may be some people—I have heard of them—who are inclined to maintain the policy of free trade and yet who mistrust the policy of Home Rule in its widest aspect. It looks at the present time as if those who are in that unfortunate position might have difficulty in the country in finding a way of utilising their votes so as to suit their political views.

These illustrations are so trite that I almost apologise to the House for mentioning them, but at the same time I think they do show that if we are to have a scientific representation in Parliament of the differences of opinion throughout the country the present system fails altogether to secure it. The noble Lord opposite has shown that under our present system the thing may go even as far as this, that the minority may get a majority of seats. On the other hand, it is practically certain that the majority will almost always be unduly magnified in its power. Minorities may be in some parts of the country, as in Wales, permanently disfranchised. The present system unduly limits the choice of the electors and magnifies the swing of the pendulum. All this constitutes a serious indictment of our present system, and, whether by this proposal or some other on the same lines, a remedy I think must be found. I understand there is to be no opposition to the Bill, and I earnestly hope your Lordships will agree to the request of the noble Lord and give it a Second Reading.

THE PRESIDENT OF THE BOARD OF AGRICULTURE AND FISHERIES (Earl CARRINGTON)

My Lords, I hope I may be permitted, not only for myself but also for my colleagues, to congratulate my noble friend behind me on the speech in which he has moved the Second Reading of this Bill. Lord Courtney told us that this was a small and a permissive measure, and the noble Lord who has just sat down considered it a reasonable and moderate one. I think most people will admit that, though it may be small and permissive, though it may be reasonable and moderate, yet it is likely to have very important results.

The noble Lord in charge of the Bill told us that the election of one-third of the Council every year prevented violent shocks and complete changes in the constitution of the bodies. I am not certain that there is not something to be said on the other side as well. Not very long ago there was general dissatisfaction in London as to the management of its government by the London County Council, and a great many speeches were made and leading articles written to prove that the credit of the London County Council was impaired, that the accounts were "cooked," and that there ought to be a commercial inquiry—whatever that may mean—into the conduct of those valuable public servants, the permanent officials of the Council. Last, but not least, there was to be a considerable reduction in the rates. About a year ago we were told that some people hoped there would be a reduction of at least 3s. or 4s. in the pound. The consequence of that was that there was a clean sweep of the Progressive Par by in the Metropolis at the last London County Council election. The personnel of the County Council was entirely changed, and, if the accusations which were brought against the late majority in the Council were true, or only one half true, and if the reduction of taxation promised could only be carried out to the extent of one-fourth, it would have justified the clean sweep that was made in London. But I would point out that this clean sweep would have been absolutely impossible without the present system of election in London.

My noble friend who his brought forward this measure stated that the process of election in the Bill was very simple. Well, I do not think it is. As I look through the appendix to the Bill in which is set out an example, extending to six pages, of an election conducted on the system of proportional representation, I cannot help feeling pity for the returning officer. I have fought five very severe contests in connection with the London County Council, and have seen something of the way in which the elections are carried out, and I should heartily sympathise with the position of the returning officer under such a system as that proposed by the noble Lord. I think the ordinary returning officer would find himself in very deep water if elections were carried out in this way. However, my noble friend has declared that he would be satisfied if the Bill were sent to a Select Committee to be thrashed out, and, let us hope, to be put in a somewhat simpler form than it is at the present moment. On that understanding, I am empowered to say, on behalf of the Local Government Board, that the Government offer no opposition to the Second Reading. I hope that will satisfy my noble friend, and before sitting down I desire once more to congratulate him on the great success of the speech he has delivered.

LORD ASHBOURNE

My Lords, this debate has been extremely interesting. I daresay a great many of your Lordships, until you came down to the House this afternoon, had never seriously considered the subject, or, at any rate, the proposals that have been put forward in such a clear and able way by my noble friend Lord Courtney. The debate has, I venture to think, been also very instructive. I cannot say that this is a subject that I have ever given very earnest attention to, although I have some general acquaintance with it; but, until the speech of the noble Earl who has just sat down, I did not understand that there was a particle of difficulty in fully comprehending the proposal.

I am in some uncertainty as to the aspect in which this Bill is regarded by the noble Earl. It appeared to me that he wished to make a personally sympathetic but a Party non-committal speech, and, of course, that is not a feat easy of performance. It requires rather an acrobatic training and intelligence, but I think the noble Earl got through his task leaving us in a state of mind, I will not say confused, but a little uncertain as to the opinion of the Department on whose behalf he spoke. Most of your Lordships came to the House this afternoon with a good deal of curiosity as to how this important and interesting subject would be presented Large intellects and powerful minds have been applied to the question of proportional representation. There is a general impression that the subject is not interesting, and that it is doubtful how far it can be made clearly to enter into the minds of the ordinary voter. This Bill is, of course, introduced as a tentative measure. It is only applied to municipal elections, and then only in the most voluntary and permissive form. One municipality may adopt it, and, after two or three years experience of the system, drop it; but, if the system is found capable of such application as has been referred to, the acceptance of the principle may lead to further results.

Although the Bill is a small one, it is, in another sense, a very large one, for the teaching of experience may commend the application of this principle to the country as a whole, do not think there has been any desire to treat the matter as a Party question. The present system is a rough and ready one. Under it, the majority prevails and the minority must look out for itself the best way it can. For myself, I agree that it is wise in all assemblies that differences of opinion should be represented honestly, fairly, and vigorously. I do not think there has been a single note of discord sounded as to the course that has been suggested as reasonable in dealing with an important proposal like the present made by a man so intellectually distinguished as Lord Courtney. I trust, therefore, that the Bill will be read a Second time and referred to a Select Committee, and that the Members of the Committee will consider the question fully and in all its bearings.

THE LORD PRIVY SEAL (The MARQUESS of RIPON)

My Lords, I am not one of those to whom my noble friend, who has just sat down, alluded at the commencement of his speech. He then said that he thought the discussion of this subject was likely to be new to many Members of this House. That is not so in my case. I have been a student of this question for a great number of years. I have watched the various experiments which have been made in this direction, and which were mentioned to us this evening. It is a remarkable thing that as far as those experiments have gone they have not succeeded, and that, I think, indicates that we should be cautious in what we do in regard to this matter.

Lord Courtney has given his attention to this matter, I think, during almost the whole of his public life, and has presented it to us to-night in a very able and interesting speech. But my noble friend is an advocate. I hope noble Lords who serve on the Select Committee which is about to be appointed will look at the proposal in all its bearings. In the first instance, no doubt, there is the general proposition: is it desirable to have a system of proportional representation or not? My noble friend behind me, though he puts the question forward at the present moment in a very tentative manner, did not conceal from us what was the ultimate object he had in view, a very natural and proper object for a man holding his opinions—namely, that the system should afterwards be extended to Parliamentary elections. I hope those who consider this Bill in the Select Committee will bear that in mind, because whatever decision they may come to is very likely to have considerable effect upon opinion in respect to Parliamentary as well as municipal elections.

My noble friend who introduced the Bill spoke of Party spirit as an evil; I have been too long in public life not to have a very lively understanding of the many evils of the Party system, but in this country, with its Parliamentary traditions, you cannot have a Parliamentary system without a Party system at its back, and one of the evils of the day here and in other countries is, I think, the tendency to break down the Party connection and to split Parliament into sections. That is an evil, because such a system does not give the Government of the country sufficient authority and power, I hope that when this question is considered in the Select Committee these points will be carefully borne in mind.

I do not propose to go into the details of the Bill. My noble friend has given a remarkable pledge that he would convince all the Members of the Select Committee that the Bill ought to become law. I will only beg the Members of that Committee who will come under the fascinations of my noble friend to look very carefully at the complicated system proposed and endeavour to understand it, remembering that it is to be carried out, not by themselves, but by the returning officers and the unhappy voters, of whom many will be ladies. Joking apart, I do think it is a very complicated system, and that is one of the reasons why His Majesty's Government cannot give it their support as it is proposed.

There is another question—the amount of power which you are proposing to give to returning officers. Returning officers are very honourable and admirable persons, but I do not wish them to have more power in regard to the allotment of votes than is necessary. The system proposed would open a door which I should be glad not to see opened. Under this system, as I understand it—I may be wrong—in the allotment of votes a great deal will depend on the perfect and absolute honesty of the returning officer. I hope the Committee will not overlook that point, which seems to me to be one of considerable importance. I think that one who has given so much attention to this question for so many years, and who has such an earnest desire to see it adopted, should have every consideration from this House I and every opportunity of placing his views before it. But while we assent to the Second Reading, not as implying assent to the principle of the Bill, but as implying only a desire that it should be fully and thoroughly considered by your Lordships, I do ask you to look at this question in all its aspects and on all its sides.

* LORD COURTNEY OF PEN WITH

My Lords, I desire to express my great satisfaction at the course the discussion had taken, and my gratitude for the proposal to send the Bill to a Select Committee. If that Committee approaches the subject in a perfectly impartial spirit, even in one of hesitation, I believe I shall persuade them of the practicability of the measure. I would remind the noble Marquess that in 1880 we were both crossing the Channel, my noble friend to take up his great charge in India, I myself to spend a Whitsuntide holiday in Paris. My noble friend on that occasion said— I suppose I shall return in five years to find you fighting the battle of proportional representation. Twenty-seven years have passed and I am still fighting that battle. I regret there should be any degree of difference between my noble friend and myself. I feel persuaded that, in spite of his hesitation, if my noble friend could find it consistent with his duty and the appropriation of his public time to sit upon this Select Committee he would be convinced.

I could make some observations in reply to some of the things which have been said in the course of this discussion, but I will not trespass further, except perhaps to say this—that I do not admit the complete failure of all the experiments that have been tried. The limited vote was not a failure. It did extremely well so far as it went, and it was abandoned in pursuit of something which was thought to be better—single Member constituencies, which have certainly not proved better. And in respect to the much-abused cumulative vote, I may remind your Lordships that the official representatives of the Board of Education who gave evidence before the Select Committee who sat on the subject, expressed the opinion that without the cumulative vote the Education Act of 1870 could not have been worked. That vote was abandoned subsequently in consequence of a complete change in our organisation of education, but I cannot admit that it was a failure. I again express my great satisfaction at the course the debate has taken, and I accept very gratefully the proposal to refer the Bill to a Select Committee.

On Question, Bill road 2a and referred to a Select Committee.