THE POLITICAL AND ELECTORAL SYSTEM

HL Deb 11 February 1976 vol 368 cc114-82

4.21 p.m.

Debate resumed.

Lord SHINWELL

My Lords, it is a privilege peculiar to your Lordships' House that membership of a particular political Party does not prevent unfettered objectivity when addressing this Assembly. The term "objectivity" is capable of erroneous interpretation. So far as my observations this afternoon are concerned, this does not mean that objectivity is associated with compromise or flexibility. It represents, in my judgment, the capacity to see both sides of the question, or even three sides of it. It is in that mood that I propose to offer a few observations on the excellent speech we heard from the noble Lord, Lord Byers.

Of course, your Lordships will agree that the noble Lord always makes a good speech. But perhaps that observation could be subjected to a mild measure of qualification. None could complain about his enunciation, his delivery, his articulation. It is all impeccable. But the content of the noble Lord's speech, however excellent in delivery, contained some misunderstandings which were surprising to me because of the noble Lord's experience of Parliamentary institutions both in another place and in your Lordships' House. For example, he began by saying that we ought not to narrow the scope of this debate by concentrating upon proportional representation and then he proceeded to put the case for proportional representation.

On the other hand, the noble Lord, Lord Campbell of Croy, probably finding insufficient in the brief provided for him, repeated what was said by many Members of your Lordships' House in a recent debate on devolution and, of course, brought Scotland into the arena. We can forgive the noble Lord for that. I am sometimes too inclined to indulge in asides, in incidentals, in the association of ideas, let it go at that. Instead of indulging in moderate severity—pinpricking at the present Government and at their idiosyncracies with which many of us are familiar—the noble Lord, Lord Campbell of Croy, might have focused attention on what is the basic element in this matter of political representation; that is, the existence of Parliamentary assemblies and the like.

As the noble Lord failed to undertake that task, I venture to fill the gap. It can be filled only by defining what is meant by democracy, a term which is often on our lips. We speak of our democratic Parliamentary institutions, our democratic way of life and all that is associated with that term. The simple definition of democracy—without understanding and accepting it with all its implications it is idle to proceed at all with any discussion of political matters, Parliamentary representation and assemblies of this character or any other—is that it represents the collective will of the people of any country—naturally, in our case, the United Kingdom. It represents the provision of privileges that are to be made available to every person in the country, without exception. That is my definition of democracy. The term is often misused, misunderstood and used in several contexts which have nothing to do with the definition.

However, accepting the definition I have ventured to represent to your Lordships, I say at once without any hesitation qualification, or reservation, or anything which savours of an impediment that I agree wholly and exclusively with the fundamental demand that the noble Lord, Lord Byers, made in the course of his speech; namely, that minorities should be represented. It is as simple as that. When I refer to minorities, I mean minorities without exception, otherwise your democracy is a false democracy, a facade, a charade.

How are democracies in that sense to be represented? Not, I suggest, by the prevailing method of Parliamentary Elections. Perhaps one error into which the noble Lord, Lord Byers, entered—indeed, it seemed to intrude into his speech—was that the decline in our political system is due to a faulty electoral system. That was an error of judgment on his part. Certainly it could not derive from his Parliamentary experience. Take, for example, the Liberal Party itself. What was the cause of the decline in the Liberal Party? Was it the anomalies in our electoral system? Not at all.

The decline in the Liberal Party began when Mr. Lloyd George, who had been Prime Minister in a Coalition Government, who had been engaged in heated disputes with Mr. Asquith and eventually replaced that gentleman, decided to form what was called a National Government—a Coalition with the Conservatives. That was the beginning of the decay in the Liberal Party. One cannot challenge that: that is what happened, and although Mr. Lloyd George subsequently made efforts to return, and indeed was requested to return, to active political life, he faltered on the way. He was never the man in later years that he was before the First World War, during the war itself, and for some time in that National Coalition Government until the Conservatives threw him out, as they did with Ramsay MacDonald some years later. By that illustration I do not mean that the Conservatives are in the habit of throwing people out simply because they dislike their views. Not at all, they belong to the gentlemanly Party and would never dream of doing a thing like that. But it happened.

I go further than that. The decline in our political system—there has been a decline, practically and complete disillusionment on all sides among the people of the country; in Scotland, there is the SNP and the variety of the ingredients in this half-baked pudding, as it has become—is due to the fact that ever since the beginning of this century, with certain exceptions, our Governments have been shambles. That is what it amounts to.

Of course it really began with the Boer War, which we should never have entered upon. That was recognised subsequently. We all recognise our mistakes subsequently, but never at the time. Then we had the Salisbury Government and then the Balfour Government. Arthur Balfour, the great intellectual, who never discovered the existence of the working classes until they were brought to his attention. Then we had the Liberal Governments of all the talents, who introduced social welfare.

Lloyd George was inspired by Winston Churchill; we must remember that it was Winston Churchill who advised Lloyd George to go to Germany, where they had initiated social welfare. Lloyd George did as he was told and as a result we got pensions at five shillings a week, subject to a means test, and unemployment benefit. I know all about that, and not by reading what the professors say. I noticed that the noble Lord, Lord Byers, quoted quite a number of professors. I do not need to bother about professors; I have had the experience. I had four months out of work before there was unemployment benefit, and heaven knows what that was like! Sometimes I shudder through the night, thinking of it.

Then we had the war. Of course, if you can avoid two great wars with eventual bankruptcy at the end, with the loss of manpower, and particularly the young manpower with all the potential talent, and if you can hold your resources overseas and internally, that has its impact on the political situation. But, unfortunately, we had two great wars and the bankruptcies and the loss of talent, and we have had almost nothing but shambles since, with few exceptions.

We have had some good Prime Ministers, some bad and some indifferent. I have observed their activities. I have listened to their speeches, read their speeches and have observed that they frequently refer to their concern about the national interest. In their minds that really represents what will happen to them at the next General Election. Not every one of them, of course. There have been good ones. There have been well-meaning ones who were subject to great vicissitudes not of their own making. For example, with great respect, the noble Lord, Lord Home of the Hirsel, for whom I have always had a great admiration, and indeed affection, might have become a great Prime Minister—one of the greatest—but for certain events for which he was not in any way responsible. They could have happened to any Prime Minister; internal events, external events, international complications and the like.

I say this to the noble Lord, Lord Byers: these are the factors, the ingredients, which have caused a decline in our political system and the disillusionment that prevails on all sides. How is it to be corrected? There are other anomalies. I hope it will not affect anybody in your Lordships' House if I say that this assembly is an anomaly, but it is a very pleasant one. It is a benevolent one—embarrassingly benevolent and friendly sometimes. One ends it difficult not to conform. It is only with the greatest effort on my part that I manage to remain on this side of the House.

Of course, mistakes have been made: mistakes which are attributable to personal outlooks, misunderstandings and the like. For example, the noble Lord, Lord Campbell of Croy, referred to the creation of functional appointments. He called them, "non-elected appointments"; I call them, "functional". Suddenly it is announced in the Press or as a result of a Question in another place that some person about whom we have never heard before has been mixed up with finance—I use the term "mixed up" meaning no offence at all—and suddenly he becomes the great tycoon who is to run a great industry, and not only run a great industry but run the nation—

A Noble Lord: And run it down!

Lord SHINWELL

—regardless of what may be said by my erstwhile colleagues in another place who somehow or other (and it is very amusing to me) consider that they have influence. They have nothing but their salaries. Of course I agree that they do a bit of social welfare.

What are we to do about all this? How are we to raise the prestige of our Parliamentary institutions so that we may create, if not euphoria, at any rate a measure of admiration? I would not put it higher than that. How are we to do it? I could speak for a long time on this aspect of the subject. I could almost write a book—indeed, I have tried to write a book on this subject, but hardly anybody reads it, so what can I do about it? Certainly, we shall not solve our problems in the foreseeable future as a result of the existence of single-Party Government. That is my view. I ventured to offer that opinion in another form in our debate on devolution.

My Lords, it has been suggested by the noble Lord, Lord Campbell of Croy, that if we decide to change our electoral system—I do not want to enter into the details or the mechanics of such a change it could be the alternative vote, or the single transferable vote, or, as in some countries, it could be to a long list out of which the electors could pick and choose, and a Government are elected. We could have all that. It has been suggested that that will be the prelude to a Coalition, and some people do not like Coalitions. That is understandable, if you belong to a Party and happen to be prominent, like the noble Lord, Lord Campbell of Croy, or the noble Lord, Lord A berdare, and even the Liberals, in a potential kind of fashion. If people have aspirations of a political character, they think, "Perhaps my time will come some day; lots of strange people have gone to 10 Downing Street, so why not me?" I have never had that view myself, but others may have, and naturally they will say, "We don't want coalition. What!— join up with those other fellows. We will never be able to get our policies through." How amusing that is: "We shall never get our policies through if we have to depend on others "! They hardly ever do get their policies through, and for the reasons put forward by the noble Lord, Lord Byers, and to some extent by the noble Lord, Lord Campbell of Croy.

One Government come to power; they are in power for a few years, and they are on top of the world. I have been in Governments myself. We are able to carry out our programme, and how we brag about it! Every item in the Manifesto has been implemented. What an achievement! And one day we find we are out. Why? The only reason is that for one reason or another we did not get enough votes, and as a result another Government come in and turn the whole thing upside down. They turn the clock back. Indeed, the fundamental element in all this is that Governments are always turning the clock back unless they are prevented by the creation of some other element in the community. It could be the Press; it could be the trade unions. It could be the collaboration of a vast number of people who say, "We are sick and tired of this nonsense. It is about time we entered the fray. Since the people who exploited us in the past had their own way, why shouldn't we have our own way?" They go on strike, they ask for too much, they want more money. But where did they learn all these tricks?—from the other fellows in days gone by. Do not blame them too much. It is natural; it is inevitable, and is understandable.

My Lords, let us come down to brass tacks. What are we going to do about it? The noble Lord, Lord Campbell of Croy, said that you cannot introduce proportional representation before the next Election. Naturally you cannot introduce it unless the Government in another place agree to it, and unless it is agreed in your Lordships' House. I do not suppose they have time for an expedient of that kind, but it could happen. I have some ideas about this, but have no time to develop them.

At least I can say this. Let us imagine an Election in 18 months' time. Mrs. Thatcher would like an Election this year. I can understand that, she is a little impatient. Women are often a little too impatient. Sometimes they want too much, and when they get it they do not like what they get. Now that we have the Sex Discrimination Act, I can say what I like about women because we have equality with them. We need not bother about our behaviour now. What are we going to do? We might have an Election in 18 months' time, and the electors of the country might say, "We are a little tired of Mr. Wilson, Mr. Healey, Tony Benn, and even Michael Foot. We are a little tired of them. They have certainly done their best in the circumstances, circumstances over which perhaps they have not a great deal of control, but we had better have a change." So we could get someone else—perhaps Mrs. Thatcher, Mr. Maudling—oh no! I think he is too lazy for a job of that kind. It could be Willy Whitelaw, a very benign person, whom I have always liked. Or it might be decided to ask one of the old school. There are some in this assembly, on the other side of the House, of course; not on this side.

So the Conservative Government come in, but have not a clear majority. What happens? If they make their representations to the Liberal Party, I would venture a guess. The Liberal Party did not like it last time for some reason, but perhaps we had better not go into the intricacies or details of that. The next time the Liberal Party are asked to come in, they will go in. And why blame them? They must have their chance to sit on a Government Bench at some time. They have very capable people, so why should they not?

On the other hand, it might be that a Conservative Government come in and have a majority, and even join with another Party if they have not got a complete majority, in order to form a limited Coalition of a certain kind. What happens? They will have more than enough trouble with the trade unions, and all your trade union Bills, all your trade union Amendment Bills and all the rest of the legislation, pernicious or otherwise, or even benevolently intended, will have little effect. That is no way to correct the situation. We must give a measure of confidence to the people of the country that those in Government are not concerned about their political views alone, but will focus their intention first of all, on putting their country back on its feet, even if it means the exclusion of some ideas and even the idealism which pervaded our Party in the past. It may be necessary to put much of it in cold storage for a while. I would be prepared to do that. Perhaps I ought not to say that because what time have I got? But let us leave it at that. It would be far better to put some of it in the freezer for a while in order to focus our attention on the things that really matter.

We have been trying to reduce inflation for quite a long time. It is not enough to use the alibi that there is inflation in other places; never mind about other places. It is said that there is vast unemployment which will increase—and why? Not merely because of a Government who fails to understand how to deal with it, but because of automation, rationalisation and mechanisation, so that fewer men than in the past are required for our productive purposes. These factors must be contended with. It requires not only skill, but organisation and understanding, and we must create the confidence necessary among the general public. In my judgment, the confidence we had in the past will not be revived and restored as a result of the Election, or the appointment arising from an Election, of one single Party. It requires a combination and collaboration of Parties in order to create that confidence.

My Lords, I conclude by saying that I support wholeheartedly the proposition made by the noble Lord, Lord Byers, that some form of electoral system which represents true democracy is essential. If, as a result of that, a Coalition should ensue, we will have to make the best of it. It may not happen, but if we believe in democracy, let us seek to implement it.

4.50 p.m.

Lord GLADWYN

My Lords, judging from the extent to which the noble Lord, Lord Shinwell, seems to accept the basic theses advanced by my noble friend Lord Byers, I confess I cannot imagine why he goes on sitting where he does. Indeed, I should have thought his place was over here, rather than over there. Anyhow, I would not have thought that what he said was very acceptable to all his noble friends on that side.

To revert, however, to the Liberal Motion, may I say that I should have welcomed the opportunity of dealing with the highly unimpressive arguments advanced by the noble Lord, Lord Campbell of Croy, in support of the present electoral law, one of which, however, was adequately countered by my noble friend Lord Byers. Unfortunately I have not the time to do that now, and no doubt some of my noble friends will deal with them later on. So I propose, not unexpectedly, to cope with a matter which is both relevant to this Liberal Motion and of great importance at the present time, and that is the issues involved in direct elections to the European Parliament. Although we are going to debate it in about a month's time, I think it is not out of order to put forward some views in regard to it now, if only because it is conceivable that what is said in this Chamber is sometimes taken into consideration by the Government when they are preparing a White Paper. I should hope so, anyway.

My Lords, a directly elected European Parliament is now—and I say this categorically—the best, if not the only, instrument for gradually transforming the present Common Market, as most people in this country go on calling it, into a real, democratic political Community. Not everybody may welcome this, especially noble Lords on the other side of this House, but I think that the majority of people who have any understanding of the great issues now facing this country, do so without reserve. In saying this I am not, as some remaining anti-Marketeers may claim, giving vent to, as it were, the last desperate hope of a European whose vision of a genuinely democratic entity in Western Europe has been consistently frustrated by the comparative failure of the organs of the EEC to function as originally intended, and notably, of course, the frequent inability of the Council on great occasions to speak with one voice.

On the contrary I have been agreeably surprised during the last few years at the extent to which quite often nationalistic urges have been overcome in the interests of an agreed common policy in the Council of Ministers. As we know, it is true that this happy outcome has, under the present system usually, been the result of furious bargaining behind the scenes in the Committee of Permanent Representatives, with some assistance by the Commission. But even as it is, the role of the present nominated Parliament has not been negligible, as is witnessed by the constant presence of important Ministers and Commissioners at its debates—they are always there month after month in the plenary sessions—and the attention paid by Ministers to at least some of its resolutions, and not least to the scheme for direct elections itself associated with the name of that admirable young Socialist Schelto Patijn. Neither should we minimise the success of the Conference of Foreign Ministers in increasingly achieving a common foreign policy within the framework of what is called the "Davignon procedure".

When, however, the Parliament is directly elected its members will be able, by the requisite majority, to bring considerably greater political pressure to bear on the Ministers to accept some solution which may for long have been held up in the Council by a minority of national representatives. Why so? Well, it is perfectly true that a directly elected assembly is less likely to be the rather jolly and fraternal body that it is now. It will, of course, have greater powers. What will be the point of directly electing it unless it does have greater powers? And the political differences will then become greater and the debates consequently fiercer, if only because the result of them will be more significant.

So it is to be hoped that, making a virtue, as I think, of ultimate necessity, the Ministers will agree to the grant to the Parliament, no doubt to coincide with its direct election in 1978, of all or some of the powers of what is called "co-decision" proposed in the Vedel Report of several years ago. By this means, apart from anything else, more important political figures will be induced to stand for election, though, if we may judge from Willy Brandt's example, many important figures arc likely to present themselves anyhow. Willy Brandt, I may perhaps remind noble Lords, has just announced in a congress in Brussels that he himself proposes to stand for election.

Be that as it may, there is no doubt that a politician elected to the European Parliament, after a, no doubt, hotly contested fight on a Party political ticket, will be able, in his European constituency, to make much more fuss than a member of a national Parliament nominated by his political Party, as now, who must presumably be on his best behaviour if he wants to hold down his job and even get preferment to Ministerial office. True, the European member concerned will also have been elected on a Party political ticket, and he may, therefore, himself be in danger when his five years' mandate expires if he departs from his Party line. But if by any chance he should do so, and perhaps persuade his constituents that he was right—because, after all, he will be making propaganda for himself in his European constituency—his action could well have some effect on the fortunes of his national party colleagues at the next national General Election.

There is certainly little doubt that when they meet together in the European Parliament all members, directly elected members, regardless of their groups, will tend, by the nature of things, by the very atmosphere of the place, to regard political issues affecting the whole of Europe much more from a European than from a purely national point of view, and this point of view will be explained by the directly elected member to his constituents in his European constituency in this country. It is for this very reason that great importance (and I am building up the argument towards direct elections) attaches to what is called the organic link between the European Parliament and the national Parliaments. The best way of achieving this, at any rate as we Liberals think, would be for the 67, as at present proposed, directly elected United Kingdom representatives to be given, on the analogy of the Berlin Members of the Bundestag, the privilege of speaking but not voting in the House of Commons, and, of course, attending all relevant committees.

Some assert—this theory has considerable support—that all that would be necessary would be for the 67 to be entitled to take part in the work of some joint European Standing Committee. But even if this body should hold its debates in public, which is doubtful I suppose, it would surely not produce the necessary sense of unity nor eliminate all sense of rivalry. So if actual membership of the House of Commons is impossible, and we are assured that it is, then it will still be essential for the 67 to become also Members of the Parliament at Westminister—and they are so enabled to do so under the Patijn Report—by being nominated temporary Peers of Parliament for the duration of their European mandate. Here I might perhaps observe, in parenthesis, that if any existing Peer happens to be elected—and some, after all, may stand—nothing could prevent him, despite the fact that he is a member of the European Parliament, from giving an account of his European activities in this House. And if he, why not others?

They could, thus, if they were ex officio Members of this House also give an occasional public account in Parliament of what they had been accomplishing in debates, which they might themselves initiate—as happens under the present nominated system. In any case, the 67, having become temporary Peers of Parliament, should attend any joint committee constituted to handle European legislation. Naturally, they would eventually take over all the work of scrutiny now so admirably performed by the noble Baroness, Lady Tweedsmuir, and her able assistants.

They would be very well qualified to do just this since they would, in the various committees of the European Parliament, have had to work from the start on such projects with representatives of the Commission. They would further be sufficiently numerous to devote most of their time to this important work, and thus be in every way capable of drawing the attention of their Party colleagues in their national Parliaments to anything which, in their view, might be dangerous from the point of view of their Party, or indeed from the point of view of the nation. It must finally be made plain that by such a procedure they could be made to appear to be—this is the real point—"our men in Strasbourg", as it were (or wherever the Parliament may then be), rather than remote characters or, worse still and worst of all, dangerous rivals to Westminster MPs whose work must inevitably be suspect and kept under constant review.

Other countries may have other means of achieving this vital organic link, but in our own case it is difficult to see how it can be suitably formed except more or less in the way suggested. After all, our Constitution is unwritten and wholly flexible. It might not, perhaps, be necessary for the 67 to be called "Lords" or even wear robes on State occasions. If necessary, there might be a special writ, couched in modern English, enabling them to sit for a given period "among the Barons". Why not? I dare say quite a number of them might like to call themselves "Lords", though it might be rather awkward if some called themselves Lords and others did not. Still, all these things are trifles, and the sensible thing, of course, would be to consider the nomination of "European Peers" as a step to-towards reforming this ancient House, perhaps on much the same lines as those so unfortunately rejected some years ago in another place.

So far I have confined my remarks to a consideration of what may happen if and when—I think I can now with some confidence say, "when"—the European Parliament, including a British contingent, is directly elected in 1978. For, after all, if we should by any chance opt for nomination, as we can, we should apparently, under the recent European Council decision, be obliged to nominate 67 Members of the House of Commons, few of whom would have either the time or the inclination to serve. Therefore if that were so, it would virtually deprive this country of all representation in the European Parliament until 1983, which would surely be intolerable. But the question still remains as to how the British Members will be elected.

As I understand it, the present intention, of both the major Parties is that it should be elected in accordance with our archaic electoral law—usually referred to as a "winner takes all" system—which is supposed to result in "strong" government, as I think has been mentioned today, even if it means, in practice, the enactment of legislation abhorrent to two-thirds of the electorate and the virtual suppression of any minority point of view. The only real reason it continues to exist, of course, is because the major Parties think that they would lose some seats if it were replaced by some other system. That is a fact. In other words, it is not the national interest which enters into their calculations at all; it is purely Party interest.

However that may be—and one may accept it or not—not even the greatest advocate of this system could maintain that, if adopted for the election of British Members of a European Parliament, it would result in the emergence of a "strong" European Government. How could that possibly be, unless it is proposed that such a Government should be drawn from the ranks of the European Parliament, of which there is no question until such time—it may be never as the British Parliament agrees that some such federal system should be adopted. The argument that it would result in a "strong" European Government in other words, is totall bogus.

I cannot believe that this electoral absurdity will last for much longer without rather dreadful consequences. For instance, at the moment it seems to be also the firm intention of the Government, at any rate to apply it to the election of a Scottish assembly. Yet almost all those best qualified to judge—and I believe that goes for some Scottish Labour supporters, too—admit that the application of this system to the election of a "devolved" Scottish assembly would mean, in practice, handing over Scotland to the Scottish Nationalists on a plate. I repeat what I said the other day when we debated devolution; namely, that either the Government plump for a toothless Scottish assembly (in which case the results of the elections may not matter very much) thereby however running the risk of producing a revolutionary situation, or they agree to grant the assembly significant powers and still arrange for the elections to be held on a "winner takes all" basis in which case there would be every reason to suppose that the Nationalists, with only, perhaps, 30 or 40 per cent. of the votes, would gain a considerable majority of the seats, and thus be well on the way to replacing the Union Jack by the St. Andrew's Cross over Edinburgh Castle.

It looks, however, as if the Government had more or less abandoned the original idea of constituting a toothless assembly, the Secretary of State for Scotland being in a position to veto any measure which he deems to be ultra vires, thus avoiding what I might call danger A. But if so, unless they agree in the national interest to arrange for some kind of proportional representation, they will unquestionably run up against danger B. There is no doubt about that.

The official Opposition seem to be becoming aware of this real danger—particularly those Tories who have anything to do with Scotland—and we must hope therefore that eventually the whole Conservative Party will vote for proportional representation when the Bill comes before the House of Commons. So, of course, will the Liberals and, I believe, for tactical reasons, even the SNP, to say nothing of such Ulster Members as may turn up. It looks, therefore, as if it would need only about 10 Labour MPs to be converted to what may be considered by most to be a reasonable proposal, even from the narrow point of view of Party interest, for proportional representation to be adopted for Scotland, as indeed it has already been adopted with success for Northern Ireland. And though noble Lords may not believe it, I ask them at least to consider that, though Liberals may well think that the adoption of this system in Scotland may lead on eventually to its adoption in England, it is something, none the less, which transcends any particular Party interest.

But if common sense as well as national interest can legitimately be invoked on behalf of PR for Scotland, there is an even more convincing case to be made out for PR in the context of direct elections to the European Parliament. This Parliament is supposed—I am sure that the Government will not deny this—to represent all the major political currents of opinion in the Community. Only if it does so will the Ministers be able to profit from the popular support—if they can get it—of the great mass of the peoples involved. Only so can they promote enthusiasm for the great reforms that must be undertaken if Europe is to survive. Only so will they, contrariwise, be able to avoid adopting measures which are clearly seen to run counter to popular instincts and desires.

But what will happen if one applies the "winner takes all" system to European elections in the United Kingdom. The psephologists tell us that the larger the constituency the larger the swing. If, therefore, we were to have some 67 British constituencies roughly ten, times as large as existing constituencies combined with a "winner takes all" electoral system, we should in all probability have a grotesque swing resulting quite possibly in the return of a very large number of Members of the official Opposition, if by chance the Party in power had become unpopular; few representatives of the Party in power itself; a high proportion of Nationalists; and no Liberals at all, even though they might poll over 6 million votes. Nobody knows what the political climate will be in 1978 but surely the two larger Parties, if only in their own interests, should think twice before saddling our unfortunate country with this kind of system—a fearful demonstration of our political immaturity displayed to an astonished Continent.

In saying all this, of course, we Liberals, as realists, can understand that, however reasonable the suggestion may be, there is perhaps small chance of the two major Parties' agreeing to proportional representation before the next national Election, which may not come before 1979—although of course they could, as the noble Lord, Lord Shinwell, said. We shall maintain our demand for it and try to rally as much public support as we can, but all we now demand in the general interests of the nation is that a reasonable electoral procedure should be applied to the two other elections that seem most likely to take place before the middle of 1978. To hint that we do so for purely Party political reasons, as I think the noble Lord, Lord Crowther-Hunt, hinted the other day, is unworthy —or, rather, it represents an attempt to place the Liberal Party in the same category as those who, flying in the face of all reasoned argument, insist for admittedly Party political motives, on applying our appalling system of voting —a system not adopted in any other country of the Community—to new situations designed to initiate a new and hopeful chapter in our relations with all our neighbours. Frankly, we think that this attitude is shameful and we appeal to all those who continue to share it to abandon what in the long run must be a losing cause, and indeed to abandon it soon. As I have said, it needs, for a start, the conversion of only a few men with a national conscience to prevent the Government from pushing through their ill-conceived devolution plan for Scotland on a basis which will only too obviously wreck it from the start.

My Lords, I have perhaps said enough to convince at any rate some of your Lordships that the whole case for electoral reform is no longer a stale joke or a Liberal lost cause appealing only to cranks and experts and professors. It is, on the contrary, a burning issue which must be tackled sensibly if we are not to become more and more an inward-looking society and, indeed, a rather provincial laughing-stock, incapable of pulling ourselves together or of embarking on those great reforms which appal the timid but attract the brave.

5.13 p.m.

Viscount HANWORTH

My Lords, some noble Lords will remember that on 22nd May 1974 I was fortunate enough to be able to initiate a full Wednesday debate on the need to consider what changes could usefully be made to our Party and Parliamentary system to bring it into line with present-day needs and improve the functioning of our democracy. Nothing since has occurred to affect the point of view I then expressed, but there is one factor which I did not emphasise strongly but which now seems to me to be of paramount importance. I said that almost any system of Government, however perfect at its initiation, would sooner or later be abused and have to be changed. I cited as an example the method of electing the American President.

Today we can see our democratic system being exploited by extremists for their own ends. Changes must be made if we are to meet this threat and to preserve all that is good and admired from the past. Two arguments against doing so were made in the last debate by some influential Members of this House. The first was that our system had always developed to meet the needs of the day and it would do so now. Perhaps this is true, but only because of the efforts of those who saw that change was necessary. The failing of this nation has always been too little and too late. It takes necessary action only at the eleventh hour. One day it may be too late—it nearly was before the last war. The second argument against change in our unwritten Constitution is rather more plausible and considerably more dangerous. It is based on the assumption that nothing has really altered in politics during the last 30 years or so and that everything today can be paralleled with past experience. This may well be true, but the point that escapes those experienced people is that the external conditions in which the old politics operated are today completely different, and their view is really a condemnation of the lack of change in our political system.

In what way is the situation so different today? First, the old order of society, based largely on an élite selected by birth and inheritance, has passed away. With it so has the inherently stable society which it required for its survival. It was perhaps historically an extension of the feudal system and our system of government, so-called democracy, was to some extent at least tailored to its needs. Secondly, religion used to provide a reasonably clear guide as to what was right or wrong, desirable or undesirable. I would still call myself religious, but one has to admit that today religion does not have any important effect on contemporary thought or ideals. Thirdly, although there has always been a vocal element against the existing order of society, it has only recently developed the efficient subversive techniques of today's extremists. Fourthly, although Governments and politicians have always been unpopular at times, they are so today to a far greater and more fundamental degree than they have ever been in the past. Fifthly, the present-day thinking is towards a greater representation of everyone's point of view. Governments may rightly have to introduce unpopular measures, but to pass through Parliament doctrinal measures supported by probably not more than 15 per cent. of the electorate is a mockery of democracy in any popular meaning of the word.

In the debate two years ago I was careful only to indicate possible areas where change might be considered. Today I think I might usefully be a little more specific. In my view, some form of proportional representation is absolutely essential. With modifications, it would still be possible to give the Party polling the greatest number of votes a majority in Parliament. Personally, I think the system would work perfectly adequately without this. I know that the self-interest of Parties makes this change difficult. However, I would maintain that it is in the interest of both major Parties although the Conservatives may win the next Election I do not believe that they will ever do so again unless the electoral system is broadened. The Socialists would, I think, remain at the mercy of their extremists and fail to achieve sensible Socialism. Inevitably, in my view, the outcome could be Communism. Among the many things that ought to be considered, I will mention only a few. The time has surely come when at least a partially written Constitution is desirable and would give greater stability.

As the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hailsham, said, devolution will mean some changes in our Parliamentary system and it would provide a good opportunity for introducing this new element. A further opportunity would occur if the House of Lords could be reformed or if proportional representation were introduced. I know that much has been said against the use of a referendum, but we now have a precedent and a referendum avoids an unnecessary election with the country having to make a choice between two Parties on a single issue. I believe that the answer would be to control the use of referenda, and this could only effectively be done by writing the principle into the Constitution.

In considering the functioning of Government, we cannot ignore the trade unions. They are now so powerful that, to a great extent, the country can be governed only with their consent. It is therefore vital that they should be truly representative, and their methods of election and much else need rethinking in terms of the wider and more important role which they now perform. There is no place today for unthinking adherence to outworn shibboleths. Collective bargaining has always been to a great extent equated with the law of the jungle in which the weakest always loses. I do not believe it to be healthy for the Labour Party to have to rely to the extent it does on funds and members funded by the unions, and I also deplore the dependence of the Conservative Party on City and business interests. There would, therefore, seem to be a strong case for providing the Parties with some funds from a central source.

I do not believe in explosive and uncontrolled change. If we want to hold on to what was good in the past, we must plan our changes in time. What I believe to be needed more than anything else today is a positive way of life as an alternative to Communism and dictatorship. In my view, neither present-day Socialism nor Conservatism is dynamic enough to inspire the moderate element in our society and it is on that element that we really should rely in the future.

5.33 p.m.

Viscount BROOKEBOROUGH

My Lords, I believe that there is nobody in this House who will not have appreciated the opportunity provided for us by the noble Lord, Lord Byers, in initiating this debate. Certainly, I have never heard a clearer or more inspiring speech than that which was made by him on this subject today. I am sorry to see that the noble Lord, Lord Shinwell, is not here at the moment; his speech was historic and I very much enjoyed it.

Everybody has agreed that there is a great need to re-establish the prestige and standing of this country's Parliamentary institutions. I should like to deal with two aspects of this problem. The first concerns the duties and the rights of a citizen to vote, and the second is to advocate without reservation the use of proportional representation for devolved Governments. I feel that there are tremendous difficulties in considering the introduction of PR into our Parliamentary system at Westminster. My noble friend Lord Campbell of Croy has mentioned some of those difficulties, but they do not apply when it comes to a devolved Government. For instance, the question of the formation of a Government taking time where is is necessary to form a Coalition and of its being undesirable to leave the country without a rudder would not apply. We shall soon have before us legislation to set up devolved institutions for Scotland, and it seems to me to be a tragedy that the Government will not make the decision now to establish proportional representation for those new institutions, if only to see how it works at a lower level before we start tampering with the central system.

My own experience has been as a Member of Parliament twice elected by the ordinary method and as a Member of the Assembly and the Convention twice elected by proportional representation. In a short space of years, I had considerable experience of both systems. I was a Minister in a devolved Government for some time and it is that which emboldens me to speak about that subject as well as the other.

My noble friend Lord Campbell of Croy brought into the debate the question of the unions. I should have liked to broaden the discussion to include also the CBI, the National Farmers' Union and all the other organisations to which we, in Parliament, have given a right to speak with authority, but especially those organisations for whose protection Parliament has passed rules, laws, and regulations. I believe that, having passed those laws, to protect and regulate the bodies in question, we have not insisted on sufficient regulation of the election of their leaders. Persons can come to the Government or before the television and can claim to speak for thousands—and, indeed, in some cases for millions—though some of them may only have been elected by tens. I therefore come to the question whether we should not involve the members of such bodies in some obligation to vote. In Northern Ireland during the past two years we have had more elections than I can count and these were followed by a referendum. The noble Lord, Lord Donaldson of Kingsbridge, will know, too, that the prospect of doing without elections or referenda in Northern Ireland is not very bright. Personally, I shudder at the prospect of more elections and, just as union members have appeared to be disillusioned with voting, so there is a great tendency now in Northern Ireland not to vote.

We should recognise that fact. It is sometimes due to laziness, sometimes to disillusionment, sometimes to inconvenience and sometimes, in the case of Northern Ireland, to intimidation. I believe that in some unions the fact that one has to go to a branch meeting and hold up one's hand also constitutes intimidation of a kind. I believe that in all these bodies and in Parliamentary elections for devolved Governments, there should be a greater obligation upon the individual to vote. That is, we should make it easier and more convenient to vote than to abstain. We should extend the postal voting system throughout this area and, like Australia, we should, at the same time, include a nominal fine—I believe that it is ten dollars in Australia—for people who exercise the right not to vote. I do not believe that anybody in this House would suggest that Australia's institutions are not democratic and I suggest that that is the first proposition we should consider.

The second is the question of the use of proportional representation in devolved Governments which are about to be set up. My devotion to the unity of the United Kingdom is fundamental to my total political philosophy. As many other noble Lords have said, I believe that there is a danger to that unity in the present plans for devolution. I fear that there is a danger of the unity of the United Kingdom being split.

The noble Lord, Lord Byers, mentioned the 1973 election for the Northern Ireland Assembly, which was carried out under PR and which produced a totally different result from the 1974 General Election. I should like to suggest a little caution on that matter. There were eight months between the two elections and I do not believe that they furnish a satisfactory comparison or a good classical example of the problems of the "first past the post" method. The example which I feel to be the best is the 1948 South African election. In that election, the South African Parliament consisted of 150 seats and the two contestants were Dr. Malan and General Smuts. There were 12 seats which were uncontested, 11 of which went unopposed to General Smuts. One must assume that, in those seats, he had a very big majority and the resulting majority should therefore be added to his figures. Of the 138 seats that were contested, Malan won 78, with a total electorate of 442,338, while Smuts won only 60 seats, with an electorate of 547,437, to which should be added the 11 scats which went to Smuts uncontested. It is then found that under 40 per cent. of the electorate in South Africa changed the whole course of history. I believe that this is a perfect example of where PR would have changed the course of history and been an accurate and true reflection of what the voting people of South Africa really meant—

Lord ALPORT

My Lords, I am sorry to interrupt the noble Viscount, but it will be for only a moment. He will remember that under the initial constitution, under the Union Act, there was a very strong bias given towards the country seats in South Africa, and therefore the actual distribution of seats was also one of the reasons for the disproportion in the voting.

Viscount BROOKEBOROUGH

I thank the noble Lord for that intervention; that is absolutely true. I am not quite sure whether this might not equally apply to Scotland, where the rural seats are very thinly populated and where there are some fairly massive urban seats. That seems to me to be almost a replica to what happened in South Africa. So I believe that there is a danger.

Had we a proportional representation Assembly, at the next Election, we could then have—as noble Lords have said, and if their fears are right —a vast majority of the 71 seats for Scotland in the House of Commons being of the Nationalist Party. It would, or should, then be modified by a much truer reflection in the lower Parliament, the devolved Parliament, elected by proportional representation. In my view this would be a modification of the voice of Scotland, or a more accurate interpretation of the voice of Scotland. But over and above this, there are aspects of the actual working of a devolved Parliament, or a devolved institution, in its relations with central Government. A devolved Government, such as we had at Stormont, arrived at a most excellent machinery and a most excellent relationship with the central Government. This was a result of many things over a long time and was a great credit to all the Governments at Westminster and at Stormont. But at all times the Northern Ireland Government accepted the limitations by which it could modify, change, accept and reject the national policies, or rather the Party policies, of the national Government in power at Westminster. We were never involved, for instance, with the tremendous change that occurred, when one Socialist Government followed a Conservative Government, regarding the Town and Country Planning Acts. We were not involved in that. We established a balance by which that type of legislation was modified by the devolved Government.

It seems to me that it would be much easier for a new Assembly to establish those proper relations—because they would take time to establish—if the devolved Government was elected on a proportional representation basis. I am not going into the question of which variety of PR is appropriate because that is not very relevant at this point. But there is no doubt that a PR Election for an Assembly will reduce swings, because the other method exaggerates swings and produces an exaggerated majority; and I think that that has been accepted by everybody. It also produces, or is likely to produce, the need for coalition. I feel that this would be very important in the establishment and in the efficient working of devolved Parliaments in the rest of the United Kingdom.

When I was in Government in Northern Ireland I felt that the operation of a devolved Government was rather like going down a fairly wide tunnel. One could go a little to the right or to the left of the tunnel, but down that tunnel one jolly well had to go! The general economic and financial limitations which are set by central Government in no way reduce the benefits from devolution, but what I believe they require is that Her Majesty's Government should look again at once, at proportional representation for devolution, and get it into the next Bill.

5.34 p.m.

Baroness SEEAR

My Lords, I speak as a member of Lord Blake's Committee set up under the Hansard Society, to which the noble Lord, Lord Byers, referred earlier in the debate today. For that reason, if for no other, I do not intend to deal with the details of electoral reform which we on that Committee are discussing at very great length, and on which, as has been reported, we hope to produce a report by the middle of June. Instead, I wish briefly to examine some of the other factors which affect the position and standing of Parliament at the present time, and therefore the efficiency of the political system in this country.

When the decline in the standing of Parliament is discussed, it is very often said that it is common in many spheres of life today for people to reject authority, and that this rejection of authority is a new thing from which Parliament suffers along with many other institutions. But on the contrary, I believe that the practice of criticising, and of being hostile to authority, is as old as Cain and Abel. Indeed, I do not believe that Parliament suffers more seriously from criticism than in previous centuries. Private Eye has very little on the lampoonists and the cartoonists of 200 years ago. Indeed, the Press has never been short of its honourable watchdogs nor, alas! of its quota of money-grabbing scavengers. Nor do I believe that it is true that the public as a whole resists authority. On the contrary, I believe that a great many people are seeking an authority that they can respect.

But what is true is that Parliament, like other institutions today, cannot command —it has to earn respect; the respect that people are seeking to give to the bodies that govern. The Parliament that can acquire and retain respect must today have three characteristics. It must be, and must be seen to be, democratic. It must, in fact, be sovereign and able to exercise the power it claims to hold; and it must be non-totalitarian, by which I mean that it must respect and recognise, in its purposes, the fundamental pluralism of our society, which is a basic characteristic of the kind of democracy that we support.

How then does our present Parliamentary system measure up to the tests of being democratic, of being sovereign, and of being non-totalitarian? Other speakers have pointed out to this House how unrepresentative of the voters, and therefore how basically undemocratic, our present Parliament is. I will not again recite the figures showing how large a number of voters it requires to return a Member of one Party as against another, but I point to other undemocratic elements in the nature of our present Parliament. Let us look at the way in which candidates are chosen. This is a vital element in true democracy, and in regaining the support of the electorate. So long as it is possible for candidates to be elected and maintained in power by a small caucus of people whose power has been acquired often in devious ways, then indeed one cannot be surprised that people are scornful of the Parliament that results as a consequence.

I do not challenge—on the contrary—the right of a constituency Party to review and, if necessary, to reject, between Parliaments, their existing Member. After all, if you believe, as I believe, that a representative in Parliament must speak his own mind and act according to his conscience, then the corollary of that is that the constituency, between Elections, must have the right to say, "You no longer speak for us". But, my Lords, it must be the constituents, and not a small group of the constituents. It must be the Party members themselves; and if we are seeking ways in which to restore the standards of Parliament, we could do worse than look at the way in which candidates are chosen to be presented to the electorate for election.

What sort of democratic control have the elected Members of the people over the Government? With the present system of Whips, which has dominated the other place for so long, what real representation of the people who sent them to Westminster is there? We know perfectly well that, again and again, individual, elected Members do not believe in the policies which they support but are dragooned into the Lobbies at the behest of the Whips. Can you wonder that Parliament as a democratic institution is losing the respect of the people that it seeks to govern?

Again, there is the question of the ultimate sovereignty, the control of Parliament over Government. How much real control do the elected representatives have over the activities of Ministers? The Back-Benchers are largely the fodder, there to feed the Ministers; and I for my part welcome the move which is going on at the present time in another place to see that Ministers can be more effectively called to account by the elected representatives of the people, that there should be a Select Committee system, working more thoroughly, under which Ministers may be required to go and could give evidence, as does not happen in most cases at the present time. When you see Parliament again exercising this kind of control, then you have some hope that people will say: "Here we see the genuinely democratically-elected representatives exercising the kind of democratic control in which we believe". So much for the House of Commons, let alone the House of Lords, being in fact a democratic Parliamentary system today.

Then, how about the sovereignty of Parliament, the power of Parliament? How many people today really believe that power resides in Westminster any more? Yes, there are some matters in which, of course, this remains true; but we know full well that to a very large extent power has moved away from the Palace of Westminster. Indeed, in many ways Parliament is not even a paper tiger: rather a Cheshire cat, fading away in its power and authority as decade succeeds decade. Where has the sovereignty gone to? Where is the power today? If we cannot reform and recover for Parliament the true sovereignty, how can we expect the electorate to take it seriously? It is, in part, in the Civil Service. It is perfectly true—nobody denies it—that a great deal of policy is decided, not by the elected Members but by the Government Departments; and many of the Government Departments no doubt accept that this is inevitable, even if, it may be, they do not wish it to be so. That needs to be looked at if Parliament is to claim to be sovereign.

But it is not only in the Civil Service that real sovereignty now resides. What are the great powers outside Parliament? We all know the great power of industry and the great power of the trade unions. It is no use going on bemoaning the fact that power is where in reality it is. When it is found that there has been a shift of power and in this way an undermining of sovereignty, the need is to look at the institutions and find ways to legitimise their power. How can this be done? It may be that a move is taking place to get more and more authority to Neddy, so that the power of the CBI and the power of the trade unions may be harnessed to an institution which bears at any rate some relationship to the activities of Parliament.

For my part, however, I think we should probably go further. Previous speakers have made reference to the possible reform of your Lordships' House. We have in this House a Bench of Bishops. Is it really not practical, my Lords, to have a Bench, or two Benches, of industry, so that the social partners, as we have to learn to call them, may have a place inside the law-making institutions of this country? Somehow a way of institutionalising the fact of employer power and the fact of trade union power has to be found if Parliament's sovereignty, and therefore the public's respect for Parliament, is to be restored.

But, my Lords, just because both industry and the trade unions have so much power I would very much endorse what has been said by previous speakers and say that there, too, we are justified in requiring that true democracy should be found. Institutions with the ability to sway the fortunes of the country, as have the great industrialists and the trade unions, are not private, voluntary organisations which can be left to order their own affairs regardless of the effect on the rest of us. How representative is the CBI of the great mass of employers in this country? What are their systems for seeing that when they come to make representations to Governments, when they use their power in developing the economic affairs of this country, they really democratically speak for the great mass of employers up and down this country and for the great mass of professional managers who in fact provide the ideas and the skills which make the carrying on of industry possible?

Then, again as previous speakers have said, although it may be said that the trade unions have in some respects set an example in some cases in having their own elections conducted on a basis of proportional representation, the fact remains that the choice of the people who are going to exercise great power in this country is often left to a mere handful, fewer than 10 per cent., of the posible voting members. Surely we can do something to see that the voting power of the trade unions is used, and properly used; and may I add to what other speakers have said in urging that we should make a move towards postal ballots inside the trade unions, and that public money should be made available to see that this is done. We have only to look at what has happened in such trade unions as the ETU, where a postal ballot has enabled a large number of people to contribute to the choice of their executive—a far more representative executive than would have been had if no postal ballot had been used. Reforms of this kind are absolutely vital, and the need to institutionalise this power is paramount.

Then, my Lords, I said that, to be respected, Parliament must also be non-totalitarian and respectful of the pluralism of our society. One of the things which has brought Parliament into great disrespect in this country is the tendency—it is more than a tendency—for Government to take on activities which do not belong properly to Government; the extension of governmental activity into a wide range of fields of life which are far better left to voluntary effort of one kind or another. We suffer from far too much government far too badly done. Your Lordships' House knows all too well how hurried and slovenly is much of the legislation which comes up to us from another place, and how difficult it is to carry through the legislation which is passed.

How can Parliament be respected? How can people take seriously the idea that the Government are in control of the economic situation when we are told that they do not even know where their own money has gone to and when estimates of what they are to spend are of an inaccuracy which would bankrupt any firm if it indulged in such wild Practices? Better government, seen to be competent, would command respect— a Government which recognized that there are many fields of life which are beyond, and should be beyond, the clutch of the politician's hand. This would do a great deal to restore the confidence that Parliament so badly needs—and it is not just that Parliament needs to have its confidence in itself restored. Representative Parliamentary government remains by far the best system of government which the world has yet devised.

The governing of men was always a difficult task. The governing of men in a democratic society, the self-government of men through Parliamentary institutions, is an even harder task. But this country is said to have a tradition of great political wisdom and great political experience. We knew how to adapt our institutions in the 15th century, in the 16th century, in the 17th century, in the 18th century and in the 19th century. Has our political creative wisdom failed us only now?

5.51 p.m.

The Earl of DUNDEE

My Lords, I think I have addressed your Lordships about three times in the last two years on this subject and all I want to do now, I hope very briefly, is to make a short contrast between the case for reform of the imperial Parliament—which is a very important question but, I am afraid, not an immediate one—and the case for having in any Bill that may be brought forward for devolution in Scotland an Assembly which shall be based not on the old bad principles but on new and better ones and preferably on proportional representation. On the question of the imperial Parliament, I think that I agreed with everything which was said by the noble Lord, Lord, Lord Byers, who introduced the Motion and, if I may say so, I was particularly interested to hear the very short and cogent speech of the noble Viscount, Lord Hanworth, opposite. I think that the noble Lord the mover of the Motion is very right to argue that over the last century the present system of election has gradually eroded the real power of Parliament and particularly the real power of the House of Commons. It has resulted in a vast increase of bureaucracy, in a great diminution of the real influence which a Parliamentary representative can exercise in the government of the country on behalf of the people who have elected him and also in encouraging in some ways, and particularly in economics, bad government by whatever Government is in power.

If we are frank with ourselves I am sure that we can all remember such periods in the life of every post-war Government. I see that my noble friend Lord Amory is here. I always say that he is the only good Chancellor that we have had since the war. He was the only one who was in Office at the Exchequer for three years without a single month of inflation; the purchasing power of our money remained the same through all his period of office and unemployment at the end was very low. No one since the war has done that.

On the other side of the picture, how easy it is under our electoral system for a Government who know that there is going to be an Election in perhaps 12 months or eight months, to manage the affairs, half consciously or perhaps deliberately, in such a way that some inflation takes place and that some, perhaps fictitious, appearance of prosperity may have the effect of giving people the impression when the Election comes that things are going a bit better. And how few votes you have to turn under our present system to win an Election! You may make a difference of 20 per cent, of the seats with perhaps only 2 per cent. of the votes. I think that that is a very bad feature of our present electoral laws. Now we hope that these things will be reformed; and I am always glad to try to encourage anyone in either House of Parliament who tries to raise the subject. I wish that there were a possibility of something being done, but I am afraid that I cannot say that there is a great prospect of anybody in another place doing much at the present moment. The Liberal Party have only 14 seats and the Socialists are not likely to do anything about it because they know that since the war they have won no fewer than six out of ten Elections, sometimes with as great a majority as 180 seats; but never once with a majority of the votes, always with a substantial minority of votes. As for the Conservatives, I am afraid that a very large number of the Conservative Party have not got enough brains to see how much harm the present system is doing. So long as these conditions are subsisting together I doubt whether anything very exciting is likely to be done.

Now, my Lords, to the more immediate question. It is perhaps not so important in the minds of many of us but it is immediate. During the lifetime of this Parliament we may have a Bill to create devolution for Scotland and it is very important that we should get the right kind of Assembly. I think that it is very wrong and unfair that English Members here, in another place or anywhere else, should try to prevent the Government or this House or anybody who has any influence in the matter from introducing proportional representation in a Scottish Assembly because some of them say, "We are afraid that if you have an Assembly of this kind in Scotland it will mean that more people will want it in England." I think that that is a rotten argument and that there is nothing in it at all. We did not object —nobody in England or Scotland objected—to Ulster having proportional representation when Ulster had a local Assembly—or the Irish Free State. Since then, and before the troubles began, this electoral system has worked very well and with much better results than a straight single-Member constituency system would have produced.

My Lords, I sat in the House throughout the two days and listened, not perhaps to all 68 of them, but to very nearly all the speeches during our debate on Scottish devolution. Your Lordships will correct me if I am wrong but I think that very few who spoke in that debate were against proportional representation for the proposed Scottish Assembly and I also think that most of your Lordships who mentioned the subject were in favour of it. Of course, the best arguments that you can find for it are in the Royal Commission Reports on which the Government legislation was based—the Kilbrandon Report and the Minority Crowther-Hunt Report which strongly recommended proportional representation on all the grounds which were brought forward by the noble Lord who moved the Motion in speaking of the Parliament at Westminster. All the same grounds apply in a slightly different way to a local Assembly. Your Lordships will find that the people who wrote these reports on which Scottish devolution is supposed to be based show clearly the bad results which might accrue if we have a system where a small number of votes could make a difference to a very large number of seats and, in particular, a system under which one area might return members to the Assembly consisting of nearly all the same Party, while another returned members consisting of nearly all another Party.

I am sorry that the noble Lord, Lord Crowther-Hunt, is not in his place. We all sympathised with him when he had to wind up the debate and had to disclaim proportional representation at the end of his speech, having given the most brilliant argument in favour of it only 18 months before in his Report. He made the excuse that when he wrote the Report he was then living in an ivory tower. That raised my sympathy and pity very much; I hated to think of him being removed from this lovely ivory tower and being enslaved by a Government who I think one might reply are forcing him to wear an iron mask which prevents him from seeing anything he is not supposed to see or saying anything he is not supposed to say. However, I should like to be kind to the noble Lord, both in his presence and in his absence. because we all understand the position of a man who has to suppress his own views on account of his being a member of a Government.

One thing which happened as a result of that debate is that a few days later there was a letter in The Times written by two Members of your Lordships' House. One is my noble friend Lord Home of the Hirsel, who is one of the most trusted and admired men in all Scotland. I was going to say a lot more nice things about him but now he is in his place I will not do so because it might embarrass him. The other Member was the noble Earl, Lord Perth, who is chairman of the Scottish Peers' Association in your Lordships' House. These are two very weighty signatures to this letter. I hope the letter will be acted on and that, as they suggest, a conference will be arranged. If the Government will not agree to take part in it, let us have one composed of people of authority in Scotland, perhaps from local authorities and elsewhere, who might wish to take part in it. It will be far better if we can have people from both Houses of Parliament and if the Government will agree to look sensibly upon this.

It may be that we shall not have a devolution Bill as soon as is intended, partly because the White Paper seems to reveal such a muddle in the Government's approach to this subject that no one would be surprised if they failed to draw up a Bill which they thought could get through Parliament; but if they do we will have to decide this question in both Houses. I have not discussed this with anybody, but for myself I believe a local Assembly in Scotland which is elected on the present out-of-date system will do very much harm to my country. I feel this genuinely, and I ought to tell your Lordships that if that is done I will vote against such a Bill in all its stages even if I have to go into the Lobby alone.

Lord BOOTHBY

My Lords, before my noble friend sits down, would he answer one question? What real advantage does he think will accrue from the transfer of the Scottish Grand Committee in the House of Commons—the most boring committee in the world, as my noble friend and I both know from personal and long experience—from London to Edinburgh?

The Earl of DUNDEE

My Lords, I am not sure but I think my noble friend is a little out of date. This was proposed some five or ten years ago, but I do not think it comes into the present scheme at all.

6.6 p.m.

The Earl of KIMBERLEY

My Lords, I feel sure that the majority of your Lordships will welcome this debate initiated by my noble friend Lord Byers. It has always seemed strange to me that your Lordships' Chamber, which is basically undemocratically populated, is often a place where the principles, rights and freedom of democracy are much more strongly upheld than sometimes in another place, in the unions and in many other so-called democratic institutions and, in particular, the selection by political Parties of their prospective Parliamentary candidates.

My Lords, let us consider briefly the purposes and intents of democracy. These I feel could be basically divided into three parts. Democracy should minimise the practice whereby minority factions gain control of organisations as a result of a low turn-out of the eligible voters. Democracy should by every means eligible encourage voters to vote. Democracy should expose fully to the public those organisations which are unrepresentative of their electors. How can this be achieved? I do not profess to know all the answers, but I should like to try and make a few suggestions. Perhaps it could be that only elections in which a majority of voters from the electorate vote by secret ballot—postal or otherwise—should be deemed as being representative. Secondly, as my noble friend Lady Seear said, postal votes should be mandatory if the voter cannot be present in person. Thirdly, elections by a minority ballot should be deemed to be unrepresentative and therefore have no standing in that particular sphere. Lastly, any organisation that does not abide by, for want of a better word, these rules should, through its own default, cease to be known as a representative organisation.

Broadly speaking, these principles should apply across the board to all organisations, political, unions and social, particularly those with a membership of more than, say, 100 people, or where aggregates of subdivisions total more than 100. It may well be that my figure of 100 is totally wrong, but perhaps the optimum figure could be arrived at after further thought and debate. I should like specifically to mention the selection of prospective Parliamentary candidates.

Through the present method of selection by the two major Parties, trouble can arise from the most unexpected quarter—and I do not need to go into the troubles which have befallen the right honourable gentleman the Member for Newham North-East. I should like your Lordships earnestly to consider the Liberal Party's practice and code for the selection of Parliamentary candidates, which are not greatly dissimilar from the system of primaries. I beg your Lordships' indulgence while I quote one or two relevant paragraphs. The procedure may seem complicated at first hearing, but if any of your Lordships should feel puzzled by it I am sure it will appear much clearer when printed in Hansard tomorrow. The Candidates' Committee, consisting of the Chief Whip of the House of Commons as ex-officio chairman, a deputy chairman appointed by him, two members elected annually by the National Executive Committee and three members elected annually by a postal ballot of all candidates shall be responsible for the preparation of lists of approved potential candidates for aiding a constituency association in the selection of candidates and the training of candidates. Constituency associations shall use the following procedure when selecting candidates. The constituency association shall first inform the Secretary of the Candidates' Committee of its intention to select a candidate. The association Executive committee, or a selection committee set up by it, shall consider all names submitted to it by the Candidates' Committee or by any member of the association. This committee shall submit three or more names of suitable candidates to a general meeting but may submit fewer than three names if, in its opinion, there are not as many as three suitable candidates among the names submitted to it. The association Executive Committee may, by a two-thirds majority, decide to propose to a general meeting the re-adoption of a previous candidate. At least two weeks' notice should be given to all members of the association and to the Secretary of the Candidates' Committee of the place and date of the general meeting and of the names to be submitted. The general meeting, after hearing and questioning each of the proposed candidates, shall select one as their adoptive prospective Parliamentary candidate in secret ballot and by the alternative vote. The Candidates' Committee may in exceptional circumstances authorise the constituency association to vary the procedure. A representative of the Candidates' Committee and of the regional Party shall be entitled to attend and speak at any selection committee, executive or general meeting. Your Lordships will, I hope, note that what I have said constitutes a closed primary in two ways—

Lord HARMAR-NICHOLLS

My Lords, would the noble Lord forgive me if I intervened to ask him what is the difference between the procedure he has just outlined to us as "special" and that which is adopted in the Conservative Party?—because to my certain knowledge they have been following such a procedure for more than a quarter of a century, and from what I know of the Party opposite, they follow a procedure which is not dissimilar. I am not criticising the noble Lord's description of their procedure, but it seems to me exactly what is in operation in other Parties and it is not "special".

Baroness PHILLIPS

My Lords, I should also like to intervene briefly, if I may, because it seems to me that this is exactly the procedure which has been followed in the Labour Party. However, what seems very important to me is the matter of how people get on to the candidate's list, and that is something which the noble Earl did not explain.

The Earl of KIMBERLEY

My Lords, if I may take first the question which was put by the noble Lord, Lord Harmar-Nicholls, I may well be under a misapprehension. I did not think that was the way in which it was done, but if I am wrong I must apologise. As regards the question which was put by the noble Baroness, I understand she was asking how one got on to the candidates list. The candidates are voted centrally in London. Does that help the noble Baroness?

Baroness PHILLIPS

Not particularly, my Lords. I hope the noble Lord will forgive me, but I thought he was making the point that he had a different system. I should like to endorse what was said by the noble Lord, Lord Harmar-Nicholls, From what was said, it does not appear to be a system which is very different, if at all different, from procedures followed at the moment by the Labour Party and, from what I know of the Conservative Party, from that Party, either.

The Earl of KIMBERLEY

My Lords, as I said, it is very possible that I may have been under a misapprehension. I thought there was a difference and I said what I said in good faith. However, I should like to continue by saying that the voters are limited to the members of the association, and this is obviously a provision which everybody in this Chamber will strongly support. Secondly, the nominations can come only through the association executive. Therefore, each Liberal, and possibly each Tory and Labour member, has a genuine say in the election of a candidate. I was under the impression that this does not always happen but certainly, so far as I know, in the Liberal Party this practice seems to have worked out very well in the past inasmuch as certain constituency executives who have produced a Liberal candidate whom they thought would be acceptable to their members have sometimes been proved wrong. This has thereby produced a strong element of genuine democracy in what is sometimes one of the more shady and camouflaged areas of our so-called "democratic" political system.

6.16 p.m.

The Earl of LYTTON

My Lords, I was fascinated by the first three speakers, and must apologise for having failed to hear the two noble Viscounts, since I had to go out. I should like to begin by saying that, with one exception, I totally agree with the case made by the noble Lord, Lord Byers. It seems to me wrong—I do not know whether it is wrong in conscience and perhaps I do not know quite enough about conscience, although I examine my own fairly frequently—that a Party resting on one-third of the votes of the people in a country should be able to pursue legislation which is hotly distasteful to the other two-thirds. But that is what is happening, and I think it is fundamentally wrong.

I am hopeful that proportional representation would cure that, so that there would be an end to this rule by a minority over a very hostile Opposition, taking the country as a whole—not on all matters of legislation but on some very important matters. Therefore, that is what I would hope for. If I were asked to vote for a method of doing this, I would do my utmost to get a single Member for a constituency, because I feel that the "fathering" of a constituency by one Member is very valuable in social and other relationships. If multi-Member constituencies proliferated, it would add one more impersonal factor to a situation which is already bedevilled by impersonal relationships in so many large institutions. I was going to add my support to the noble Baroness, Lady Seear, who was the first person I heard endorsing the necessity for a very thorough process of selecting candidates. 1 now transfer my support to the noble Baroness, Lady Phillips, because I am really bothered by the question of how they get on the list at all. I have the feeling that once they get on to the short list the business is probably well and fairly done. How do they get on to the short list? I think I am probably bothered by the same idea as the noble Baroness: I do not know whether the noble Lord, Lord Byers, can enlighten us about that. However, in the matter of the trades unions and the way they vote, that surely is equally important.

If, for example, in national Parliamentary Elections the poll was regularly under 50 per cent., I think I should very strongly support a compulsory vote as there is in some countries, so that people would be obliged to vote. I have heard today—it may have been from the noble Lord, Lord Campbell of Croy—that, by means of the postal vote, the voting for union officials has moved in some cases from 6 per cent. to 37 per cent. I was familiar with the figure of 6 per cent. and I have always thought it a horrifying concentration of power in the hands of a few activists. But 37per cent. is rather poor, and I should have thought we had in some way to move towards something more representative. One mentions that now because of the power exercised by the trade unions.

I think one must now face the fact that if there is proportional representation there will be a permanent Coalition, by which I mean that if there is minority government the Coalition is unseen; it is a crypto-Coalition. It may be a shifting Coalition from one Bill to another, and not a formal one. But I think that, in one way or another, Coalition will be the Government of the future and I accept it. I have been worrying about it for many years, and I think that that will come.

I am not certain that the noble Lord, Lord Shinwell, has the same ideas about the Coalition which he advocates. Incidentally, I was once more fascinated from the beginning to the end of his 30-minute speech, which kept a smile on my face the whole time. How he does it at 90, I do not know. But I gathered from his speech the other day that he was advocating, for the cure of our inflationary problem—which is a great crisis, indeed—a Coalition which would he of a different kind. Although it was reported in the Press that he had talked of a Coalition for seven years, I think he meant for only several, perhaps having in mind three years or thereabouts.

But the Coalition that we are arguing about today is different. I have a feeling that it is too late and the opportunity has gone for that kind of Coalition in this Parliament. On the other hand, I think that proportional representation, if and when implemented, will change our system of government into a permanent Coalition, and I do not mind. I do not like the spectacle of the Conservatives being influenced unduly by their extreme Right, as I have seen happen, or the Labour Party by their extreme Left. Moderate men in both Parties find that distasteful, but they have to placate their extremists who are people with nothing to lose; therefore, we all suffer.

Another thing which I would readily accept is a waiting period after General Elections, during which no legislation at all takes place. I would regard that as a breathing space and would look upon it as an interval of extreme relief, because we legislate too much. If there were a crisis pending, deliberations would soon he brought to a conclusion and people would decide. It is only when things were going reasonably well that deliberations would last for weeks.

I come now to the point at which I would respectfully disagree with the noble Lord, Lord Byers. Even if we have proportional representation and it gets rid of the minority control over our affairs, I do not think that we shall effect an enormous measure of cure of our present ills. The ills from which we suffer have been indicated in unexpected quarters—one in a speech to which I referred earlier, that of Mr. Harold Wilson addressing the miners on 7th July last year, and the other in a little article by Bryan Magee in The Times of, I think, the day before yesterday—which show that we have reached a kind of cul-de-sac in the process of the redistribution of resources. We have been moving from the bourgeois, the well-to-do, to the workers, and we have reached a point where a very large proportion of the workers have moved to bourgeois standards and are enjoying a standard of living superior to that of the lower middle classes. They are getting more money to spend.

Mr. Wilson's remarks to the miners indicated that further transfer of wealth by what is conventionally known as "soaking the rich"—an expression which he did not himself use, although he used an expression which meant that—had come to an end. There were no further possibilities in that line. Any further subsidies of this and that would mean additional taxation, additional inflation, and the taxation in that case would not be taxation of the well-to-do, but taxation of everybody—of everybody's beer and of the commodities that we all use. Therefore, we have reached the end of the road.

I am one of those who feel that the disturbance from which we suffer is that we have created, among the workers of our country, persons of a bourgeois standard of life who have not acquired the bourgeois responsibilities of the past. They do not have the stability of ownership. I am talking not of the ownership of Dukes, Marquesses, Earls and people of the class of life from which I have emerged, but of everybody. I have often wondered why we made no progress when, 20 years or so ago, the Conservative Party was talking about a property-owning democracy—in other words, everybody with at least a house and a garden as a foundation of stability—and whether that target could be revived. There are so many people who own things which are of a decaying nature, even the motor car for which people save for years. Its life is only eight to 10 years at the very outside. It is a dreadful delusion to think that you are stable and well-to-do in saving up for a motor car, and then find that it decays in your hands and you have to save again.

It seems to me that the hugely expensive process, whereby the Treasury takes money from taxpayers and then redistributes benefits largely to the same taxpayers at enormous expense both in taking away and in redistributing, should be slowly transformed into self-insurance groups and many other systems, whereby the growing number of well-to-do people may opt out of what is a kind of servile state and once more become independent. In other words, what I have always looked for is that the working classes, as they used to be called, should become small bourgeois people and not the other way around. I am only too aware of the immense scorn which Marx poured on that kind of person. Nevertheless, he is the person whom I should wish to see come about. I want to see a multiplication of small people of minor substance owning houses, a small plot of land and a good many other things such as nice furniture, with a great choice of things which do not decay in their hands and which give them stability, and I would take the risk that in that process they might become Conservatives.

6.30 p.m.

Lord ALPORT

My Lords, my noble friend Lord Campbell of Croy is one of the most attractive Members of this House, whose fluency and style I, for one, greatly admire, but this afternoon he appeared to me to have something less than a wholehearted conviction for the arguments that he advanced. Having enumerated the weaknesses of proportional representation, he went on to show that those weaknesses were even more pronounced in the present system. Having dismissed proportional representation for Westminster, he appeared to welcome it for Edinburgh, or at least for Belfast. Having drawn attention to all the disadvantages of coalition, he went on to criticise the Liberal Party for failing to take advantage of Mr. Heath's coalition offer of 1974. He admitted that a vast majority of moderate, patriotic, middle-of-the-road folk would like to see some kind of coalition between some Conservatives, some Social Democrats and some Liberals, and then said that this was impossible because the Party activists would not allow it. That suggestion brought me to a consideration of the definition by the noble Lord, Lord Shin-well, of democracy and how far it could be reconciled with that definition. My noble friend ended his speech by giving a really formidable catalogue of the defects and failures of our present system, which would make almost any alternative seem preferable. He is a brand, I am sure, which in due course will be saved from the burning, and if this debate contributes to that in any way our thanks are due to the noble Lord, Lord Byers, for having initiated this debate.

My noble friend referred to a debate on electoral reform which I was able to initiate in your Lordships' House last year. I think it was the first—of recent years, at any rate which originated from the Conservative Benches in Parliament. I said then that in future the Liberal Party could look for reinforcements in its long and tenacious campaign. I was astonished as a result of that debate to discover the great weight of support which now exists and is mobilised behind this issue. There is now an effective group in the Conservative Party, headed by Mr. Anthony Wigram. There are a number of influential Conservative Members of the other place who support electoral reform. For the first time in history, so far as I know, there has been a full dress debate on the subject at a Conservative Party Conference. There are, I know, a number of experienced Conservatives in this House who are as convinced as I am of its importance and its inevitability. As the noble Lord, Lord Gladwyn, pointed out earlier this afternoon, those who take a realistic view of the future of the European Community, and those who are interested in and concerned with the devolution issues in Scotland and Wales, all seem to have come to the conclusion that electoral reform or proportional representation is an essential ingredient in the creation of effective representational systems for those various Assemblies.

We know very well that outside Parliament there is strong support among leading figures in banking, industry and the law, and also among political journalists of standing and repute, for this issue of electoral reform. It was always to be expected that the establishments of the Parties would be somewhat behind the front runners in this field. In so far as this is due to a fear that electoral reform might increase the influence of the minority Parties, and the Liberal Party in particular, I frankly have little patience with them. Speaking personally, I can say that I won my first election in 1950, only because I had Liberal support although there was, in fact, a Liberal candidate in the field. The Liberal Unionists of the Chamberlain era and the Liberal Nationals of the 1930s and their successors, like my noble friend Lord Drumalbyn, of the post-war period, have always formed part of a continuing coalition over a long period of time with what some people like to call the "true blue" Tory Party. That my noble friend Lord Thorne croft and Mr. Angus Maude should concert their considerable influence and powers of eloquence in a determined effort to stamp out the electoral reform movement in the Conservative Party at last year's Black pool Conference seems to me to have been unwise. I can only assume that they were so recently appointed to office that they were inadequately briefed on contemporary trends in the Party and on political opinion in the country.

Let me confine myself in the rest of my remarks to the two objections to proportional representation which are at present fashionable: first, that the introduction of proportional representation will lead to weak government. I personally am not enamoured of strong Party government, either of the 1970 to 1974 or of the 1974 to 1976 kind, which has forced through policies against the wishes and judgment of the sober, sensible majority of folk in Britain who occupy the centre, or the middle, or the common ground, if that is the description your Lordships would prefer. I feel that that is no objection at all. The consequence of what has been known as strong Party government is that great issues, which should be solved only by the consensus of a united nation, or at any rate by the realistic-minded moderate majority, have been decided on the terms dictated by the power of sectional and nationalistic minorities.

My noble friend Lord Selkirk said in a recent debate that his doubts about proportional representation derived from his recollections as a student of the Germany of the Weimar Republic. This is always the skeleton that is pulled out to frighten public opinion in Britain, but Britain of the 1970s is not Germany of the 1920s. We have centuries of experience of Parliamentary democracy behind us. Germany then had less than a decade of Parliamentary democracy. We have the advantage of the historic continuity of our political institutions and of our national life, which Germany had had for only about 50 years. They were defeated in war and we were the victors. I believe that the danger which we face is more likely to arise from our failure to make good use of the underlying strength of our political inheritance to make the changes which are necessary than from any uncertainty which change must inevitably involve.

Secondly, those who oppose proportional representation in the form, perhaps, of a single transferable vote say that it will destroy the identification of Members of Parliament with the territory—the constituency, that is—which they are elected to represent and the people who live there. I think we should realise that the territorial constituency is a hangover from the feudal period and from the rotten boroughs. My predecessor but one in Colchester appointed and paid his agent just as he paid the factor on his estate and the stipend of a parson whose benefice was in his gift. I myself always enjoyed identification with my territorial constituency.

I remember very well when, at the Dog and Pheasant farm I drove across the boundary from my noble friend Lord Butler's constituency at Saffron Walden and saw the splendid herd of Friesians in the fields by the roadside, I used to say to myself, "Ah, my cows", and that when I saw the lights of Colchester I said, "Ah, my town". I know what it is to have a love affair with somewhere in the Provinces of England and to feel a sense of fulfilment which has nothing to do with either ambition for office or the pursuit of power. But all this is quite unnecessary as an ingredient in a truly representative form of government or in ensuring the prudent exercise of judgment in national affairs. The territorial principle, the closeness of the representative to his constituents is, and truly should be, applied to local government, but not in my view necessarily to the government of the nation at Westminster.

If I may take my own example to illustrate my argument from personal experience and in a simple manner: if, for instance, I had been elected as one of the four Members for North-East Essex in a multiple Member constituency with my noble friend Lord Butler of Saffron Walden, Mr. Ridsdale (now the honourable Member for Harwich) and Mr. Harrison, who was then the honourable Member for Maldon, under a system of proportional representation I believe we would have been just as good Tories, just as good Essex Members; we would have been just as close to the problems of that part of the world which we represented and, what is to me so important, my Lords, we would almost certainly have been less vulnerable to local, personal and political pressures. These pressures have forced so many experienced Parliamentarians to cut short their careers and deprive the country of their services in what is, after all, the most important and most difficult of all professions, which the late S. F. Oliver called "the endless adventure of governing man". And if one of us—myself for example—had been forced, through the system of proportional representation, to give place in the House of Commons to a Labour or a Liberal Member for North-East Essex, to that extent the representation of our part of East Anglia would have been so much closer to the expressed wishes of the electors at a General Election.

In replying to the debate last year the noble Lord, Lord Harris of Green-which, indicated that the Prime Minister would agree, if the other Party Leaders were willing, to refer the matter to a Speaker's Conference. Since then nothing has happened, and in any case, on perhaps more mature thought on my part, I believe that a Speaker's Conference would be too dilatory and its membership unlikely to be sufficiently detached from the basic issue to produce a fair and objective Report. A Royal Commission would take even longer and would perhaps fail to give proper attention to the realities, as opposed to the theories, of Parliamentary government.

I would therefore suggest to your Lordships that electoral reform should be examined by a Joint Select Committee. In this House we have an abundance of experience of the workings of modern Parliamentary government from the grass roots up to the highest office which anybody can achieve under the Crown. Let the House of Commons send to such a Joint Select Committee as vigorous and able a cross-section of its Members as it can produce. Let the Committee take evidence. If, as a result, they come to the conclusion that the present system of territorial constituencies, derived as I have said from its feudal and rotten borough past, is best; that the present system of faction in our Parliamentary life (or confrontation, which is the modern word) based upon an auction for votes which allows real power to pass to extra-Parliamentary forces is inevitable; that it is right that a Government elected by less than one-third of the voters should be able to force through legislation against the wishes of the vast majority; that in the latter part of the 20th century Britain must continue to be governed by an unrepresentative assembly which has lost the confidence of the nation; that the disruption to industry and commercial life caused by constant reversals of policy and repeal of legisla- tion are all essential to the government, and the best government we can find for this country, then, my Lords, I would accept their verdict and give up any efforts that I have made to make a change.

I realise, and other noble Lords have said, that the real malaise at the root of our problems here at the present moment cannot be completely solved by any form of electoral change or any form of constitutional innovation; but I strongly believe that the start of the improvement of the morale of the country depends upon the people of this country getting the sense that the institutions which govern, with which they are associated—our Parliament, for instance—are something which provides what to them seems to be a fair deal for all those who are part of our nation, who are the electors at a General Election and whose future for themselves and their children depends so much upon the good government and stability of this country.

6.46 p.m.

Lord WADE

My Lords, I should like to join in congratulating my noble Leader Lord Byers on his admirable opening speech and for approaching this subject from a wide perspective. I have only one specific point to make as we near the conclusion of this debate and it seems to me that this is a convenient opportunity for doing so. It has a bearing on the need for avoiding undue delay—a point which has been touched on by the noble Lord, Lord Alport. On the26th March 1974, I opened a debate on this subject and in the course of my remarks I asked the noble Lord, Lord Shepherd, whether it was intended that there should be a Speaker's Conference. I think a fair summary of his reply would be that the matter was under consideration. I was only asking for information. I had at that time a fairly open mind as to whether a Speaker's Conference would serve a useful purpose or whether progress might be made in some other way.

On the 23rd April of last year, as we know, the noble Lord. Lord Alport, opened the debate to which he has just referred. The noble Lord, Lord Harris of Greenwich, referred to me at col. 940 of the Official Report of that debate and I think he may have assumed that in the previous debate I had been advocating another Speaker's Conference to consider whether or not electoral reform should be introduced. I have no complaint if that is the assumption he made, but I should like to make my present position clear. I have given a good deal of thought to this. Much has happened since 1974, and I believe there is much greater urgency. Several noble Lords have also expressed that view, and there has been a marked change in public opinion.

With great respect to the Speaker of the House of Commons, whose impartiality is not of course in any way in question, I doubt whether a Speaker's Conference on whether or not we should have electoral reform would be the best course to adopt. It could so easily involve a waste of time if it meant going over all the old ground again, followed by a vote on Party lines. What is required is a decision of principle and then some method could be followed of deciding what is the best way to put that principle into effect. I believe it is reasonably clear that the majority of electors in all Parties are now in favour of proportional representation, and the numbers in support are growing.

Therefore, what is required so far as Parliamentary Elections are concerned—and I think this is true with even greater force with regard to devolutionary powers—is a decision on the best and most expeditious way of bringing about this reform. That this movement of opinion has taken place really does not require proving, but I will just give one very recent quotation in support. Mr. Ian Appleyard, President of the Leeds Chamber of Commerce, reported in the Yorkshire Post of 31st January this year, in proposing the toast of Her Majesty's Ministers at the chamber's annual dinner at the Queen's Hotel, said: I suggest that industry and commerce should use their not inconsiderable influence to persuade one or other of the principal political parties to include in its next manifesto the irrevocable pledge that it will introduce proportional representation. A few years ago I would not have expected that at a chamber of commerce dinner.

Of course there will be some opposition from those who do not like change, but I believe the reform will come sooner or later. I believe the criticisms we hear are reminiscent of the opposition to the great Reform Bill of 1832. It is very interesting to read some of those old debates. The opposition was based on fear of representative democracy. Today, the only practical question is how best to bring about a necessary reform, for how long will obstacles be put in its way, and how much will the country suffer in the meantime. I hope not for long. My own belief is that the sooner the advice given by the President of the Leeds Chamber of Commerce is adopted, the better it will be for industry and the country.

6.53 p.m.

Lord HARMAR-NICHOLLS

My Lords, I intimated to the noble Lord, Lord Banks, that I would be only two minutes. My name is not on the list of speakers, and I apologise for that. But one has heard arguments that did not altogether fit in with one's experience and at a time like this I think the alternatives ought to be on the Record. The last Election was my 11th Parliamentary Election, and if one takes local government elections into account, it was my 18th election, so one is bound to have formed a view as to the effectiveness or ineffectiveness of a system which has been in operation for all of that time.

It is clear that the bandwagon of some alteration, whether it be proportional representation or something else, is on the move, but personally I would give this warning. Whatever change may come about, it will be a bad thing for good government if one gives the Government of the day, whoever they are and however elected, an alibi to get out of any mistakes they may have made. The one advantage of the system which has been criticised so much today is that no Government have been able to have an alibi. They have had the power and have used it for good, or on occasions have used it for ill, but it has been recognised that they had the power when that thing happened. If we move to any system which gives any Government an excuse for the things that have gone wrong, then in the long run I believe that the effective government of the country will suffer.

If it is that things have gone right, they are entitled to claim credit for them, and are entitled to be re-elected, but let us not do anything which will give them any excuse, or what I would call an alibi, to overcome any problems that may arise from their wrong or mistaken approach. The one good that has come from the old system is just that. I do not want to chastise the Liberal Party because that Party is not really the subject for discussion this afternoon. But I am sorry that they did not join a Coalition when they had a chance after the February 1974Election. I said so to their Leader and to their Chief Whip when they turned it down. I believe they were driven away from that because of an avalanche of letters organised by the Young Liberals of the day—and we all know how effective that sort of lobby can be when it is pushed at you at a critical and emotional time after an Election.

On the other hand, for the good of the 6 million people who voted for them, and for the good of the country, I believe they should have shown that, under the old system, it was possible for an anti-Socialist group to represent what were the views of the country; because one thing the country made clear from their votes was that, at that time, they did not want the Socialism which was presented in the Manifesto. The Liberals, because they did not join in, thwarted that.

My Lords, I was disturbed at what might possibly arise from any new procedure relating to the conclusion of the noble Earl, Lord Lytton, who said that if it took the form suggested by various people today we should have a permanent Coalition. I do not believe a permanent Coalition would be good for this country, with its industrial need for virility, and so on. I believe a coalition is a valuable part of the existing governmental system. The value of a Coalition is that it comes into being only when there is a state of crisis, when there is something terribly important, when the message has to be given to the nation and the world that the groups are coming together to deal with a specific problem. We had such a thing in 1931, and it worked; we had such a thing in 1939, and it helped us to have the strength to win the war. I should like to keep this valuable impetus that can come from a coalition, and to have the special value of it only being used when necessary to distinguish it from the normal run-of-the-mill Government. If as a result of proportional representation we have permanent Coalition, it cannot be good. I say to the noble Lord. Lord Alport, that the morale of the nation needs something today, otherwise we shall sink into the abyss from which we shall not be able to recover in half a century. But a Coalition that would be permanent would not do that.

My Lords, I believe a Coalition is good when it can be produced to meet a specific demand or problem, but I believe it is not good if it will be a permanent feature of government itself. I am trying very hard to keep to my two minutes, but the noble Lord emphasised the importance of the subject. He raised the point which people react to. It is right that those who operate the system should have their views on record. If we could get the leaders of the three Parties to find some way of approaching the overwhelming problems of the nation today by now having a Coalition, from that Coalition not only could some of the answers to the other problems arise but we could get a reform of government procedure which may well be proportional representation, or something else. We could get a realignment of Parliament. I would urge noble Lords who are placing their views on record today not to recommend anything which would give any Government, however elected, an alibi for their mistakes. In the long run, that would not be good government.

Viscount HANWORTH

My Lords, before the noble Lord, Lord Harmar-Nicholls sits down, may I ask him whether I am correct in assuming that he attaches enormous importance to being able to criticise a Government later for their mistakes? Does the noble Lord really think that, with the problems we have today, this is a very profitable exercise? Does he believe that the nation as a whole cares very much about this final analysis of mistakes made some time ago, when it is faced with immediate problems?

Lord HARMAR-NICHOLLS

My Lords, I am afraid the noble Viscount, Lord Hanworth, did not quite get my point. That is my fault. I am not talking about the theory of government. It is good government for a distinctive group of men who have views to have the power to put those views into active operation. If the active views of those who form a Government are successful, they ought to have another term of office. If those views and the power to implement them prove to be unsuccessful, the electorate will remove those men and replace them with another group of men who again have been thinking to put their views into operation. If you have a permanent soporific of a coalition, a consensus that comes out of it, you will never get the new thinking that the nation needs from time to time.

I never criticise what was called "stop-go". In any business, in any country, you have periods where you go, and then come up against problems and stop, and then move on again. There is no steady graph in business or in Government which is level, steady and easily recognisable. It is that sort of movement, of "Stop-go," which really gets us in the long run, to do something positive, instead of merely talking and being soporific in our outlook.

7 p.m.

Lord BANKS

My Lords, I am sure there will be general agreement in the House today that the subject chosen for discussion by my noble friend Lord Byers is one of great topicality. The noble Lord, Lord Alport, referred to the growing interest in the subject, and indeed the growing support for electoral reform. Reference has been made during the course of our debate this afternoon to the recommendation of the Kilbrandon Commission, for example, that elections to regional assemblies, to assemblies in Scotland and Wales, or, if we have them later, assemblies in regions of England, should be by the system of proportional representation, by the single transferable vote. We have seen the reintroduction in recent years of that system into Northern Ireland for the Assembly, the Convention, and local Government. There has been discussion about the relation of electoral reform to direct elections to the European Parliament, and various important points in connection with that were put forward earlier by my noble friend Lord Gladwyn.

I think there is a growing feeling, as my noble friend Lord Byers said when he opened the debate today, that the electoral system is a root cause of confrontation politics, and it is not only informed opinion but also popular opinion which is coming to support electoral reform. During the same week in October last year the London Evening Standard and the Sun both carried opinion polls which showed that about two-thirds of those questioned wanted to see a voting system which would mean that political Parties, shades of opinion, were represented in the House of Commons according to their strength in the country. It is no wonder that this should be the case; it is not surprising, as we can easily see if we look at some of the results of the last General Election in October 1974. We find that fewer than half of the 29 million who voted in October 1974 elected all the 635 Members. A majority of the electors, 15 million people, were not able, after the Election was over, to say that their vote had helped to elect anyone; and in point of fact if those 15 million people had remained at home and not gone to the polls the result of the Election would have been exactly the same. A Party with 39 per cent. of the votes gained an absolute majority of the seats, and reference to that has been made several times this afternoon. In England, a Party with 20 per cent. of the votes got only 8 out of 516 seats, and in Scotland a Party with 36 per cent. of the votes got 41 out of 71 seats.

During the course of the debate, there has been a great deal of support, which we have greatly welcomed, from all quarters of the House for electoral reform and for proportional representation in particular. Until the noble Lord, Lord Harmar-Nicholls, spoke, I was going to say that the only hostile speech was perhaps that of the noble Lord, Lord Campbell of Croy. He said that there were advantages in the system of proportional representation, but he felt that we had put them so well that he should concentrate on what he considered to be the disadvantages. He said that proportional representation was a matter of consequence to the Liberal Party, as if it were not of consequence to anyone else. We believe it is of consequence to those 15 million people who voted at the last Election and secured no direct representation for the opinion which they registered at the Election. It is a matter of consequence to electors.

In listing the disadvantages, the noble Lord, Lord Campbell of Croy, said that it was likely to lead to a permanent state of Coalitions, and that point was also mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord Harmar-Nicholls, in his remarks just now. Of course, there need not be any Coalition if one political Party can secure 51 per cent. or more of the votes cast. There might be in those circumstances, but there certainly need not be. If one political Party does not secure 51 per cent. or more of the votes, then surely it is not right that one political Party should be given a monopoly of power, a monopoly of government in the country. If public opinion is so divided that there is not sufficient confidence in one political Party for the electorate to give it more than 51 per cent. support, then surely no political Party should receive a complete authority to carry through its policies in the way that the present Government, elected with 39 per cent. of the votes cast but fewer than a third of the total electorate, is able to do at the present time.

It has been said many times that all political Parties are in fact coalitions, and this is often said by people who are opposing electoral reform. They say: "Well, we have coalitions already, because all political Parties are coalitions". But they are coalitions at the moment which do not secure a majority of the votes in their support in the country. A reference was made to Germany, where coalition does exist, and the noble Lord, Lord Harmar-Nicholls, referred to industrial virility and felt that our industrial virility would somehow be undermined if we had Coalition Government in this country, although West Germany seems to have managed better so far as industrial virility is concerned with Coalition Government almost continuously.

The noble Lord, Lord Campbell of Croy, was rather critical of the pacts and compromises which he felt would be necessary if we had Coalition Government. He spoke of this with some distaste; yet it seems to me slightly inconsistent with a regret which he expressed later in his speech that a coalition had not been arranged in March 1974 between the Conservative Party and the Liberal Party.

Lord CAMPBELL of CROY

My Lords, I wonder whether the noble Lord will allow me to intervene. I am most grateful; I would not wish him to misunderstand. I was pointing out that this is a new situation for this country, to have proportional representation and then have to negotiate on policy. What I was saying was that even when there was the more straightforward case it had been difficult for the Liberal Party and had placed them in a difficult position.

Lord BANKS

My Lords, I should like to take up the point the noble Lord has made. I think it is important to realise that the present electoral system makes coalition very difficult indeed, because under the present electoral system if a Coalition Government are going to proceed to a subsequent Election, or even in the course of by-elections, they find it necessary under the present system to have an electoral pact; that is to say, the candidates of the two Parties in coalition cannot oppose each other. This tends to lead to the destruction of the smaller partner. This is one of the reasons—and there are many others—why the Liberal Party has resisted suggestions of coalition in the past under our present electoral system. Under a system of proportional representation, it is quite possible for candidates of the two Parties in the coalition to stand in the same constituency without splitting votes at all, because the system is not one in which that can take place. The electorate is able to choose between the Parties in the coalition without undermining the coalition or the structure of the Parties, and without undermining their independence, as tends to happen under our present electoral system.

Reference was made to the alternative vote, and the noble Lord, Lord Campbell of Croy, said—and I agree with him—that the alternative vote is not proportional representation, and indeed we do not advocate it. It would be better than the present system, because it would do away with split votes and would prevent people being elected on a minority of votes; but because it retains single Member constituencies it retains all the distortions to which the single Member constituency gives rise. It gives rise to distortion because in every constituency you are giving 100 per cent. of the membership, 100 per cent. of the representation, to a Party which certainly has not had 100 per cent. of the votes—it may in fact have had only 34 per cent. or 35 per cent. of the votes, or even less, according to the number of candidates who may have been standing.

Reference was made, too, to the fact that it would be bad to have Parties come together because the new electoral system had forced them unwillingly together, and that that would be a bad state of affairs. But all the new electoral system would do would be to make the result of the Election a reflection of opinion. It might be that that reflection of opinion made coalition necessary, but that is a different matter. If that reflection of opinion made coalition necessary, then the electoral system, for reasons which I have just explained a moment ago, would make coalition possible in a way in which it is not possible today. We are not saying from these Benches that coalition is always and inevitably the best way in which the country should be governed in any particular situation, but we are saying that it is an option which should be available, and which should certainly be available where no Party commands majority support in the country, and that the system which we suggest would in fact make it possible.

We welcome the entertaining speech of the noble Lord, Lord Shinwell, in which he said that some form of electoral system which represents true democracy is required, and that if that meant coalition, he would accept it. The noble Viscount, Lord Hanworth, said that some form of PR is absolutely essential. The noble Viscount, Lord Brooke borough, speaking from considerable experience in relation to this matter, advocated without reservation, he said, proportional representation for devolved assemblies. He drew our attention to the way in which in the South African election in 1948, even though there were only two Parties, it was still possible for distortion with the single Member constituency—taking into account the point raised by the noble Lord, Lord Alport—and that the Party which got the minority of the votes got the majority of the seats.

The noble Earl, Lord Dundee, did not want to see the old bad principles applied to devolved assemblies. We on these Benches join with him in that. We should like to see the old bad principles eliminated as soon as possible from the system of election for Westminster. We believe that if we had it, then, as the noble Earl, Lord Lytton, desired, we should bring to an end rule by the minority over the majority.

I would sum up in this way. If we were to have a proportional system, and if, in particular, we were to have the system of proportional representation with the single transferable vote (the system which we prefer), then no longer would it be possible for a Party to have a minority of votes in the country with a majority of seats in the House of Commons. No longer would more than half the voters be in a position where they could not point to any particular Member who represented them. This is relevant to the point raised about the link between the Member and his territorial constituency, because although you would have a larger constituency it would be possible for an individual to say, "At least there is somebody here whom I have helped to represent me", and probably something like 80 per cent. of the electors would get their first preference elected under the system of proportional representation with the single transferable vote, and that must surely strengthen the link between the individual and Parliament.

It would always be possible, if Parliament wanted so to arrange things, to say that in, say, a five-Member constituency after the Election was over it would be possible to divide the constituency into five areas, and perhaps according to the order in which the Members were elected, or in some other way, to allocate the five Members to an individual part of that five-Member constituency, so that there could still be a territorial link between one Member and a territorial area, if that was felt to be of such importance. It is by no means ruled out. Then there would be no longer the exaggeration of small swings of opinion which give enormous power to a small number of voters. There would be no longer the under-representation of substantial minorities, and no longer would the electoral system encourage and bolster confrontation politics.

May I say in conclusion what I have said in your Lordships' House before; that is, that the present electoral system has become a barrier to unity, a barrier to co-operation, and a barrier to the supremacy of majority opinion. Its reform has, therefore, become an urgent necessity.

7.17 p.m.

Lord HARRIS of GREENWICH

My Lords, I think we have all listened with great interest to the speeches made in this debate this afternoon. I am sure that the whole House has welcomed the opportunity of coming back to this subject. I have a particular affection for this issue on the grounds that I took my seat in this House on the day that the noble Lord, Lord Wade, produced the first of what has in fact been a run of three debates on this subject, in March 1974.On that occasion the noble Lord, Lord Wade, spoke about the virtues of proportional representation, as he has today. In April last year we had the speech and the debate initiated by the noble Lord, Lord Alport, who, as always, has spoken with great force and vigour this afternoon. It is right that there should be regular debates on this issue, because the noble Lord, Lord Alport, is right in saying that there is a substantial degree of interest in this subject both within Parliament and outside. However, I fear that even at the end of what is, as I have indicated, becoming a regular series of discussions I am by no means clear that we are any nearer to an agreed solution.

This year, as last year, the number of noble Lords who are prepared to speak in defence of the existing system has been fairly limited. For one appalling moment I thought that the noble Lord, Lord Campbell of Croy, and I—and we had a certain amount to do with one another during the European campaign last year—would once again be standing fighting together against every other Member of your Lordships' House. Fortunately, at the last moment we were saved by the noble Lord, Lord Harmar-Nicholls, who spoke rather convincingly about one or two aspects of our present arrangements, which have been dismissed a little too lightly in my view in the debate this afternoon.

There were two other elements in the debate which made the debate this year interesting, particularly to those of us on this side of the House. First of all, we had that extraordinarily interesting interlude where we had a discussion between the noble Lords, Lord Campbell of Croy, Lord Byers and Lord Avebury, later joined by the noble Lords, Lord Harmar-Nicholls and Lord Banks, as to what exactly happened when the Conservative Party and the Liberal Party were having a leisurely discussion together in March 1974 as to whether or not they were going to have a Coalition. I am bound to say, on the basis that there seemed to be a slight disagreement as to what people's motives were on that occasion and as to what each side was saying, that if they found it difficult to agree about events that transpired only two years ago, it might have been a rather disputative Coalition if they had in fact succeeded in forming a Government.

The second question which I thought was of some considerable interest today was the position of the Party opposite, at least so far as its Front Bench was concerned. Last year noble Lords opposite were led by the noble Earl, Lord Mansfield, and he began his speech in these terms: …I have to admit that over this matter I regard myself as an agnostic".—(Official Report, 23/4/75; col. 911.) He admittedly added the qualification that he was ready to be convinced, that he was bound to say that he had not so far heard any truly cogent evidence, but nevertheless he was on the side of agnosticism. With respect to the noble Lord, Lord Banks, I think that if he studies the speech made by the noble Lord, Lord Campbell of Croy, he will find that the noble Lord is a believer and not an agnostic the noble Lord. Lord Campbell, in my view gave a very clear indication of what was, in fact, the position of the Opposition in this matter. And, of course, the reason for the change in attitude is to some extent an indication of the success of the campaign of the noble Lord, Lord Alport, and his friends outside the House. What was decided at the last Conservative Party Conference by the noble Lord, Lord Thorneycroft, and Mr. Maude was that they had to bang this particular idea very hard on the head, otherwise it was going to get out of hand. That is why, in fact, there has been a very substantial change in the position of the Opposition since the debate we had about a year ago.

At the beginning of this debate, the noble Lord, Lord Byers, referred properly to the text of the Motion he has put before us and, in particular, to the reference he makes in it to the rapidly declining efficiency of the British political system". I know, and I would accept at once, that there are significant shortcomings in our political system, but without wishing to be in any way complacent I think that formidable criticisms can also be directed at the political systems of many other advanced industrial countries, some of which have electoral arrangements on a basis very different from our own. The noble Lord gave some indication in his speech of what he regarded as the shortcomings in our present arrangements in this country, but I am bound to say that at the end of his speech I was left wondering how one can objectively judge the efficiency of a political system. No doubt, any system in which the Liberal Party gains 5 million votes in a General Election, as they did in October 1974, but succeeds in getting only 13 Members elected to the other place could certainly be judged inefficient by the Liberal Party and, no doubt, by some people outside the ranks of the Liberal Party. Equally, I suppose, the Labour Party might have judged the system inefficient in October 1951 when it secured 230,684 more votes than did the Conservatives but found itself in Opposition.

I doubt, however, whether that means that the system can rightly be judged inefficient as a whole. In particular, it seems to me doubtful whether a change in the electoral system would necessarily lead to an improvement in the efficiency of the political system, even judged by Lord Byers's own criteria. I judge his argument, if I may summarise it rather simply—he will, no doubt, say rather too simply—to be that because a particular Party received X per cent. of the votes at a General Election, they should be allocated roughly—very roughly—X per cent. of the seats. That is an argument which I understand and, indeed, there are some electoral systems which provide for an answer of that kind, though not, I may say, necessarily the one which the noble Lord advocated this afternoon. But this argument of the noble Lord's assumes that the electorate is not itself influenced by a system of election and I think that this proposition is far from certain. We do not know how many seats individual Parties would have won under a different electoral system.

I accept at once that public opinion in this country is a great deal more disenchanted about our political system than it has been for many years past; yet I am far from convinced that this mood of dissatisfaction is primarily caused by our system of Parliamentary Elections. It is due far more, in my judgment, to the intractable character of the economic difficulties which have faced Governments of different political persuasions. Until we surmount these difficulties, I do not believe that any change in our system of election will lead to a significant change in the public mood. Certainly there will always be those at either end of the political spectrum who wish to sweep away our existing institutions—there are even some who would like to include this House in that objective—but they do not show, in my view, signs of growing significantly in number, though they certainly do sometimes in terms of shrillness.

Of course, I accept that our political system is capable of improvement. The noble Baroness, Lady Seear, gave some indication of the improvements she favoured making in the system and she was joined by many other noble Lords, and let me join her by giving some obvious examples of my own. I would certainly admit that there is still a great deal too much power centralised in London, and the Government are at the moment endeavouring to take some action to deal with this. I certainly think—the noble Baroness touched on this and she was joined by many others—that there are significant shortcomings within Parliament itself and I believe that all Members on both sides of both Houses have a responsibility for tackling this problem.

The noble Lord, Lord Byers, believes that the central problem is not this, but is the need to reform our electoral system. One thing that I find certain about electoral reform is the profusion of alternative systems and the fact that no one group of people can agree on which one of these is best suited as a replacement for what we have at the moment. There is obviously a substantial volume of literature on the subject; there would clearly have to be, given the fact that we had a Royal Commission on this subject in 1910, the Speaker's Conference of 1917, the Conference of 1930 presided over by Lord Ullswater, and the Speaker's Conferences of 1944 and 1965 to 1968. This abundance of material exists despite, or perhaps because of, the fact that the variables in any electoral system are fairly limited. They are principally the size of the constituency, the different methods of voting and counting and the principle on which seats are finally allocated. One can have a system of separate constituencies, as we do now, or one can have just one countrywide constituency, as in Israel and in Holland; one can have different methods of voting, such as a single choice, or an order of preference, but most interest is inevitably concentrated on the different methods of counting the votes under different systems.

At the end of the debate, the noble Lord, Lord Banks, referred to public opinion polls which had appeared in, I think, two newspapers, indicating that there was broad public support for a change in the electoral system to some form of proportional representation; but what form of proportional representation? The forms are very diverse indeed. The noble Lord, Lord Byers, and the noble Lord, Lord Alport, clearly favour the single transferable vote, but there is no unanimity of view on this issue. There are, by my calculations, at least six separate systems, including our present system of election—the first past the post. We have, in Australia, the alternative vote which is used for elections to the House of Representatives. Under this system, voters are required to give an order of preference to all candidates in the constituency, and if no candidate achieves an absolute majority on the basis of first preference then the second preferences of the bottom candidate are allocated to the others.

This process continues until one candidate emerges with an absolute majority. I suspect that system is rather more favoured in this country than it is in Australia because one can get some very strange results with a system of that sort. Nevertheless, there are perfectly legitimate differences of opinion as to whether this is a system of election which we should have in this country. It can certainly be argued that it would be more fair, but I believe that there are other significant problems associated with it, some of which the noble Lord, Lord Campbell of Croy, referred to in his speech.

Then we have a variant of the alternative vote system, that is the second ballot system, as used in France. There, electors vote only for one candidate in the first ballot but, if no candidate has secured an absolute majority over all his opponents, a second ballot is held. In the second ballot, only candidates who have achieved 10 per cent. of the possible votes in the first ballot go forward and then a "first past the post" system obtains.

Fourthly, there is the single transferable vote system. It is this which has engaged the attention of many Members of your Lordships' House. Under the STV system, which can only operate in a multi-Member constituency—and we must recognise that there is no question of retaining our current system of single-Member constituencies if we go for a single transferable vote system—account is taken not only of a voter's first choice of candidate but also of his second and subsequent preferences. The voter marks on his ballot paper an order of preference for each candidate. By doing so, he indicates where his support should go either if the candidate of his first choice has already secured more than enough votes for his election or if his first choice has secured too few votes to stand any chance of election. The surplus votes of the candidate who has already been elected and of the candidate who is eliminated are redistributed to the other candidates in accordance with voters' expressed preferences, and the process of elimination and redistribution is continued until all the vacancies are filled.

If I may, I shall come back in a moment to the particular point of the relationship between a Member of another place and his constituents, but I should like at this stage to deal with a point made by the noble Lord, Lord Banks. I can see his problem: how is a Member to do his job if he is one of four or five operating over what is in fact a substantial part of the country? The noble Lord, Lord Banks, suggested that one way of dealing with this would be to divide up the constituency on a somewhat arbitrary basis—because all the people in that area will have elected each Member for the constituency—and for the four or five Members to meet and decide who is to have relations with which local authority and where they are to conduct their surgeries and matters of that sort. With great respect to the noble Lord, Lord Banks, I do not believe that there is the remotest prospect of a system of that sort operating. Apart from anything else, as the noble Lord, Lord Alport, quite rightly said, the Members may well belong to different political Parties. One of the virtues of the system mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord Alport, is that, for instance, the Labour constituents of what is in fact a Conservative-inclined area would feel that, for the first time, they had a representative in Parliament. I can see the force of that argument. Nevertheless, that Member, if he is one out of four or five, will have formidable problems in simply maintaining contact with his constituents in what will be an extremely substantial area of country.

Lord ALPORT

My Lords, if I may just develop that point, which is a very important one, the surgery and welfare services of the Member have developed over the past 20 years. They are done not because it is the Member's job but because, very often, he is taking over work which should properly be done by the local councillor and the local representative. It is extremely important that he should not be burdened with all that work and that it should go to the local man—the local representative of the council—who very often has the answer and has to act in the case.

Lord HARRIS of GREENWICH

My Lords, I am sure that there is great force in what the noble Lord has just said. I believe that it is undoubtedly true and I know that it is so from cases which I deal with as Minister. This situation arises from time to time, particularly in the area of housing in the major conurbations. Nevertheless, I believe that it would be a formidable responsibility which a Member, particularly from a minority Party, would have to fulfil in what would be a very large constituency. I believe that one must recognise that that is one of the problems associated with this system.

Lord CAMPBELL of CROY

My Lords, I believe that this is a very important point. The noble Lord, Lord Harris, and my noble friend Lord Alport have discussed the question of the four-or five-Member constituencies which would have to exist under this system and the fact that not all those Members would belong to the same Party. Even though, being fairly fresh from the other place, I sympathise with my noble friend's suggestion that more of the work which is now being done by Members of Parliament ought to be transferred to local authorities and local bodies, none the less those Members will be competing with each other because their constituents will be expecting them to do the work in question whether or not it is right that they should.

Lord HARRIS of GREENWICH

My Lords, that is undoubtedly true. The fact is—and I am saying something which I shall no doubt regret at leisure—MPs are often a great deal more assiduous in carrying out their responsibilities than are some members of local authorities. For instance, many more Members of Parliament regularly—and I emphasise that—have surgeries than do many councillors. Therefore, almost inevitably, they get shovelled in their direction a great deal of work which is properly that of councillors. Once it has been so shovelled, it is very difficult to get rid of it.

I now move to the fifth example of alternative systems. This is the Party list system which exists in Israel. There, each Party draws up a list of candidates in a specific order and the ballot paper contains the names of the Parties alone. The elector may vote only for one Party, and the seats are then allocated to each Party broadly in line with their proportion of the vote. To some, that may sound a fair system, but I believe that it has so many formidable objections so far as its application in this country is concerned, that I am extremely doubtful whether it would meet with any substantial support. For instance, it would make it impossible to have any relationship between an elected Member and his constituency because the Member's essential responsibility would be to his Party and not to a part of the United Kingdom.

Lord SHINWELL

My Lords, is my noble friend aware of the history of the Labour Party? Has he never heard of double-barrelled constituencies with both a Liberal and a Labour representative? They lasted for a considerable time, and even Keir Hardie was involved in such a constituency. It is surprising to me to hear all this because this is how we started. Is my noble friend further aware that, in 1900, the Labour Representation Committee started as a coalition and that there were actually Liberals in that coalition? Richard Bell, who was the Secretary of the railwaymen at the time, was a Liberal Member of Parliament. We had Liberals, though, as far as I know, we had no Conservatives. We had Lib/Labs and all kinds of people in the coalition and there were double-barrelled constituencies. That is how the Labour Party made progress.

Lord HARRIS

My Lords, with great respect to my noble friend, I was discussing the system in Israel, where there are no constituencies of any kind and where people vote for a Party and not for Members of Parliament standing for individual constituencies.

Sixthly, I come to the West German example. This example was referred to by the noble Lord, Lord Banks. It is, to some extent, a combination of the British single-Member constituency system, the relative majority system and the Israeli pure Party list system. Under the German system, half the deputies in the Bundestag are elected in single-Member constituencies on the basis of votes cast by the electorate in each constituency in what we in this country regard as the normal way. Each voter is, however, also entitled to vote for a Party shown on the ballot paper, and these votes are totalled nationally and used to distribute the other half of the Bundestag seats on a Party basis.

I should like to say one thing on this point because it has not been dealt with in the debate, and I believe it is important. We must ask ourselves a question, and it is related to a number of these alternative systems—some of them, but not all of them. Once there is a Party list it confers the most tremendous power on the headquarters of the national Party organisation. There is no doubt—and I concede it immediately—that politicians as a class are not the most popular group of people in this country. I am not totally convinced that the Party machines are regarded by the people in this country in a wholly different way, and that there would be widespread public support for giving them tremendous authority in terms of deciding who should be Members of Parliament. I think that it is a major issue and one which is involved in some of these systems, though not all—

Baroness SEEAR

My Lords, I am sorry to interrupt the noble Lord, but he is surely aware that the German system is on a regional, not a Federal basis, and therefore it is not completely under the control of the Party system.

Lord HARRIS of GREENWICH

My Lords, the noble Baroness makes a point as far as the German example is concerned. I was simply pointing out that a number of these systems—I did not specify the German system—in fact confer very substantial authority on a national or, it may be in this particular case, a regional Party organisation. We have to ask the question whether we are prepared to consider very carefully schemes of this kind which would confer substantial authority on the national Party organisation.

The noble Lord, Lord Gladwyn, dealt with a point relating to elections to the European Parliament, and I hope he will acquit me of any discourtesy if I do not deal with this at any length, all the more so because I have already spoken for 24 minutes. As he recognised in his speech, we are to have a debate on a Government White Paper which will be published in the near future. It is on that occasion that the important issues which the noble Lord identified in his speech should be dealt with, and I am sure they will be.

My Lords, I come to the conclusion of my speech. I end to some extent as I began, with a note of caution. There is a tendency at the moment for rather too many commentators in this country to seek a solution to our present national economic difficulties in some swingeing all-embracing reform of the system, whether it be the political system or the economic system. It might be rather agreeable for many of us if it were as simple as that, but I just do not believe that it is. In my judgment we will restore the confidence of our people in our democratic system in this country only if we succeed in our present struggle against inflation, and its directly related companion, unemployment. It is this, not juggling with our electoral process, that is the central issue in British politics today, and it is towards this problem that the Government are determined to direct their efforts.

7.43 p.m.

Lord BYERS

My Lords, I begin by thanking all those who have taken part in this debate, and particularly those who have given us support. I also with to thank particularly the noble Lords, Lord Alport and Lord Wade, who have been carrying on this series of debates with great effect over the past two years. The attitudes of the official spokesmen from the Front Benches were, I am afraid, predictable, although I got the impression that the noble Lord, Lord Campbell of Croy, was less inflexible than perhaps the Conservative Party had been some time ago. As for the noble Lord, Lord Harris of Greenwich, I am not going to refute all his points because it would take far too long to do that, and I do not want to reopen the debate. But he ought to be a bit more forthcoming on this issue. I detected far too much complacency. As the spokesman of the Front Bench of a Government who have just been defeated in another place by five votes, this is something which he ought to take in very carefully indeed. After all, they may not be there tomorrow. I would willingly give way if the noble Lord wants to make a farewell speech, or to add to what he has already said.

I feel that this is a matter of some urgency. I am extremely worried that we are going to have a deadlock situation in the next Parliament through the disproportionate preponderance of nationalist Members who are there on an unfair vote because they are over-represented in relation to Westminster. I give warning of this. This could easily happen, and it will not be an easy siutation from which to escape. I do not know how one would get out. That is why I believe that Speaker's Conferences and Royal Commissions are too dilatory, and they will not give us an answer to this problem quickly enough. Therefore I feel that the Parties should be brought together and we should find a machinery by which to determine this question.

In conclusion, I wish to say that I am so grateful that we have had this wonderful opportunity of hearing the delightfully incorrigible noble Lord, Lord Shinwell—and may he be incorrigible for many years to come. As soon as he is on the transfer list, the Liberal Party will be in business. My Lords, with the leave of the House I beg to withdraw my Motion.

Motion for Papers, by leave, withdrawn.