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The Report of the Independent
Commission on the Voting System Contents Volume 1
Volume 2
Glossary of Main Electoral Systems First Past the Post The system currently used for electing members to the British House of Commons is a plurality system with single member constituencies. Winning candidates simply gain more votes than any other candidate on a single count. This need not be an absolute majority of the votes cast in a constituency. The Alternative Vote (AV) The Alternative Vote, which like FPTP is based upon single member constituencies, is a majoritarian system. Winning candidates secure the support of over half the voters in a constituency. The vote is exercised by recording preferences against the candidates on the ballot paper. If no candidate receives more than half of the votes cast on the first count of first preference votes, the candidate who received the fewest first preference votes is eliminated and his/her second preferences are distributed between the other candidates. This process continues until one candidate has achieved an overall majority. Supplementary Vote (SV) The Supplementary Vote is similar in method and purpose to the Alternative Vote, the key difference being that, under SV, voters are limited to indicating a first and second preference. Where candidates receive more than a half of first preference votes cast on the first count they are deemed elected. If not, all but the top two candidates are eliminated and their second preferences redistributed. The candidate with the greatest share of the resultant vote is elected - in the majority of cases, but not necessarily, this will be with more than half of the votes cast. Second Ballot As with the Alternative Vote the main objective of the Second Ballot system is to increase the chances of a candidate being elected on an absolute majority of the vote. Voting takes place on two separate days. If any one candidate fails to achieve an absolute majority after the first ballot a second ballot takes place. Where more than two candidates are allowed to progress to the second ballot a majority result cannot necessarily be guaranteed but, typically, candidates not performing well in the first ballot will withdraw and throw their support behind a candidate with a better chance of winning. List Systems The rationale of list systems is to translate directly a party's share of the vote into an equivalent proportion of seats in parliament. The precise proportionality of such systems will, however, be influenced by such factors as whether the country is treated as a single constituency for the purpose of voting and the allocation of seats (some systems involve the use of smaller, regional or sub-regional units or two-tier districting), the use of differing electoral formulae for the allocation of seats and the use of thresholds. Single Transferable Vote (STV) The Single Transferable Vote system is essentially preferential voting (as in AV) in multi-member constituencies. Voters are to able to rank as many candidates, both within parties and across different parties, as they wish in order of preference. Any of those candidates who reach a certain quota are deemed to have been elected. The surplus votes of candidates elected on the first count and the votes of those with fewest votes after subsequent counts are distributed on the basis of preferences to the remaining candidates until sufficient candidates reach the quota and are, as a result, elected. Mixed systems: the Additional Member System (including AV or SV Top-up) and Parallel Systems (AMS) The title of mixed system describes any system which combines a list system element together with a plurality or majoritarian single constituency system. Under an additional member system, voters cast two distinct votes -the first for a constituency MP and the second a party vote. The allocation of additional members then serves to correct the disproportionality which arises from the election of single constituency MPs. Under a parallel system, the two votes are independent of each other and the additional members exist to mitigate rather than correct any disproportionality in the return of constituency members. Terms of Reference and Membership The Independent Commission on the Voting System was established by the Government in December 1997 with the remit to report within 12 months. The Commission started its work in January of this year with the following terms of reference. The Commission shall be free to consider and recommend any appropriate system or combination of systems in recommending an alternative to the present system for Parliamentary elections to be put before the people in the Government's referendum. The Commission shall observe the requirement for broad proportionality, the need for stable Government, an extension of voter choice and the maintenance of a link between MPs and geographical constituencies. There were 20 formal Commission meetings at all of which every member of the Commission was present. Membership of the Commission The Rt. Hon Lord Jenkins of Hillhead O.M Lord Alexander of Weedon QC Baroness Gould of Potternewton Sir John Chilcot GCB David Lipsey Esq We were exceptionally well served by our team of Home Office officials headed by Rosalind McCool. Gus Park provided fine intellectual stimulus until he had to leave us at the beginning of September. Ragnar Clifford who came to us in June proved an admirable replacement. Rosalind McCool and he worked exceptionally hard in the latter days to enable us to meet the exact target date which we had announced at the beginning of our work. Belinda Kay and Gemma Pearson provided good backup. Acknowledgements The Commission is extremely grateful to everyone who has contributed to its work within the UK and overseas. We have received over 1500 written submissions and letters from members of the public, academics, political parties, MPs, and lobby groups. A list of the main contributors is provided at Annex G. Particular thanks goes to David Butler and his fellow academics for their report on a number of technical issues and also to Professor Patrick Dunleavy and Dr Helen Margetts and to Professor John Curtice for the research they conducted on the Commission's behalf. We would also wish to thank the High Commissioner for New Zealand, Dr Richard Grant and the Ambassador for Germany, Herr Gebhardt von Moltke for their helpful contributions. Special thanks also goes to the British Ambassadors to Ireland and Germany and High Commissioners in New Zealand and Australia for their hospitality during our visits overseas, and to their staff James Tansley, Stephen Smith, Carol Hinchley and Brian Davidson who worked so energetically and successfully on our behalf in preparing for and conducting our programmes. We are grateful to all who gave their time to see us in the course of our visits. A full list of our interlocutors overseas is provided at Annex F. We are also grateful to Sir John Quinton, Chairman of the Metropolitan Police Committee for graciously allowing us use of his well-appointed room for Commission meetings. Finally, the way in which we approached our work is described at Annex E.
1. The remit which we were given by the government in December 1997 was to recommend the best alternative 'system or combination of systems' to the existing commonly-called 'First Past the Post' system of election to the Westminster Parliament. In doing this we were asked to take into account four not entirely compatible 'requirements'. They were (i) broad proportionality; (ii) the need for stable government; (iii) an extension of voter choice; and (iv) the maintenance of a link between MPs and geographical constituencies. 2. Fortunately the 'requirements' were none of them absolute. Otherwise our task would have been not merely difficult (which it certainly has been) but impossible. Proportionality may be 'broad' not strict. 'Stable government' in the context is necessarily a relative term, for the only way to ensure it absolutely (at least until the rÈgime blows up) would be by avoiding elections altogether, which would make our enquiry otiose. Voter choice is at once important and imprecise. And it is 'a link' and not 'the link' between MPs and geographical constituencies which has to be respected. This semi-flexibility has made it possible for us to aim at a point which comes near to reconciling all four criteria. 3. It must be stressed that there is no question of our being asked to impose a new electoral system upon the British public. What we are asked to do is to recommend the best alternative system which will then be put to the British electorate in a referendum. There has been some suggestion from the opponents of any electoral change (see for instance the House of Commons debate on 2 June 1998) that we should have been given the opportunity to consider the virtues of the present system and to adjudicate between it and all alternatives. But this is surely a misconceived argument for it would have given us a power which we do not have and do not seek. The one proposition which is guaranteed a place upon the referendum ballot paper is the maintenance of the status quo. Our rÙle is merely to recommend what the alternative should be. 4. Nevertheless it has in practice been inevitable that when considering the advantages and disadvantages of any new system we should have been constantly measuring them not only against each other, but also against what exists today and in the course of that we necessarily had to deploy arguments both for and against the existing system. It is further the case that none of us are electoral absolutists. We all of us believe that any system has defects as well as virtues. Some systems are nonetheless much better than others, and we have endeavoured to seek relative virtue in an imperfect world.
Chapter Two: The Meaning of Representation 5. Before we get into the comparison of the merits of different systems we think it right to set out certain assumptions which have lain behind our work. These relate first to our concept of 'fairness' in electoral outcomes; second to the place of political parties; and third to the role of Members of Parliament, who are an important outcome of any electoral system. Fairness and the Role of Parties 6. First, 'fairness', which is an important but imprecise concept. Fairness to voters is the first essential. A primary duty of an electoral system is to represent the wishes of the electorate as effectively as possible. The major 'fairness' count against First Past the Post is that it distorts the desires of the voters. That the voters do not get the representation they want is more important than that the parties do not get the seats to which they think they are entitled. Parties should, like the electoral system, be servants rather than masters, although in their case it is necessarily to a segment rather than to the whole which they appeal. If they aspire to be parties of government, however, that segment needs to be a wide one, and if the nation as a whole is to function well they need also to show some respect for the opinions of their opponents. Parties should not elevate themselves into mystical entities, enjoying special rights of their own. That way lies what can be described as the 'tabernacle' approach to politics, by which all virtue lies with those within the sacred temples and all those outside are eternally damned. Such an approach is almost certainly a recipe for parties getting above themselves, being intolerantly dogmatic when they are successful, and degenerating into narrow sects when they are not. It is also a recipe for the 'blame the other side for everything' confrontational style of politics, which has done much to reduce respect for the functioning of the House of Commons and for politicians generally, and which in the quite recent past has also encouraged a confrontational mood in industry, although that is less of a problem today that it was a couple of decades ago. 7. It is also the case that the near unanimous opinion which was expressed to the Commission in its consultative hearings around the country was a distrust of any electoral system which increased the power of party machines. While we do not deceive ourselves that the limited number who attended these meetings can be regarded as a representative cross-section, this persistent current of opinion, coming as it did from those who were hostile to any change as well as from the committed reformers and some who were more neutral, made a strong impression upon us. 8. Allowing for this, however, it is important not to be carried too far by a fashionable current and to pretend that representative democracy can function without parties. Within the Commission's own electoral systems context it is impossible not to use the results for parties as the principal criterion for measuring 'unfairness'. The basic evil is unfairness towards voters but its manifestation is unfairness to various groups, of which some (women, ethnic minorities) are not specifically political, but with parties nonetheless being the principal beneficiaries or losers. In saying this we are not unmindful of the argument that, in justifying fairness, what is sometimes called 'proportionality of power', as well as proportionality of representation should be taken into account. Just as the gross and persistent under-representation of a substantial minority cannot be justified, so it would be undesirable to correct that by giving to the minority such a permanent hold upon hinge power that neither of the larger groupings could ever exercise independent power without the permission of the minority. That would substitute one distortion for another. But a balance can be struck. If in the catch-phrase (and somewhat misleading like all such phrases) we avoid the tail wagging the dog this should and can be done without all dogs having their tails cut off. 9. Within a wider context it is also the case that any Parliament endeavouring to function without any party organisation would be an inchoate mass, incapable not merely of giving effective sustenance to government (and thus meeting the second of our terms of reference requirement) but even of organising its own business, from electing a Speaker to deciding which issues should be debated on which day. As, in addition, parties are mostly sustained by those with a spirit of public service, we do not see our role as being either on the one hand to denigrate parties or on the other to increase the already very considerable powers which are exercised by these necessary tools of democracy. The Role of the Members of Parliament 10. The role of Members of Parliament can now be broadly regarded as four-fold: to represent their constituencies; to provide a pool from which most of the holders of ministerial office are chosen; to shape and enact legislation; and to enable the party in power to sustain the central planks of its legislative programme whilst yet being held to account for its executive action. 11. The House of Commons fulfils the first two of these distinct but overlapping roles with marked effectiveness. There is no doubt that most of its members work hard in their constituencies and once elected regard themselves as representing the entire electorate within their constituency regardless of which party individual electors supported at the polls. This convention has been rightly valued down the years by almost all MPs. The workload of members within their constituencies has grown, as is illustrated by an explosive increase over the years in the size of their postbags. In contrast to the not so very distant past, members are expected to spend a lot of time in their constituencies. Our clear impression is that most members take this constituency responsibility very seriously and discharge it well. With devolution, this constituency role will not be so obvious for members in Scotland (in particular), Wales and Northern Ireland, since many of the issues a member has traditionally dealt with will be handled at devolved level. 12. Similarly few governments have not been able to recruit from the House of Commons a ministerial team which contains several stars and maintains a general level of competent and devoted public service. This is not contradicted by the fact that nearly all governments have found it necessary to bring in a few people not previously in Parliament for some ministerial posts. This has become notably so for Law Officers, Scottish ones for some time past, more recently for English ones as well. 13. By sharp contrast it is difficult to be at all sanguine about the performance of the House of Commons as a legislature. There is a mass of complex legislation each session. The tasks imposed on the relevant civil servants and parliamentary draftsmen are demanding. There is no doubt that in the past much legislation has been hastily conceived, and that imprecise ministerial instruction or sheer pressure of time have resulted in inadequate thought being given to the precise form in which legislation is brought forward. We hope that the increasing trend towards pre-legislative scrutiny will contribute to an improvement in the draft legislation presented to Parliament. 14. Legislation is not very effectively scrutinised in the House of Commons. In most cases, government MPs are expected to and do support the first and each subsequent versions of a bill equally faithfully. Usually only amendments which are introduced by the Government have much chance of success. The theory that any government always knows best or will assuredly get it right first time is not easy to sustain. Nor does the career structure of parliamentary politicians encourage many backbench MPs to concentrate on the painstaking, low-profile work of improving the quality of legislation. A lot is left for a revising second chamber to do. 15. Inevitably perhaps, the competing responsibilities of MPs do not assist them in the task of coping with the large and complex burden of legislative business. We believe nonetheless that there is considerable scope for some members to concentrate more fully and more critically on the legislative process and for there to be amongst the mix of members some who have appropriate expertise and temperament to undertake the grinding and often unnoticed slog of improving the quality of our laws. For on those laws depend the legal foundation and economic and social balance of our society. 16. The fourth, and for many the most central, role of the House of Commons is to ensure that the executive is held fully accountable for its actions. This task is hard when governments elected by minority votes can command large majorities. Fortified by the whipping system, by the natural loyalty to their leader of most MPs and by an equally natural desire on the part of many for political preferment, this can lead to what Lord Hailsham in 1976 memorably described as 'elective dictatorship'. He was speaking during a period of Labour government, which had been supported by only 39% of the electorate, but which was nonetheless pushing through what appears in retrospect at any rate to be some of the last gasps of a dogmatic desire for nationalisation - of the ports and of the aircraft industry. 17. A decade or so later, however, a Conservative government, with only a few percentage points more of electoral support behind it, pushed through first the disciplined enactment of the poll tax, and then, within the same parliament, its equally disciplined repeal. This was followed in the 1990s, in the last years of a government moving towards heavy electoral defeat, by further measures of privatisation, from the railways to the Stationery Office, of questionable popularity. In view of this record it may be thought that some greater diffusion of power through the encouragement amongst MPs of more independence and more concentration upon the legislative process would be desirable. Insofar as a reformed electoral system could assist in this direction that would be a mark in its favour.
Chapter Three: The Current System 18. Next we set out what appear to us to be both the qualities and the defects of the existing First Past The Post or simple plurality in single-member constituencies system (henceforth referred to as FPTP; a brief description of this and the other main electoral systems is provided on the inside of the front cover of the report). The Virtues of FPTP 19. First the virtues. It is the incumbent system. It is familiar to the public, votes are simple to cast and count, and there is no surging popular agitation for change. It usually (although not invariably) leads to a one-party majority government. It thus enables electors, while nominally voting only for a local representative, in fact to choose the party they wish to form a government. It then leaves each member of Parliament with a direct relationship with a particular geographical area, on a basis of at least nominal equality in the sense that they are all elected in the same way. It also enables the electorate sharply and cleanly to rid itself of a unwanted government. The case can be expanded in the following ways. i.By giving to all MPs each a unique position in their constituency for the period of their incumbency it encourages them to try to serve all their constituents well, and however partisan members may be at Westminster, to practise a more even-handed approach in their base. ii.The single-party government outcome may be seen as assisting quick decisions - although there are one or two examples to the contrary - and the implementation of a sustained line of policy. iii.Where a government fails, or at least disappoints, it can easily be punished by the electorate. iv.By its 'winner takes all' and 'loser (particularly second or third losers) gets very little' effect it encourages parties to broaden their appeal and thus discourages extremism. (It can also be said, however, that in certain circumstances it encourages extremists to infiltrate moderate parties because the system gives them so little to gain on their own.) v.It offers to unorthodox MPs a degree of independence from excessive party control, provided (as many of them do) that they can retain the support of their local organisation. Historical and Political Context 21. These are by no means negligible virtues, partly springing out of and partly providing the reasons why the system has persisted for a long time in Britain (although not, in exactly its present form, as long as is widely thought). There are one or two glosses which need to be put upon this list of virtues before more fundamental criticisms are considered. First the single member constituency is not an inherent part of the British parliamentary tradition. It was unusual until 1885, and only became the rule in 1950. Until the first date most seats were two-member, one (the City of London) four-member, supplemented by thirteen three-member ones in the large cities. These last were created by Disraeli's 1867 Reform Act, each elector having only two votes, the limitation introduced with the deliberate intention of providing for minority representation. Until 1950 a number of two-member boroughs persisted, in which it had been often the case that the two members were not of the same party; this was indeed the way in which most members of the early Labour party, frequently in double harness with a Liberal, secured their entry into Parliament. There were also the twelve university seats, three of which were two-member and one three-member, all of these multiple ones elected on a system of a Single Transferable Vote. 22. Second the FPTP system, although familiar, certainly could not be said in recent decades to have produced a House of Commons the functioning of which commands strong respect. There has been a long history of attempts to replace or at least substantially to modify the system. Many of these go back well into the nineteenth century. There were two high points of such attempts. First, the 1917 all-party Speaker's Conference which unanimously recommended a switch to a Single Transferable Vote system in the cities and large towns, accompanied by the use of the Alternative Vote in the counties. The various propositions foundered in a series of cross party currents with unfavourable votes in a not very well-attended wartime House of Commons. Then in 1931, under the second Labour government, a bill for the introduction of the Alternative Vote got through the House of Commons, but was rejected by the Lords and was lost with the break-up of that government in the following year. 23. The third occasion when there was a surge of criticism of FPTP was in the mid 1970s, when, following a perverse general election result in February 1974 (the Conservatives had a lead of 0.7% or 226,000 over Labour, but secured fewer seats, and the Liberals got only 2% of the seats for 19% of the vote), about a hundred Conservative MPs (in step with the CBI resolution of 1977) pronounced themselves in favour of electoral reform, the enthusiasm of many of them fading away during the long period of Conservative power in 1980s. However such fluctuation of view in accordance with changing party need has by no means been peculiar to the Conservatives. The Liberals were indifferent to the issue during their ten years of early twentieth century power, and as late as 1917 the London Liberal Federation even produced a pamphlet entitled The Case Against Proportional Representation. The Labour party showed matching hostility in the years from 1945 to 1979 when they enjoyed somewhat more than an equal share of power. The Labour party renewed its interest in the late 1980s which led to the admirable analysis of the Plant Report. There is enough here to prompt the cynical thought that there has been an element of 'The devil was sick, the devil a monk would be, the devil was well, the devil a devil he'd be' about the attitude of all parties to electoral reform. Their desire to improve the electoral system has tended to vary in inverse proportion to their ability to do anything about it. 24. The Liberal Democrats, in contrast with one side of their early twentieth century ancestry, are of course strongly in favour of electoral reform, and have a great interest in its effect. It is inevitable that when a system has heavily discriminated against a particular party, as FPTP has undoubtedly done against the Liberal Democrats, they are likely to be substantial beneficiaries of a change. But to have an interest in an outcome does not necessarily vitiate advocacy of it. Churchill had a great interest in victory in the Second World War. But that does not mean that the quality of his rallying cry should be dismissed on the ground that 'he would say that, wouldn't he'. Furthermore the Liberal Democrats are against the simple introduction of the Alternative Vote, despite the fact that it would be of substantial benefit to them. 25. We are of course aware of the considerations of realpolitik which have informed the bigger parties in framing their positions at and since the 1997 General Election. However, the narrow interests of the two parties are by no means obviously reflected in their positions. The Conservative party, which has often done well out of FPTP in the past, although not particularly so in 1992, was hit on the head by it in 1997. Not only were Scotland, Wales and all the big provincial cities (with the solitary exception of the Sutton Coldfield appendage of Birmingham) rendered an absolute electoral desert for them (in spite of their polling an aggregate of 1.8 million votes - or 17% of the total in these areas), but their overall reward of only 25% of the seats for 31% of the vote meant that the rest of the country was not adequately rich in compensating oases. Yet the Conservative evidence to this Commission shows that their faces are now firmly set against any change from the system which has temporarily treated them so harshly. The members of this cross-party Commission wonder, however, how fully the Conservative party has appreciated the longer-term nature of a bias against them which has recently entered the FPTP system and how additionally difficult this will make a quick and major resurrection. This point will be explained when we come to one of the broader deficiencies of FPTP in paragraphs 40-43 below. 26. The Labour party, per contra, has after many thirsty years had a cornucopia of luscious psephological fruit emptied over its head. FPTP, aided by some mutual tactical voting from and to the Liberal Democrats, has rewarded it with 63.6% of the seats for 43.2% of the vote. On a 'what we have we hold' basis 1997-8 might be expected to be the most improbable period for the Labour party leadership to contemplate electoral reform. Yet, perhaps on grounds of wider statesmanship, perhaps with a shrewd instinct that when you have as much as this you are historically very unlikely to hold anything like the whole of it, the Labour government, which is already legislating for a more proportional system for the European Parliament, the Scottish Parliament and the Welsh and London Assemblies, has set up this Commission, with the strong presumption that, if well argued, its recommendations will at least be taken seriously. If this disposition persists this Labour government will have the unique distinction of having broken the spell under which parties when they want to reform do not have the power and when they have the power do not want to reform. As a result of this knot the existing electoral system, in many ways irrational, and, to judge from most opinion polls on the subject, not particularly loved either, has persisted. The Defects of FPTP 27. The deficiencies of FPTP are principally the following, many of which derive from a natural tendency of the system to disunite rather than to unite the country. This tendency shows itself in several ways. 28. FPTP exaggerates movements of opinion, and when they are strong produces mammoth majorities in the House of Commons. Since the war it has done this for Labour in 1945, 1966 (less sweepingly) and 1997, and for the Conservatives in 1959, 1983 and 1987. While there is a considerable case for some clear cut results, there are also disadvantages to 'landslide' majorities, which do not in general conduce to the effective working of the House of Commons. Landslide majorities, our researches suggest, are regarded with considerable suspicion by the wider public, perhaps more so even than coalitions. It is also the case that recent large majorities (both in 1987 and 1997) have been secured with a smaller percentage of the total vote (42.3% and 43.2% respectively) than in 1945 (48.3%), 1959 (49.4%) and 1966 (47.9%). This is of course largely a function of stronger support for a third party. 29. The FPTP system is peculiarly bad at allowing this third party support to express itself. Half a century ago, at the great mass plebiscite of 1951, when 82.5% voted and 96.8% of them voted for one of the two big parties, it was a negligible problem. The fact that the 2.5% who voted for the third party achieved an even lower percentage of the seats, barely 1%, was not a serious distortion. Already by 1974, as had been seen, this 2.5% had grown to 19.3% of the vote, but still yielded only 2.2% of the seats. And in 1983 the third party, then known as the Alliance, got 25.4% of the vote and 3.5% of the seats. Even in 1997, when the third party benefited from tactical voting, it still got only 7% of the seats for 16.8% of the vote. 30. This under-representation of a relatively strong minority party is very much a function of that party's appeal across geographical areas and occupational groups. When a party has a narrow but more intense beam, as with Plaid Cymru but less so for the Scottish Nationalists, its representation, although by no means perfect under the present system, approximates more to its strength. This is perverse, for a party's breadth of appeal is surely a favourable factor from the point of view of national cohesion, and its discouragement a count against an electoral system which heavily under-rewards it. 31. The same properties of FPTP tend to make it geographically divisive between the two leading parties, even though each of them can from time to time be rewarded by it with a vast jackpot. We have already seen how the 1997 election drove the Conservatives out of even minimal representation in Scotland, Wales and the big provincial cities of England. During the 1980s the Labour party was almost equally excluded from the more rapidly growing and more prosperous southern half of the country. South of a line from the Wash to the Severn estuary and outside London there were, in both 1983 and 1987, only three Labour seats. It was also the case that as a result of both of these elections there was no Labour MP for a predominantly rural English constituency. This, also, is a bifurcation which has recently become increasingly sharp. In 1945, for instance, there were three Labour members for Norfolk county divisions, which were then more rural than they are today. And in 1955 there were, unbelievable as it now seems, eight (out of fifteen) Conservative MPs for Glasgow. Such apartheid in electoral outcome is a heavy count against the system which produces it. It is a new form of Disraeli's two nations. 32. One thing that FPTP assuredly does not do is to allow the elector to exercise a free choice in both the selection of a constituency representative and the determination of the government of the country. It forces the voter to give priority to one or the other, and the evidence is that in the great majority of cases he or she deems it more important who is Prime Minister than who is member for their local constituency. As a result the choice of which individual is MP effectively rests not with the electorate but with the selecting body of whichever party is dominant in the area. Unless the electorate is grossly and rarely affronted (as appeared to be the case in the Tatton division of Cheshire at the 1997 election), individual popularity in any broad sense hardly enters into the process at all. This is not an inbred deficiency in all voting systems. Both the Additional Member System (as in Germany, see paragraphs 55-61 below) with its two votes and the Single Transferable Vote in multi-member constituencies (as practised in the Republic of Ireland, see paragraphs 50-54 below) allow the voter to combine influencing the choice of government and expressing a preference between individuals as local representative. Voter choice and 'Making Votes Count' 33. The next criticism of FPTP is that it narrows the terrain over which the political battle is fought, and also, in an associated although not an identical point, excludes many voters from ever helping to elect a winning candidate. The essential contest between the two main parties is fought over about a hundred or at most 150 (out of 659) swingable constituencies. Even in a landslide election such as 1997 Conservative vulnerability or Labour hopes did not extend beyond the larger range, and in most elections the range has been even more narrowly confined. This indeed was explicitly recognised by what is regarded on all sides as the exceptionally efficient Labour machine in 1997. They concentrated their resources on what they had identified as the vulnerable hundred with all the clinical precision of the German general staff going for weak points in their 1870 or 1940 advances. Outside the chosen arena voters were deprived of (or spared from) the visits of party leaders, saw few canvassers, and were generally treated (by both sides) as either irrevocably damned or sufficiently saved as to qualify for being taken for granted. 34. To some extent the challenge of the third party provides an antidote to such complacency, sometimes threatening Labour in what would previously have been regarded as safe inner-city seats, and doing the same to the Conservatives in the far West Country and Wessex. This point can however hardly be called in aid of FPTP, for one of the most salient characteristics of the system is that it makes it as difficult as possible for a third party to win seats and thus does its best to render that threat innocuous. 35. The semi-corollary of a high proportion of the constituencies being in 'safe-seat' territory is not merely that many voters pass their entire adult lives without ever voting for a winning candidate but that they also do so without any realistic hope of influencing a result. In these circumstances it is perhaps remarkable that general election turnouts remain at or a little above a relatively respectable 70%, well down on the 80% plus of Britain in the early 1950s or of Germany last month, but a little higher than the Republic of Ireland or France and well up on the United States. As the Home Affairs Select Committee has recently argued, we should not be satisfied when 3 in 10 voters (although some of them are disenfranchised by an out-of-date electoral register) fail to use the five-yearly opportunity to influence their choice of government. Nevertheless we do not believe that this problem should be solved by compulsory voting. 36. Although FPTP is often referred to as a 'majoritarian' system this is an increasing misnomer at the constituency level. To a growing extent it is a 'plurality' rather than a 'majority' system. In the four elections of the 1950s an average of only 86 or 13.5% of MPs were elected without having the support of a majority of those voting in their constituency. In the two elections of the 1990s these figures have risen to an average of 286 or 44%. The change is of course a function of the growth of support for the third party (and the fourth in Scotland and Wales). But as a fundamental weakness of FPTP is that it is inherently ill-at-ease with anything more than a two-party pattern, this can hardly be regarded as an adequate excuse. It is a heavy count against a system which claims the special virtue of each MP being the chosen representative of his or her individual constituency if, in the case of nearly a half of them, more of the electors voted against than for them. Perverse Results 37. There is also not merely the regular divergence from a majority but occasionally from a plurality in the country as a whole. The perverse result of the first 1974 election has already been referred to. There was also the arguably equally perverse one of 1951, when the Conservatives, although polling 250,000 less votes than Labour, won a small overall majority of 17 seats and skilfully built 13 years of power on this slender base. The irony of that result for Labour was that in terms of crosses on ballot papers it was their best result ever. Both in absolute numbers and percentage of the votes cast they did better than they had ever done before, or have ever done since - better than in 1945, better than in 1997 - and yet they lost. 38. It may be said that, if two elections of the fifteen since the war have produced perverse results, that is in itself unfortunate, but it nonetheless means that thirteen have given the victory to the party with more votes than any other and that is on average not at all bad. However risks have to be measured by their consequences and not merely by their incidence. Two rainy days out of fifteen would certainly be an acceptable risk for the planning of a picnic, but an air journey which has two chances out of fifteen of ending in a crash would most certainly not be. Nor, in the days of controversy about the death penalty, would for most people be a two in fifteen chance of hanging the innocent. A false election verdict might be regarded as about halfway between the two categories, which is well short of saying that two distorted results out of fifteen do not matter. Nonetheless, in fairness to FPTP, it should be noted that other electoral systems can also produce occasional irrational results. Wider Representation 39. There is some, but not overwhelmingly strong evidence that FPTP is less good at producing parliamentary representation for women and for ethnic minorities than are most more proportional systems. In New Zealand, for example, (which we discuss in more detail at paragraphs 67-73) the proportion of women (30% of MPs there are now women), Maoris and ethnic groups increased dramatically following the introduction of a proportional system. And in Germany where a similar system is used the proportion of women in the Bundestag is 26%. Both are significantly higher even than the current UK figure of 18%, itself a great improvement upon the less than 10% upon which it was stuck for half a century. But the point should be noted without giving it a weight which it cannot bear. We can equally point to examples where a more proportional system has not been so successful in this area. In Ireland, for example, under the Single Transferable Vote rather than an Additional Member system, women make up only 13.9% of the Dail. We believe that, ultimately, under any system, it is the political parties who are responsible for candidate selection, and the matter is in their hands. Nevertheless, a party which has the will to increase female or minority representation might find it easier to do so under a system involving lists or slates of candidates than it would with a system which makes use exclusively of single-member constituencies. Bias 40. A more certain, and in this list final, criticism of FPTP is its tendency to develop long periods of systemic bias against one or other of the two main parties. These periods of bias (apart from that against a widely-spread third party) are not necessarily permanent but while they last they are very difficult if not impossible to correct. They are in this respect rather like a little ice age or period of global warming. 41. Bias essentially arises when a given number of votes translates into significantly more seats for one party than for the other. For the post-war period until about 1970, as the graph below illustrates, it ran in favour of the Conservative party and against the Labour party. It was largely a consequence of Labour piling up large unneeded majorities in its heartland seats (of which the old mining constituencies were the most conspicuous examples) while failing to pick up a full share of the key voters in the marginal seats. In the 1970s and the early 1980s there were fluctuations around an approximate equality. In the two elections of the 1990s, however, the bias of 1945-70 has drastically reversed itself. The number of votes achieved by the Conservatives in 1992 was not substantially different from that achieved by Labour in 1997. But the former election yielded the Conservatives only what proved a shaky and erodable majority of 21 (and one over Labour of 65) whereas the latter gave Labour an overall majority of 179 (and one over the Conservatives of 255). The discrepancy arises from a mixture of causes, ranging from the over-representation of Scotland and Wales (from which the Conservatives are now wholly excluded), through some inequality in the size of English constituencies, the Boundary Commission being almost inevitably a bit behind the game, and the impact of the Liberal Democrats being now (much more than in the 1980s) favourable to Labour than to the Conservatives, to the most important but most elusive factor, which is that the lowest percentage polls are in Labour (often inner-city) seats, and that in consequence a given number of Labour votes now produces more seats than the same quantity of Conservative votes.
42. The combined strength of these factors is such that there is now an almost unanimous psephological opinion that at the last election an equality of nation-wide votes between the two parties would have produced a seat lead of circa 76 for Labour, or, put another way round, the Conservatives would have required a lead of approximately 6 1/2 % to give them an equality of seats with Labour. In order to obtain an overall majority, taking into account the Liberal Democrats and the Nationalist parties (and the prevalence of such overall majorities and the consequent security of single-party government is the central argument deployed for FPTP) they would have required a very much more substantial lead. While there can be no guarantee that the next election will produce precisely the same level of bias, we can say with some certainty that the system will, for a given level of votes, treat Labour better than it will the Conservatives. 43. While systemic bias could, on the record, be argued to display a certain impartiality, running for one long period in favour of one party and then for another period in favour of the other, such irrational alternations must be held as a count against the system. It is moreover a bias which could not by definition occur in a fully proportional system and which would be reduced by any significant move in that direction.
Chapter Four: Electoral Systems and Stable Government: Experience of the United Kingdom and Overseas. 44. The case in favour of FPTP, set out at the beginning, has therefore to be tested against a very substantial list of deficiencies. Apart from its familiarity (which is a point needing to be handled with care, for it can be deployed against any reform of any institution) and its simplicity, the central argument in favour of FPTP appears to be that it alone can produce effective and stable yet democratically elected one-party government, and thus remain true to the best part of the British political tradition. The British Tradition 45. The first assumption to be examined in this context is that single-party government is a time-hallowed British tradition. The past 150 years, which began just before Disraeli's celebrated remark that 'England does not love coalitions', an aphorism delivered in a very specifically partisan context but since elevated into a general proposition, gives a reasonable sweep. It embraces both the classical period of widening empire abroad and widening franchise at home, when Britain was said to be the mother of parliaments, and the more modern period when, perhaps since 1918, certainly since 1945, we have been endeavouring to find a new balance as a medium-sized power. For 43 of those 150 years Britain has been governed by overt coalitions, sometimes almost all-embracing as in 1915-16 and in the Churchill government of 1940-45, and sometimes more politically skewed, as with the Unionist coalition of 1895-1905, the Lloyd George coalition in its peacetime manifestation of 1919-22, and the National government of 1931-40, but all involving a wider or narrower degree of cross-party co-operation. 46. In addition there have been 34 years in which the government of the day was dependent on the votes of another party (in one case of two others), although their representatives were not at the Cabinet table. Examples of this type of situation were provided by the Salisbury government of 1886-92, by the Asquith government between the first 1910 general election and the formation of the 1915 coalition, by the two short inter-war Labour governments and by parts of the Wilson/Callaghan government of 1974-79 when Liberal votes were crucial. 47. And on top of these two periods of 43 and 34 years respectively there has to be added another nine years in which the government of the day, while technically in possession of an overall majority, had it by such an exiguous margin as to give no certain command over the arbitrament of the division lobby. This was the case in the last year and a half of the Attlee government, the first year and a half of the 1964 Wilson government and during much of John Major's experience with the Parliament of 1992-97. It is therefore the case that in only 64 of the past 150 years has there prevailed the alleged principal benefit of the FPTP system, the production of a single-party government with an undisputed command over the House of Commons. 48. On the factual record it clearly cannot be sustained that (pace Disraeli) there is anything shockingly unfamiliar to the British tradition about governments depending upon a broader basis than single party whipped votes in the House of Commons. Nor could it be plausibly argued, as is sometimes theoretically maintained, that such a wider basis carries with it such a burden of compromise as to produce inspissated immobility in decision making. Some of the most formative (for good or ill) of the changes of the period under review have occurred during coalition or minority governments, or as a result of a crucial cross-party vote, even when the government itself had a nominal one-party majority. These include: (i) the mid-nineteenth century reform of the fiscal system which turned Britain from a country of sinecures and protected privileges into the foremost market economy and free trade country of the world; (ii) the imposition from 1886 (with a gap from 1892-5), as an alternative to Home Rule, of 'twenty years of resolute government' upon Ireland, (iii) the Parliament Act of 1911 with the major shift towards the elective sovereignty of the House of Commons which that implied; (iv) the National Insurance Act of 1912 and hence the beginning of the welfare state; (v) victory, whatever the price, in the First World War; (vi) the move from free trade to imperial preference in the early 1930s; (vii) the survival of the country and hence of Western civilisation in the early 1940s, and (viii) the entry into Europe in the early 1970s. 49. History within a British context does not therefore suggest that single-party government, while it undoubtedly has strong virtues, as will be expounded below, is a necessary pre-requisite for effective action. Coalitions are by no means necessarily flaccid or indecisive. Nor is this view contradicted by geographical comparisons. Two of our near neighbours operate under one or other of the two main branches of proportional systems, and while recognising that what works well in one country does not necessarily do so in another, it is nonetheless worthwhile to consider briefly their respective experiences The Republic of Ireland 50. The Republic of Ireland has operated under a Single Transferable Vote electoral system since the first days of the Irish Free State in 1922. This was fostered by the British in the last days of London rule mainly as a form of protection for the Protestant minority, but was in no way resisted by the new Irish government. (It was also introduced in Northern Ireland when Stormont was set up, but was then abolished by the Ulster Unionists in 1928 with the clear objective of strengthening one-party control in a two-community province.) In the Republic it has persisted, despite being twice put to a referendum by governments of Fianna F·il, the party which thought it had most to gain from a majoritarian system. The proposal for a change was defeated on both occasions. The first was in 1959 when it went down by 52% to 48%; this vote however coincided with a presidential election when Eamon de Valera, the candidate of the party proposing the change was overwhelmingly elected. On the second occasion, in 1968, the proposition to move away from the Single Transferable Vote was more clearly rejected by 61% to 39%. 51. The Irish multi-member constituencies have been rather small - three to five members - for achieving the full proportional potential of the Single Transferable Vote. For this seven to eight member constituencies are better. As a result the Irish results have sometimes been little more than halfway between what FPTP would have produced and full proportionality. But they have never failed to be well nearer to a fair representation of the competing parties than would have been the results under FPTP. Nor have they led to any divorce between TDs (Irish MPs) and localities. This has perhaps been made easier by the fact that Ireland is a small country. But, if anything, the complaint has been the reverse, that TDs are too locally and not enough nationally orientated. Members of the same party are often fighting as much or more against each other (in the constituencies) as they are against their opponents. 52. What have been the consequences for the political tone and the general performance of Ireland? The system has frequently but far from invariably produced coalition governments. Fianna F·il was in independent power for two continuous periods each of sixteen years, from 1932 to 1948 and from 1957 to 1973. There have been occasional periods of instability, but scarcely more so than there have been in Britain (1922-24, 1950-1, 1974) under the FPTP system. Coalitions have become more frequent over the past twenty years or so, and there has also been some proliferation of parties (beyond the previous 2 1/2 party pattern - Fianna F·il, Fine Gael and Labour) over the same period. But this is little more than in line with the erosion of the two-party duopoly which has occurred in Britain over the same span. On the whole there has been no excessive frequency either of elections or of changes of government. Indeed, particularly in the long de Valera years, the greater charge against the Irish system was that it produced a dead hand of immobilism. 53. More recently there have been continuous coalitions (with the Irish Labour party co-operating at different times with both Fianna F·il and Fine Gael), and perhaps a certain anonymity of leadership. Since de Valera there have been only a few Taoiseachs whose personality has lastingly impressed itself on the outside public. But this anonymity has by no means necessarily reflected itself in bad government. If the object of government is not to make a show for an international audience but to improve the lot of the governed, Ireland has done spectacularly well. From Cosgrave to Lynch to Fitzgerald to Haughey to Bruton to Reynolds to Ahern there has been stability on the most important aspect of policy, which has been that of co-operating fully with the European Community or Union so as to get the maximum benefit, both psychological (releasing Dublin from enmity as well as from subservience to London) and material, but using the substantial material aid not as a dole but as a springboard. The result has been a spectacular economic performance, with Irish national income per head now the rough equivalent of that of Britain, an equality which would have been simply inconceivable thirty years ago. 54. Furthermore, in the somewhat longer perspective of around eighty years, a polity born to an almost unexampled degree in destructive violence, first against the external 'oppressor' and then between different wings of the 'liberators', has settled down into a cosy and prosperous bourgeois society, the spirit of which is well expressed by the present day self-confident urbanity of Dublin. It would not be remotely sensible to argue that this has all been due to the benefit of the Single Transferable Vote. Equally, however, it is a piece of significant evidence that a more proportional system accompanied by coalition governments is in no way incompatible with a great advance in a country's performance. Germany 55. Some would dismiss Ireland as a small country: what works for 3 1/2 million is very different from what might do so in a Britain of 58 1/2 million. This consideration cannot apply to Germany, a country of 81 1/2 million (or, perhaps more relevantly, of 65 1/2 million, for the record essentially depends upon the performance of West Germany between 1949 and 1991), where with occasional small modifications a different form of proportional representation, the Additional Member System, has prevailed since the setting up of the Federal Republic. The additional members amount to the high proportion of 50% of the Bundestag. This gives a very strong degree of proportionality, substantially more so than with the Irish fairly small multiple member constituencies system of the Single Transferable Vote. It also gives a very high degree of party control over who is elected on the supplementary lists, a problem which there arouses less controversy than it would do here. 56. What, however, is more relevant to the present stage of the argument is the extent to which it makes coalitions inevitable, and the effect which this has had upon the stability and quality of German governments. The answer to the first point is that it has undoubtedly made coalition the norm, but not inevitable. Adenauer, who was four times elected Chancellor by the Bundestag following a general election, was necessarily a coalition Chancellor on two of these occasions, 1949 and 1961. After the 1953 election he (together with the Bavarian CSU branch of his CDU party) had a bare absolute majority, and could have governed alone, but chose to continue the coalition with the Free Democrats over which he had presided since 1949. After the 1957 election he had a much bigger majority and dropped the FDP to form what was in effect a one-party government. (He still had the small Deutsche (or refugee) Partei in his government, but it had become as much his creature as the National or Simonite Liberals eventually did of the Conservatives in Britain). After 1961, which was a setback election for him, Adenauer was again dependent upon the FDP, and his remaining two years were not a success, but that was because he was over 85 and nearly everyone thought that it was time that he went. 57. Before this overstay of welcome set in, however, the achievements of Adenauer were awe-inspiring. He began with a Germany that was shattered, impoverished and reviled, and he ended with one which was rich, respected and even admired. Its real national income had grown threefold under his Chancellorship, it had regained such sovereignty as was possible in an inter-dependent world, had become America's dependable and valued ally as well as the economic powerhouse of the Common Market, had buried a hundred years of Franco-German enmity and begun a Bonn-Paris partnership which was to run the European Community for at least a third of a century. And this massive constructive work was achieved just as much when he was in coalition as when he was nominally untrammelled. 58. Since the end of Adenauer, coalition has been the unbroken pattern in Germany, though it has not always taken the same form. Mostly the FDP has been the hinge, and has done very well out of the rÙle. But this was not so in 1966-69 when the two bigger parties formed a so-called 'Grand Coalition' and the FDP was excluded. From 1969 to 1982 that party was in alliance with the Social Democrats, and the centre-left, first under Brandt and then under Schmidt, was in continuous power. 59. Then the FDP made a 'historic shift' and thirteen years of Brandt/Schmidt were succeeded by sixteen years of Kohl. It can certainly be argued, as we do at paragraph 122, that the German system has given too much power to the FDP. But it was not just a whim of this third party which was at work in 1982. In the election which followed in 1983 the CDU/CSU polled 48.8% as against their 44.9% of 1972 and the SDP fell from 45.8 to 38.2%. The FDP switch was working with the grain rather than against it. It was also a time of movement to the right in America and Britain. The FDP could more easily be accused of jumping on a band-wagon more than of perversely frustrating the desires of the electorate. Furthermore, the 1982 reversal of alliances apart, they never acted in a way that had not been made clear to the voters before an election. 60. As this potted history makes clear, the last fault which could be attributed to proportional representation in Germany is that of instability of government. Over the 49 years which passed between the inauguration of the Federal Republic in 1949 and the 1998 election there were only six Chancellors. All of them, with the possible exception of Kurt-Georg Kiesinger, who presided over the Grand Coalition, were powerful world statesmen in their different ways. And no government or parliament has lasted less than three years. In Britain, on the other hand there have been no fewer than eleven Prime Ministers during the same period and three parliaments which have not survived for even two years. And even in the United States, with its fixed-term rigidities, there have been ten Presidents. 61. If there has been a criticism of the recent working of the German system it is that it has produced too much rather than too little stability, that it has been sclerotic rather than febrile. In September 1998, however, a full-scale change of government occurred as a direct result of an election. Confidence was withdrawn from the previous government just as decisively as it was from the previous British government in 1997, although of course without the swollen majority which is a feature of FPTP. But a more significant point is that the system has produced not only stable but also, on the whole and judged by results, very good government. At least until the last seven years, when the awkward and ill-prepared dish of East Germany has proved difficult to digest even by the great boa-constrictor of the West German economy, the past half-century record of the Federal Republic has been remarkable. Judged by almost any available standard: economic success, a liberal and tolerant rÈgime at home, an unassertive but responsible foreign policy, it is difficult to find any major country which, over the past half century, has been better or indeed as well governed. In any event this would be a great achievement. In view of Germany's previous recent history, it is almost a miracle. Once again it would be ludicrous to attribute all this to the Additional Member System of proportional representation. But it is at least strong evidence that such a system, and the coalition habit in which, with a 50:50 constituency/top-up member balance, it mostly results, is not necessarily an inhibition on such a favourable outcome. Other Countries 62. There are of course other foreign comparisons which are commonly regarded as much less favourable to the case for proportional systems. Those most frequently cited are Israel, Italy, the France of the Fourth Republic (1946-58) and (latterly and perhaps most prominently) New Zealand. They each raise somewhat separate issues. Israel operates on a national list system with a very low threshold, so that small splinter parties easily get representation in the Knesset and can sometimes be decisive to the formation or support of a government. It can be stated straightaway that, from the beginning of its deliberations the Commission has rejected such a national list system for Britain. It would, in our view, be too remote, rigid and party machine-dominated a system for our four-nation and regionally diverse polity of 58 1/2 million people. It would also run directly counter to our fourth requirement, that of a link between MPs and a geographical constituency. It should nonetheless be noted in passing that a national list system works on the whole well in the Netherlands, a country of 15 1/2 million (as opposed to Israel's 5 1/2 million). Its disadvantage there, as some would see it, is that it makes all governments coalitions and that after elections these mostly take some time to negotiate. But, once negotiated, and the negotiations are open rather than 'smoke-filled', they have considerable stability and nearly always last a full parliament. Furthermore it would be difficult to contest the view that the Netherlands is one of the most successfully governed countries in the world, combining a growth economy, a non-inflationary currency and a society more at ease with itself than most in the Western world. Italy 63. Italy is frequently held up as the locus classicus of the evils of a proportional system. It is certainly true that it practised a list system with a threshold of 2% on the basis of large regions for nearly fifty years from the establishment of the republic in 1946, and that this coincided with bewilderingly frequent changes of government. There were 29 switches of Prime Minister during this period, although the cast was revolving as well as large: 18 individuals headed the 29 governments. Paradoxically, there was also a considerable, arguably too much, stability of policy. The Christian Democrats, at least as broad as the Church of England, were always the core of every government, with a fringe of various coalition partners. The instability was essentially that of political personnel, which had the effect of rendering the political class somewhat irrelevant. The non-elected administrators, filling a vacuum, perhaps achieved more power than is healthy in a democracy. This was particularly true of the Banca d'Italia and of the Italian Foreign Ministry, both of which performed with distinction and consistency. Despite the frequent changes at the top there was a good deal more steadiness of Italian economic and foreign policy in, say, the twenty-five years from 1955 to 1980 than there was of British policy in these fields. And this showed itself both in a more successful Italian than British handling of relations with the European Community and of a much stronger Italian rate of economic growth. It is clear, however, that the Italians were concerned about the rapid turnover of governments, and attributed this at least in part the electoral system. As a result, they changed in 1993 to a variant of the German Additional Member System, not, as has been erroneously reported, to FPTP. 64. Underneath the electoral system, however, there were two deep fractures in Italian society. The first was that over a century after the exploits of Garibaldi's 'Thousand' the old Kingdom of the Two Sicilies, with its weak civic culture, remains fundamentally unintegrated into the successful Italy of the north and the centre. The second was that the Communist Party of Italy, while always more open, moderate and penetrating of bourgeois life (films and publishing for example) than was the French Communist party, nonetheless occupied for decades the awkward position of being sufficiently strong to block the emergence of any other mass opposition to the ruling Christian Democrats, while sufficiently 'way out' to make any government with Communist participation unacceptable to the Catholic Church, to the United States (always a crucial factor in post-war Italy) and maybe to the leaders of the European Community. As a result there could be no easy and natural alternation of governments in Italy, and with this major safety valve unavailable, a superficial instability provided a minor and unsatisfactory alternative. These two fractures have been a much more fundamental cause of Italian political weakness than has been its electoral system. That 1946-93 system was not however one which this Commission would contemplate recommending for Britain. Since then, the knot at the heart of Italian politics has been loosened by the old PCI (Communist Party of Italy, not to be confused with the rump Refundazione Communista) changing both its name and its policies, moving further into the mainstream, and becoming part of the 'Olive coalition' with which Romano Prodi has successfully governed for 2 1/2 years until this autumn. The rump party has however retained enough power to be the catalyst for defeating the Prodi Government by one vote earlier this month. Such a narrow defeat can, however, happen under almost any political and electoral system. It was exactly the fate which in 1979 met James Callaghan after only a few months longer in office. France 65. On France the British Conservative party's powerful memorandum of evidence to us stated that "it is well-known that PR contributed to the instability of governments in the French Fourth Republic (which is why it was repealed in 1958)". Once again it is undeniable that the Fourth Republican list system did coincide with frequent changes of government - there were twenty in the twelve years between de Gaulle's two periods of power. And there was also, with the exception of MendËs-France's effective nine months in 1954-55, a persistent weakness of government. Nevertheless there were some significant achievements: the launch of the Schuman Plan, the modernisation of the French economy under the Commissariat du Plan, which laid the foundation for much of the economic success of the Fifth Republic, and the difficult but necessary withdrawal from Indo-China. The peculiar difficulty that the French had in winding down their colonial empire - with Algeria even more traumatic than Indo-China - was a continuing cause of weakness and instability. This, and the fact that each National Assembly for its five years of life was effectively immune from either the threat of dissolution or the responsibility, when it had defeated one government, for finding another (in sharp contrast with the duty laid upon the German Bundestag of not being able to vote out one government without providing another) had at least as much to do with the deficiencies of the rÈgime as did the electoral system. 66. Furthermore, the experience of France in the lead up to the 1940 collapse makes it very difficult to lay the blame for national weakness at the door of a proportional electoral system. Between 1919 and 1927 France had got along under a proportional multi-member system known as scrutin de liste. Then it was changed for the last twelve years of that Republic to scrutin d'arrondissement, which was very similar to the British system with single member constituencies and simple pluralities, although with two ballots as in the France of today. As those twelve years terminated in the collapse of 1940 it could be argued that the agent of disaster was the switch to a single member majoritarian system. But it would be much wiser not to, and to recognise that there are factors more fundamental and more complicated than its electoral system in the strength or weakness of a nation and its rÈgime, and that what can work well in certain countries and circumstances can work badly in others, and vice-versa. Fractured societies are more powerful than voting systems, good or bad, in producing failures of government. New Zealand 67. The fourth overseas comparison which has recently come to be cited adversely to the case for electoral reform is that of New Zealand. New Zealand, which had previously used, with small modification, the FPTP system as currently practised in Britain, moved after the 1993 general election and a referendum to what is there called Mixed Member Proportional (MMP) and is very close to the German system with both countries using FPTP for constituency elections and a near-equal balance between constituency and list seats. The general election of 1996 is so far the only one in New Zealand to have been fought under the new rules. There have been wide reports of early disenchantment with the new system, which the Commission took sufficiently seriously to think it wise to send a delegation of three of its members to investigate. Their clear report was that while dissatisfaction might well lead to a further referendum (there was always provision for an early review) and some modification of the MMP system, it was the nearly unanimous opinion of politicians and other opinion makers that there was unlikely to be a simple reversion to FPTP. Such nearly unanimous punditry can of course be wrong. But there are nonetheless some substantial reasons for thinking that it may be modification of the new system rather than reversion to the old which the New Zealand electorate will favour. There are also some considerable lessons of relevance here to be drawn from striking a balance sheet of the pros and cons of the brief New Zealand experience. 68. Apparently on the adverse side of the balance sheet is the behaviour of the New Zealand First party. There is, however, at least an even chance that it would have held a hinge position even had the election been fought under the previous FPTP system. It was a new party, although containing a few old politicians, which in the 1996 general election campaigned vigorously against the National party government of Mr Bolger. And it was a substantial beneficiary of that campaign. It secured 17 seats (or 14.2% of the total), eleven of them by list rather than by direct election. This gave it a key position, with Labour on 37 seats, the National party on 44, the Alliance party on 13 and others on 9. It was not however much beyond their deserts, for they had secured 13 1/2 % of the votes. After an eight week interregnum New Zealand First then proceeded to form a coalition, not as had been expected with the Labour party, but with the National party, which they had so freely denounced during the campaign. Neither the delay not the apparent reversal of alliance created a good impression. Nor was it markedly beneficial to the fickle party. New Zealand First secured 5 (out of 20) Cabinet posts, but its poll rating fell quickly from 14% to 1%. The party has since split and partially withdrawn from the coalition. 69. There have been two other aspects of the new system which have militated against its popularity. The first was that it was associated with an increase in the size of the Parliament from 99 to 120 members. (This in relation to size of electorate would be equivalent to increasing a British House of Commons with already 1794 members to one of 2175.) It was not popular, for a lack of respect for existing MPs was a considerable factor in producing the referendum vote for a change. The electorate did not want more of them. The British House of Commons with a membership of 659 is today one of the biggest legislative assemblies in the world. Many think it would function better if smaller. That is well outside our terms of reference. But one conclusion we draw from the New Zealand experience is that we should avoid any solution which involves even a small increase in the size of the House of Commons. 70. The other factor which seems to have disappointed the New Zealand electorate has been the failure of the new system to produce any reduction in the rancour and bitterness of party politics. There was apparently a widespread desire and hope that MMP would lead to a more consensual political habit. This had been a marked feature of its near twin AMS in Germany. In the Federal Republic, with its elaborate system of power-sharing between L”nder and not very centralised central government, and within the federal legislature between Bundestag and Bundesrat (the latter made up of L”nder representatives, often with different parties in power in the different institutions), a consensual habit has become the dominant political culture. 71. New Zealand, on the other hand, with its unicameral legislature and weak local government, was unusually free of any such checks and balances. The public hope that the new system would lead to politicians taking more notice of their opponents has however been sadly disappointed. The 'shot-gun marriage' between National and New Zealand First, while producing only a parliamentary majority of one, nevertheless proceeded to govern with considerable intransigence. It seized the Speakership, the deputy Speakership and 15 out of 17 committee chairmanships, while also forcing through after minimal discussion a highly controversial budget and finance bill as well as other far from consensual legislation. 72. Considerable off-setting factors are however widely perceived in New Zealand. The first is that the current parliament is seen as being the most representative which has ever there been elected. The proportion of women members has risen to 30%, the Maoris have for the first time achieved a representation approximately equal to their numerical strength, and there is also a hitherto unknown presence of Asian and South Sea Islander MPs. Few in New Zealand would want to lose this better balance. 73. It is also the case that the New Zealand electorate seem to appreciate the greater degree of voter choice offered by the new system. In 1996 37% of those voting - a much higher proportion than in Germany - chose to split the party affiliation of their two votes, thereby liberating their choice of local members from their view of what party or combination should form the government of the country. Nor did they show any evidence of finding the new system confusing. 87% of them turned out to vote and cast valid ballots. For these reasons amongst others, while it is impossible to pretend that the country's early experience of MMP has been fortunate, it is unlikely that it will opt to go back to FPTP as opposed to some modification of the new system. Australia 74. The next international comparison we make is perhaps the one with most resonance for the United Kingdom. Australia is often referred to as the most governed country in the world with three distinct, but interrelated layers of Government at local, regional and national or federal level. It is the latter in which we have most interest. At national level Australia is governed by a bicameral parliament with direct elections to both Houses. Members of the House of Representatives (the lower house) are elected using the Alternative Vote, or the Single Transferable Vote in single member constituencies as it sometimes called there, while members of the Senate (the upper house) are elected on a more proportional basis using the Single Transferable Vote in multi-member constituencies. Compulsory voting ensures that turn-out at elections is very high, generally exceeding 95%. 75. The relationship between the two Houses and their respective electoral systems is key to understanding Australia's polity. The systems operate in tandem to deliver stable government with constituency members elected on a majority vote and normally delivering 'single'-party majority Government in the House of Representatives (in Australia the National Party and Liberal Party are in almost indissoluble alliance which means that the Commonwealth is effectively a two-party society). Wider representation or proportionality is delivered through the Senate. Unlike the House of Lords vis-ý-vis the House of Commons the Senate has broadly the same powers as the House of Representatives. This and the fact that it is rare for the Government to hold a majority in both Houses makes it a powerful check on the executive. The Australian electorate and politicians appear at ease with their electoral systems, which have on the whole worked effectively since 1919. In the October 1998 election Pauline Hanson's much apprehended extreme One Nation Party failed as a result of the Alternative Vote even to retain the seat of its leader, and the Liberal/National Alliance was returned to power with a working majority in the lower house, but as it had substantially fewer votes than the Labour Party, this was a still more perverse result than the British ones of 1951 or 1974. FPTP Shared Mainly with North America and India 76. It is difficult to find in the post-1945 years examples beyond India, which is admittedly a big exception, although not one exhibiting great stability since the prestige of the Nehru/ Gandhi Congress party faded, of a country making an unfettered choice, as opposed to accepting an inheritance, in favour of FPTP. None of the new democracies of the first decade of freedom in central and eastern Europe appear to have contemplated going in that direction. If there is a trend, it is towards incorporating a degree of constituency representation, and in some cases moving away from pure proportionality (while retaining a significant proportional corrective mechanism). 77. FPTP we share with the United States and with Canada. The United States is of course the most powerful democracy in the world, with an impressive record of world leadership for nearly the past sixty years. On the other hand it is a presidential and not a parliamentary system in the British sense (which may be good or bad but weakens the comparison), its level of participation in elections, at barely 50% for Presidential elections and only 37% in the last mid-term Congressional elections, is appallingly low, and some would say that its system of government has not recently been a great advertisement for democratic maturity. The Canadian political record was for long an impressive one, but it has not recently produced much stability (the previously governing Conservative party was reduced to two seats at the 1989 election) or successful national unity. While it would be wrong to attribute the Quebec problem to FPTP, it would also be wrong to say that Canadian experience provides evidence for FPTP being a nationally unifying system.
Chapter Five: Solutions for Britain Without Constituency Changes 78. It is time to turn to the specifically British aspects of the issue. The problem here has obviously become more acute since the electoral watershed of the post-war period in 1974. Prior to the first of the two elections of that year British politics was overwhelmingly a two-party affair and although FPTP did not work perfectly (as in the perverse 1951 result, and in the bottling up of sporadic third party surges, which were only allowed to show themselves in by-elections) it did not represent a major and manifest unfairness between parties. Since that date approximately 20% of the voting public (26% in 1983) have turned away from the two-horse race( see Table 1 below). In these circumstances those who resist change have to argue that the preference of a fifth to a quarter of the nation is irresponsibly inimical to the British tradition, and that such a considerable proportion ought either to be forced back into a more acceptable pattern of behaviour or effectively ignored. Table 1
79. This is not an unarguable proposition. Indeed it can be and is argued, often with considerable force and some persuasiveness. But it requires as essential premises the views both that FPTP has served us peculiarly well, and that a deviation from it would be demonstrably deleterious. So far as the first is concerned it is undoubtedly true that Britain has long enjoyed an unusually stable parliamentary rÈgime (broadening into a democracy between 1832 and 1918, or 1969 if age as well as class and sex enfranchisement are taken into account) and that this has on the whole been accompanied by a tolerant, decent and sometimes successful society. It is however much more difficult to argue that these qualities have been directly linked to the exact electoral system, and would have been gravely endangered if the recommendations of the 1917 Speaker's Conference for a mixture of the Single Transferable Vote in the big towns and cities and the Alternative Vote in the rest of the country, or the 1930 House of Commons endorsement of the Alternative Vote (rejected by the Lords) had been implemented. And if the criterion be economic success it would be still more difficult to argue that the British performance, particularly over the past 40 years, gives a clear endorsement to FPTP. Nor does the respect in which Parliament is currently held, or the turn-out at elections, or the degree of commitment to the political process exhibited, particularly by the young, constitute a ringing endorsement of the present system. 80. Against this background we have approached the question of what alternative system we should recommend for Britain. We do so by no means rejecting the achievements of the British political tradition, but being anxious to build upon and improve it, such flexible improvement being indeed very much part of the tradition. We do so also after observing the virtues and deficiencies of different systems abroad, without believing that any is perfect, but finding that there is nonetheless a lot to learn from objective comparative appraisal. The Alternative Vote 81. The simplest change would be from FPTP to the Alternative Vote (henceforth referred to as AV). This meets several of our four criteria. It would fully maintain the link between MPs and a single geographical constituency. It would increase voter choice in the sense that it would enable voters to express their second and sometimes third or fourth preferences, and thus free them from a bifurcating choice between realistic and ideological commitment or, as it sometimes is called, voting tactically. There is not the slightest reason to think that AV would reduce the stability of government; it might indeed lead to larger parliamentary majorities. This is a formidable list of assets, particularly in the context of our terms of reference. And there are at least two further ones. AV would involve no change of constituency boundaries, and could thus be implemented from the moment that Parliament accepted a positive vote in a referendum. It would also virtually ensure that each MP commanded at least majority acquiescence within his constituency, which is far from being the case under FPTP, where as we have seen nearly a half of members have more opponents than supporters, and, exceptionally, a member can be elected (as in Inverness in 1992) with as little as 26% of the vote. However, it is necessary to acknowledge the argument that the second or subsequent preferences of a losing candidate, if they are decisive, are seen by some as carrying less value (and even as arising almost accidentally) and so contributing less to the legitimacy of the result, than first preference votes (or indeed the second preferences of the most powerful candidates). 82. Beyond this AV on its own suffers from a stark objection. It offers little prospect of a move towards greater proportionality, and in some circumstances, and those the ones which certainly prevailed at the last election and may well do so for at least the next one, it is even less proportional that FPTP. Simulations of how the 1997 result might have come out under AV suggest that it would have significantly increased the size of the already swollen Labour majority. A 'best guess' projection of the shape of the current Parliament under AV suggests on one highly reputable estimate the following outcome with the actual FPTP figures given in brackets after the projected figures: Labour 452 (419), Conservative 96 (165), Liberal Democrats 82 (46), others 29 (29). The overall Labour majority could thus have risen from 169 to 245. On another equally reputable estimate the figures are given as Labour 436, Conservatives 110, Liberal Democrats 84 and others 29, an overall majority this time of 213. On either basis an injustice to the Liberal Democrats would have been nearly two-thirds corrected (their strictly proportional entitlement was 111 seats) but at the price of a still greater injustice to the Conservatives. The Conservative 30.7% of the votes should strictly have given them 202 seats. Instead FPTP gave them 165 or 25% of the seats, whereas AV would have given them on one estimate only 96 (or 14.6% of the seats), and on the more favourable one from their point of view 110 seats (or 16.7% of the total). 83. The 1997 election, it can be argued, was far from typical. The scenario was the one most calculated to produce an exaggerated majority and to increase disproportionality. There was a strong desire to get rid of the incumbent government, the third party (Liberal Democrats) was much closer to the main Labour challenger than to the government, and many voters cared more about casting an anti-Conservative vote than about whether this would result in a Labour or a Liberal Democrat victory in their particular constituency. (This last factor, however, did not clearly add to the difference between a FPTP and an AV result, for many electors did a sort of 'do it yourself' AV and voted for whichever of the two opposition candidates they thought was the more effective challenger.) In the three previous elections, those of 1983, 1987 and 1992, AV would have had a less distorting effect on proportionality between the two main parties. For example, one estimate suggests that it would have led to a Conservative majority (with the actual FPTP result again given in brackets) of 27 (21) in 1992. But it would have avoided this distortion at the expense of being able to claim much less credit for correcting the adverse treatment of the third party. The Liberal Democrats would in 1992 have got only 31 or 4.8% of the seats for 19% of the vote. 84. Added to this, AV on its own, because it makes use exclusively of single-member constituencies, would fail to address several of the more significant defects of FPTP which we identified earlier. In particular, there would still be large tracts of the country which would be electoral deserts for major parties. Conservative voters in Scotland, for example, might only hope to influence the result through their second choice. And although AV would probably increase the number of marginal seats thus reducing the number of voters effectively excluded from influencing the overall result, most seats in the country would remain safe. 85. The Commission's conclusions from these and other pieces of evidence about the operation of AV are threefold. First, it does not address one of our most important terms of reference. So far from doing much to relieve disproportionality, it is capable of substantially adding to it. Second, its effects (on its own without any corrective mechanism) are disturbingly unpredictable. Third, it would in the circumstances of the last election, which even if untypical is necessarily the one most vivid in the recollection of the public, and very likely in the circumstances of the next one too, be unacceptably unfair to the Conservatives. Fairness in representation is a complex concept, as we have seen in paragraph 6, and one to which the upholders of FPTP do not appear to attach great importance. But it is one which, apart from anything else, inhibits a Commission appointed by a Labour government and presided over by a Liberal Democrat from recommending a solution which at the last election might have left the Conservatives with less than half of their proportional entitlement. We therefore reject the AV as on its own a solution despite what many see as its very considerable advantage of ensuring that every constituency member gains majority acquiescence. The Supplementary Vote 86. With it there falls in our view, the Supplementary Vote or SV. It is a system close to AV, and is likely to produce a very similar result. As such it shares many of the disadvantages of AV and some of the advantages, although not the major one of making each MP, at the last count, a majority choice. Its essential difference from AV is that it allows the voter to exercise only a second choice, and not a third, a fourth or even a fifth one, and thus avoids these weak, even haphazard lower-grade choices, as some would argue, from occasionally illegitimately influencing the result. It is much more suited to a three rather than a four party political scenario, and would therefore cause special difficulties in Scotland and Wales. Essentially, however, the deficiencies which we regard as endemic to AV apply almost equally to SV. If they could be overcome, the choice, in England at any rate, between AV or SV would be a finely balanced one. The Second Ballot System 87. A cousin of SV is the French system of two ballots or deuxiËme tour. This cannot be wholly convincingly dismissed by Labour and Conservatives opposed to any change in the electoral system for it is near to the method they have both recently used for the choice of their party leader, and therefore in many cases of an actual or future Prime Minister. These elections were in consequence peculiarly important, carrying a choice of far more moment for the limited parliamentary electorate than does a choice of local MP for the run of constituency voters. Yet neither Conservatives nor Labour have in any contested election this century thought of entrusting this grave decision to the vagaries of a FPTP system. Of course in an election for a single position, whether it be leader of a party, President of a Republic, |
