Training | 2009.06.06
It's as easy as 1, 2, 3 | Peter Hain
The system is broken but proportional formulas are flawed and fanciful. I\'m backing alternative vote
The grubby, self-inflicted disrepute into which parliament has fallen demands not just cleansing MPs\' expenses of duck islands , luxury lifestyle items and second home " flipping ", but wholesale constitutional reform. There is a yawning democratic deficit and we need to create a politics which is genuinely pluralist and empowering.
The unelected House of Lords is an anachronistic stain on our "democracy", on which Labour has prevaricated far too much. The Commons voted overwhelmingly for at least an 80% elected second chamber and there is no excuse for any further delay.
Parliament has already voted in fixed terms for devolved legislatures, local councils and Europe, so why not now for itself?
There must be an end to the shabby basis of party financing which has enabled a Tory billionaire, Lord Ashcroft, to pour tens of millions into marginal seats to "buy" the next election. There is already over £10m per annum public funding for parties, and this should be radically extended.
As in Scandinavia and elsewhere in Europe, funding should be audited and earmarked for youth and community organisers, research, education and training, and headquarters staff. In that way parties would be better resourced and better linked into civil society. But they should raise funds for propaganda and campaigning themselves, with limits on individual donations.
Backbench MPs need better scrutiny opportunities. All except very urgent bills should be subject to pre-legislative scrutiny conducted by re-vamped select committees.
Our electoral system was perhaps appropriate for an era of two-party dominance, like in 1951, when Labour and Tories together polled fully 96.8% of the vote. But their share has fallen remorselessly, to just 67.6% by 2005.
Turnout has also fallen sharply so that, even more starkly, the two major parties captured 79.2% of the electorate in 1951, but barely half that in 2005 – an embarrassing 41.4%. Next week\'s European elections could see Labour and Tories humiliatingly poll under one fifth of the electorate between them.
But the fatal defect of proportional representation options is that power is sucked upwards to regional or national levels of party structures, with the single member constituency, such a cherished feature of British parliamentary democracy, abolished. It is also hugely complex with its own anomalies.
The Liberal PR favourite, single transferable voting, with on average five MPs in each "multi-member seat", would mean monster constituencies (some covering hundreds of square miles), so breaking the historic link of democratic accountability to the local electorate and preventing voters re-electing or sacking their MP.
List PR systems favour candidates approved by central or at best regional party machines, with local parties losing virtually all influence and candidates often parachuted in, as happens for example in France. The most proportional PR version of all is in Israel, where there is a national list leaving governments in hock to the vagaries of tiny and often extreme parties. And it is much harder for elected representatives to be directly connected to voters: how many know who "their" MEP is?
A "Jenkins"-type additional member system, recently advocated by Nick Clegg and Alan Johnson, requires two classes of MPs, some constituency based, the others coming from lists: constitutional "free loaders" without constituency responsibilities or voter accountability. The behaviour of many list members in Wales and Scotland has hardly been a good advertisement.
A far better option is the alternative vote under which voters are allowed to vote 1,2,3 etc if they wish, with bottom candidates dropping out and subsequent preference votes allocated to those above until someone wins an overall majority.
The winner has to have more than 50% of voter support; just a third of MPs currently do so. AV retains accountability through the single member seat and produces a better relationship between votes cast and seats won than the existing system.
AV is much fairer, the single member seat would be retained, and there is less scope for "wasted" votes as electors can express there first preferences which might encourage turnout. There would be less geographic bias which sees either Labour or Tories under-represented in regions where both still have significant support. And it is simple – a contrast with the unfathomable complexities and anomalies of PR options.
It is also by far the most practical, and could be introduced quickly in time for the next election. No boundary changes taking years would be required. And it is the only option the Commons has either ever voted for (in 1931), or would now do so, because MPs are unlikely to vote themselves out of their seats – as would certainly be required for PR.
There is one other important plus. Because the AV is an adjustment to the current system, not (like PR) a wholesale change involving abolition of parliamentary constituencies, there is no case for the referendum rightly promised over PR. Electors would hardly thank parliament for indulging in all the costly paraphernalia of a referendum which invited them to state whether they wanted to confine their vote as now to 1 – or have the option of voting 1, 2, 3.
With the current "a plague on all your houses", the next general election outcome is not certain. The evidence suggests Liberal Democrat second preferences would break pretty evenly, in the current political climate possibly more so to the Tories, so Tory opponents could not claim AV as a pro-Labour device. As the Australian experience shows, the case for the AV is not that it would necessarily favour or disfavour any one party, but that it is a more democratic system.
First-past-the-posters in Labour can live with the AV. So can Labour\'s PR advocates like Alan Johnson. Liberal Democrats wouldn\'t champion it, but would probably back its parliamentary passage.
There is now a window of opportunity for a Great Reform Bill that may not come around again for a generation, if ever. It should be introduced this autumn and taken through in the coming parliamentary session so that it is in place before the next election.
Labour should seize this moment now, ideally with all-party support; but if not, then so be it. Our system is broken and, if traditionalist MPs in all parties are allowed long-grass reform yet again, citizens really will not forgive us.
For more information, please visit
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/[...]8/electoralreform-constitution
