Official Report search · Parliament Workbench

Chamber

Meeting of the Parliament 18 November 2010

18 Nov 2010 · S3 · Meeting of the Parliament

Item of business

Alternative Vote Referendum Date

McLetchie, David Con Edinburgh Pentlands Watch on SPTV

No. I want to make some progress.

Let us be clear that it was always possible to have dates that coincided, even when not by deliberate design: on many occasions in the past, elections to the UK Parliament were coincidental with local elections in other parts of the United Kingdom. There is nothing particularly novel about the issue of coincidence that justifies anything like the volume of excitable criticism that it has generated.

We are in this situation because Nick Clegg had the courage to spurn the advice of his Labour-luvvie predecessors—most of whom were Scots, such as Steel, Kennedy and Campbell—and recognise that the country needed a stable Government with a Commons majority to take the difficult decisions that had to be taken to tackle the problems inherited from Labour, not least of which is the appalling state of the public finances. As we know from our experience in this Parliament, the foundation for any formal coalition is a partnership agreement, negotiated between the coalition partners. In such negotiations, the prospective partners will have policies on which they insist and others on which they are prepared to compromise, and so it is that agreement is finally reached on a programme for government.

As we all know, one of the concessions that the Conservatives made to our friends the Liberal Democrats in the coalition agreement was that the new Government would bring forward legislation to hold a referendum on changing the voting system for elections to the House of Commons, from the present first-past-the-post system to the alternative vote system. We were very pleased to accommodate our Liberal friends and allies in that respect, not because we like the concept of the alternative vote—we do not, and we will campaign against it—but because it was in the wider national interest that we have a coalition Government to tackle the real problems that Labour bequeathed to us.

There is of course a simple way to resolve the matter, and that is for our Liberal Democrat friends to drop their insistence that we have a referendum on a voting system in which they do not believe and have never believed; which will not deliver their holy grail of proportional representation; and which, if approved and enacted, would make a true PR system for elections to the Commons an even more distant prospect. However, I suspect that our Liberal Democrat friends will not change their minds and so, having agreed to legislate for the holding of a referendum, the next issue is the date. Given the constitutional significance of the decision, it is desirable to maximise the number of voters who will participate in it. Equally, it is clear that the intricacies of the alternative vote system are so mind-numbingly tedious that, on a free-standing basis, only the political anoraks would be in the least bit bothered about it one way or the other.

In that context, it makes sense for the referendum date to coincide with the date for elections to the Scottish Parliament, the National Assembly for Wales and councils in many parts of England, which will involve more than 30 million voters. It is an insult to our intelligence to suggest that Scots voters are uniquely incapable of making up their minds on two matters on the same day. The Conservatives and our Liberal Democrat friends are prepared to treat our fellow Scots as intelligent adults; the patronising parties—the SNP and Labour—seem to think that they are stupid children.

Having decided for reasons of turnout and participation to hold an election and a referendum on dates that coincide, it is worth noting that holding the votes on the same day across the United Kingdom will save approximately £17 million.

Search Hansard contributions

Meeting of the Parliament 18 November 2010

In the same item of business