“This House believes that Proportional representation should be introduced in this country’

Those for and against the present system don’t just disagree, our basic starting points are different.

The purpose of the electoral system is to elect a person from each locality to represent those interests in Parliament. The Commons is the place where representatives meet to form a Government which represents the majority opinion within the Chamber. Supporters of PR believe that the Commons should represent a microcosm of the electorate as a whole with all different political opinions represented. 

We argue that the purpose of elections is to provide each locality with its representative and the country with a stable majority Government, rather than simply to represent all shades of opinions. 

There is a strong tradition in Britain of a personal relationship between a Member of Parliament and the clearly defined geographical area he or she represents. For expressing grievances and demands to Government, contacting one’s MP is the most popular form of personal action and is judged to be effective. 

It is in their role as Constituency Members of Parliament that MPs are valued and to quote it is “deeply embedded in Britain’s Parliamentary history and culture. It is strongly supported by the public and it ensures that MPs are clearly representative of, and answerable to, a clearly defined group of electors”. Not my words, but the evidence of the Labour Party to the Jenkins Commission in 1998.

On a personal note, I can say that I receive over 10,000 letters a year, 100 emails a day and hold regular surgeries where people come to me asking for help and I am sure that any Member of Parliament would agree that the Constituency link is alive and well.

Supporters of PR say that the coming of mass political parties has weakened the concept of territorial representation, but I do not agree. The numbers who have a fixed adherence to one political party have fallen and there is evidence that voters do consider the qualities of the person standing for election in making their decision. This was true with the election of Martin Bell in Tatton and Richard Taylor in Wyre Forest – both independent candidates. But it is also true in many Constituencies that the personality of the Member of Parliament is crucial.

I know from my own experience of fighting the Southwark and Bermondsey Constituency in the 1980s that the predominant politics of that seat were Labour, but they kept electing Simon Hughes, the Liberal Democrat. Why? It is because they see him as a passionate advocate for local interests. I believe that the character and personality of the candidate are becoming more important, not less.

It is possible to have a Constituency link in a mixed PR system, but the truth is the more proportional the system, the weaker the Constituency link. Single Transferable Vote requires large multi-member Constituencies. The Alternative Vote system is not proportional anyway and the Party List system does not offer the Constituency link. Mixed systems which have some Constituency Members and some List Members also have the difficulty that you end up with more than one Member of Parliament concentrating their hopes and efforts on a particular Constituency. It is already causing trouble in Scotland and Wales. It interferes with the best traditions of an MP endeavouring to serve all constituents – those who supported him or her and those who did not – with equal diligence. If there is a rival and equally active MP from the opposition party, this link is inevitably weakened.

The other main benefit of FPTP is that it normally leads to the election of a one-party majority Government, which is then able to govern. It also assists in quick decisions with a new Government formed promptly. It means that where a Government fails or disappoints, it can easily be punished by the electorate. 
The fact that we have a winner-takes-all system has the effect of encouraging parties to broaden their appeal.

You only have to look at the situation in Germany, where because of PR the Christian Democrats and the Social Democrats after a long period of negotiation are about to form a Government to see many of the things which are wrong with proportional representation. 

Although Angela Merkel won the election as the Leader of the largest party, she is not now able to implement the programme on which she was elected. This means that her own supporters will not get what they voted for. Equally, the Social Democrats did not vote for the sort of programme which will be put in place. Proportional representation only provides a mandate to negotiate. 

This means that people’s votes for particular policies and beliefs simply do not count. What counts are the negotiations in smoke-filled rooms. 


It can also let the extremists in and empower them. One of the countries with the purest form of proportional representation is Israel, where for many years minority religious parties were able to hold up the peace process and impose their will on the majority. 

It also has perverse effects. In Ireland, which has a form of single transferable vote, it is necessary within the multi-Member Constituency to have your own personal organisation and the result is that particular families pass down seats in the Dail from generation to generation, because they have the family political organisation to back them up.

There are, at the latest count, over 300 systems of proportional representation. The reason there are so many is that they involve many different attempts to overcome the weaknesses of PR: that it weakens the Constituency link; that it does not create clear stable Government; and that it allows in extremists, even with a very small percentage of the vote. 

There is a way our current system could be more proportional. There is a problem of bias in the existing system, with some parts of the country over-represented and inequality of constituency voter size. Changes should be made to correct this bias by moving to a single electoral quota for the United Kingdom as a whole. The effect of this would be that all Constituencies would have the same number of voters. 
This would remove the anomaly that currently penalises the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats, because on average Labour Constituencies are so much smaller than the others. 

So the case for FPTP is that it maintains the Constituency link. It is easy to understand and operate. It provides clear stable Government and that it can even be improved to become more proportional. I ask you to vote for our tried and tested system that works? Vote No.