Orders of the Day — House of Commons (Redistri Bution of Seats) Bill

Part of the debate – in the House of Commons at 12:00 am on 10 October 1944.

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Photo of Mr Denis Pritt Mr Denis Pritt , Hammersmith North 12:00, 10 October 1944

I had in the course of the Debate prepared myself to answer a good many things said by hon. and right hon. Members, but the right hon. Gentleman who sits for East Edinburgh (Mr. Pethick-Lawrence) has put what case can be made against Proportional Representation so fully, clearly and fairly that, having regard to the fact that we do not want to talk too long, I think I shall best serve the House and the interests I represent by simply confining myself to his speech, and answering it without undue length, if I am capable of doing so.

His speech consisted of a preamble on four defects of Proportional Representation in working and of three or four—according to how one looks at it—prices one would have to pay for Proportional Representation even if one thought that it was a good thing, and I will model myself on what the right hon. Gentleman has said. The preamble is, in effect, that it is undesirable really to have a mathematical reproduction in the House of opinion in the country, but surely we want the House substantially to rerpesent the country. That seemed almost to frighten the right hon. Gentleman. I was going to quote speeches and articles by the present Prime Minister strongly advocating Proportional Representation for that very reason, and I think the House in general will at any rate accept this, that on quite broad lines the nearer the House represents the country, the better far the House, the better for the country and the better for democracy. I think the reason why most opponents of Proportional Representation rather slide away from that is because they know that the House does, in fact, grotesquely misrepresent first one part of the country and then another. The only other thing the right hon. Gentleman said in his preamble, and certainly it is important, is that it is very good to have as a result of your elections a Government which can really set about the task of government, and a firmly knit Opposition. I am going to suggest that Proportional Representation will, in fact, do that pretty well. I am going to suggest also that the present system does it extremely badly. I think I can do both those things best by going straight to the right hon. Gentleman's four points one by one, because they really involve what he said in his preamble and those are the points he was using to support the broad assertion made in that preamble.

He said that you are no more likely to have a clear majority under Proportional Representation than under the present system. I do not know why. I should have thought that if the country is broadly divided, say, 10,000,000 to 8,000,000 at the next General Election—I will not tell you which way—you will have a House which is broadly zoo of one side for every 80 of the other, whereas under the existing system the most probable result will be that instead of no to 80 you will have 130 to 50, which in itself is unjust and gives you a bad and weak Opposition. There is quite a chance, however, that your 100 to 80 one way will actually find its representation in this House 105 to 95 the wrong way. It is pure chance. When the right hon. Gentleman seemed to assume that one of the great virtues of our system now is that we normally achieve a Government with a clear majority, let me remind the House that there has not been one single moment in the last 25 years in which this House has had in it a party forming a Government in this House and having the majority of votes in the country. When the right hon. Gentleman says that one of the evils of Proportional Representation is that it produces coalitions, how about the continuous coalition in this country in the last quarter of a century? We have had very many examples of Coalition Government and two examples of a Government in office without power, so that while I do not say that the evils he attributes to Proportional Representation are inherent in the present system, I do say it has delivered a fine crop of these in the last quarter of a century.

Then he said that you are more likely, under Proportional Representation, to get a multiplicity of parties. That is often said and, superficially, it looks a reasonably plausible argument. I do not propose to injure it by enumerating the number of parties that we have already in this House under the present system—the hon. Member for Gateshead (Mr. Magnay) had some difficulty in remembering precisely to what party he did belong—but I defy anybody to produce any solid argument to show that Proportional Representation applied to this country would produce any new parties. Let anybody suggest what it could possibly produce. It cannot produce the Liberal Party because the Liberal Party has a very definite and clear existence. In countries that have suffered from multitudinous groups and parties, Proportional Representation brought to bear on them has not increased the number of those parties. There is not an instance in history where the result of applying Proportional Representation to any country has resulted in the emergence of any party that did not exist before.

So there is no evidence to support this charge on actual experience. I think the Weimar Republic gave an illustration of what happened with Proportional Representation with a large number of groups. The groups, which were ridiculously numerous, diminished by about 40 per cent., as a result of which they were still ridiculously large. But, at any rate, Proportional Representation did not prevent them getting a little less bad, and did not create any new parties. Then the right hon. Gentleman—I know he will not think I am attacking him—said it is less easy, under Proportional Representation, to have a shadow Cabinet with a sense of responsibility. I quite understand that argument, which is sometimes put another way and is very much the same thing: that it is less easy to have a good and strong Opposition—