Schedule 1 - Constitution of public benefit corporations
Health and Social Care (Community Health and Standards) Bill
3:45 pm
Mr Simon Burns (West Chelmsford, Conservative)
I shall speak to amendment Nos. 127, 130 and 71.
Amendment No. 127, to which the hon. Member for Oxford, West and Abingdon has briefly referred, would ensure that members of the board of governors—other than those appointed members—are, as paragraph 6(3) says,
''to be chosen by election''.
Paragraph 6(4) states that
''the election must be by postal ballot.''
I do not disagree with the Government's suggestion. If a postal ballot is to take place, it should be by the first past the post system, because I strongly oppose the principle of proportional representation and other voting systems. The person who wins the most votes should be the winner and the person elected to the relevant position.
My noble Friend the Baroness Thatcher probably encapsulated it best when she said that when a running race—such as an Olympic race—is over, the first person over the line is the winner, the second person over the line comes second and the third person comes third. One does not have some poxy system whereby votes are redistributed—[Interruption.] One does not have some extraordinary procedure whereby the system redistributes votes to take account of the efforts of all the other runners, so that the person who went across the line first is not necessarily the winner. The election system that serves this House remarkable well—as it serves local elections well—is the system that we should have.