I beg to move. That leave be given to bring in a Bill to provide for the election of Members of Parliament by means of the system of the single transferable vote in any Constituency in which the demand has manifested itself by local action. I do not think that I have need to dilate at length on the nature of the proposal in my proposed Bill. The question of the alternative vote has come up from time to time in our political life and during the present century. In asking leave to introduce the Bill I would like to remind the House this matter has most respectable precedents, including numerous statements by the right hon. Member for Woodford (Sir W. Churchill).

The Bill would not, I wish to emphasise, attempt to alter our present electoral system, but provide that on occasions where local demand manifests itself—say, by means of a petition—the simple transferable vote system could be introduced into any single constituency, if need be for a single election only.

The Bill has an exact precedent in recent years: the Representation of the People (St. Albans) Bill, which was introduced by the noble Lord the Earl of Verulam when he sat in this House as the hon. Member for St. Albans. On 26th March, 1954, he introduced that Measure and described it as …a small and modest Bill which would permit a limited experiment". It is in that spirit that I am asking leave to introduce my Bill.

The noble Lord further said, in a somewhat prophetic fashion, that his Bill would protect the "independently-minded candidate". He spoke of the "middle-of-the-road candidate" and added that it would …influence the strongly partisan party feeling to adopt perhaps more moderate ways."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 26th March, 1954; Vol. 525, c. 1599–1602.] When the noble Lord introduced his Bill in 1954 he did so in an altruistic spirit, but 26th March of that year being a Friday, his Bill was counted out in the same manner as so many other admirable altruistic Measures leave the scene.

I, on the other hand, must confess an interest in my Bill. Owing to a controversy which is by now fairly well known—and about which I need only say, at this stage, that both sides are pursuing their course with equal obstinacy—there might well be two candidates of the Conservative persuasion in Carlisle at the next General Election. If that happens it may be that the undesirable position will occur that there will be wasted votes on either one side or the other.

I do not wish today to resurrect dead controversies, or to bring in any form of partisan feeling in what I say. It is a type of situation which can occur and which, indeed, has occurred on both sides of the House. I have felt it my duty to appeal to the House as a whole, as well as to hon. Members individually, in stating that, in a situation such as has arisen in Carlisle and elsewhere in the past 10 or 15 years, we are up against one of the problems of the party system in this country and the strength with which it has manifested itself throughout this century.

We accept in this House the discipline of the party system as a whole. It is proper that it should be there and we acknowledge that, at the centre, it is exercised with moderation and centuries of experience behind it. However, in recent years a fresh discipline has manifested itself in the party system; that of the local party committee. It is exercised somewhat easily, not always with the full sense of responsibility or with the many years of experience with which we are familiar in the central discipline. It is one from which, in my experience, the individual hon. Member has totally inadequate protection.

I have no time today to go into this in detail, although there is one assertion which should be recorded in the annals of this House; the assertion made by the chairman of the Carlisle Conservative Association in these words: Dr. Johnson has always been an outspoken M.P., and, within reason, there is no objection to this. But it is, of course, an Association's duty to decide in this context what is reasonable and what is not. I leave it to hon. Members to ponder on the implications of that statement.

I need only draw attention to the concern that is occasionally expressed in this House, and frequently outside, at the decline in the powers and prestige of Parliament. The Sunday newspapers this last weekend have been full of reviews of the book by Dr. Bernard Crick, in which this phenomenon is commented upon quite freely. I must put it on the record, this being perhaps the last speech that I shall have the occasion to make in this House, that my own main feeling during my nine years of membership has been one of utter helplessness as against the permanent bureaucracy.

The cure for this lies in the hands of hon. Members of the House. If, as happened in my case, one's career is cut off almost immediately one mentions this, there is little hope for the future solving of this problem. I am recommending my Bill to the House as a remedy for this state of affairs. I have no sponsor other than myself and I feel that, according to the traditions of the House, and the protection which it gives to the individual, this is appropriate, since the Bill is designed to protect the individual.

Its effect is that it allows an appeal in the constituency from a small committee to the voters as a whole in as much as they can, in certain instances, vote for alternative candidates of the same political persuasion without the fear that they are wasting their votes.