Part of the debate – in the House of Commons at 12:00 am on 9 June 1964.
Mr Tony Benn
, Bristol South East
12:00,
9 June 1964
The whole House will have listened with sympathy and interest to the remarks of the hon. Member for Carlisle (Dr. D. Johnson) in introducing his Motion. The difficulties in which he has got himself with his local Conservative association are not by themselves a case against his proposed Measure. Every case must be looked at on its merits. Hon. Members on both sides will remember the similar incident recently, when Mr. Nigel Nicolson was removed by his local Conservative association; and, certainly, this is a problem which, although not peculiar to hon. Members opposite, does present itself occasionally.
There are many arguments that might be used against the hon. Member's pro- posed Bill. I want to list them, but not to use them. The first is that the Bill might be thought of as a preparation for some party advantage for the party opposite. It may be that, like the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Woodford (Sir W. Churchill), who proposed proportional representation as a way of winning the Liberals over to support the Conservative Party, this Bill might have been introduced for that reason, but I do not believe that it has, and, if looked at from the point of view of the proposals which have been made for amending the electoral law, it will be found that every party has, at one time or another, come out in favour of it.
The second argument against it might be that it is too near to election time to introduce it. I do not accept this, because, if it is a good proposal, then the House should concede it. The third is that private Members should not seek to amend the Constitution; and-whoever else might be able to use that argument, it is certainly not one which commends itself to me. The House must look at this proposal on its merits alone and it seems to me that the proposal falls down on its merits.
First of all, as the hon. Member will know very well, he offers no greater guarantee of proportionality in the representation of the different parties in this House of Commons. We all know that under the present system of voting it would be possible for one party to get more votes than another and yet only to have one Member, whereas the party with the minority of the popular votes would have 629 Members. Under the proposal of the hon. Gentleman, it would be possible for a party with only 26 per cent. of the popular vote to have 100 per cent. membership in the House.
I do not know whether the hon. Member wishes me to go into details. But if the votes for the major parties went 49–25 in half the constituencies and 25–49 in the rest, a minority party getting only 26 per cent. of the popular vote could win every seat and we could get just as big a nonsense from his proposal as from the present system.
The single transferable vote (STV) is a voting system that allocates seats in a parliament or committee in proportion to the number of votes recorded. This is in contrast to the first-past-the-post system, which may result in political representation failing to reflect votes cast. Under STV voters indicate their support for individuals who they feel will best represent them, unlike in list systems where they must choose a political party.
STV ballot papers include a list of the names of each candidate standing in the election. Voters are asked to place a number "1" next to their first choice candidate and a number "2" next to their second choice candidate, a number "3" next to their third choice and so on.
At the first stage of the count each ballot paper is awarded to their first choice candidate and candidates with the required number of votes (called the quota) are elected. If a candidate has more votes than the required number of votes a proportion of these votes may be transferred after considering the preferences expressed by the voters.
Candidates who receive very few votes are usually excluded and each of the votes is transfered according to the preferences expressed by the voter.
In Northern Ireland STV is used for European and local elections as well as for elections to the Northern Ireland Assembly. STV is also used for local elections in Scotland.
The House of Commons is one of the houses of parliament. Here, elected MPs (elected by the "commons", i.e. the people) debate. In modern times, nearly all power resides in this house. In the commons are 650 MPs, as well as a speaker and three deputy speakers.
