The other argument has been that a small party could hold larger parties to ransom, but that has not been our experience in Scotland. It appeared to be the case, as has been mentioned, with the Greens, when two brought down the Scottish Budget, but they overplayed their hand, and when the Budget eventually went through with Labour support-and, I think, almost all-party support-the Greens were left nowhere, so a small party like that is taking a lot of risks in acting in that way.

There was a step forward in 2007 with the local government elections in Scotland. I thank the Liberal Democrats for that achievement. In Glasgow we had 79 councillors, but with 21 multi-member wards, and three or four members in each, there is a much better range of representation.

I welcome you to the Chair, Mr. Amess. I thank Mr. Mitchell for obtaining the debate. He has been a supporter of proportional representation for a long time, and his enthusiasm is undimmed by the years. He put the case in terms of fairness, and there is definitely a case for PR on those grounds, but there is also a case based on confidence in politics. To come back to the point made by Daniel Kawczynski, the current relevance of the debate lies in the fact that we are in a political crisis-a crisis of confidence in politics itself-and the existing electoral system is part of the crisis.

To deal first with fairness, hon. Members who support the first-past-the-post system are very fond of accusing parties that might benefit from a different system of arguing from their own interest. Of course, that also applies the other way around. Members who are here because of first past the post, but who would not be here under the proportional system are also arguing from their own interest. Fairness cannot be judged in that way. It must be judged by other means, and the obvious way to do that is to imagine, as a thought experiment, a situation in which we did not know how popular our views would be with the electorate and had to choose an electoral system knowing only our own views and no one else's. In those circumstances, what system would be chosen: first past the post, or a proportional system?

Choosing first past the post means taking the risk of one's political views being excluded for ever and of never having any representation in the legislature of the country. I cannot think of anyone who, faced by the question about fairness from behind the veil of ignorance, would choose first past the post. Perhaps some people might be so convinced that strong government is important that they would choose first past the post, despite the risk that their own views would never have any influence on the legislature, but it would be an extraordinary thing to do. People taking that view would probably take the view that democracy itself might be excluded.

The hon. Gentleman suggests that we were all taking our view for party political reasons, but that is not the case. In the past 12 years of Labour Governments, the Conservative party would have been much better off with a proportional voting system, yet despite that we want first past the post.

No. The Conservative party wants first past the post because that is the only way that it can form a majority Government with a minority of the vote. The idea that it is being generous about it is ridiculous. We need to get away from the idea that fairness can be judged from a partisan point of view, and think about it from a non-partisan point of view. I am sure that from a non-partisan view, taking into account all our interests, fair-minded people would never choose first past the post as their electoral system.

Surely, the hon. Gentleman was listening to what I said, which was that the Labour party in government gave away more power and influence, as a consequence of which we are now in the mire north of the border. In the party context, he would know, if he was listening to me, that the Liberals, for other reasons, were opposed to the concept of proportional representation in 1921.

It is also the case that the that Labour party was in favour of PR when it was founded and has since abandoned that view for national Government. Let us get away from the history and stick to the question of what is a fair system. I am sure that if we based our answer on a neutral point of view that got away from party interest and if people thought about it honestly, we would not conclude that first past the post was fair.

My second point is about confidence. It is a crucial point because we are in a crisis of confidence in the political system. We have to ask ourselves whether we can carry on with an electoral system in which Governments are very unpopular on the day that they are elected. The current Government were elected with 35 per cent. of the vote. Almost twice as many people voted against them as for them. It is not surprising that the Government were unpopular from the start. Most Governments in this country are unpopular. That unpopularity is part of the crisis of confidence in politics, as people do not see their political views represented in the way that politics works nationally.

The hon. Member for Great Grimsby mentioned the 1950s. There was a sense then that the main purpose of the electoral system was simply to choose a Government from the two options available. It did not really matter how unrepresentative the Parliament was. However, the idea that the House of Commons is here simply to choose a Government cannot survive the massive reduction in support for the winning party. The electoral college notion of what the Commons is for cannot survive the present situation in which the winning party is so unpopular at the start.

We need to get away from the idea that the only purpose of the Commons is to act as an electoral college and that we all may as well go away once it has done that. We need to come round to the idea that the purpose of the House of Commons is to be a representative assembly. The first virtue of a representative assembly is that it represents the political views of the electorate. At present, it does not and it cannot regain any place in public confidence as long as that is the case.

The arguments against PR always come down to its not working in Israel or Italy and its helping extremists and damaging the constituency link, and a Conservative argument, which goes back to Mrs. Thatcher, is that consensus politics is a bad thing. None of those arguments works; for every Israel, there is a Germany, and for every Italy, there is a Scandinavia. There are many examples of successful, stable countries that use proportional systems. In any case, for Israel-a country that has been threatened existentially every moment since to came into existence-to have survived using PR is an example of PR's success not its failure.

We have discussed the point that extremists get in at local level even with first past the post. As the percentage needed by the winning candidate drops, the chance of that happening increases. Moreover, if people feel excluded from a political system and unrepresented in Parliament, it breeds extremism. People have this the wrong way round: the failure to recognise the unrepresentative nature of this place breeds further extremism, and we must do something about it.

All the alternative systems put forward maintain the constituency link in some way or another, apart from the extraordinary system used in European parliamentary elections, which is the worst of all systems, as the hon. Member for Great Grimsby said. In the additional member system, half the seats are constituency seats. In STV, the constituencies are large, but because of the way that the system works, individual Members have to compete with one another in their constituencies to do their work better. If there is one disadvantage of STV, it is that it would make Members concentrate so much on their constituencies that the kind of ministerial candidates that the hon. Member for Great Grimsby mentioned might be put off. That is why national politicians in Ireland now and then suggest that STV should be abandoned. The people would not allow that to happen; they are convinced that STV is the best system for them, which is why it has won in all the referendums in Ireland on the electoral system.

The final point is one that always comes up from Conservative Members; it is always at the back of their minds: if we had had PR in the 1980s, Mrs. Thatcher would never have become Prime Minister, and all the radical reforms that she introduced would never have happened. I do not think that that is true; many of those reforms would have happened eventually, in a different way, with greater consensus and less social rupture than they did. We must ask ourselves whether we want further electoral coups d'état by minorities. Is that how to unify the country? Or given the crisis of confidence in politics that we face, do we need politics that is more consensual and based more on debate and agreement? We cannot have that under first past the post.

David Howarth forgets that we entirely applaud what Lady Thatcher did in the 1980s. A strong Government, however unpopular in some parts of the country, put this country back on its feet and made it possible for us to do what we do today as a country and an active participant on the world stage. But let us put that aside.

I applaud strong Government doing what is needed to get the country back on its feet after a difficult economic crisis. Does the hon. Lady applaud this Government for doing exactly that in response to the world economic crisis?

No, I do not applaud what the Government have done, but I applaud the fact that we have a strong Government, in electoral terms, and that those of us who are against them at least know what they are doing. We have certainty, and I applaud that.

I congratulate Mr. Mitchell on securing this debate. He is an individual, as I said earlier, and I mean that as a compliment. I congratulate him for adhering to his principles through the decades. This is an important debate; indeed, it is a perpetual one. For democracy to be vibrant, we must continually debate electoral reform. However, he based his argument on the fact, as he says, that we need a referendum on proportional representation on 6 May or on whatever date the general election might fall.

I put it to the hon. Gentleman and other hon. Members that we do not need a referendum. On whatever day we hold a general election, the people of the United Kingdom will know that one party-the Liberal Democrats-has made proportional representation one of the main planks of its manifesto promises. If more people throughout the United Kingdom vote in the general election for the party in favour of proportional representation than for all the parties against it, that party will become a Government and can introduce proportional representation at its leisure. That will be our referendum.

Is the hon. Lady saying that if the Liberal Democrats were to win the next election with 35 per cent. of the vote, we could change the electoral system without a referendum? I thank her in advance for her support.

Yes, the hon. Gentleman is right. If the Liberal Democrats have a majority of votes in the United Kingdom, or more votes than the parties against proportional representation-

More seats.

No, I said more votes, but it does not matter which way one looks at it. If the Liberal Democrats get either more votes or more seats than all the other parties that are against proportional representation, they will be in a position to form a Government and go ahead with their plans.

Does the hon. Lady think that there should be a closer link between seats and votes?

Yes, of course there should. That is why it is Conservative policy to reduce the number of Members of Parliament and to equalise the size of constituencies. Votes in Scotland are not equal to votes in the rest of the United Kingdom, because of the differential size of the constituencies.

I must update the hon. Lady: Scotland now has the same numbers as the rest of the constituencies in the UK.

I appreciate that we have reduced the number of Scottish Members from 72 to 59. I agree with having done that. Nevertheless, throughout the rest of the United Kingdom, there is not parity of representation.

The hon. Lady is very generous in giving way. I will keep my remarks short and give way to her many times when I stand up to speak formally. Does she recognise that some, if not most, of the disparity between different constituencies is due to the deplorable lack of registration among a large number of voters-more than 3 million people, according to the Electoral Commission-who are eligible to vote but are not registered to do so? It is not possible to look at genuine parity until we have a universal registration of all those who are eligible to vote.

The Minister and I have had this conversation across the Dispatch Box on many occasions, and I agree that the comprehensiveness of the register is a sine qua non of having a fair and equal system. That is included in Conservative policy and outlook on this subject, too.

I will be brief now in my main remarks. I congratulate my hon. Friend Daniel Kawczynski and Mr. Donohoe on the eloquence with which they outlined the confusion in Scotland and quite rightly brought to our attention the problems that have occurred there because of the different types of voting system, which are sometimes all used on the same day, thereby causing confusion. I disagree with John Mason, who, although he has fought and won many elections, still has not quite got the point that a fair system has to be a simple system.

My hon. Friend Sir Paul Beresford has very eloquently told us what he discovered in New Zealand, and I tend to believe him. He is our best link to New Zealand, and he is absolutely correct to say that, under its system, the people got a Government whom no one voted for, because they were a Government brought about by bargaining after the event, and the voters had no part in choosing them. To have a Government who are truly based on the three principles that government should be of the people, by the people and for the people, there must be three basic principles: those who are elected must be accountable to the electorate; the system must be certain and simple; and it must give power to the people and not to political parties.

First, on accountability, a voter must know when he or she goes into the polling booth not only how to elect a person but how to get rid of a person. It is a basic tenet of accountability that if we have a representative whom we do not want for reasons of ideology, personality or whatever, there must be a way of getting rid of that person. Under a proportional system with a list, that cannot be done by the voter. It can only be done by the party hacks. I, of course, love the party hacks, but that is another matter. They take power away from the voter. The unique link between the representative and those who are represented must remain. In parliamentary terms, it is the unique link between the Member of Parliament and the constituency. At other levels of government, that unique link must always be there because it gives us accountability. Only through accountability can we have a democracy that works and represents the people.

Secondly, I agree with the Minister that the system must be certain, and therefore simple. Much as I detest most of what the current Labour Government have done, I certainly accept that the people have spoken very definitely and certainly for the past 12 years. When the people have spoken, we know what they have said, although I hope that they will soon change their minds. Therefore, the Government, however wrong they might have been on many things they have done, have been absolutely legitimate. People have to know what the effect of casting their vote will be and also the effect of changing their minds-let us hope that they will do that in the near future.

Finally, a truly valuable system of democracy gives power to the people and not to political parties. The hon. Member for Great Grimsby is an individual, not a party hack. He is the perfect example of someone who is elected by first past the post, because of his ability to stand up for his constituents and his principles, regardless of his party-[Interruption.]Well, sometimes regardless of his party and to good effect, and regardless of what the Government at Westminster say. It is the individual in the House of Commons who makes this a great democracy, and that is possible only through a first-past-the-post, straight, simple and constituency-linked system. To tinker with that for the purposes of the current fashion, the prevailing wisdom in the press or the economy would be wrong. Our democracy is more valuable than any of those things, and we must protect it by protecting first past the post.

Welcome to the Chair, Mr. Amess. I congratulate my hon. Friend Mr. Mitchell: as Mrs. Laing just said, he is living proof that the current system of electing Members of Parliament produces not only the cloistered, faceless, apparatchiks he so derided, but thoughtful, passionate, principled individuals such as him. I congratulate him on securing this genuinely important debate.

Daniel Kawczynski seemed to be facing two ways at once. On the one hand, he was deeply worried about the prospect of change in the electoral system, so he obviously thinks it an important part of our constitutional arrangements. On the other, however, he spent a lot of time saying that it was not important and that Members of Parliament ought to concentrate on the sorts of things that his constituents were raising with him. However, as David Howarth rightly said, those two things are not mutually exclusive, but part and parcel of the same issue.

The issue is so important, and my hon. Friend the Member for Great Grimsby is correct to bring it up at this point because we are facing a crisis in the legitimacy of our constitutional arrangements. All parties recognise that. Conservative Front-Bench Members clearly recognise it and are coming up with all sorts of ways to address the crisis, as indeed are other parties and the Government. One can look at a whole range of constitutional reforms, including the open primaries that the Conservative party has rightly pioneered. In my view, there is a lot of merit in what the Conservatives have done in that area.

However, to look at all those constitutional reform measures and then exclude any discussion of the system for electing Members of Parliament is bizarre. The system should be looked at as part of the constitutional crisis that we face. The system is so important because it is about how power is distributed, and how power is distributed makes possible the answers to all the questions that the constituents of the hon. Member for Shrewsbury and Atcham raise with him weekly in his surgeries.

In my speech I was saying that I wanted to have the status quo left as it is, with a first-past-the-post system. According to the media, the Labour Government will not have a referendum on PR on the date of the next election, but will put it in their manifesto and have a referendum should they be re-elected. Will the Minister give me a pledge that he will try to change the voting system not at the fag end of a Parliament, but only when his party has a fresh mandate?

The Prime Minister has made it clear that we are pledged to bring forward a referendum on the system in the next Parliament; there is no question of having it on the date of the next general election. My hon. Friend the Member for Great Grimsby seems to think that that will be on 6 May, but I have no such advance knowledge. None the less, by the middle of next year, there will be a general election. It is simply not possible to have the referendum, or any referendum, on that date and nor should it be.

This should not be a matter of party political calculation and, more crucially, it should not be perceived as such. Such a subject is fundamentally important. It is about the wiring of our constitution, and should not be seen as-or actually be-the subject of partisan political manoeuvring. If we had the referendum on the same day as the election, there would be the risk that the two things would get muddled up, and that is not the right way of doing things. As a Government, it is our settled view that any change in the electoral system should be subject to a referendum by the British people. This is their voting system and their constitution. It is not for Members of Parliament alone to decide on the matter.

I agree entirely with the Minister, but will he also agree that as part of that debate, we should be considering voter turnout?

I agree entirely with my hon. Friend. Such things must be considered together; we are looking at only one part of the picture. He is absolutely right in suggesting that participation is central. There are many views about why participation is declining, and we must consider the issue across the piece, as we are doing. We have already taken measures to increase turnout and we are continuing to look at different ways of voting. I will shortly publish an electoral strategy that looks in principle at different ways in which we can address that issue and many others.

We have had a lengthy debate. In the few minutes remaining, I want to pay tribute to the passionate speeches that we have heard from all parts of the Chamber, from the hon. Member for Shrewsbury and Atcham and his colleague in the all-party group, my hon. Friend Mr. Donohoe, and from the hon. Members for Mole Valley (Sir Paul Beresford), for Glasgow, East (John Mason), for Cambridge and for Epping Forest. The different points of view expressed reflect the importance of the subject. No doubt we will continue this debate in the months ahead.

In the time remaining, let me caution all hon. Members about the use of language in such a context. Terms such as "fairness" are not objective terms; they are relative. The hon. Member for Cambridge made much play of his notion of fairness, but I ask him to consider this point. What is so fair about a system in which a party that year after year, decade after decade, gets simply 5 per cent. of the vote-as happens in Germany, which he holds up as a model of the system-determines the complexion of the Government? That is axiomatically not fair.

The situation in Germany is not like that. The grand coalition, which has just ended, shows the other option. John Mason pointed out that small parties cannot get their way when the larger parties agree, but the Minister is assuming that larger parties never agree, which is an extraordinary thing to assume.

I ask the hon. Gentleman to look at the history of post-war Germany and see what percentage of the time has been occupied by a grand coalition in power. He will find that history proves my point rather than his. All I am saying is that we need to be extremely careful about using terms such as "fairness". Personally, I prefer "legitimacy", because in the end it is the legitimacy of the system-not our view but the British people's view of legitimacy-that really counts.

I agree with the hon. Gentleman that a system in which a Government can be elected with an absolute majority, with about 25 per cent. of the electorate supporting them, is not sustainable in the long term. It is a system that has persisted and is likely to persist after the next general election, whichever party wins. Unfortunately, part of the problem is the low turnout, as my hon. Friend the Member for Central Ayrshire rightly pointed out. We have to look at different ways in which we can inject greater legitimacy into the system.