The 2011 AV Referendum or the attempt to change the UK parliamentary voting system

Abstract

As the Lords Constitution Committee pointed out in its fifteenth report devoted to "the process of constitutional change" (6th July 2011) "The Constitution is the foundation upon which law and government are built. Yet, the United Kingdom has no agreed process for constitutional change. We do not accept that the government should be able to pick and choose which processes to apply when proposing significant constitutional change". This statement came as a reaction to the way the coalition government rushed the Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill through Parliament that was to serve as the legislative framework for the referendum on the Alternative Vote, with no prior consultation or pre-legislative scrutiny. Members of the Constitution Committee did not so much challenge the government’s right to initiate constitutional change but emphasize the pressing need to hold it to account and especially to make sure that the whole process is democratic and transparent as well as respectful of parliamentary scrutiny. Although constitutional change did not rank high among the 31 points listed by the Coalition Programme for Government following the May 2010 general election, some were to be given priority such as an overhaul of the voting system from first-past-the-post to Alternative Vote, a reduction of the number of MPs in the House of Commons to 600, establishing fixed-term parliaments and, in the longer run, turning the House of Lords into a wholly, or mainly, elected second chamber based on some form of proportional representation. The wish of the Conservatives to set up new constituency boundaries, and the opposition of the Liberal Democrats to the first-past-the-post system gave the two parties that now form the coalition the basis for a deal agreed during the five days of coalition negotiations in May 2010 without which the coalition itself might not have come into being. Besides, there was no sustained public demand for such constitutional change. Indeed, British voters had not sought a coalition government nor did they particularly want electoral or parliamentary reform. So it seems that those constitutional change proposals were doomed to fail from the outset as there was an absence of consensus within the government as well as a lack of consultation and no consideration of the wider impact of those changes on constitutional arrangements.