Thank you, and good evening.
Thank you for inviting us to appear before the committee to share our position and expertise on the United Kingdom's electoral systems. My colleague Mr. Hughes and I thank you for your welcome.
The Electoral Reform Society is a non-governmental association that campaigns for a better democracy in the United Kingdom. The principle underlying our work is that every voice needs to be heard and every vote must be reflected in Parliament.
I will start talking about the various systems in the U.K. My colleague will then speak to the system in New Zealand, which changed in 1996. Finally, we'll talk about our experience of referendums.
Thank you very much for inviting us to give evidence today. We're honoured to be here and thank you for your warm welcome.
The Electoral Reform Society campaigns for a better democracy in the U.K. We believe that every voice should be heard and every vote valued and that votes should be fairly translated into parliamentary seats.
I'll address the U.K. experience of proportional voting. I'm loving the well-behaved idea, which isn't one I had come across before. My colleague Darren will speak to the New Zealand experience, and finally, I'll share reflections on the U.K.'s recent experience of referendums.
First past the post, as you may know, is used to elect all members of Parliament, and in England and Wales only, municipal representatives. All our other institutions and elected offices use other systems.
The ERS's preferred system is a proportional system with a constituency link that allows voters to vote preferentially for candidates from parties or independents. This system, the single transferable vote form of PR, is used in Scottish municipal elections as well as in Northern Ireland and in Ireland. It's a candidate-centred system that puts maximum choice in the hands of the voter rather than the party.
We like it because candidates reach out to far more voters and they visit neighbourhoods they never bothered with under first past the post. They literally go to parts of the community that would otherwise go untouched. They have a different kind of conversation, often more positive. After all, they're saying, “You might not want to give me your first preference, but how about giving me your second or your third preference”. It's a different kind of conversation. It's a more positive conversation.
There's more competition. Uncontested seats are a thing of the past at the Scottish municipal level. There are no no-go areas. Competing everywhere is worthwhile, and people are far more likely to have a representative they voted for and a choice of representatives to visit.
There's some evidence of some specialization when it comes to casework. After all, when there's a team of MPs or representatives voting locally, you can begin to have some sharing of the casework load. Translated to the federal level, that approach sees a team of local MPs from a range of parties, very much like in Ireland, where it's used for the lower house and you have three to five local MPs. Interestingly, Ireland has multi-member constituencies elected by STV and an extremely local focus by candidates, which is interesting. That's something they have under a proportional constituency system.
Turning to MMP, which we also have some experience with, but we call it AMS, the additional member system, that's the system used in Scotland and Wales for their Parliaments. As you all know, it's a system where people can vote for the constituency representative and a party list.
What happens is that it produces broadly proportional parliaments where people are seeing seats reflect votes. Voters retain a clearly identifiable local representative. It has produced both power-sharing governments and majority governments, and crucially, it has also enabled parties to put forward a balanced and diverse group of representatives.
On that note, I'm going to hand it over to Darren.