No hanging chads, please

Bob Alexander on the need to reform the voting system to get rid of ‘electoral bias’

One of New Labour’s most outspoken commitments in opposition was that it would reform Parliament. It vowed to make the House of Lords more democratic and representative and later committed itself to the Wakeham recommendation to introduce some elected members. But now it is reduced to a grudge match against the remaining hereditary peers who are there as part of the clandestine deal agreed by Lords Irvine and Cranborne to stand security for the government’s pledge to have a second stage of change.

But where real reform is needed is in the House of Commons. There are glaring inequities in the voting system. In opposition, Labour promised to set up an Independent Commission on the Voting System. It did so when elected. I gladly joined because the new government had also made a clear manifesto commitment to a referendum on the outcome. How naive. I should have realised that the pledge had been made solely to woo the Liberal Democrats and that, with a thumping majority, they could now ditch them. Roy Jenkins was the Chair, which meant that the discussion sparkled and that our work never got in the way of a good meal. We were very careful to propose only evolutionary change, keeping the full constituency system but with the alternative vote to get a more representative result. We modestly added the idea of 20 per cent proportional representation, which would mean that for the first time in our history every vote cast would count towards the election of an MP. But for all our concern not to frighten the horses, our report was quickly tossed into the long grass.