BRITISH PRIME minister Gordon Brown’s proposal to hold a referendum on electoral reform was passed last night by a majority of 178 in the House of Commons. The vote will take place before October next year.
Despite the opposition of Labour rebels and the Tory party, MPs voted 365 to 187 to ask the British people to decide whether the traditional first-past-the-post system should be scrapped.
Under Mr Brown’s proposed alternative vote (AV) plan voters would rank candidates in order of preference. The candidates ranked lowest would be eliminated until one was left with 50 per cent of the vote. Currently, just one-third of MPs gets 50 per cent of the vote.
Meanwhile, efforts by cash-strapped local authorities to end overnight vote counting – one of the great traditions of British politics – in this year’s election should be banned, the House of Commons ruled last night.
Justice secretary Jack Straw joined 70 MPs in supporting an amendment subsequently passed by MPs that orders the counting of votes to start within four hours of polls closing. He had earlier told MPs that he was concerned at the “growing trend” among returning officers to begin counts the following day “for their own convenience”.
The full legislation will struggle to become law before this parliament ends because of Tory opposition in the House of Lords.
The overnight counting amendment, however, is supported by both Labour and Conservative MPs. They believe that the electoral commission should issue orders to returning officers on the back of last night’s vote.
The British love of overnight counting was best illustrated in the 1997 election, when outgoing Conservative minister Michael Portillo lost his Enfield seat at 4am – prompting an election book titled, Were You Still Up For Portillo?Up to a quarter of all councils, facing higher staffing costs and difficulties coping with new postal voting rules, had considered abandoning the traditional Thursday night count in favour of one beginning on Friday morning.
The counting amendment was added by Mr Straw as an incentive to MPs to back the wider electoral reform plan, which has been sharply criticised by the Conservative Party since Mr Brown took up the issue in recent weeks.
As he urged MPs to support the AV system, Mr Straw said all parties have rules that progressively eliminate candidates, and the British public should enjoy the same powers.
Critics, however, have accused Mr Brown of a cynical ploy to win the support of Liberal Democrat MPs in the event of a hung parliament at the next general election.
The government also came under fire over the £80 million cost of the plebiscite at a time when public spending is under intense pressure because of a record budget deficit.
Conservative Party leader David Cameron dismissed Mr Brown’s plans as “a fiddle”, though the Electoral Reform Society pointed out that his opposition is based on a belief that the current system best suits his own interests.
– (additional reporting PA)
