Campaigners for voting system reform say the electorate is keen to see a wider spread of parties at Westminster. Photograph: Danny Lawson/PA
Gordon Brown is to introduce a law to guarantee that a re-elected Labour government would hold a referendum within two years on abolishing Britain's first-past-the-post system for elections to the Westminster parliament.
Electoral reformers hailed the move to abolish the winner takes all system which gave Labour 55% of the seats in the House of Commons in 2005 on an overall share of just 35.3% of the vote.
Ministers are to introduce paving legislation within months to ensure a referendum by October 2011 on replacing the first-past-the-post system with the Alternative Vote (AV) system.
Under the current system voters place an X against the name of just one candidate; the winner is the candidate with the most votes. Critics say the votes for other candidates count for nothing.
Reformers say that AV is more proportional because candidates rank candidates according to their preference. Votes are redistributed if no candidate secures more than 50%.
Some traditionalists support AV because it would preserve the 650 constituencies that will be in place in the next parliament. They oppose purer forms of proportional representation (PR) because they would lead to the creation of larger multi-member constituencies or the abolition of constituencies altogether if a national list system were introduced.
Jack Straw, the justice secretary, will introduce the change in an amendment to the constitutional renewal bill. This will amount to paving legislation for a referendum on whether to introduce AV, to be held no later than October 2011.
Ministers, who agreed the move at a meeting of the cabinet's democratic renewal committee (DRC) yesterday, believe that the prospect of a referendum will have three key benefits. It will:
• Allow Labour to depict itself at the general election as the party of reform in response to the parliamentary expenses scandal.
• Make David Cameron look like a defender of the status quo. The Tories, who are opposed to abolishing the first-past-the-post system, would have to introduce fresh legislation to block the referendum if they win the election.
• Increase the chances that the Liberal Democrats will support Labour – or at least not support the Tories – if no party wins an overall majority at the election, resulting in a hung parliament. The Lib Dems have traditionally regarded the introduction of PR as their key demand in any coalition negotiations. While AV does not technically count as PR, many Lib Dems regard AV as a step in the right direction.
Well Labour has fulfilled all of its other promises - hasn't it?
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