MORE than a week after Prime Minister Gordon Brown made what was widely taken as a promise to consult the public on electoral reform I still haven’t received an invitation to participate.
This is in spite of the fact that I am quite willing to defer to Mr Brown’s judgement on the value of retaining the local constituency link to MPs.
I also agree with him and Conservative leader David Cameron that it is important for the largest single party to have a working majority in the House (something which the current system fails to ensure).
These characteristics are, I believe, entirely compatible with major improvement to the system, and even with achieving what is arguably as close an approximation to proportional representation as the systems which Liberal Democrat leader Nick Clegg might seek to pass off under that label.
Anyone who would claim it is proportionate to give none out of more than 600 seats to a party that has ten per cent, or even just a quarter of a per cent, of the total vote has a problem either with mathematics or with honesty.
John Riseley, Harrogate, North Yorkshire.
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