What should we do now that the coalition Government has promised a referendum on the Alternative Vote (AV) for elections to the House of Commons?

We welcome it. Although it falls far short of STV, it is a small but significant step in the right direction because it introduces preferential voting (voting 1st, 2nd, 3rd etc) for the first time. It would also give all MPs the legitimacy of being elected by at least half the constituency voters. AV would be easy to introduce with, unlike most other systems, no boundary changes needed. A subsequent change to STV would be as easy. The public would already be used to voting by numbers and clusters of existing single-member constituencies could simply be grouped together to form multi-member ones for STV.

I believe both coalition partners will do their best to honour their joint programme, including passing legislation for a referendum, but we need to remind them and encourage them to get it on the Statute Book without delay.

Thereafter, we shall have a very hard campaign for a “Yes” vote. Although the Conservative Party is committed to whipping its MPs to vote for holding a referendum, the Party is free to campaign in the referendum for a “No” vote. We should do our best in the meantime to encourage the Conservative Party and its individual members to support a “Yes” vote.

Also, although the Labour Party promised in its manifest to hold a referendum on AV, there is no guarantee that it will support the coalition’s legislation and, if it does, it may still campaign for “No”. So we should also do our best now to encourage Labour both to honour its manifesto commitment by supporting the legislation and then to campaign for “Yes” in the referendum.

We can’t afford to wait for the referendum; we must start building support and engaging the public now – recruiting supporters and members for pro-reform organizations, especially STV Action and the Electoral Reform Society, which both want preferential voting.