The Government's recent Green Paper, The Governance of Britain, is for me personally a mixture of good and bad ideas, relevant and less relevant ideas. For STV Action, the mere eleven lines (on page 46 of the 63 pages) devoted to electoral reform are the most important. We are disappointed, but not surprised, that there is no commitment to reform. The flourish with which the Government published the paper reminds me of the glossy wrapping you may find round an expensive Christmas present but its contents are more like a packet of cheap tissues, only less useful.

Although the paper contain many fine sounding words about improving democracy, encouraging more female MPs, involving citizens in decision-making etc, the paper fails to contain any robust proposals to achieve these objectives.

I quote just one of the Government's professed goals from the paper's introduction:

"To invigorate our democracy, with people proud to participate in decision-making at every level."

People will not be proud to participate until they feel their votes really count. Our democracy cannot be invigorated with the present voting system. The top priority must be to introduce the Single Transferable Vote, sometimes known justifiably as the Supervote.