We warmly welcome today’s action by Health Secretary, Alan Johnson, in putting electoral reform high on the political agenda by calling for a referendum on it. In particular, we welcome the proposal to let voters – not MPs – decide on the voting system. When so many MPs (although not all) cannot be trusted to restrict their expenses claims to acceptable items and amounts, we cannot trust them to decide how they should be elected.

However, although it is understandable that Alan Johnson proposed the AV+ system for the referendum because the Jenkins Commission recommended it in 1998, politics have moved on since then. The current scandal of MPs’ expenses makes it essential to have a voting system that makes MPs really accountable to voters. STV, more than any other system, would allow voters to choose between candidates of the same and different parties and enable them to reward the honest and remove the dishonest without any risk of splitting the party vote.