Why alternative vote and proportional representation are polls apart

A RECENT correspondent in the Letters Pages (The Herald, April 30) was rightly taken to task for describing the Alternative Vote system, on which we had a referendum in 2011, as a proportional representation system, which it most certainly is not. He may be in good company, however.

The new Minister for Constitutional Reform, John Penrose, was charged with responding to a Make Seats Match Votes petition, handed in to Downing Street and comprising nearly half a million signatures. He replied: “I appreciate your point, but the difficulty would be that we had a referendum on changing the electoral system to Proportional Representation in 2011... it would be pretty difficult to argue that we should go ahead anyway.”

The organisers of the petition think that Mr Penrose has “forgotten” that AV is not a proportional system. Too kind, I think, and a recent report on the 2015 election from the Electoral Reform Society emphasises that, in party proportional terms, an AV outcome would have been even less proportional than the first past the post result.

Mr Penrose should do his homework. He needs to look no further than the 2014 report of the House of Commons Political and Constitutional Reform Committee on Voter Engagement (or “disengagement” more like) where 39 consultees argued that electoral reform is necessary to improve public engagement and turnout. Of these, 21 advocated the Single Transferable Vote system as the required election system. Most of the remainder did not specify a system, beyond suggesting some form of proportional representation. Thomas G F Gray, 4A Auchinloch Road, Lenzie.