The
BBC's report on Labour's plans to introduce a referendum on the Alternative Vote voting system does manage to include this line
"Labour pledged a referendum on electoral reform in its 1997 election manifesto but the idea was kicked into the long grass by Tony Blair after his landslide victory."
But do not mention the Jenkins Commission which was set-up to look into the various alternatives to the First Past The Post voting system. Here's what
The Jenkins Commission concluded re the Alternative Vote system:
"The Commission's conclusions from these and other pieces of evidence about the operation of AV are threefold. First, it does not address one of our most important terms of reference. So far from doing much to relieve disproportionality, it is capable of substantially adding to it. Second, its effects (on its own without any corrective mechanism) are disturbingly unpredictable. Third, it would in the circumstances of the last election, which even if untypical is necessarily the one most vivid in the recollection of the public, and very likely in the circumstances of the next one too, be unacceptably unfair to the Conservatives. Fairness in representation is a complex concept, as we have seen in paragraph 6, and one to which the upholders of FPTP do not appear to attach great importance. But it is one which, apart from anything else, inhibits a Commission appointed by a Labour government and presided over by a Liberal Democrat from recommending a solution which at the last election might have left the Conservatives with less than half of their proportional entitlement. We therefore reject the AV as on its own a solution despite what many see as its very considerable advantage of ensuring that every constituency member gains majority acquiescence."
Might this be a pertinent point for an unbiased news agency to recall? Does not recalling this fact lead one to think that the BBC might not be entirely impartial in this as in so many political matters?
No comments:
Post a Comment