Hain: Vote change

The leader of the House of Commons has said the Labour Party has the chance to change the electoral system.

Speaking from the party's annual conference in Brighton, Peter Hain backed calls for the alternative vote system to be adopted in Westminster elections.

And he claimed that fellow Cabinet ministers are open to persuasion on the issue which is currently being reviewed within government.

Constitutional affairs secretary Lord Falconer, whose department is leading the assessment of the four different electoral systems now used throughout Britain, is "very open minded", Hain told ePolitix.com.

"Indeed I would say more than open minded," the Commons leader added.

But he argued that the prospect of success for the campaign depended on the strength of the case made by activists.

"The first thing to do is we have to win the argument within the party," Hain said.

"We have to win the argument over the coming months over what goes in the manifesto.

"I think the door is open and we ought to make that argument.

"It really rather depends on the case that is made, the strength of that argument and the campaign."

Hain believes that Labour would regret not "grasping this opportunity" to realign the political system while in power.

"The challenge for us to achieve is a political legacy with a permanent shift towards progressive governance," he said at a Make Votes Count fringe meeting.

Under the system second preference votes are cast to ensure that the elected MP has the backing of at least 50 per cent of voters.

Hain added that it was the only reform that supporters of both the current first past the post method and pure proportional representation are "comfortable" with.

"Pragmatically it is the only option that stands a chance of going through the House of Commons," he said.

"I don't think people will support a system which gets rid of their ability to sack their MP," Hain added.

But at the same meeting former Commons leader Robin Cook told ePolitix.com that supporters of the alternative vote could not be sure it would keep Labour in power.

"I'm not against the alternative vote so I'm not going to argue against it," he said.

"But I think that those who propose it need to be quite honest that it is not a proportional system.

"You could end up with an even less proportional result in the House of Commons under AV.

"That is why the Jenkins commission, which went into this in great depth, did not accept it.

"Of course the irony is that in circumstances in which we are currently in a prolonged period of Labour government, we could actually come off much worse under AV than under first past the post."