Although Parliament’s draft report has not been voted on, it is likely to be approved with a large majority.

It would establish common EU standards for the prosecution of traffickers and greater protection for victims, meaning that, for example, women trafficked for the sex trade could not be charged with holding false immigration papers given them by traffickers.

The directive also includes the protection of children from sexual abuse, exploitation and child pornography. The need for EU action is, in part, because many victims are trafficked through Europe. It would also allow suspects to be prosecuted for offences in other member states.

European treaties give the government the option to opt-in or out, but this right was not agreed for directives such as this. On August 4, the Home Office told the BBC that the directive offered no benefits to Britain, hence the decision to opt-out. In another instance, the Home Office spokesperson told the media:

“Human trafficking is a brutal form of organised crime, and combating it is a key priority for the government. The UK already complies with most of what is required by the draft EU directive.”

Working with our neighbouring member states to combat human trafficking was at the heart of a conference held by Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) in Sheffield in 2005; Crown Prosecutor Mr Rankin said:

“At meetings such as these with our partners in the criminal justice systems across Europe, we discuss how we can work together to prevent and combat human trafficking through international co-operation, sharing best practice and improving the effectiveness of prosecutions.”

Britain’s record in tackling and convicting human traffickers has been criticised by grouns including Amnesty International, who stated in June that the UK’s new anti-trafficking measures were “not fit for purpose”. They added that the government was “breaching its obligations under the European Convention against Trafficking”.

Klara Skrivankova of Anti-Slavery International said:

“Without international co-operation, the government will lose the battle with the traffickers. By choosing not to opt in to the directive, the government is failing in its efforts to combat this transnational crime.”

New figures also show a failure to increase convictions of criminal gangs who have forced an estimated 2,600 foreign women into prostitution in brothels in England and Wales.

Only five people were convicted of human trafficking for sexual exploitation in the first six months of this year, according to the UK Human Trafficking Centre. This is compared with 33 and 34 in the previous two 12-month periods. A further nine were convicted of other offences, having been arrested on suspicion of trafficking.

Former Europe Minister, Denis MacShane has written to Nick Clegg to urge the ex-European Commission official that:

“Women in particular will be alarmed to learn that the Liberal Democrats are willing to support these efforts to weaken the directive. It is the wrong signal to send to the pimps and traffickers.

“I hope you can persuade the prime minister to drop his opt-out policy on this welcome effort to combat sex-slave trafficking.”

The communication revolution that we’ve undergone in recent years has two big impacts:

• It changes what’s possible. It makes creating networks between people across organisations easier; it opens new ways for communication between citizens and state; it gives everyone who wants it a platform for global communication; and it makes it possible to discover local online dialogue.

• It changes citizen expectations of government. When I can follow news from my neighbour’s blog on my phone, why can’t I get updates on local services on the mobile-web?

• When I can e-mail someone across the world and be collaborating on a document in minutes, why is it so hard to have a conversation with the council down the road?

• And when brands and mainstream media are doing interactivity and engagement – why are government departments struggling with it so much?

Right now, government is missing out on significant cost saving and service-enhancing benefits from new forms of communication and collaboration. But the answers are not simply about introducing new technology – they are to be found in intentional culture change: in creating the will and the opportunity for interactive government.

There are three things we need to focus on:

• Culture change. Although there are pockets of interactivity breaking out across the public sector, it’s often counter-cultural and ‘underground’. Most staff feel constrained to work with tools given to them by IT departments, and to focus on official lines more than open conversations. Creating a culture of interactivity needs leadership from the top, and values that everyone can sign up to.

• Removing the barriers. There are literally hundreds of small daily frustrations and barriers that can get in the way of interactive government. It might be the inability of upload a photo to an online forum (interactive government has human faces…), or consent and moderation policies that cover everyone’s backs but don’t allow real voices to be heard. Instead of ignoring these barriers, we need to overcome them – to rethink them within an interactive culture that can make dialogue and change a top priority.

• Solving tough problems. Public service is tough: it has to deal with political, democratic and social pressures that would make most social media start-ups struggle. We need to think hard about how interactive technology and interactive ways of working play out in the tough cases that the public sector deals in every day.

The Interactive Charter is a project to explore how exactly we go about making government into interactive government. It’s got three parts:

• Creating a pledge – The ‘Interactive Charter’ will be a clear statement that any organization (or senior manager within an organization) can sign up to say something along the lines of “I want my organization to get interactivity; and I’ll commit to overcoming the barriers to interactive ways of working”. With a promise and commitment from the top removing the barriers should get a lot easierOf course to just hand down a pledge wouldn’t be very interactive, so we’re drafting it on Mixed Ink.

• Naming the problems…and overcoming them – We’ve already made a start over on the Interactive Charter wiki, but we would love you to join in suggesting practical challenges, and practical solutions, to interactive and digital working in government.

• Putting it into practice – We want to pilot the approach: getting top-level support, and removing the barriers to interactivity from the ground up. Could your organization be part of that?

So, if you’ve got a vision for more interactive government, you can share it by redrafting the current pledge. And if you’ve faced or solved problems around interactive government, help shape the body of knowledge around each of the barriers and their solutions on the wiki. Of course, you could also just drop in comments over on the Political Innovation blog…

About Political Innovation

We’d be very interested to hear any ideas that you have for an essay of your own – we’ll need an email and we’ll want to discuss it with you before it goes on the site. All contributions will be archived on www.politicalinnovation.org – along with details of what we’re looking for from essayists and a bunch of FAQs and a guide to how we hope the whole thing will play out.

I hope you’ll get involved in this as a commenter, participant or maybe even as an essayist. Make sure you don’t miss anything by the blog joining our Google Group, subscribing to RSS feed, getting each post emailed to you and, of course, following us on Twitter – @PICamp – and Facebook.

With the Labour leadership race entering the home straight, the result of the Edinburgh East primary was cast in doubt this evening when it became clear that only 300 people had voted in a contest which used the wrong rules.

The Edinburgh East primary was held using first-past-the-post in contravention of the Labour party’s rulebook. A spokesman for the Labour party confirmed to Left Foot Forward that CLP supporting nominations must be held using the transferable vote system – also known as Alternative Vote – the same as used in the election itself. Around 1,000 ballot papers were distributed in recent weeks with a reported turnout of 27 per cent. The turnout was significantly lower than the 5,000 people who voted in the Bassetlaw primary.

The YouGov poll of Labour Party members last month indicated that Ed Miliband won 61 per cent of second preferences from supporters of Diane Abbott, Ed Balls, and Andy Burnham. If this held true in the Edinburgh it would have been enough to give Ed Miliband the narrowest of victories, possibly a margin of just one vote.

Local MP, Sheila Gilmore, nominated Diane Abbott but had pledged to give her vote – which is equivalent to the ballots of 1,000 members in the CLP section of the electoral college – to the winner of the primary. She will now come under pressure to organise a re-run.

While the David Miliband campaign claimed victory, a spokesman for Ed Miliband told Left Foot Forward:

“This result shows that the leadership election is absolutely all to play for. Ed intends to use the next few weeks to continue speaking to as many labour members and trade union members as possible. His message that Labour must change to win again is being well received.”

UPDATE 18.17

The David Miliband campaign have been in touch asking us to clarify that the Edinburgh East CLP’s supporting nomination went to Ed Miliband earlier this summer. The primary vote which concluded today was an indicative poll to influence Sheila Gilmore’s vote in the electoral college. It is, of course, up to the MP as to whether to cast her vote on this basis, particularly in light of the question marks over the rules used in the ballot.

UPDATE 10.15 24/8

Jon Rentoul has a blog this morning questioning the methodology used in our analysis above. I wanted to post the following comment but the Indy’s bizarre comments system won’t let me using Open ID. It’s here instead:

“A fair point and glad you liked the picture. But the reason for our post was not to conclusively suggest that Ed Miliband had won. How could we know? Indeed, the sample of 329 ABB supporters is sufficiently small that the margin of victory would have been well inside the margin of error as your post also shows.

“The point of the post was to show that the election had been conducted using an electoral system (first-past-the-post) which the party never uses and which both Milibands are committed to opposing. Given that the outcome is being used to determine how Sheila Gilmore votes, it should either be re-run or she should adopt the Burkean position of almost all her PLP colleagues and vote for the Miliband (or other candidate) that she wants to see as leader.”

Rowland, who is estimated to be worth £730 million, had lived in tax-haven Guernsey, but returned to the UK for the past year so he could legally make donations of £2.7m to the Tory party in the run up to this year’s election.

Even Conservative Home criticised CCHQ’s handling of Rowland’s botched non-appointment, saying “big questions need to be asked about failing to carry out due diligence on this appointment”. However, they didn’t complain when the appointment was announced on June 25th.

Back then, Rowland said:

“It is a tremendous honour that David Cameron has asked me to take on the role of Treasurer to the Conservative Party after Conference.”

Honestly, though, you’d think that after all the furore of being bankrolled by tax avoider Michael Ashcroft, the Tories would have learnt their lesson. Apparently not. Just what is it about the super rich that makes them think they don’t have to pay their fair share?

Meanwhile, following Left Foot Forward’s piece on Philip Green’s controversial appointment as Government ‘cuts Tsar’, and our exposé on the extent of Green’s tax avoidance, the Liberal Democrats have joined the criticism; Vince Cable’s adviser Matthew Oakeshott stated that Green must pay tax in the UK, saying:

“…it must be right for any British people in prominent positions in public life to be firmly resident and domiciled for UK tax purposes.”

Elsewhere, Lib Dem MPs Roger Williams and Mike Hancock expressed concern about the appointment, with Williams arguing Green’s tax arrangements should be studied by the Treasury and HMRC adding that Green’s appointment showed that “rich people can arrange their financial affairs with a great deal more latitude”, while Hancock stated that “anyone who avoids tax (should) be tackled firmly” and that he was “surprised that Clegg would want to appoint someone like that to advise him”.

No doubt when he returns from his ‘austerity’ holiday, David Cameron will be at pains to remind Britons that ‘we’re all in this together’. But the Tories’ obsession with appointing tax avoiders to high-profile positions exposes the hollowness of Cameron’s lofty words.

Green is the multi-billionaire owner of the clothing retailer Arcadia, which includes Topshop and Dorothy Perkins. However, while he may be one of Britain’s most successful entrepreneurs, owning an estimated 12% per cent of Britain’s high-street shops, his billions are the result of massive tax avoidance.

Ninety two per cent of Arcadia group is owned by Green’s wife, Tina, for tax purposes. Green spends most of his time in Monaco, a tax haven, and in 2005 his company paid a £1.2 billion dividend to Tina Green. The Treasury did not receive a penny because she is a Monaco resident.

Of course, despite being morally repugnant, tax evasion the Green way is not illegal. But, as Will Straw points out in the Guardian, ‘it is certainly a poor qualification for heading up a Whitehall “external efficiency review”’.

In 2006, the BBC’s Money Programme reported that Green and his family had saved themselves nearly £300 million the previous year by living partly in Monaco. Green has at least acknowledged that his family does not live in Britain, although he claims that his family has paid capital gains and corporation tax of between £300-400m over the past five years in the UK, although this is still a very small sum for a man estimated to be worth well over £4bn.

Few could deny that Green is a brilliantly skilled money-maker and Arcadia has recorded operating profits of between £250-300m in the last three years despite the downturn. But Green is also the Tories’ fourth so-called ‘government efficiency’ adviser after former BP boss Lord Browne was appointed in June “to improve efficiency in each department”, while Sir Peter Gershon and Dr Martin Read promised the Conservatives £12bn in efficiency savings before the election.

These conflicting egos, all doing the same job, are not likely to achieve anything.

Moreover, while it is unsurprising that the Lib-Con Government of millionaires should have appointed a billionaire to look for efficiency savings, the appointment is surely a PR disaster – for one thing Green is a forceful man with a shorter fuse than Colonel Gaddafi – and his appointment will undoubtedly increase Cabinet tensions, despite the warm accolades that were heaped on Green by Government ministers yesterday.

Cabinet Office Minister Francis Maude praised Green’s “immense commercial experience”, adding that he had a “fantastic track record”. Meanwhile, Lib Dem Chief Secretary Danny Alexander claimed that Green’s review would help the government “totally rethink” the way it spends public money. Green will be supported by a team of civil servants and report directly to Maude and Alexander.

However, while his over-promoted colleague may be sanguine about this highly controversial appointment, it may push his Lib Dem colleague, business secretary Vince Cable, towards the door marked resignation. Cable was clearly not consulted on the appointment, and when interviewed on Friday, said “there’s a lot I could say on this, but I’d better miss this one out”, adding he was “tempted to comment, but I think I’d better not”.

Indeed, in November 2009, Cable strongly criticised Scottish first minister Alex Salmond when Salmond appointed Jim McColl, also a Monaco-based tax exile, as one of his economic advisors, stating that “there is growing intolerance of British companies and the super-rich who dodge taxes. Having an adviser who is also a tax exile is completely incompatible and totally unacceptable”. With Cable’s recent green paper on bank lending having been watered down by the Treasury so much as to be virtually meaningless, Green’s appointment may be the final straw.

Furthermore, the focus on what are, in relative terms, small government efficiency savings, is a further sign of the coalition’s short-sightedness. As Left Foot Forward’s Will Straw has pointed out, David Cameron wrote in The Sun this week that “benefit fraud is the first and the deepest cut we will make”, blithely ignoring the fact that there is just £1.5bn in benefit and tax credit fraud compared to an estimated £17bn of tax avoidance, evasion and non-payment identified in HMRC’s Protecting Tax Revenues report. In other words, tax dodging dwarfs welfare and tax credit fraud by a factor of more than 10 to one.

In this vein, Paul Kenny, the general secretary of the GMB, struck an appropriately sarcastic tone when he expressed his hope that Green would use his “experience and knowledge to help the government deal with tax avoidance schemes give the government good advice in closing the loopholes”; well said, Paul – but appointing a tax evader to look at ways to cut public spending must be second nature to a party that has spent the past decade being bankrolled by one.

City AM reveals that Grayling’s DWP:

…rapped out a press release claiming that there are 71,000 households in London where no-one has ever worked, equivalent to 23 per cent of the capital. Perturbed by the maths, a conscientious City A.M.er rang up to check the figures, to be greeted by a red-faced spinner.

“It’s actually 61,000 households, equivalent to just seven per cent of London,” she explained, apologetically.

This isn’t the first run-in Grayling has had with a calculator, of course: earlier this year, as shadow home secretary, he was publicly rebuked by the head of the UK Statistics Authority for manipulating crime statistic comparisons in the election…

Since the turn of the year, Left Foot Forward has exposed and chronicled many more Grayling gaffes:

• February 3rd: Grayling claims there was a “98 per cent increase in serious violent crime” under Labour – the true figure is actually a 43 per cent fall.

• March 9th: Grayling claims there was a 44 per cent increase in violent crime – yet failed to release any details, figures or sources to back him up.

• March 20th: Grayling is caught on camera condemning the principle behind David Cameron’s unilateral bank tax at a public meeting.

• April 4th: Grayling is secretly recorded saying hotel owners “should have the right” to bar gay couples from their premises – putting him at odds with the image of the ‘new’ Tory party.

• April 9th: Grayling is filmed on a council estate near King’s Cross station and fails to make the link between poor social housing and drug use, then later that day blunders on the issue of youth reoffending.

• April 20th: Out of hiding, Grayling refuses to say he regrets his homophobic B&B remarks – only to be slapped down by David Cameron later that same day.

• April 23rd: Grayling fails to welcome the latest fall in violent crime, bizarrely claiming the fall in violent crime is evidence that Britain is a “more dangerous country” than before.

• April 27th: Two independent fact checking websites further undermine Grayling’s claims about violent crime; once again he refueses to provide any evidence for his claims.

How would we fill our webspace without him…

The overestimation of the number of schools applying for academy freedoms follows Gove’s litany of errors over the announcement of the Building Schools for the Future scrappage, described as “intolerable” and “astonishing” by Labour MPs, and a “regrettable error” by the man himself.

Shadow education secretary and Labour leadership candidate Ed Balls today seized on Gove’s latest blunder:

“Michael Gove railroaded the Academies Bill through Parliament in a way that’s only normally done for emergencies like anti-terrorism legislation. He said this was because hundreds of schools wanted to become Academies, over a thousand schools had applied and many of them wanted to open in September.

“Now barely ten per cent of that number, around 100, have even applied for Academy status and none of them will convert in September, Michael Gove must explain why he rushed this Bill and misleadingly claimed that more than one thousand schools had applied. It seems to me that the real reason for the rush was to avoid proper scrutiny for a deeply flawed piece of legislation.”

In a DfE press release in early June, Gove had originally claimed:

“The response has been overwhelming. In just one week, over 1100 schools have applied. Of these, 626 are outstanding schools, including over 250 primary schools, nearly 300 secondary schools (over half of all the outstanding secondary schools in the country) and over 50 special schools.”

On June 2nd, the DfE said the total number of schools who have applied for academy freedoms was 1,114: 488 non-outstanding schools and 626 ‘outstanding’ schools, of which 273 were primary schools and 299 secondary schools; now, however, the figure is 158 – 110 secondaries and 46 primary.

Balls today added:

“Michael Gove must now publish the criteria he is using to decide which schools will be granted Academy status and which won’t. He said outstanding schools would be ‘pre-approved’, but we already know that at least one of them has been rejected.

“Just like the chaotic announcement on school building cuts it seems that arbitrary decisions about schools are being made by Mr Gove and his Department. This is what happens when local councils and local communities are cut out of the picture and decisions about hundreds of individual schools are made at the centre by Ministers.”

As Paul Waugh reports, King was unhappy Clegg had used his conversation with him as an excuse. Responding to questioning from Labour MP Chuka Umunna, he said:

“I don’t think central bankers ever feel comfortable when they are drawn into comments by politicians.”

Adding:

“I said nothing that wasn’t already in the public domain. My position hadn’t changed.”

Watch the exchange:

During the election campaign, the Institute for Fiscal Studies examined whether the Liberal Democrats were “planning to be more ambitious than Labour in reducing the deficit”, concluding:

“If anything the manifesto implies the opposite: it says that a Liberal Democrat government would carry out a Spending Review over the summer and autumn ‘with the objective of identifying the remaining [our italics] cuts needed to, at a minimum, halve the deficit by 2013-14′.

“At face value this might suggest a less ambitious plan to reduce the deficit overall than that implied by the forecasts in the Budget. The Budget predicted that the deficit (total government borrowing) would be down to 5.2% of national income in 2013-14, whereas halving it means that it need not be reduced below 5.9% of national income (half the 11.8% forecast for 2009-10).

“But the Liberal Democrats tell us that this promise to “at a minimum, halve the deficit” should be taken as shorthand for matching the deficit reduction path set out in the Budget. So, overall, they are no more or less ambitious than the Government.“

Indeed, in January Vince Cable had said:

“My party takes the view that the government’s eight-year plan, with a four-year halving of the deficit, is a reasonable starting point…

“The time to start cutting the budget deficit and its speed must be decided by a series of objective tests which include the rate of recovery, the level of unemployment, the availability of credit to businesses and the government’s ability to borrow in international markets on good terms.”

Of course the Lib Dems now support an additional £32 billion of spending cuts above and beyond Labour’s plans in this parliament; as Waugh points out, Clegg initially put this down to a the result of a private conversation with the Governor, telling The Observer:

“He [King] couldn’t have been more emphatic. He said: ‘If you don’t do this, then because of the deterioration of market conditions it will be even more painful to do it later.’”

After the Forgemasters debacle, we know all he likes to change his mind, but what excuse will he use this time to justify his decision?

Wales’ Chief Electoral Officer has declared it “vital” that the Welsh public have full confidence in the electoral system, ahead of next year’s elections.

The comments, by Ian Kelsall will once again raise concerns about the problems that could be caused by holding on the same day votes for the devolved institutions and local councils, a referendum on the Alternative Vote, and a Wales-only ballot on further powers for Cardiff Bay.

In 2007, the Scottish Parliamentary Elections were marked by scenes of chaos as voters were faced with multiple ballot papers, each under a different system.

In the latest warning, Kelsall concludes:

“Next year voters in Wales will have several opportunities to have their say at the ballot box.

“It’s vital that they have confidence in the electoral process and the UK Government addresses some of the areas where change is needed.”

His remarks come as over 40 Conservative MPs signed a parliamentary Early Day Motion (EDM 613) expressing their concern that the proposed date of the AV referendum would clash with the elections to the devolved bodies. In doing so, the motion cited Electoral Commission advice in 2002, which made clear its unease at holding referendums on major policy issues on the same day as other polls. Among the concerns it raised was a warning that:

“There is a risk that the dominance of the referendum issue would influence other polls to an extent that may compromise the electorate’s will in those other polls.”

Meanwhile, the Interim Electoral Management Board for Scotland has written to both Nick Clegg and Scottish Secretary, Danny Alexander to express its concerns at holding a poll on AV at the same time as elections to Holyrood. In particular, the board warned:

• Holding a referendum on AV would need to be administered based on Westminster constituencies, while polling for Holyrood elections is administered based on different boundaries. This could mean some people having to cast their votes at two separate polling stations.

• Under current law, the elections would also have to be treated as two separate polls, requiring two voting cards and two lists of eligible voters.

What is more, following the chaotic scenes that followed the 2007 Scottish Parliamentary Elections, the report into the fiasco, drafted by Ron Gould cautioned against combining more than one poll in two days (p. 114 – 115).

Responding to the latest developments, Shadow Scotland Office Minister, Ann McKechin said of the ConDem coalition:

“It is an act of disrespect not to have even thought about the consequences for Scotland.”

Speaking in the House of Commons however, Nick Clegg said that it was “disrespectful” to suggest that voters “could not make two different decisions at the same time.”

1. The Bill prevents equal representation

While everyone accepts the principled case for equal-sized seats, time must be taken to ensure that the equalisation is of those entitled to vote rather than those already registered to vote.

In 2005 the Electoral Commission estimated that 3.5 million eligible voters were missing from the electoral roll in England and Wales alone. But that was based on five-year-old figures. More recent estimates suggest the figure for the UK today is closer to 6 million. According to an Electoral Commission investigation published in March this year, “under-registration is notably higher than average among 17-24 year olds (56 per cent not registered), private sector tenants (49%) and black and minority ethnic British residents (31%)”, finding that:

“The highest concentrations of under-registration are most likely to be found in metropolitan areas, smaller towns and cities with large student populations, and coastal areas with significant population turnover and high levels of social deprivation.”

As John Costello, writing for this blog, wrote:

“By failing to factor them into his arithmetical review of constituency boundaries, Mr Clegg will be distorting the electoral map of Britain for good, and diluting the representation of people from poorer social groups in the process.”

A proper registration drive must take place before boundaries are redrawn.

2. The Bill gives the Liberal Democrats a partisan advantage

Two parliamentary seats – the Western Isles (SNP) and Orkney and Shetland Islands (Lib Dem) – have been exempted from the need to meet new quotas because of their low population density.

But as John Costello has outlined:

“in practice other seats are spared by special “geographical exemptions” that appear to have been devised with Lib Dem seats in the Scottish Highlands in mind. The Bill states that no seat can be enlarged beyond 13,000 square kilometres. Alongside that, tucked away in Schedule 2, Rule 4(2), is a previously unmentioned exemption that, in addition to the 13,000 sq km limit, constituencies larger than 12,000 sq km are freed from the need to hit the quota of registered electors.”

Seats that will be spared from being broken up include the Liberal Democrat constituencies of Ross, Skye and Lochaber; Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross; and Argyll and Bute.

Completing the boundary changes by 2013 will also lock the public out of deliberations. So much for “[handing] power back to the people” as Nick Clegg claimed in his first speech as Deputy Prime Minister.

3. The Bill does not correct distortions in the electoral system

On the Today programme this morning, Evan Davies asked Jack Straw about the disproportionality in the system which meant the Conservatives needed a large lead in votes in order to form a majority. The 1998 Jenkins ‘Commission on the Voting System’ looked at the issue of ‘bias’ and described it as one of the defects of First-Past-The-Post but described it as “very difficult if not impossible to correct”. Meanwhile, Dr. David Butler, the eminent psephologist, was asked to convene a group of academics – including Vernon Bogdanor, John Curtice, and Patrick Dunleavy – to consider a series of questions including, “Can deviation from proportionality under the current system be corrected to any significant degree by changing the criteria for redrawing constituency boundaries?” They replied:

“The principal sources of disproportionality have nothing to do with boundary-drawing or the detailed statutory rules which the Boundary Commissioners have to apply. Changes in these rules would do very little to make results more proportional…

“In general, no significant reduction in disproportionality can be expected from further action to improve the workings of FPTP.”

More recently, the Independent cited new research at the University of Plymouth which set out why the changes would not correct the problems with the current electoral system:

“The geography of each party’s support base is much more important, so changes in the redistribution procedure are unlikely to have a substantial impact and remove the significant disadvantage currently suffered by the Conservative Party.”

4. A smaller House of Commons will be be less representative

As Sunder Katwala has outlined on Next Left, “a smaller Commons will almost certainly delay and slow down progress towards gender equality in the House of Commons.”

Katwala explains that since 232 new MPs were elected in 2010, the reduction in the size of the House makes it extremely likely that the new intake in 2015 will be “one of the smallest in recent political history”. This will have a knock on effect since, “new cohorts of entries to the House of Commons are very likely to be more equal than the House as a whole in terms of both gender and ethnicity.”

***

The Spectator’s David Blackburn has some advice for David Cameron today suggesting that he should, “Detach the boundaries changes clauses from the AV bill, and then re-introduce them in a separate bill.”

This is a good idea as it would mean that Labour MPs could heartily support the AV bill while continuing a principled opposition to the proposed boundary changes. Reformers should encourage the Coalition to do just that.

UPDATE 10.13

David Cameron this morning accused Labour of “complete and utter opportunism” on the Parliamentary Voting Bill. The wording of Labour’s amendment makes it clear that this is not the case:

“That this House, whilst affirming its belief that there should be a referendum on moving to the Alternative Vote system for elections to the House of Commons, declines to give a Second Reading to the Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill because it combines that objective with entirely unrelated provisions designed to gerrymander constituencies by imposing a top-down, hasty and undemocratic review of boundaries, the effect of which would be to exclude millions of eligible but unregistered voters from the calculation of the electoral average and to deprive local communities of their long established right to trigger open and transparent public inquiries into the recommendations of a Boundary Commission, thereby destroying a bi-partisan system of drawing boundaries which has been the envy of countries across the world; and is strongly of the opinion that the publication of such a Bill should have been preceded by a full process of pre-legislative scrutiny of a draft Bill.”