National News from Conservatives.com

Warwickshire MPs Dan Byles (North Warickshire & Bedworth) and Chris White
(Warwick & Leamington) today joined campaigners from across the country to
present a petition with some 108,000 names to 10 Downing Street calling for the
controversial High Speed Rail project to be scrapped.

Next week, on May the 5th, the first referendum in the United Kingdom for over 35 years will be held on Parliamentary voting reform. I’ve been out for the last few weeks knocking on doors and talking to people in the high streets, and most people I speak to either don’t know about the referendum, or they don’t really care.

Like many people I agree that this is an unnecessary referendum, and the country faces more than enough challenges at the moment without wasting time and money on voting for a reform that no one really wants, not even the people campaigning for a ‘yes’ vote. But now that we are having it, it is really important that people think about it and take part. The referendum will ask “Do you want the United Kingdom to adopt the ‘alternative vote’ system instead of the current ‘first past the post’ system for electing Members of Parliament to the House of Commons?” Those who want to change to ‘AV’ should vote ‘yes’, and those who want to keep ‘First Past The Post’ (or FPTP) should vote ‘no’.

The first thing to bear in mind when deciding how to vote next week is that this isn’t about personalities. Both sides in the campaign are trying to use personalities to sway your vote – saying that it is about Nick Clegg or about David Cameron. It isn’t. It is about potentially changing the way we elect Parliament, and it is more important than any individual current politician.

The second thing to bear in mind is that it isn’t about party politics. This isn’t Labour versus the Liberal Democrats versus the Conservatives. There are people in all three parties on both sides of the debate. While the Labour party leadership are supporting a ‘yes’ vote, for example, the majority of Labour MPs and councillors actually support the ‘no’ campaign, including prominent Labour figures and former cabinet ministers such as John Prescott, David Blunkett, Margaret Beckett, John Reid, Hazel Blears and Lord Falconer. Indeed, David Blunkett told the Times newspaper this week that: “the ‘no’ campaign (has) the support of four out of five Labour councillors, thousands of party activists and 131 MPs, a majority of Mr Miliband’s 258-strong parliamentary party.”

So the key thing for voters deciding how to vote on this issue next week is, don’t assume it falls on traditional party lines. Look at the issues and make up your own mind. I’ll be voting ‘no’ next week, and this is why.

Firstly, I believe AV is unfair and less democratic. Briefly, ‘First Past The Post’ is the system we currently use. Everybody gets one vote, and the candidate with the most votes wins. I believe that is simple, democratic and fair.

AV requires voters to rank candidates in order of preference (1, 2, 3 etc). Then some people (those who give their first preference to the least popular candidates) get their second and third votes counted, which can tip someone who was running second, or even third, into the lead. Under AV the candidate who comes second, third or even fourth can actually be elected. In an election in Australia a candidate who only polled 16% of the first preference votes won the day and one who polled 45% of first preferences subsequently finished second.  Can this be considered either fair or democratic?

People campaigning for a ‘yes’ vote – to change from FPTP to AV – say that it will stop what they call ‘wasted votes’. I believe this is nonsense. No one’s vote is wasted under our current system. Everybody’s vote is counted and counts equally. But some people are outvoted, that’s all. That’s democracy.

Secondly, nobody actually wants AV. It is a compromise for everyone. Even some of the most prominent supports for ‘yes’ have described AV just last year as ‘a miserable little compromise’. They see is as a stepping stone to bigger changes later. If even the ‘yes’ campaigners don’t really want AV, why should we change our entire way of electing Parliament?

Thirdly, it is expensive. There are arguments raging about how expensive, but some estimate the cost of introducing it at a quarter of a billion pounds due to the need for expensive electronic counting machines etc. We currently are borrowing £3000 million extra each week just to balance the books. How on earth can this cost be justified at a time when we are cutting back on spending whilst trying to protect the frontline services?

Finally, AV is obscure and hardly anyone in the world uses it. That should tell us something. Our current system, FPTP, is used by over 2.4 billion people in over fifty countries around the world. That’s 2.4 billion people – each with one ballot paper and one, equal, vote. In contrast, only 29 million vote using the AV system. There are just three countries in the world that use it – Fiji, Papua New Guinea and Australia. The system is so unpopular in Australia that they have to force people to vote through compulsory voting.

That’s why I’ll be voting ‘no’ to AV next week, and I urge you all to look beyond the personalities and the party politics and make a decision on how you’ll vote based on the facts.

Dan Byles MP has backed a UK campaign highlighting the importance of school crossing patrols, and says that schools across North Warwickhsire and Bedworth should recognise the role lollipop people play in local road safety. The Kwik Fit Insurance Lollipop Person of the Year campaign, which is open to all primary schools in the UK, aims to find Britain’s favourite lollipop person.

The Member of Parliament for North Warwickshire has added his voice to those who are questioning the affordability of plans to construct a High Speed Rail network linking London to Birmingham and beyond. The route as it currently stands would cause significant blight to the villages of Gilson, Water Orton, Coleshill and Middleton.