Alternative Vote Referendum Date

Part of the debate – in the Scottish Parliament at 3:58 pm on 18 November 2010.

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Photo of Robert Brown Robert Brown Liberal Democrat 3:58, 18 November 2010

I will not take a further intervention.

The sum of £17 million would build a couple of secondary schools, employ 700 teachers or support nearly 1,000 apprentices—all of which, it would appear, are lesser priorities for Labour. Oddly, it was exactly that analogy that Labour used when objecting to the cost of the SNP's vanished neverendum on independence. The final irony, of course, is that at the election it was only the Labour Party who supported the particular form of voting reform that is now on offer. Now, however, for reasons of higher party strategy, it is doing its best to sabotage it. A feeble SNP Government is matched by a feeble Labour Opposition that lacks any sense of principle in these matters.

Reform of the Westminster voting system is in the interests of Scotland, because it is part of our democracy in a modernised United Kingdom. The adoption of the AV system would not conclude business, but it would certainly be another step on the journey towards a modernised democracy. Liberal Democrats would be campaigning for a yes vote, and I hope that we will be joined in that campaign by Labour, which travelled a good distance on the constitutional reform journey but got off at the last station, and by the SNP, which jumped on the reform train halfway through the journey but constantly threatens to jump off it unless it goes where no one else wants to go—off the main line and up the siding to hit the independence buffers.

This is a debate about not very much, as it is only about the timing. We need to finish it and get on with the real business of the issues that are involved in next May's election and the important referendum on voting reform that will go with it.