The recent Labour Party proposals for constitutional reform are welcome — the devolution of greater powers away from Whitehall to Scotland, Wales and to the regions will strengthen the United Kingdom, the very opposite of what the Conservative Party appears to have been doing over the last 12 years.

The reform of the House of Lords is particularly welcome. A former Tory Party chairman has been quoted as saying: ‘Once you pay your £3-million, you get a peerage’.

Sadly however, the proposals do not go far enough in not dealing with electoral reform. The first past the post system belongs in the nineteenth century not the twenty-first.

The last time a party was elected to Government by a majority of the UK electorate was 1935. The only other European country to have a first past the post system is...Belarus.

At the last general election, the SNP received 4% of total votes and got 48 MPs, the Lib Dems received 12% of the votes but only got 11MPs, Plaid Cymru received 0.5% of the votes and got 4MPs, the Greens received almost 3% of the votes but only got one MP.

The suggestion that the first past the post system creates stable governments is risible. We have had three general elections in the last seven years and five different prime ministers in the last six years.

We are in desperate need of consensus, not a government of the far right, as we have had for much of the last 12 years, nor one of the hard left. We need a government of the centre, having a mandate of the majority of the electorate. The last Labour Party Conference voted unanimously for Proportional Representation. The country needs Proportional Representation.

Mike Baldwin

Thorverton