Letter: MPs from lists no party hacks

Monday 18 November 1996 00:02 GMT

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Sir: Your leading article (11 November) on the possibilities of electoral reform writes off the additional member system (used by Germany) on the grounds that the "appointed MPs", whose purpose is to bring about the overall proportionality, give power of patronage to "party hacks and apparatchiks".

This need not be so. The Hansard Society Commission on Electoral Reform (1976) recommended that those MPs should be the best losers for their parties in the single-member constituency elections. Every MP would, therefore, have had to fight in the election and the party machines would have no more power than at present.

MILES HUDSON

Mattingley, Hampshire

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Letter: MPs from lists no party hacks

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