OPPONENTS OF electoral reform in Britain yesterday unveiled the names of 114 Labour MPs who will oppose their party leader, Ed Miliband, and campaign for a No vote in May’s referendum on the alternative vote system for elections to the British parliament.
The cross-party No to AV group hailed the support of almost half of the 253-strong Labour contingent in the House of Commons as a breakthrough.
The list includes five members of the shadow cabinet and Labour modernisers such as MP for Stoke- on-Trent Central Tristram Hunt and former transport minister Jim Fitzpatrick.
The MPs will campaign alongside former Labour cabinet heavyweights including David Blunkett, John Prescott, John Reid, Margaret Beckett and Lord Falconer. The Tories are fielding foreign secretary William Hague and party chairman Lady Warsi.
Former Labour MP Joan Ryan, who is deputy campaign director of No to AV, said: “This issue is more important than party politics. The Labour Party has said that MPs, councillors and activists are free to make up their own mind.
“We are pleased to see so many MPs from right across the party united in voting No and we are confident that many Labour supporters will be joining them.”
The presence of so many Labour MPs on the No to AV campaign shows the party is deeply divided on electoral reform.
Mr Miliband will be campaigning for a Yes vote after writing the Labour general election manifesto which pledged to hold a referendum on AV, in which voters rank candidates in order of preference in individual parliamentary constituencies.
The Labour leader has drawn parallels with 1975, the last time a UK-wide referendum was held.
Harold Wilson, the late Labour prime minister, called the referendum on whether Britain should remain in the EEC because his cabinet was divided.
Meanwhile, British prime minister David Cameron and his deputy, Nick Clegg, were accused last night of “total hypocrisy” in appointing Simon Hughes as a champion of access to higher education after Labour claimed funds designed to encourage disadvantaged pupils had been cut from £360 million a year to £150 million.
Pat McFadden, business minister in the former Labour government, which lost power in May, accused the prime minister of piling “dishonesty upon betrayal” after cutting the funding.
“It is total hypocrisy to appoint a champion for higher education participation if money for this purpose is to be cut,” Mr McFadden said. “This would be a complete betrayal of the very students we want to help most.”
In the run-up to the vote on trebling university tuition fees, Mr Clegg attempted to reassure his Liberal Democrat MPs by unveiling a £150 million national scholarship programme aimed at poorer pupils.
However, the Browne review, used by the Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition as the basis for increasing tuition fees, said £360 million was being spent in the current financial year by the Higher Education Funding Council for England.
The department for business said it was not possible to draw a comparison between the two sets of figures because the council would decide how much of its £9 billion grant for next year to devote to helping disadvantaged students. Labour said this budget was being cut in real terms