All-party group

This evening, I chaired the first meeting of the All-Party Group on the Constitution.  I have already posted a report on Lords of the Blog.   For an all-party group, it was well attended, albeit principally by peers.  MPs were tied up in the Commons debating the very issue we were addressing: the Alternative Vote (AV) and the referendum on whether it should replace the existing system.   Professor Simon Hix detailed how AV worked (focusing on Australian experience) and Anthony Wells, Associate Director of YouGov – and also a Hull British Politics and Legislative Studies (BPLS) graduate – outlined the findings the TCS/YouGov poll on AV and the referendum.   You can access the findings of the poll, along with other briefing material prepared by the Constitution Society, here.  There were plenty of questions, in some cases I suspect garnering information ready for when the Bill reaches the Lords.