"It cannot—or it can no longer—be said that the House of Commons is a representative cross-section of the social and economic interests of the nation." —page 222, Voters, Parties and Leaders (1969 edition) by Jean Blondel, Professor of Government in the University of Essex. How little has changed in 40 years!

  Your terms of reference are to: "Consider, and make recommendations for rectifying, the disparity between the representation of women, ethnic minorities and disabled people in the House of Commons and their representation in the UK population at large". This seems to exclude the option of deciding that there is no need to rectify the disparity and we think that exclusion is justified from a national point of view because of the perception created by the disparity.

  Ethnic and social groups are not spread out evenly across the country and First-Past-the-Post gives certain areas of the country (marginal constituencies) a disproportionate amount of power leaving others with minimal influence. Channel 4's opinion poll of only the sixty most marginal constituencies, published yesterday, illustrates this. The situation has the potential to make members of certain groups feel that their votes do not count and their voices are not heard. This in turn can contribute to a feeling of exclusion from the democratic process.

  Nevertheless, rectification sits uneasily alongside the basis principle of representative democracy, which is that the voters choose representatives to represent their political views—not their sex, ethnicity, age, disability, religion, sexual persuasion or other fixed features unrelated to their political views. To say otherwise would deny the ability of Mr Blunkett to represent the sighted and the women of Sheffield Brightside or of Ms Abbott to represent the white and Asian constituents and the men of Hackney North & Stoke Newington. The problem is that solutions like lists restricted to candidates of one ethnicity or sex is that in reducing the national problem, they create constituency problems; if Mr Smith is assumed not to represent the women of the constituency properly, why should Ms Jones be assumed to be able to represent the men?

  Many constituencies now have no choice other than between white, male, able-bodied middle-class candidates. Even if there is a wider choice in theory, a safe seat usually guarantees victory to one candidate, who most likely will be white, male, able-bodied and middle-class. Unacceptable though that may be, for a party to set out to give a safe seat to a woman, an ethnic minority candidate or a disabled person would be to replace one unacceptable practice with another and continue to deny real choice to voters. The election of one representative can never be diverse, whereas a group of representatives can represent the political and cultural diversity of a constituency.

  The solution is multi-member constituencies, so the MPs for them could be a mixture of men and women, black and white, able and disabled according to voters' choices. Thus constituencies, as well as the nation, could be more representative of diverse groups and constituents would have a choice of MPs to approach with their problems. For example, five neighbouring singe-member constituencies could be grouped together to elect five MPs together to avoid increasing the size of the House of Commons.

  However, the voting system in such constituencies is important, too. The "Block X" or Multiple Non-Transferable Vote (MNTV) voting system used in multi-member wards in some local authority elections in England and Wales would mean that, in most cases, one party would take all the seats of a multi-member constituency so, while Parliament may become more representative in some ways, it would become less representative politically. Moreover, voters would not have a realistic choice of candidates; the only choice available to a party supporter would be to vote for all the party's candidates or split the party vote which would usually mean wasting it. Consequently, consideration should be given to changing the voting system.

  The best solution, instead of restricted lists or MNTV in multi-member constituencies, would be to use the Single Transferable Vote (STV) in multi-member constituencies, the system used for local elections in Scotland and all elections in Northern Ireland except to Westminster. This eliminates the problems that one party may win all the seats in a constituency and that a voter's only choice would be between voting for all the party's candidates and splitting the party vote. Consider the example of a five-member constituency where one party expects to win two seats and hopes to win three:

— To maximise its vote, the party will be encouraged to nominate a diversity of candidates; eg from different wings of the party, pro- and anti- EU, men and women and, perhaps depending on the ethnic mix of the constituency, different ethnic communities. This will give voters a genuine choice, not only between parties but also between candidates within them.

— Because the party will have offered a wider choice of candidates, there will be greater opportunities for groups, currently under-represented in Parliament, to increase their representation, but the party's voters—not the party—will decide which two or three candidates from the party will represent the constituency and from which wings of the party or from which groups, ethnic or other, they will come. Thus, not only the nation but also constituencies will be represented better to reflect society as a whole. Furthermore, better representation in constituencies will ensure even better representation nationally representing the voters' choices.

  Voting by STV is literally as easy as 1, 2, 3. Voters simply list the candidates in order of preference. It has been used successfully in both parts of Ireland for many years and caused no problems in local elections in Scotland on 3 May 2007, even though problems were experienced with the Additional Member System (AMS) used for elections to the Scottish Parliament on the same day.

  We shall not explain the counting procedure for STV in this short note; that is better left to others such as the Electoral Reform Society, but it is already well documented for Scotland, Northern Ireland and the Republic.

  Tinkering around the edges of the problem by introducing restricted candidate lists would go against the basis principle of representative democracy. Encouraging and training potential candidates from under-represented groups or providing child-minding facilities for women may or may not ameliorate the problems caused by the disparity; without a different voting system, these proposed "solutions" even taken together, would not solve the problem and might create new ones. The introduction of STV may not alone solve the problem but will go further than anything else towards solving it.