British liberals see Blair backing voting reforms By Gerrard Raven BRIGHTON, England, Sept 20 (Reuters) - Britain's minority Liberal Democrats are ``quietly confident'' that Prime Minister Tony Blair will back voting reforms that could catapult them to the political centre stage, a senior party member of parliament said on Sunday. Nick Harvey, who chairs the party's campaigns committee, was speaking at a news conference in Brighton, southern England, where the party holds its annual conference this week. Earlier Liberal Democrat leader Paddy Ashdown told BBC television a revision of the way the 659-member House of Commons is elected could ``change the landscape of our country politically.'' Blair has appointed a commission under veteran Liberal Democrat Lord Roy Jenkins to identify a proportional representation system that would be appropriate for Britain. Britons will then vote in a referendum on whether they prefer this to the first-past-the-post system which last year gave Blair a massive 179-seat majority despite Labour winning just 44 percent of the votes in a general election. According to Sunday's Observer newspaper, Blair is prepared to back a change which could have cut this majority by more than half, and doubled Liberal numbers in parliament to 93. It could also mean Liberals becoming frequent partners in coalition governments as elections produce ``hung'' parliaments. ``We are quietly confident that Tony Blair is likely to do that,'' Harvey said. ``It seems improbable that he would have gone to the trouble of setting it (the commission) all up...if he had really had it in mind all along that he was going to reject what it came up with.'' Blair's promise of a referendum followed talks between the Liberals and Labour ahead of last year's general election on a host of constitutional changes in Britain. His government has already legislated for new parliaments in Scotland and Wales to elected by proportional representation (PR) systems, amended the way Britain chooses its members of the European Parliament, and passed a bill on human rights. It has pledged to end the right of hereditary peers to sit in the House of Lords, and legislate on freedom of information. These reforms are discussed in a special cabinet committee on which Ashdown and some party colleagues sit -- the only such committee to have Liberal members since World War Two. But for Liberals the big prize is voting reform for the Commons, where the traditionally centrist party has just 46 seats after winning a sixth of the votes in the 1997 election. Publicly Blair has been sceptical about the merits of voting reform. ``I personally have never been persuaded of the case for proportional representation,'' he said recently. But the Observer said he was now prepared to back a watered-down version of Germany's additional member system if Jenkins proposes it in his report, to be published next month. Under the system, some 500-550 British MPs would be elected in single member constituencies. But a further 100-150 seats would be allocated to parties in order to make the result more -- but far from perfectly -- proportional. Blair could face opposition within his own party if he backs this compromise, although any change would probably not come in time for Britain's next election, due by mid-2002. Ashdown faces conference criticism from some Liberals for what they call his cosying up to Blair, but he terms ``constructive opposition.'' Harvey hinted that the constructive opposition policy could not survive Blair rejecting electoral reform out of hand. ``We will continue the cooperative arrangement as long as we believe it is achieving things,'' he said. Ashdown told the Observer electoral refom could bring ``a fundamental realignment of British politics.'' ``We are playing for the highest stakes,'' he said. 12:49 09-20-98
