A year ago in the middle of the general election campaign, the last thing on my mind would have been joining forces with my Labour opponent. But that’s what happen last week when Donald Worsley supported me in Folkestone unveiling a new poster in the ‘No to AV’ campaign. We both believe that it would be a mistake to change the voting system for future general elections to the alternative vote system; a method only used by three other countries, Australia, Papua New Guinea and Fiji. On Tuesday the Conservative Party Chairman, Baroness Warsi also joined our ‘No to AV’ campaign street stall in the centre of Folkestone.
Throughout our campaign the vast majority of people I have spoken to are against changing our voting system because they do not believe that it is a change we need to make. Our current voting system is clear, simple and fair. Everyone gets one vote, which can be used once, and is counted once. All of the votes cast are counted equally, and the candidate who receives the most votes wins. With the complex alternative vote method, people who vote for minority parties may get to express their preference two or three times, whereas the second preference of someone who has voted for one of the leading candidates is never considered.
Our current system also largely produces stable one party Governments. After the last election forming the coalition was the best way to deliver a stable Government at a time when the country faced so many problems. However, I believe that this should be the exception rather than the rule. When we have single party Government it means that the people get to decide on the policies that they want to see implemented, when they cast their vote based on one manifesto or another. With coalition government many of these decisions are taken by the politicians in their negotiations after the election.
This issue of immigration has also been hotly debated over the last week, and it is important for us to discuss this sensitive subject in a mature and honest way. Britain has always offered shelter to people fleeing persecution, and immigration has helped to enrich our economy and society. However, the levels of immigration we saw over the last decade were unsustainable. Between 1997 and 2010 we saw a net migration of 2.2 million people into Britain; the equivalent of the entire population of Kent, plus half that number again.
That is why I am supporting the Prime Minister’s commitment to control immigration and see a large reduction in the number of people who are allowed to settle in our country; from the hundreds of thousands to the tens of thousands a year.
To achieve this Government has capped migration from outside of Europe, clamped down on abuses of the student visa system, is taking action against people who have no legal basis to be in the UK and will be setting up a Border Policing Command to control our borders.