Conservative Chairman County Councillor Albert Atkinson and Vice Chairman Councillor Ken Hind have advised Conservative members and supporters in the Ribble Valley to vote against the proposal in the forthcoming referendum on electoral reform to introduce an alternative vote system.

Ken Hind explained '' The system proposed means that each elector will rank the candidates in order of preference. The candidate with the lowest number of first preferences will be knocked out and the vote transferred to the second chosen candidate. This will continue until one candidate has over 50% of the vote . It will lead to constituencies electing everyone's second choice. There will be government by coalition for ever and often weak and short lived governments as in countries like Belgium and Italy  .

''We support the stance taken by Prime Minister David Cameron in supporting the Bill to allow the  the referendum which is part of the coalition agreement with the Lib Dems.  We welcome and endorse his opposition to the idea of transfer voting.The PM's position  represents for Conservatives our long standing support for the first past the post system. It strongly  links the constituency to the MP and  produces more often than not strong government in the national interest .

''There is a need for reform but it should be by making constituencies more equal in the number of voters they contain. It is unfair that  some constituencies in cities have 50,000 voters whilst some  rural seats have up to 80,000.

''The Conservative party in the 2010 election obtained more votes that the previous Labour government in the 2005 election and yet did not have an overall majority of MP's. If Labour had obtained the same number of votes as the Conservatives obtained in the 2010 election they would have had an overall majority with no need of a coalition.  

''This problem needs resolving  and a new boundary commission to create more equal constituency boundaries  set to work  in the near future to address these anomalies.''