The public mood of anger and disquiet over the way MPs have used and abused the lax system of distributing second home allowances demands a response on two levels.

The first is to demonstrate not just proper contrition but a determination to ensure that the public can participate in a root-and-branch examination of our political system.

The second is to continue to discuss the core issues that will determine this country’s future — the economy, crime, health and education. I don’t think that the public has in any way downgraded the importance of the latter in pursuit of the former.

Gordon Brown was absolutely right to seek cross-party consensus on MPs’ pay and allowances. Placing these issues in the hands of an independent body and taking immediate steps to alter some of the worse excesses of the allowance system, ahead of the Kelly report, showed that the three main party leaders recognised that using allowances as a political punchbag would sicken the public further. All three parties have been damaged and all three must demonstrate their determination to renounce the status quo.

However, the inner workings of Parliament are just one aspect of the political system. We need to overhaul the engine, not just clean the upholstery. Again the Prime Minister is leading on the need for profound constitutional change. This will demand the kind of measured debate that he will instigate over the coming weeks.

This debate cannot exclude the central question of electoral reform. But on this aspect the heavy lifting has already been done. The Plant Commission — the joint work of Robin Cook and Robert McLennan — and the Jenkins Report have all been completed. Nothing has changed in the meantime apart from the public mood. We have the mandate to pursue the issue of electoral reform and to hold a referendum on a specific new system.

Jenkins produced an elegant solution — Alternative Vote Plus. This system maintains the constituency link so that voters have a local MP that is directly responsible to them, but it also ensures that all votes count, irrespective of whether or not they were cast in the “safe seat” of one particular party.

Here’s the gist of how it would work. On polling day, a voter would have two ballot papers. The first would be for choosing the constituency MP: the voter marks his preferences (1, 2, 3 and so on) against the candidates. If one candidate gets more than half of the first preference votes cast, he or she is duly returned. If not, the candidate with the lowest tally is knocked out, and the second (and then third, etc) preferences are redistributed until finally one candidate reaches the magical 50 per cent mark.

On the second ballot paper, the voter simply marks which party she wants to give her vote to. All these votes are tallied up and those parties that exceed the threshold (say 5 per cent) get a proportionate number of seats. The majority of those sitting on the green benches, however, would be constituency MPs.

The adoption of AV+ would shift the political focus currently concentrated almost exclusively on a few swing voters in a handful of marginal seats. It would end the perversity of the party with the most votes nationally forming the opposition rather than the government, as has happened twice since the war.

Labour is the only party ever to win under First Past the Post (FPTP) and then use its majority to explore a change to the system that elected them. I recognise that Jenkins is gathering dust because we lost the will to carry it through — but that was at a time when it could legitimately be said that there was no public interest and when narrow party political advantage dominated our internal debate in the Labour Party. Of course, I recognise that many colleagues on my benches support FPTP for more valid reasons.

My proposal is that we offer the public the two options of AV+ and FPTP. We should debate these two alternatives freely and openly with no party whip and no government recommendation. Then on the date of the next general election we should have a national referendum and let the people decide. This is a genuinely radical alternative that only Labour in government can facilitate. It need not distract us from my second imperative.

I bow to no one in my desire to debate the major political issues of the day. On health, the Conservatives have sought to erase their dreadful record in government from the public memory while adopting policies designed to find favour with the most reactionary elements of the medical profession. Thus while 75 per cent of GP surgeries are now open later and/or on Saturdays following the action we took last year, the Conservatives still oppose greater access. As patients benefit from the maximum 18-week wait for surgery, the two-week wait for cancer patients and the four-hour limit for waiting in A&E, the Tories would remove these standards.

As we seek greater regulations in the financial sector, the Conservatives have made it clear that they will remove the prudential borrowing requirements on Foundation Trust Hospitals and give them the freedom to go bust, handing NHS assets to the administrator.

And as each of the 150 GP-led health centres open from 8am–8pm, 365 days a year, are established across the country, local Conservatives will, I presume, be standing outside with placards to express their opposition in accordance (amazingly) with Tory frontbench policy.

At the next election Gordon Brown will lead a party proud of its record and challenging in its vision. We also have the opportunity to go into that election offering to put real power into the hands of every voter. The two combined can produce the radical change that the moment demands.

Alan Johnson is Secretary of State for Health

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