conscience voting in an MMP world

Asher of Left and Lefter has started an interesting discussion about conscience voting, continued by Matt over at Random Contributionz.

I'm leaping in too, as it's an issue close to my heart. At the first Alliance conference I attended - back in 2000 - there was much debate about the role of conscience votes in a socially progressive left wing party. Although I was quite ill at the time and unable to take much in, the righteousness of some of the speechs stayed with me.

Given the list MP/electorate MP split, the role of conscience votes is even more crucial. If having conscience votes allows an MP to respond to their electorate, rather than their party, and vote along representative rather than delegate lines, then what about those MPs without electorates?

In the Alliance the situation that was being advocated back in 2000 was for MPs to be allowed a free vote on issues determined conscience issues by the House when there was no party policy, or party policy was unclear. I wasn't really hooked into the party enough at that time to understand what was going on, or how it all fell out, but I think this is probably the best approach.

This way of dealing with conscience votes was one of the reasons our policy on marijuana was for an inquiry - JPA knew he ran the risk of losing if we had the actual debate about supporting decriminalisation, and be forced to vote for something that would make his socially conservative brain implode. (In fact, largely due to the hard work of the youth wing and the distraction of the Afghanistan problem, we did manage to get a remit supporting decriminalisation passed at the 2001 conference, just).

This could be the answer for list MPs - presumably they sign up to some kind of pledge to uphold the party's policies when they put themselves forward, and that should include being bound to party policy on conscience votes too. Electorate MPs should, as much as it grates me, probably get more lee-way, to provide succor to their electorate voters.

Really though, there should be a process within any party by which an MP, list or electorate, can negotiate with their colleagues to vote differently if they have good reasons, and not just on conscience votes. I pretty sure Labour has one (eg Nanaia Mahuta, and I think Damian O'Connor voted against something to do with his electorate way back in 1999 or 2000). Of course the Alliance has no MPs so it's a moot point for us ;-)

Does anyone know about these processes in other parties?