in The Co-operative Group. As noted above, because it was re-invented by the Englishman Thomas Hare and has been used in many parts of the former British Empire, STV has in the past been referred to as "British proportional representation". Nonetheless, it has never been used by more than a handful of constituencies in the British Parliament. In 1917, the Speaker's Conference in the United Kingdom advocated the adoption of STV for 211 of the 569 constituencies in the UK, and instant-runoff voting for the rest, and the Representation of the People Bill was introduced in Parliament that year. The House of Commons and the House of Lords engaged in an extended series of amendments and counter-amendments, in which the House of Commons kept trying to replace the STV provisions of the bill with the Alternative Vote scheme, and the House of Lords tried to reinstate the STV provisions. In the end, the House of Commons agreed to strip all preferential voting provisions in return for agreeing to discuss introducing STV in 100 seats in the future (the House of Commons subsequently reneged on this commitment later in 1918). Nonetheless, in 1918 STV was adopted for the university constituencies of Cambridge, Oxford, Combined English Universities, Combined Scottish Universities and Dublin University; these constituencies continued to use STV until their abolition in 1950 (or 1922 in the case of Dublin University). STV was also introduced for local elections in the Irish borough of Sligo in 1918, and extended to all Irish local government shortly afterwards. Northern Ireland In 1921 the UK government attempted to establish two home rule parliaments in Ireland–the Parliament of Southern Ireland and the Parliament of Northern Ireland–with the Irish general elections of 1921, both of which were conducted using STV. The intention of using STV in Ireland was partly to ensure adequate representation for the Catholic minority in the North and the Protestant minority in the South. Southern Ireland seceded from the UK in 1921 but today, as the Republic of Ireland, continues to use STV for all of its elections. The Northern Ireland Parliament continued to use STV until 1929 when it switched to the first-past-the-post plurality system. However STV was reintroduced there after the imposition of direct rule in 1973, and is now in use for all elections except those to Westminster. Scotland In Scotland, following the passage of the Local Governance (Scotland) Act on