Soon after the general election in 2010, Harper became Under Secretary of State for Political and Constitutional Reform in the Cabinet Office. There he worked with Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg on the Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Act 2011 that would offer the electorate a switch from 'first-past-the-post' to the Alternative Vote system for electing MPs (Harper was not enthusiastic about the proposal, which had been a key bargaining chip in the Coalition negotiations in May 2010). The Act also aimed to change the shapes of parliamentary constituencies and introduce fixed-term parliaments. On 5 May 2011, the referendum was held and voters rejected the proposed switch to the Alternative Vote system. Fixed-term parliaments became law later that year in a separate Act but the changes to constituency boundaries, which would have been advantageous to the Tories, never materialised.