While the Elections Bill is not expected to return to parliament until the new year, opposition is still growing against this dangerous legislation.

The most recent conservative to speak out is former Attorney General, Dominic Grieve. In a piece in the Times Grieve argues that “voter ID will be the nail in the coffin for democracy and MP’s integrity” with current lawmakers rewriting the law for their benefit. The former minister lays into the government’s handling of the bill criticising the lack of scrutiny over key amendments to change the voting system for mayors and police and crime commissioners.

Grieve has called for parliamentarians to look at the current Elections Bill and scrutinise the draft legislation in order to create a law that consolidates British democracy.

As Grieve points out, voter ID disproportionately impacts those most marginalised in society, who are far less likely to have access to ID. Official figures estimate that 3.5 million people do not have access to photo ID in the UK and 11 million do not own a passport or a driving licence. Grieve is right to raise this issue – the proposals risk equality in our democracy and, as he points out threatens to “create a two-tier electorate” with the least advantaged shut out.

As we at the Electoral Reform Society have also argued, these changes are unnecessary and expensive. The Government have estimated that implementing voter ID could cost £120 million – a lot of money to demand ID at polling stations. A lot of money to tackle an issue that barely exists. Cases of electoral fraud are extremely rare. In 2019, there were only 33 allegations of voter impersonation.

In his piece, Grieve also highlights the unnecessary amendment to change the election of Mayors and Police and Crime Commissioners from the Supplementary Vote to First Past the Post. This late addition to the bill has received little scrutiny – being introduced at committee stage, too late for MPs to properly interrogate the proposals. As Grieve points out it’s a proposal designed to benefit those already in power.

And that’s what this bill is all about – a power grab by the government over our Elections.

And worse than that they’re racing it through the Commons without giving it the necessary scrutiny such important legislation requires.

During an evidence session on the bill in September (after the changes had been announced) Labour’s Cat Smith tried to question the academic, Alan Renwick on the amendment, but was told the proposal was outside the scope of the session. However, the amendment was then passed for inclusion, without scrutiny a mere four days later.

From the damaging proposals on voter ID, to attempts to give ministers power to direct the work of the currently independent Electoral Commission, this bill is about centralising control over how our elections work in the hands of the government of the day – allowing ministers to set the rules by which they themselves play.

That conservatives such as Dominic Grieve are speaking out about this legislation is a clear sign that the government have got it wrong. Much like ministers’ attempts to override the Independent Standards Committee earlier this month, the Elections Bill provisions to overturn the way we run our elections is a step too far for many MPs.

As opposition continues to grow, and the bill is expected to return to the Commons in the New Year, now is the perfect time for ministers to stop and re-think this dangerous legislation. Listen to feedback from MPs, campaigners, academics and experts and bring forward an Elections Bill we can all get behind – that strengthens our elections and puts voters first.

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There is overwhelming support for reform but Friday once again showed there is little chance of it succeeding.

On Friday 3rd December, for the fourth time in just five years, Labour peer Lord Bruce Grocott put forward his bill to end the bizarre practice of hereditary by-elections and in turn begin the process of ending guaranteed aristocratic representation in the House of Lords.

In recent years Lord Grocott has waged a personal war to end these “beyond satire” by-elections. But each time his bill has made it to the floor his attempts have been consistently thwarted by hereditary peers. In 2019, Lord Trefgarne and the Earl of Caithness laid more than 50 wrecking amendments in order to ensure that the debate exceeded three-and-a-half hours, and the bill failed.

This latest second reading debate meant that amendments could not be tabled but the same old arguments came up again with many peers calling the bill little more than ‘nibbling at the edges’ when it comes to Lords reform.

Lord Trefgarne made his well-known objections to the proposals noting: “I accept that the present size of your Lordships’ House is excessive but the problem is too many life Peers, not too many hereditary Peers.”

Lord Moylan rejected the suggestion that there was widespread public opposition to the existence of hereditary peers arguing (without irony) that as unelected hereditary peers that “If we are accountable to anybody, it is to the public for whom we legislate.”

But despite these few committed voices of opposition support for this reform spans the whole house, peers of all parties and none both appointed and hereditary agree it’s time to change the system. But until the government backs reform it stands no chance of being passed in the upper house.

The government remains opposed to Grocott’s proposals or, as government spokesperson Lord True put it during the debate: “governments reservations of his proposals remain” – on the basis that the hereditary questions should not be addressed until a full proposal of reforms is agreed that cover all of the house, not just a small group within it.

But when it comes to Lords reform the great cannot be the enemy of the good. We need wholesale reform of our outdated second chamber but ending these farcical hereditary peer by-elections would be a small step in the right direction.

This bill should be uncontroversial – a small and common-sense reform that would end these ridiculous by-elections, slowly reducing the number of hereditary peers. No radical overhaul or disruptive upheaval. In fact, in 2020 these by-elections were temporarily suspended due to the coronavirus pandemic and the House of Lords continued to function without issue.

Since they returned we’ve seen seven new hereditary peers join this chamber, each one taking a seat for live to vote on our laws down solely to the circumstances of their birth. One peer, Labour’s Viscount Stansgate (ironically the son of Tony Benn, who famously rejected his hereditary peerage) was ‘elected’ unopposed to his seat. You could be forgiven for laughing it wasn’t so serious.

The last by-election was held last month, with Labour scrambling to fill the Labour-allocated seat. The winning candidate, Lord Hacking, won with a short 75-word manifesto that simply promised to adopt “social democratic policies”.

The bill is now at the committee stage, where every clause of the Bill has to be agreed with and votes on amendments take place. Any peer can suggest amendments and it’s expected that many will in an attempt to block the bill.

This Friday in the Commons Labour MP John Speller is putting forward a similar bill, we can only hope it won’t meet the same fate as this one because this spectacle cannot be allowed to continue.

Sign our petition for a fairly elected second chamber.

On the 9th and 10th November, the House of Lords will be hosting their fifth hereditary peer by-election this year.

The House of Lords Act 1999 led to the removal of all but 90 hereditary peers, plus the holders of the offices of Earl Marshall and Lord Great Chamberlain – in total, 92 hereditary peers remain in the chamber, though only 90 are replaced via by-elections.

Most by-elections take place within party groups, so when a Conservative hereditary peer retires, the remaining Conservative hereditary peers vote on who should take their place. These party groups reflected the proportion of party affiliation at the time of the 1999 reforms of the House of Lords.

The recent vacancy comes after the death of Viscount Simon, one of a group of 15 hereditary peers who were elected by the whole House in 1999. These 15 peers were originally expected to serve as Deputy Speakers or hold other offices in the chamber, but they are no longer expected to.

Under the terms of an informal agreement in the House of Lords, it is expected that this vacancy will be filled by a hereditary peer who will sit as a Labour member of the House. But while Conservative and crossbench by-elections are typically competitive, Keir Starmer’s party have been struggling to find a suitable candidate, with there being a limited number of Labour-supporting aristocrats eligible to stand. 

This lack of candidates makes a mockery of the already absurd system that sees these seats held back for aristocrats to choose one of their own to make our laws for life.

The Labour party have finally found a candidate in David Hacking, 3rd Baron Hacking, who is willing to take up the Labour-allocated seat and take home a handsome £305 a day for the privilege. The 83-year-old barrister was previously a Conservative peer before switching his support to Blair in 1998. 

To add to the confusion, it is only an informal agreement that states the winner should sit as a labour member. Hacking faces slim competition for the seat as he is running against just two other candidates: Thoby Kennet, 3rd Baron Kennet and Anthony Biddulph, 5th Baron Biddulph. Baron Kennet, who runs a PR agency promoting industrial hemp and has consistently tried to be elected as a Liberal Democrat despite claiming a long term allegiance to the Labour Party, while, Baron Biddulph, a former interior designer, is running for the Labour-allocated seat as a Conservative. 

The three candidates have provided short manifestos, with Lord Biddulph submitting a measly 14 words, including that he is “happy to serve if requested”  and Lord Kennet promised to tackle climate change in his wordier pitch of 73 words. Lord Hacking, stated he will help the Labour party adopt “social democratic policies”. 

These manifestos are a joke to our democracy, with the candidates essentially running on empty platforms that do not represent the interests of the public. 

The absurd election simply encourages desperate aristocrats to adopt party allegiances in order to get back into the House of Lords, with Lord Hacking repeatedly attempting to be elected as a crossbencher over the past two decades. The lack of an appropriate candidate for the Labour-allocated seat has provided a perfecting opportunity for Lord Hacking, convincing him to now support Starmer’s party. 

The last by-election for a Labour seat resulted in Stephen Benn, 3rd Viscount Stansgate, running unopposed. Ironically, he is the son of Tony Benn, who avidly campaigned to get rid of hereditary peerages and was the first peer to give up his title under the Peerages Act of 1963. 

The Labour party have been particularly quiet about the by-elections, with the continued existence of hereditary peers providing some embarrassment and directly contradicting Starmer’s 10 Pledges, which advocates for the abolishment of the House of Lords. 

It is time to get rid of the archaic by-elections and scrap the undemocratic House of Lords altogether. Blair’s reshaping of the Lords in 1999 was supposed to be the first phase of reform. The by-elections were a compromise, where a vacancy caused by the death, resignation or retirement of a hereditary peer, is filled with a member of an official ‘register’ of hereditary aristocrats, sorted by their party – but 22 years later nothing has changed. 

The next phase of reforms is now long overdue. However, despite many attempts to scrap these ridiculous elections, hereditary peers have blocked these motions through filibustering, showing how unelected peers have an active role in shaping our democracy. 

The calls for change are even coming from the Lords itself – even the Lord Speaker agrees it is time for the hereditary peers to go, with the House of Lords spiralling out of control to over 800 members.

We’ve long argued for the end of these sham by-elections and to finally replace the House of Lords with an elected body. How long can these so-called elections continue to make a mockery to our democracy – its time people had a say on who makes our laws, not just a handful of unelected peers.

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Mark Drakeford has thrown his support behind changes to how MPs are elected calling for ‘radical reform’ of Westminster’s electoral system.

The First Minister of Wales made the remarks at the 2021 Aneurin Bevan Memorial Lecture. In his speech, Drakeford advocated for the Labour party to step up and make the necessary political reforms in order to “repair” British democracy. 

The Welsh Labour leader used his speech to call for ‘radical reform’ of the electoral system to be put at the forefront of the next Labour government’s agenda.

He highlighted how the First Past the Post system has disproportionately disadvantaged voters from Scotland, Northern Ireland and Wales who, despite low or falling levels of support for the Conservatives, do not see their votes represented at a national level where Conservatives won an 80 seat majority in 2019. Until this is addressed Drakeford claimed “the system, therefore, cannot adequately represent the interests of millions of regional voters”. 

This is particularly problematic for Welsh voters, with the Conservatives gaining little support in Wales, with the party never winning “an election in Wales in the nearly two hundred years since the first stirrings of universal suffrage”. 

The call came just weeks after proposals for Labour to back electoral reform were debated at the party’s annual conference – the motion, despite receiving the support of over 80% of constituency party delegates ultimately fell due to the lack of support from trade union affiliates.  

However, a decision by the Unite union – one of the Labour party’s largest union affiliates – to back a new voting system makes the chances of reform ‘significantly improved’, Drakeford said, following a decision of the union’s policy conference just last week.

He added: “How anyone clings to the notion that a system which delivers, so consistently, majority Conservative governments on a minority of the votes cast is best for working people simply baffles me.”

The First Minister also called for ‘urgent’ reform of the House of Lords, replacing it with a ‘Chamber of the Union’ guaranteeing representation from the nation and regions of the UK. – something that he persuasively argues is necessary in order to restore the UK to “a democracy in which every part of the UK feels it has a share”. 

The Electoral Reform Society has long argued for such reform so that the House of Lords can finally provide adequate representation and scrutiny. Proportional representation in both the Commons and the Lords is a vital step towards a more representative politics where the voices of voters from all nations and regions of the UK are heard.

Drakeford’s call is just the latest from a senior Labour figure, demonstrating the growth of support within the party for reform. And as our broken Westminster system continues to distort and ignore the views of ordinary voters – the time for change is long overdue.

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Whenever a conversation online comes to proportional representation, you can set your watch by the appearance of someone claiming that ‘we had a referendum on that!’.

Advocates of the way things are in Westminster argue that there is little desire to change the current voting system to proportional representation, due to this referendum in 2011.

Of course, a lot has happened since 2011 – people are voting differently and entirely new parties have arisen. But, just on a purely technical point, the 2011 referendum was not on proportional representation at all, but to change the voting system to the Alternative Vote (AV), a watered down version of First Past the Post.

What even happened with the AV vote?

As one of the terms of the 2010 coalition agreement with the Conservatives, the Liberal Democrats demanded they hold a referendum on changing the First Past the Post voting system. The current winner takes all voting system has seen Labour and the Conservatives take turns in government, consistently ignoring the will of the voters.

Therefore, when the Liberal Democrats were in a position to join the government in a coalition, they argued for proportional representation as a key demand. The Conservatives, however, as strong opponents of electoral reform, offered a referendum on the Alternative Vote instead as part of a final offer during the coalition negotiations. 

With the Alternative Vote forming part of the Labour manifesto, the negotiators thought it stood a good chance of winning a referendum.

The AV referendum was held in May 2011, with the cross-party Yes to AV campaign in the lead at the start. Ultimately, the No to AV campaign won the most votes, after a contentious campaign, with 67.9% voting to keep the current system. The referendum had failed to capture the interest of the public and saw a low turnout of just 42.2%. 

So what was AV, and what are its benefits?

The Alternative Vote is not a proportional electoral system. It is, in fact, part of the ‘majoritarian’ family of voting systems – like First Past the Post.

For instance, The Jenkins Commission estimated that AV would have increased the size of the “already swollen Labour majority” in 1997. ERS research in 2015 shows the Conservative Party’s majority under AV would have doubled from 12 to 24.

With AV, the public cast their vote by putting a number one by their first choice, two by their second and so on. They can put numbers on as many or as few candidates as they wish. A candidate is elected if they receive over half of the votes – if nobody receives over half the vote, the candidate with the least votes is eliminated and everyone who voted for them has their vote moved to their second choice. This process is repeated until one candidate receives over 50% of the votes and is elected. 

Unlike the all-or-nothing approach of the First Past the Post system, AV ensures voters can vote for their favourite candidate without worrying about wasting their vote. This avoids the need for tactical voting, where voters don’t vote for their favourite candidate, but vote for someone else in order to stop a disliked candidate from winning. Moreover, as extremist candidates are on the political fringes, they are most likely to be excluded in the first round, allowing for candidates who are more broadly liked and less polarising to get into parliament. 

The Alternative Vote is a watered down version of First Past the Post, that removes the need for tactical voting, but still means parliament doesn’t match how we vote.

Supporters of the status quo like to pretend that AV and PR are the same thing

But AV is not proportional representation. Proportional representation is where the seats in the elected body reflect the overall distribution of public support for each political party. This creates a more representative chamber, allowing for the differing views of the electorate to be properly reflected in the makeup of the legislature.

This differs from AV, which can often provide an even more disproportional result than the Westminster system.  The most common proportional electoral systems used in the UK are Additional Member System (AMS) as used in the Scottish Parliament, Welsh Senedd and London Assembly, Single Transferable Vote (STV) as used in Scottish local elections and the Irish Dáil Éireann. 

Proportional systems are more democratic as they put the power directly into the hands of the people. If a party wins more votes it wins more seats, something not guaranteed with first past the post. Voters can often choose between candidates from the same or different parties, which allows voters to elect MPs based on their individual abilities and merit. Independent candidates are also more likely to get elected, which has happened in Ireland as well as some Scottish Councils which both use STV, as voters do not have to worry about wasting their vote. This all allows for voters and their interests to be better represented in parliament. 

It is time for the outdated Westminster to be scrapped and place the power back with the people. Unlike the AV system, an actual proportional voting system will create a more democratic Britain.

Sign our petition for a fair, proportional, voting system in the UK