We just saw a significant victory when it comes to ensuring the independence of our elections watchdog.

It came during the second reading of the Representation of the People Bill on Monday, which is the government’s legislation to reform elections with measures such as votes at 16, automating voter registration and tightening rules around political donations.  During the debate, Steve Reed, the Communities Secretary, announced that the government will remove the government’s ability to set the strategic direction of the Electoral Commission.

Announcing the move in Parliament, he said: “We recognise the importance of maintaining confidence in the commission’s operational independence and ensuring it can carry out its statutory duties effectively, so we will repeal in full the power for government to impose a strategy and policy statement on the Electoral Commission.”

Weakening independence risks undermining public trust

This is an important win for democracy campaigners, as it undoes the damaging move by the last government to bring the Electoral Commission under the direction of ministers. The Electoral Commission is effectively the referee that ensures our elections are run properly and that political parties adhere to electoral law. Any move to weaken its independence risks undermining public trust in how our democracy is run and also risks opening the door to potential political interference in the future.

This week’s announcement promises to reverse the last government’s policy, introduced in the Elections Act 2022, which required the Electoral Commission to ‘have regard to’ a strategy and policy statement set by ministers, which reflects the government’s policy priorities and set out the ‘roles and responsibilities’ of the commission in achieving those priorities. The commission also had to report annually against that statement to the Speaker’s Committee. We argued these stipulations amounted to a significant imposition on the commission’s regulatory autonomy.

On Monday 2^nd March, MPs will gather for the second reading of the Representation of the People Bill – a welcomed and vital opportunity to discuss a fairer and more representative democracy for all.

It will extend the vote to 16- and 17-year-olds, overhaul our outdated voter registration system, and tighten the rules around campaign finance and political donations. These are changes our team has fought for for many years – important changes that will help make our elections fairer and remove barriers to voters participating.

But whilst the bill will bring once in a generation changes to our democracy, it misses the opportunity to replace Westminster’s outdated voting system.

For this bill to succeed, MPs need to attend the debate, ask the right questions, and push for the strongest possible version of these reforms. To support MPs ahead of the first debate on the bill, we have reached out across the House – providing research, evidence and briefings to ensure that when politicians stand up to speak, they know our concerns and how we think the bill can be improved.

Our work behind the scenes

Influencing legislation doesn’t happen by accident. It requires sustained relationship-building, careful research and a deep understanding of how Parliament works.

Our work behind the scenes consists of meeting with MPs and their staff to better understand their democratic concerns, finding out who shares our goals, and supporting them with reliable, evidence-based research on a variety of democratic issues – not just at key moments like this debate, but consistently, over time.

We work closely with other organisations in the democracy sector to support MPs in raising democratic issues with the government and organising events to facilitate conversations amongst politicians around our policy issues – issues we know also matter to you.

In the run-up to Monday’s debate, we have been actively encouraging MPs to attend, to speak and to champion changes in this bill, and asking our supporters to do the same. You can read all the briefings we have been using with MPs on our website.

Support the Electoral Reform Society

This briefing is part of a much bigger picture. The Electoral Reform Society has spent over a century fighting for a fairer democracy – and right now, with bills like this one moving through Parliament, that fight has never mattered more.

You can help to strengthen this work. If you join the Society as a member, your contributions will support our work in parliament like this, as well as in the press and online – making the case, and backing it up – for how we can fix Westminster’s broken system.

Join the Electoral Reform Society today