MPs back PR bill in vote, a symbolic win for electoral reform campaigners – as it happened

1.44pm and 4.36pm.)

Labour had won two thirds of the seats in the Commons despite winning just one third of the votes.

Thanks to first past the post, nearly 60% of people who voted in the general election in July are not represented in parliament by the candidate that they voted for. This is the most disproportionate election result that this country has ever seen.

We are also seeing record levels of disillusionment with the political process, with citizens becoming increasingly disengaged. This is reflected in the fact that turnout in the 2024 general election was the second lowest since 1918 at just under 60%. Over 40 per cent of registered voters in the UK thought so little of the political process they did not think it worth expressing a preference for one candidate over another.

Olney said the Liberal Democrats had always believed “a fair voting system is an essential bedrock of a functioning democracy”. She went on:

Democracy has proved to be the most effective and enduring of governing systems because it relies on a broad base support across the population. A faulty voting system, delivering a majority government on a minority vote, undermines democracy and its ability to deliver an effective government.

Olney said she was proposing a PR system using the single transferrable vote (STV). This system would protect the link between MPs and local constituencies, she said. She went on:

In the most recent general election, the number of MPs elected to this chamber with more than 50% of the votes cast in their constituency was just 96. It decreased from 421 in the previous 2019 election and 476 in the general election before that.

Ten of our colleagues in this current parliament were elected with the votes of fewer than 30% of their constituents. Far fewer MPs in this place can say today that they have the support of the majority of their constituents, or even a broad base of support, than ever before.

Olney said STV was already in use for local elections in two of the four nations of the UK (Scotland and Northern Ireland). And taking into account the use of other forms of PR in Britain (for the Scottish parliament and the Senedd in Wales), first past the post was now the “outlier rather than the norm”, she said.

Olney said it is not just the Lib Dems backing PR. Labour voted for it at its conference two years ago, she said.

She concluded:

This summer, the Labour party won a landline election victory, securing 63% of the seats in the House of Commons with 34% of the vote. This system leads millions of voices unheard, and creates a divisive, adversarial political climate where collaboration is discouraged and accountability is often sidestepped.

The Liberal Democrats have long championed proportional representation, advocating for a voting system where every vote truly counts.

Parthenon marbles when they met in Downing Street this morning.

One report quoted Greek government sources as saying: “We welcome the fact that the British government will not stand in the way if there is an agreement with the British Museum.”

At the Downing Street afternoon lobby briefing, the No 10 spokesperson did not deny that the sculptures were mentioned during the talks. But, pointing to what the UK government said in its readout of the meeting (see 12.58pm), and what the Greek government said in its readout, he said the two leaders focused on priorities and “areas of shared cooperation”.

Asked if the fate of the marbles was a joint priority, the spokesperson said the priority issues were those mentioned in the readouts. (Neither of them refer to the Parthenon, but the Greek one does reference tourism.)

Labour MP has written to Claire Coutinho, the shadow energy secretary, to ask why she has described a policy to encourage the use of heat pumps as a trap set “the climate change lobby” when it was Coutinho herself who introduced it in government.

Polly Billington, the East Thanet MP who was an environmental campaigner before entering parliament this summer, also asked why Coutinho claimed recently that she had “scrapped” the clean-heat market mechanism (CHMM) when she had instead just delayed its implementation.

Under the CHMM, which was introduced in December 2023, four months after Coutinho was made energy and climate change secretary, targets were introduced for the sale of heat pumps as home heating systems from April 2024. She later put this deadline back by a year.

Although her Labour replacement, Ed Miliband, has simply kept to the same April 2025 date, Coutinho called the CHMM “a classic example of policy designed for the green lobby and vested interest groups rather than for the consumer” and said she had “scrapped” it.

She also said:

The climate change lobby have been itching to get this on the statute book for years because it uses higher costs to force people to buy heat pumps.

In her letter to Coutinho, Billington asked Coutinho to explain on what basis she said she had scrapped the policy. She added:

You then stated that, ‘the climate change lobby have been itching to get this on the statute books for years.’ As the person who introduced the CHMM onto the statute book, can you confirm if you are, or have ever been, a member of the climate change lobby?

Coutinho was contacted for comment.

3.15pm.) This was not a whipped vote, but the figures show some interesing splits within the parties.

Voting for the pro-PR 10-minute rule bill

Greens: 4

Independents: 4

Labour: 59

Lib Dems: 62

Plaid Cymru: 4

Reform UK: 3

TUV: 1

Voting against

Conservatives: 78

DUP: 4

Independent: 1

Labour: 50

Reform UK: 1

UUP: 1

The biggest split, obviously, is in Labour, where members and MPs have long been deeply divided on this issue. Two years ago the Labour conference voted in favour of PR. The leadership made it clear it was not going to take any notice, but Labour’s national policy forum report subsequently said first past the post (FPTP) was driving “the distrust and alienation we see in politics”.

But the Reform UK vote is interesting too. Like Ukip before it, Reform UK has always been in favour of PR. At the election it suffered the most from the disproportionality of FPTP, gaining 14.3% of the national vote but only 0.8% of available seats. Their manifesto advocated PR.

Today three Reform UK MPs (Lee Anderson, Richard Tice and James McMurdock) voted in favour. However, a fourth, Rupert Lowe, voted against. Nigel Farage, the party leader, did not vote.

Wales, and Rhun ap Iorwerth, the Plaid Cymru leader, has said the resignation of Andrew RT Davies as Welsh Conservative leader shows the Tories are not offering solutions to the people of Wales. Ap Iorwerth said:

The legacy of the Tories in Wales is one of chaos and cuts – a legacy that was roundly rejected at the ballot box this year. They offer no solutions for the challenges facing our communities and nor do they have a serious plan for government.

Plaid Cymru stands ready to offer Wales a fresh start. While the Tories fight amongst themselves and Labour continues to let down our communities, Plaid Cymru is united and focused on delivering our vision to rebuild our economy, fix the NHS, demand fair treatment from UK Government and show real ambition for the future of our nation.

3pm.) A 10-minute rule bill is a type of private member’s bill but, even though after the vote was read out the deputy speaker made a point of asking what day was set aside for the second reading (Friday 24 January), no time will be allocated for the bill that day, and so after today it will vanish into the parliamentary ether. Asking for the date of the second reading is an empty ritual.

But, symbolically, this is a victory for electoral reform campaigners.

And the result may be seen as further evidence that there is significant support for PR in the parliamentary Labour party.

However, Keir Starmer has shown no interest in electoral reform, and given that he won a landslide majority through first past the post, campaigners for a different system may have a hard job getting him to change his mind.

what she told the CBI last month when she said: “I’m not coming back with more borrowing or more taxes.”

During Treasury questions in the Commons this morning, Mel Stride, her Tory shadow, quoted Reeves’s words and asked: “Did she mean it?”

Reeves replied:

At the budget in October, which [Stride] knows, we had to fix a £22bn black hole in the public finances, and of course some of that black hole comes from the fact that we are the only G7 economy where employment is lower than it was before the pandemic, when he was presiding as work and pensions secretary in the previous government.

So we did have to raise taxes to fund our public services, but never again will we have to repeat a budget like that, because we have now wiped the slate clean and drawn a line under the mess created by the last government.

When Stride asked Reeves if she was refusing to repeat what she told the CBI because she had been over-ruled by No 10, or because she “spoke without thinking”, Reeves replied:

No chancellor is going to write five years worth of budget in their first five months as chancellor of the exchequer, but what I can say is that we will never have to deliver a budget like that again, because we took the decisions in this budget to wipe the slate clean after this mismanagement and decline and chaos of the previous government.

T-level subjects. A wider decision is expected as soon as next week.

Anna Gardner, chief executive of the Edge Foundation which promotes skills education, told MPs on the education select committee this morning that T-levels are “possibly not the route for every young person”, with 30% of the most recent cohort dropping out during the two-year course, compared with 90% retention for students taking BTecs and A-levels.

Gardner said:

There are overlaps but there are a number of students who will need that overlap and the option to do BTecs or other qualifications in this area, and we want to make sure we don’t take away that choice.

David Robinson, director for post-16 and skills at the Education Policy Institute, said that while 25% of students hadn’t gained a grade 4 or better in English or maths GCSEs, only a fraction had gone on to take T-levels. He said:

I think there are serious questions around where [the remaining] 20% of students are going to go.

T-levels were launched in 2020, with a single course intended to be equivalent to taking three A-levels. However take-up has been sluggish, with the government this week reducing the amount of work placements that students will be expected to undertake.

Source: theguardian.com