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Politicians from across the divide have launched a new group in Parliament to push for electoral reform.
On Tuesday, around 20 MPs and peers joined up to set up the All-Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) for Fair Elections.
Labour MP and new chair Alex Sobel said the group was “on a mission to restore trust in politics”.
The APPG, which is backed by campaigners at Fair Vote UK, will push for measures including replacing First Past the Post with a proportional voting system, ending the influence of secretive funding or “dark money” in politics, and countering disinformation.
Keir Starmer appeared to rule out moving to a proportional representation for Westminster voting. But after being elected the now-PM said “the fight for trust is the battle that defines our age”.
Campaigners see an opening for political reform, whether through the House of Commons’ new Modernisations Committee on updating parliamentary processes, or the upcoming legislation scrapping hereditary peers in the House of Lords.
The new all-party group warns that recent years of scandal as well as concerns over foreign interference in UK politics have exposed “critical vulnerabilities” in British elections.
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The group’s Chair, Labour’s Alex Sobel MP, said: “Trust in politics is at an all time low. The public can see that our political system isn’t working and our elections aren’t on an even playing field…We’re on a mission to restore trust.
“To do so, we need to clamp down on the growing influence of untraceable money in politics. We have to counter malicious disinformation that undermines the basis of democratic debate. And we must replace Britain’s clearly unfair voting system with a modern, proportional one that means everybody has a vote that counts.”
The recent general election has been branded the “most distorted” in British history, after Labour won a historic majority of seats despite receiving just a third of the votes cast.
One in five people voted for either the Greens or Reform, yet the two parties now share just one percent of MPs between them.
The APPG’s Vice Chair, Green MP Ellie Chowns, added: “The point of elections is for everyone to have a real say about who represents them and what direction the country should go in. But thanks to First Past the Post, only four in ten voters got the local MP they chose for this year – and only one in three got the party they voted for in government.
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“We need an electoral system that fairly and accurately reflects Britain’s voters in Parliament – and that’s one of the main aims of this new APPG.”
After the first official meeting on Tuesday in Parliament, the APPG for Fair Elections will hold a public launch event in parliament in the coming months.
Backers say it will play an active role bringing together campaigns both inside and outside Parliament.
Mark Kieran, director of the democracy campaign group Fair Vote, said: “This summer’s riots laid bare the danger that deliberate disinformation can pose – and elections in Britain, the US and beyond have faced a growing risk of being undermined by malicious actors.”
He warned of “dark money” continuing to “pour into politics”, giving influence to anonymous individuals.
‘The Political System Needs Fundamental Reform – From Capping Party Donations to Scrapping Voter ID’
‘It is a scandal that, in so many constituencies, people did not really have a choice of MP – as the real choice lay with a party machine that can foist MPs upon them’
The mission of the APPG for Fair Elections is to enhance the integrity of UK democracy by replacing First Past the Post with a proportional system that “makes seats match votes”, “eliminating dark money and undemocratic influence” from politics, countering disinformation in political debate, and “delivering clean and fair elections” where all votes count.
The group may also turn their attention to mandatory voter ID, after a new Electoral Commission report revealed that hundreds of thousands of people didn’t vote this July due to strict new photo identification rules.
The new parliamentary officers of the cross-party group are:
- Alex Sobel MP, Labour (Chair)
- Ellie Chowns MP, Green (Vice Chair)
- Lord Balfe, Conservative (Vice Chair)
- Lisa Smart MP, Liberal Democrat (Vice Chair)
This June, Professor John Curtice and the National Centre for Social Research found that trust and confidence in British politics and elections had fallen to a record low, while proposals to change the voting system commanded record, majority support.
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