Elections: First Past the Post

Lisa Smart Excerpts

Wednesday 24th June 2026 Westminster Hall

[Lisa Smart (Hazel Grove) (LD)]

It is a pleasure to serve with you in the Chair, Mr Turner. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Richmond Park (Sarah Olney) on securing this vital debate. Like many colleagues, we have both been vocal, proud advocates for political reform. This debate builds on the important work of my hon. Friend in the previous session, when she won a vote on the Second Reading of her Bill to bring PR to elections for national and local government in England. That was a clear sign that the demand for reform exists across the House and continues to grow.

In her excellent opening remarks, my hon. Friend mentioned the newly re-elected right hon. Member for Makerfield (Andy Burnham) whom I have told I would mention. He is not alone in his support for proportional representation. The right hon. Member for Manchester Central (Lucy Powell), the deputy leader of the Labour party, has said that she has always supported electoral reform. From a different side of the political spectrum, the Conservative London Assembly member Emma Best has said her party should start thinking seriously about proportional representation. She speaks compellingly, making a strong Conservative argument for PR.

When voices across the political spectrum are saying the same, the Government should listen. I am proud to sit as vice-chair for the all-party parliamentary group for fair elections, which is the largest APPG and shows clear cross-party support for replacing first past the post with a proportional system. It is good to see several members of the APPG here today. We have heard from a number of them, so I will reflect on some of their comments. My fellow vice-chair, the hon. Member for North Herefordshire (Dr Chowns), reminded us that PR is fair. We are in a multi-party political system and first past the post, which was set up for two parties, is no longer fit for purpose.

The hon. Member for Edinburgh South West (Dr Arthur) talked in detail about his experience on the city council, and how PR in Scotland works. My constituency neighbour, my hon. Friend the Member for Cheadle (Mr Morrison), said that despite being elected on a minority of votes, he represents well his whole community. That is an urgent issue, to ensure that people have trust in our system. My hon. Friend the Member for South Cotswolds (Dr Savage) talked about how the voting system shapes the way we campaign, focusing on a core number of marginal seats and a group of voters in them. My hon. Friend the Member for Wokingham (Clive Jones) reminded us that PR is not a panacea—he is absolutely right to do so—but it is a fundamental step in the right direction towards a fairer, better system.

My hon. Friend the Member for Mid Dunbartonshire (Susan Murray) reminded us how PR shapes how we campaign and what we choose to do and not do with our resources. My hon. Friend the Member for Didcot and Wantage (Olly Glover)—while doing an impression of my hon. Friend the Member for Cheadle—gave us examples from overseas and of parties working together in local government. He also reminded us that sorting out the voting system would better enable us to sort out our country.

I know that objections are made to reform. We are told that PR means weaker coalitions, constant instability or Members who answer to a party list rather than the people they serve. To those who have those concerns, I point to the weakness, instability and chaos, frankly, that we have seen over the past decade. The hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) made his case, as he often does; he had a very good go at making arguments that I disagree with, but I am sorry to say that he failed to convince me on this occasion. Seven Prime Ministers in 10 years is not what a well-functioning system looks like.

Our current system is failing, and we have such a great opportunity to push forwards and make positive reforms. Some may look at each change of Prime Minister as a story about one person, one party or one bad week in Westminster, but that just does not cut it. When a pattern repeats again and again, it stops being about individual issues, personalities or failures and starts reflecting the system that produces them. First past the post manufactures large majorities out of modest vote shares, and those majorities are built on such shallow foundations that they can collapse as quickly as they were built. Instability is not a glitch in our multi-party system; it is a feature of it.

There are various forms of PR. I will not try your patience, Mr Turner, by ranking them in order of my preference—I will save that for the Lib Dem conference—but, suffice to say, the Liberal Democrats support the single transferrable vote. It keeps a strong direct link between Members and the place they represent. Constituents have local MPs to turn to, but they would have a real hand in choosing them. That is the price of different voting systems.

[Mark Sewards (Leeds South West and Morley) (Lab)]

I am grateful to the hon. Lady for giving way, especially as she is my friend on the armed forces parliamentary scheme. It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Turner. I am sorry I was not here at the beginning of the debate; I was at a really important statement on Nottingham maternity services in the main Chamber. Does the hon. Lady not agree that, even if some commission came forward and said that STV was absolutely the way to go and that we should adopt it in future, this country should adopt it only if the electorate validates that through a general election where a majority of the parties making that promise win a majority in Parliament, or through a referendum?

[Lisa Smart]

I am not personally a fan of a referendum. They can be quite divisive and they return one of two answers, so I would not support one. The Liberal Democrats have had a fairer voting system in our manifesto since the foundation of our party. I believe that the current Government, whose party the hon. Member is a member of, have put forward some other suggestions that were not in their manifesto in 2024, so it is possible for situations to change. It is possible for the world to move on, and for people of good will to work together for the betterment of our country.

Single transferrable votes for the House and for local councillors in England would mean that communities would not be written off because they were a safe seat, and nobody would feel that their vote was wasted. We could also introduce more nuance into a debate than can be delivered via the medium of bar chart. Consider the previous general election: the Labour party won about two thirds of the seats in the House on roughly one third of the vote. A system that can hand near-total control of the Commons to a party that two in three voters did not vote for cannot honestly claim to speak for the country.

The Liberal Democrats have argued for fair votes for decades, because a democracy in which every vote counts is a better democracy. I do not want to spend my time today just listing what is broken, because the more important point is that we have in front of us a genuine opportunity to put it right. The appetite for reform is no longer confined to the Liberal Democrat Benches; it is growing across the House and across the country. We need to fix our politics so that we can fix our country. An amended Representation of the People Bill could be the vehicle to deliver it and to give this country a voting system worthy of the people it serves. I hope the Minister will tell us today that the Government are ready to take that chance.

--- Later in debate ---

[Paul Holmes]

I believe I have already addressed that point: it is because of us, as politicians. I absolutely agree with many of the comments that Members across the House have made today about trust in politicians and the level of discourse, but we need to improve our game. I do not believe that there is a direct correlation between the voting system and turnouts at general elections; I genuinely think that it is normally about whether a voter feels good or not. If the hon. Gentleman’s only issue is voter turnouts and he wants to have a conversation about compulsory voting, then I am up for that debate, but I do not believe that we should move to another system without looking at whether voting should be compulsory or by choice.

It is worth recalling, as I lightly touched on, that the British public have previously been asked whether they wish to move away from the existing voting system for Westminster elections. That was in 2011, and it was a condition of the Liberal Democrats being in government from 2010 to 2015. A clear majority voted to retain first past the post rather than adopt an alternative system. In fact, only 2% of local counting areas wanted rid of first past the post.

[Lisa Smart]

Does the hon. Gentleman agree that the alternative vote is a preferential voting system, not a proportional system?

[Paul Holmes]

Absolutely, and we can talk about that, but that was the system that the Liberal Democrats proposed in that referendum, and they lost the argument when they were in government. When they were last in government, they put a question on reforming the voting system to the country and it was resoundingly rejected. I agree with the hon. Lady; I am not in favour of referendums a lot of the time. But I believe that we have put the issue of reforming our voting system to bed for the foreseeable future—that is, unless a Government come in with a manifesto commitment to change the voting system, in which case we can have that discussion, even though my party would still oppose it.

It is worth saying that 2% of local counting areas voted against the last referendum. I struggle to see why we would reopen a question on which the public have already expressed a clear preference. That, in my view, is the crux of the matter. This debate is not fundamentally about voter understanding or participation; it is about dissatisfaction with how support for certain parties translates into seats under the current system.

Many Members make the case that we should switch to a proportional representation system in order to follow the example of other major democratic nations. I do not accept that. This country has consistently delivered stable Governments—which is slightly ironic, given the last week or so. I also remind Members of the comments made in previous contributions: we vote for Members of Parliament, not for Prime Ministers. That is the key point about the system in our country. The right hon. Member for Makerfield (Andy Burnham) has been spoken of as the Prime Minister-elect. We do not have that. We elect Members of Parliament, and the party that has the most MPs forms a Government. If they do not have a majority, they try to form a coalition—that has happened in recent history. We do not vote for Prime Ministers. That is why I do not think that argument pushes the case forward for proportional representation.

This country has consistently delivered stable Governments, in contrast to a number of European systems, which rely on complex coalition arrangements. That is not to suggest that we need to compare systems like that to justify our own, but it is clear that first past the post prevents smaller and more extreme parties from having undue influence, which is a respected element of the UK’s democracy. I refer Members to some of the parties elected to the Israeli Parliament, which has a proportional representational system.

In conclusion, first past the post is not a perfect system, but it is a proven one. It delivers a clear link between constituents and their representatives. It provides voters with identifiable accountability, and it ensures that Governments are formed with a clear mandate from the electorate. I utterly respect the case made by the hon. Member for Richmond Park, and I utterly respect the fact that we are likely to see calls for electoral reform in a future Liberal Democrat manifesto, but I dearly hope the voters reject that option. For the reasons I have set out, I believe first past the post is the system to form strong and stable Governments in the United Kingdom.