Mary Southcott on reforming election laws, changing voting systems and rejecting non-PR approaches
The English Devolution and Community Empowerment Bill, introduced in July 2025, based on the White Paper in 2024, contained an important message promised in the Labour Manifesto, to reverse the Conservative decision to put first past the post back whenever the opportunity arose. The exact formulation in the Bill on the Voting system is: “The Bill introduces the Supplementary Vote, where voters select first and second preferences to ensure the winner has broader support.”
Under other circumstances, this could be construed as a victory for pluralism and democracy. But now we have five or six multiparty politics, SV is just not good enough. This system was designed for two and perhaps a half party politics in London, when Professor Patrick Dunleavy was propagandising for SV. From the start, it confused voters with many LibDem and Green voters choosing to throw away their vote by voting for each other when neither was thought able to win. The other thing which recommended itself to Labour at the time was that SV didn’t require a change from X-voting.
The electorates of Northern Ireland and in local elections in Scotland have however managed to rank order their preferences by using STV, 1, 2, 3 … This, when voting for a mayor, amounts to Alternative Vote which confuses people still further as they are now being asked to consider AV for General Elections, something which was visited and rejected by the 2011 Referendum. Many PR supporters rejected it then and now, so perhaps we should not be beguiled by the siren voices willing to consider AV as an alternative or precursor to PR. But this does not mean, as people in Hampshire see clearly – and is perhaps not so obvious in the north – that we need not think of importing STV into both Welsh and English local government, while plans are being drawn for new boundaries in non-unitary local councils. This could create even more unchallenged and unrepresentative governance at local level if we do not address the system.
Most of the other reforms left out of the King’s Speech in July 2024, or introduced into the thinking since, were expected in an Elections White Paper before the end of July 2025. What arrived instead on schedule, just (17 July), was a policy paper, consultation not being the most reliable way of getting one’s own way. The Paper outlines the Labour Government proposals for an elections and democracy bill, Restoring trust in our democracy: Our strategy for modern and secure elections, informed by the 2025 Association of Electoral Administrators Report in February 2025, named New Blueprint for a Modern Electoral Landscape: How to bring resilience and capacity to UK Democracy, which also calls for a Commission.
The Government proposes reducing the voting age to 16, reviewing voter ID, improving voter registration and strengthening political donations rules. At Labour Campaign for Electoral Reform, we are hoping that previous legislation on citizenship education can be highlighted where it is not functioning, and that voter ID should enable everyone eligible to vote, especially young people. We also hope that automatic registration will be supported, and attempts will be made to sort out political finance from home and away, not just foreign donations.