In the wake of the pomp and pageantry of the Queen’s speech last week, a victory for the voter emerged from the Cabinet Office in the form of the Electoral Registration and Administration Bill.

Last year the government’s draft bill on electoral registration seemed set to disenfranchise millions, creating a mockery of our electoral system by enabling citizens to simply ‘opt out’ of their democratic right to vote. The Electoral Commission estimated the proposals could lead to a drop in the completeness of electoral registers from over 90% to 65%.

Following months of campaigning by the Society, in which we presented evidence to the committee and lobbied hard to remove the most harmful elements of the bill, the bill introduced last Thursday is a million miles from its original draft. Gone is the bizarre ‘opt out’ and the annual canvass, critical for reaching voters who have moved during the year, has been reintroduced for 2014 (albeit by delaying the 2013 canvass). ERS has long argued that an annual canvass is necessary in the year individual registration is introduced in order to capture the two to three million people who will have moved in the months between canvass and introduction. It is also heartening to see that the government has listened to the Society’s concerns about abolishing the fine which registration officers rely on. The government will now legislate for a civil penalty similar to a parking fine.

Whilst we welcome these changes, it is no time for complacency. The devil is in the detail of the regulations and we will be scrutinising both this bill and the secondary legislation to ensure we do not see the sort of drop experienced in Northern Ireland when individual electoral registration was introduced there. The impact on postal and proxy voters is still a concern. Research by Scope found that in 2010, 67% of polling stations had one or more significant access barriers for disabled voters. It cannot be right that people with a regular postal or proxy vote who fail to notice the change are required to attend a polling station in order to exercise their democratic right.

The missing millions are still out there. With electoral registers only 87% complete at present we need to not only ensure more people do not drop off the register but to look at ways to increase registration across the board. Depleted electoral registers have greater democratic implications. They will be used to draw the next set of constituency boundaries which means unrepresentative registers will lead to unrepresentative constituencies – with some MPs representing many more constituents than others, most likely in inner city areas.

The leader of the opposition announced this weekend that his party would begin a voter registration drive. Clearly low levels of registration should be a concern to politicians, but is enough being done to tackle the root causes of the issue? Low registration is closely linked to low turnout but it is also indicative of a wider disconnect. Making voter registration easier will not address the underlying problems but it is an important step in making the processes of democracy more in-tune with ordinary citizens’ lives.

Abolishing the archaic system of household registration is the first step in what could be a greater modernisation of our electoral system; creating one that is appropriate for 21^st century citizens and their lives. Individual electoral registration opens the door to further innovations in future, such as linking electoral registration to other citizen-state transactions like applying for a driving licence and online registration.

In October last year the proposals for individual voter registration were being called the biggest political scandal you’ve never heard of. The Society has campaigned hard to make voters’ voices heard, and the government has listened. We have a better bill as a result.

To find out more about what the ERS has done on electoral registration visit our missing millions campaign page

Well another Queen’s Speech has come and gone.

We can only welcome the government’s pledge to legislate on reform of the upper house. But Lords Reform will take more than words; it will require action.

If you hold the power to help decide how Britain is run you should be elected by us, the British public – that’s democracy. The public know it, so how long can a small privileged clique of politicians afford to fool themselves?

In the current economic climate to be handed a job for life because your father was a lord, and to be able to turn up, claim £300 and go home again, is quite simply an embarrassment.

Hearing politicians bewailing the time it will take to pass Lords reform, you’d be forgiven for forgetting that it is their petty in-fighting that will prolong the process.

There is no reason for this process to be drawn out. MPs from the three main parties were elected on a commitment to Lords reform, the proposals are backed up by consensus from a century of debate and public opinion is behind an elected second chamber.

If we blow this opportunity now we’re going to end up spending another hundred years of our parliament’s time trying to undo that mistake. We cannot allow the turkeys to veto Christmas. Politicians’ self interest must not be allowed to waste any more of our time.

Since Thursday’s local elections we’ve been crunching the numbers. Did voters get a fair deal? What has breaking from First Past the Post meant for Scotland?

Well what we’re seeing is a widening gulf between local democracy in England and Scotland.

We’ve focused on six English and Scottish cities and its’ clear English voters are drawing the short straw – with less choice and less chance of affecting the result on polling day.

A tale of 6 Cities – Edinburgh, Glasgow, Dundee, Portsmouth, Birmingham, Manchester:

Scotland abandoned First Past the Post for local government elections in 2007 and adopted the Single Transferrable Vote form of Proportional Representation. This has brought competitive elections into all the local ‘One Party States’ that once blighted Scottish politics.

Scottish voters got more choice at the polls and more chance of deciding who speaks in their name in their town halls. And while most Scots got a councillor they backed for their trouble, most of the English just threw their votes away (33,000 in Birmingham, 27,000 in Portsmouth, and 90,000 in Birmingham alone).

Glasgow has transformed itself from rotten borough to a multi-party democracy. Scotland now has a local democracy we can all be proud of, and getting rid of First Past the Post made that possible. With the Single Transferable Vote people have got a real say on who runs their local authorities.

Voters in England should settle for nothing less.

It is a widely held view that the first-past-the-post electoral system disadvantages women and that electoral reform would improve the representation of women in the UK Parliament. In Westminster elections party candidates are selected constituency by constituency – too often women are selected for the party’s less winnable seats. Only on election-day does it become obvious that the House of Commons is once again over-represented by men. Proportional representation is, however, neither a necessary nor sufficient condition for improving the political representation of women. This is not to say that a more proportional system is not desirable but the surest and most immediate way to guarantee a fairer representation of women in elected bodies is to apply quota rules, irrespective of the electoral system.

Evidence from the UK and around the world clearly demonstrates that operating under a more proportional electoral system is no guarantor of women’s political representation. Whilst at first glance the Scottish Parliament appears to be an example of electoral reform working in women’s favour, when we look more closely at the figures we see that the high numbers of women returned to the Scottish parliament can be largely attributed to the Labour party’s use of twinning in its single member constituencies rather than high numbers of women in the party lists.  We don’t wish to argue that electoral reform is of no benefit to women, moments of constitutional change often provide a window where women can disturb the political order and demand space in the new institutional arrangements. But the choice of PR is important. In OSCE countries with a party list system of PR there are on average 4-6% more women in lower house. List systems can make initiatives to improve the representation of women easier to implement, and harder to ignore. Certainly in a closed list system parties can ‘zip’ men and women candidates, alternating them on the party list, and therefore greatly increasing the likelihood of women getting elected and not just selected. Should a party place all of their women candidates at the bottom of the list the distribution of seat winnablity by sex of candidate would be plain for all to see.

Global Trends: the case for quotas

When it comes to the global league table of women’s representation there are some surprising countries in the top ten. In fact if you ask undergraduate students of politics to rank order countries by the percentage of women in the legislature fail they invariably fail to get the right order.

Top 10 Percentage of women in lower or single house in rank order

1. Rwanda 56.3%
2. Andorra 50.0%
3. Cuba 45.2%
4. Sweden 44.7%
5. Seychelles 43.8%
6. Finland 42.5%
7. South Africa 42.3%
8. Netherlands 40.7%
9. Nicaragua 40.2%
10. Iceland 39.7%

www.ipu.org

Their expectations – and no doubt others – is that established democracies will do  best. In fact this is rarely the case. The UK House of Commons does particularly poorly, with just over 20% women MPs, coming in at an embarrassing 49^th place. It is beaten by other European countries, including Spain, Portugal and Belgium even as it is ahead of France and the US. The scale of women’s under-representation in the UK Parliament is often met with surprise; perhaps because women MPs often wearing bright jackets are highly visible against a background of grey suits, and perhaps too because they are used strategically by party leaders – ‘doughnutting’ the Prime Minister on the Parliamentary benches, or on the campaign trail, or at press conferences.

Around the world the single most important factor related to higher levels of women’s representation is the use of quotas. About half of the top 20 OSCE countries registering sharpest growth in women’s representation have used legal quotas; of the bottom twenty none had such constitutional requirements. Sure, there has been overall improvement in women’s representation over time, but there is no simple linear trend, with stagnation in some countries and regions, for example, Scandinavia, and fall back in others, such as those countries that make up the post-soviet space, and in Scotland and Wales.  In other cases there has been substantial and steady growth (Switzerland, Spain, Austria) and in yet others sudden rises (Belgium and the  Netherlands). In all this, there is no clear unambiguous relationship between electoral system and the proportion of women in the lower house.

The way forward for the UK: time for quotas too

A change in the electoral system in the UK might well have pushed Britain up in the international ranking by a few places. But if we want to see sizeable changes then sex quotas are a better – and arguably post the AV referendum, the easier – choice.  Recall that in 1997 there was a big jump in the number of women MPs:  the figure doubled overnight from 60 to 120. This had nothing to do with the electoral system per se. Instead, it was the Labour party’s use of a quota system, in the form of all-women-shortlists, that accounts for the rise, and explains too their continuing higher levels of women’s representation. In the 2011 parliament they still have more women MPs than all the other parties added together Quotas are, for sure, by no means a simple panacea, they need to be well designed and robustly implemented or some parties will find ways to circumvent them, but they provide nonetheless the most effective means to improve the political representation of women. As one of the recommendations of the 2008-10 Speaker’s Conference made clear, it is time for Parliament to consider legislative quotas for women.

Find out more about the different PR systems and their strengths and weaknesses on The Electoral Reform Society’s Voting systems made simple

However, the vote against the AV was not a vote of confidence in FPTP.

Referendums, by their very nature, tend towards oversimplification in order to achieve clear outcomes. On May 5^th 2011 voters were not asked “are you in favour of a more representative voting system?” they were asked “should the Alternative Vote system be used?” – a very different question.

So this year we decided to ask the real question. And, as expected, the results were very different.

“The UK should use a different voting system that would give parties a share of seats in Parliament that more closely reflects their share of votes”

Polling by Populus for the Electoral Reform Society [1]

A year on from AV only 1 in 5 people support the current system. The majority of British voters agree that parliament needs fair votes.

The Society’s goal of a truly representative democracy therefore remains unchanged. We are still campaigning for reform but now we are able to use the lessons from the referendum to inform our approach. The Yes campaign highlighted that it is difficult to persuade people to vote for change if they don’t recognise the problem in the first place, so we are working harder to highlight the problems before we offer solutions.

So how does our post-referendum approach play out in practical terms?

Firstly, we are continuing to push for reform in local government by showing that First Past the Post is unfit for purpose and that there is a tried-and-tested and genuinely democratic alternative.

This week Scottish voters went to the polls, in the second set of local elections since they moved from First past the Post to STV. And once again it meant voters got what they asked for.  No more safe seats, no more uncontested seats, just fair votes for all and a fair share for parties and independents. We won the fight for PR in Scottish local government, and it’s already making a big difference. Voters in England and Wales should settle for nothing less.

Secondly, we’re lobbying the government to make changes that will create fairer politics. Political reform remains high on the government’s agenda, presenting us with multiple opportunities.

For example, Lords’ reform is being debated as we speak. The coalition pledged to reform the Upper House, so we’re holding them to account and pushing for a fairly elected Lords. We’ve exposed the attempt to bring in a self serving system that would have packed the upper house with party Yes men and women. And we’ll keep piling on the pressure.

We’ve also been winning the argument on sweeping reforms of Electoral Registration – some of the biggest changes to the way we vote since the Universal Franchise. Last year we heeded the warnings from the Electoral Commission that changes could mean 10 million disappearing from our democracy. Not only was the government planning to let voters ‘opt out’ from their democracy, millions of people would simply slip through the cracks and off the electoral register.

We’ve taken the lead on this, and scored some big wins. But the government are still ignoring warnings from registration officers and charities who are all saying the same thing: that crossing their fingers and hoping for the best is not good enough. We need a safety net to ensure that millions of us do not lose our say at the next election. The government must rule out the opt out once and for all; otherwise it risks undermining the act of voting as a civic duty. Electoral registers are not mailing lists; they are the nuts and bolts of British democracy. Ending the opt out is a battle we intend to win.

And thirdly, we’re campaigning to bring about change on big issues which are seeing the parties talk and yet fail to take action.

For the first time in a generation the number of women in positions of power is heading south. From cabinet to local government, it’s impacting on every level of our government.  So together with partners Fawcett Society, Hansard Society, the Centre for Women and Democracy and Unlock Democracy we launched the Counting Women In campaign. At this rate even our daughters will be claiming their pensions before they get an equal voice in the government of our country. We don’t think that’s good enough, so we’re putting pressure on the government to change the political culture and on political parties to do more to encourage women. David Cameron promised that one third of his minsters would be women by the end of his first term as Prime Minster – so we are petitioning him to make sure he keeps that promise.

The referendum propelled the electoral reform debate into the public arena for the first time since the early 1930s. 6 million supported change, putting electoral reform back on the political agenda and giving organisations like us a much stronger platform from which to lobby and campaign.

Polling shows we have reasons to be cheerful, but now is not the time for complacency.

We’ve regrouped and we’re establishing ourselves as the voice of the voters on democratic reform. From what’s been described as ‘gerrymandering’ of constituency boundaries to party funding, we are leading the debate and holding the politicians to account. Our goal is a level playing field in our elections – and it must be achieved, whether politicians like it or not.

[1]  Weighted sample 2053 British adults.  NET: agree 1058   (52%)  Strongly agree  458   (22%)  Slightly agree 600 (29%)  Neither agree nor disagree 666  (27%)  Slightly Disagree 190 (9%)  Strongly disagree 250 (12%)  NET: disagree 400 (21%).

While 20 years ago this would mean the use of just one electoral system – First Past the Post, today Britain has an almost countless number of electoral systems. The trouble with electoral systems is that they don’t necessarily produce the result you want. Depending on the electoral system used, some votes may count more than others. Some votes can be ‘wasted’ by being cast in ineffective ways. So how do you get the best use out of your vote this Thursday?

Single Member First Past the Post

Most people in England will be presented with a ballot paper for a single member seat and asked to mark an X against their favoured candidate. If your favoured candidate has little to no chance of winning then your vote could be ‘wasted’. For an effective vote you can check previous results in your ward on your council’s website and use that to judge who has the best chance of winning. If your seat is ‘safe’, i.e. one party have won the seat year after year, then there’s not much you can do.  If the election is likely to be close however, you can chose to vote tactically to try and stop a party you don’t like winning the seat.

Multi-Member First Past the Post

In some parts of England and in most of Wales you’ll be asked to place a cross against multiple candidates. This is multi-member First Past the Post. You’ll be asked to cast say three votes, to fill three seats. The three best performing candidates will win.

If you want to vote for one party’s candidates and that party has three candidates for three seats then cast all three votes for those candidates. If, however, your favoured party is running less than the number of seats available, say, 2, then you may wish not to use one of your votes because each vote cast for an alternative party makes it less likely that your favoured candidate will be elected.

If you wish to ‘split’ your vote between multiple parties it is best to cast your votes for the party candidates who are highest on the ballot paper as voters tend to split their votes this way in general. As ballot papers are ordered on the basis of alphabetical order this does unfortunately mean a bias towards people with the good luck to have surnames beginning with A rather than W!

Supplementary Vote

In London and in cities like Liverpool, directly elected mayors will be being elected by the Supplementary Vote method.

In this method voters have two preferences. In the first column cast your vote for whoever your favoured candidate is. Your first preference cannot be ‘wasted’, if you cast an effective second preference.

If no candidate achieves 50%+1 of the vote then a second round will count second preferences. Only the top two candidates stay in this round so if your first preference is not for a candidate who is likely to come first or second then it is important that your second preference is, to ensure your vote counts.

This can be easy in an area like London with established opinion polls and clear streaks of opinion, but it may be harder in other areas. For example, who would have guessed that in 2009 in Doncaster the English Democrat candidate and an Independent would reach the second round.

Additional Member System

Londoners will also have the chance to elect the Assembly using the mixed Additional Member System.

They will receive two ballots – one to elect a constituency member and one to elect a list member. The constituency member is elected by First Past the Post so the advice from the first section of this post counts once again.

For the list vote simply cast a vote for your preferred party. As the list is proportional your vote cannot be ‘wasted’.

Single Transferable Vote

In Scotland STV will be used. Rank candidates according to your preference. Cast as many preferences as you think you can to have the most effective vote. Your vote cannot be split and cannot be wasted if you preference every candidate for whom you have a genuinely held preference.

Even with all the planning in the world, come Friday some of us will find that our votes have counted for nothing. With people’s engagement with politics at the lowest ebb in recent history and turn-out embarrassingly low, is it surprising that the British public are loosing faith in their political system when it seems to care so little what they think?

For more information on the UK’s different voting systems and their various merits and failings see our A-Z guide: Voting systems made simple.

Does Bristol, Birmingham or Bradford want a Boris? We find out next Thursday when these and seven other English cities give voters a choice as to whether to adopt the directly elected mayor model.

Yet just days before the poll, there is little understanding of what benefit directly elected mayors might bring, what their role and powers are likely to be and what, if anything, they will do to reinvigorate local democracy.

Turnout for Mayoral referendums has ranged from lows of 10% in Sunderland and Ealing to a high of 64% in Berwick upon Tweed. Most mayoral referendums have returned a ‘no’ vote (27 out of 42) but areas that have chosen a directly elected mayor seem to like them; most Mayors elected in 2002 are now serving their third term. A ComRes poll in April this year asked whether ‘London is a better city for having a Mayor’ – 69% agreed and only 12% disagreed.

The latest British Social Attitudes survey reveals mixed response to elected mayors. Whilst 58 per cent agree that an elected mayor can speak up for an area, only 37 per cent think an elected mayor makes it ‘easier to get things done’. More people agree than disagree with the claim that it gives too much power to a single person, but almost the same percentage of people simply don’t know.

Opponents of the role see it as too great a concentration of power in a single individual and fear it leads to unaccountable, authoritarian leadership, opening the door to corruption. Yet the formal powers of existing elected mayors do not differ greatly from those of council leaders. The arguably more important powers are ‘soft powers’ deriving from direct election and the position itself which expands influence.

However, this new set of city mayors are to have greater powers in relation to economic growth, infrastructure, planning and employment. The government intends to take a ‘bespoke approach’ to devolving power through ‘tailored city deals’. This means people will be voting in referendums with no idea what powers their future mayor may have. Whether this uncertainty will impact on the result of the referendums remains to be seen, what we do know is that a lack of knowledge will always sway voters towards the status quo.

In the opposite corner, advocates of elected mayors argue that they deliver strong and stable leadership; that they can act as champions of an area, driving economic development and growth. As representatives chosen by citizens rather than their party colleagues, directly elected mayors are arguably more externally focused. Many mayors see themselves as leader of a place rather than leader of a council.

The position also appears to attract leaders from outside the usual political channels. To date, six elected Mayors have been independents including a former detective inspector, a former newsagent and a former football mascot. Yet whilst the position has attracted new political voices, it has not attracted candidates from across society. The Centre for Women and Democracy reports that in next week’s three Mayoral elections only 15% of candidates are women. This is the lowest percentage in the history of the post of directly elected Mayor. In Liverpool’s election there are no female or minority ethnic candidates.

Devolving powers to city regions could be seen as an important move to reinvigorate local democracy and mitigate against the centralization which shapes governance in England. But it is not clear on the evidence to date that it is always the right move. The Warwick Commission on elected mayors and city leadership has concluded that whilst elected mayors are right for some places, they might not be necessary for cities which are already ‘vigorously and strategically led’.

Next week may see more citizens gaining the opportunity to elect a leader for their area. But the jury is out on whether directly elected mayors offer a better version of democracy or just a different one.

What are your views on Elected Mayors? Let us know your thoughts in the comments section below.

Democracy deserts

But for nearly 140,000 the opportunity to express a view has been stolen from them by an unfair and outdated electoral system.  For them, next Thursday won’t be Election Day.

Across Wales, 95 individuals have already been elected unopposed.  The simple task of submitting nomination forms was all it took.  No need especially to phone canvass, knock a single door, or attend a hustings.   In one ward, no one submitted nomination forms.  Residents there will go unrepresented until a by-election is organised.

Electoral Reform Society Wales research shows that across the country, 12 of the 21 councils up for election contain uncontested seats.  The worst, Powys is home to an estimated 32,132 residents denied a vote.  Gwynedd has approximately 22,861 residents robbed a voice; and in Pembrokeshire its 20,038.

This is not just a problem for rural Wales. Voting won’t interrupt the daily routine of 7,085 residents in Bridgend county borough next Thursday.  Nor the 7,524 taxpayers who live in local government minister Carl Sargeant’s own constituency.

Is this a sign of a declining interest in politics?  A sign that fewer and fewer people are interested in standing?  Or is it an illustration of how our ‘winner takes it all’ First Past The Post system is crowding out competition, particularly in single-member wards?

Meaningless votes

All of the 96 democracy deserts are single member wards.  Yet seats which elect more than one member (‘multi-member’ wards) are even more unfair under the current system as a party can gain all the seats – as many as 5 – despite not winning a majority of the vote. Most ‘multi-member’ wards are held by one party, because the system doesn’t allow for a politics that accurately reflects the diverse needs and interests of the community.

Across Wales at the last local government election in 2008 two thirds of voters might as well have thrown their ballot paper in the bin as only 34% of votes cast actually got a councillor elected.

• In the Morriston ward in Swansea, Labour won ALL of the 5 seats, despite gaining 39.6% of the vote.

• In the Plasnewydd ward in Cardiff, the Lib Dems won ALL of the 4 seats, despite gaining only 44% of the vote.

Under the current system those who finish 3rd can still go on to win. In the starkest example from last election the Lib Dems came third in Cardiff according to the number of votes they won, but gained twice as many seats as the Conservatives, who won the most votes.

Votes Cast:

Seats Won:

The ‘winner takes all’ feature of FPTP is an unfairness which is repeated in county after county across the country.

The case for reform

Scotland had similar problems, but in 2007 moved to a fairer system of electing local councillors.  There are now no single member wards in Scotland.  Local voters there get to express a preference at the ballot box, ranking in order their preferred candidates.  In comparison, the Scottish local elections under STV meant that 74% of voters got their first choice of councillor elected. The unfair situation where the ‘winner takes all’ is avoided as seats are distributed more proportionately.

It’s a system that the 2004 Sunderland Commission, established by the then Labour and Liberal Democrat partnership government, recommended.   It’s a system that would have provided a vote to the 140,000 Welsh taxpayers who live in one of the 96 democracy deserts.  It’s a system that the Welsh Government must now get on and implement. Wales cannot afford to waste a further 8 years waiting for fair votes.

Ever since West Lothian MP Tam Dalyell questioned post-devolution arrangements in Westminster, the issue of Scottish and Welsh MPs voting on legislation applying only to England has been a point of some contention. But the so-called ‘West Lothian’ question is not the only issue under discussion and the ‘English question’ has come to represent an array of constitutional conundrums.

Part of the problem in finding the answer to the ‘English question’ (if indeed there is one) is that it is not a single question. There is the constitutional anomaly created by devolution arrangements as noted by Tam Dalyell, but beyond this, many people question whether post-devolution England commands enough political voice within the Union. In addition, for many the ‘English question’ encompasses issues of decentralisation and regionalism; whether power needs to move away from Westminster.

On this last point – let’s call it the English, English Question – both the previous and current governments have attempted to find the answer in strengthening regional governance. In 2004 the North East was given a referendum on an elected regional assembly. The result (nearly 4 in 5 people voted against it) showed that this form of regionalism was not the answer for the majority of voters. The elected mayor model has had greater success. There are now 14 directly elected Mayors, two more will be elected on 3^rd May and at the same time, a further 10 of England’s largest cities will vote on whether or not they want to elect a city Mayor.

But decentralisation in itself does not resolve the issue at Westminster – that of all MPs, wherever they represent, voting on matters, some of which have been devolved elsewhere. A possible solution, ‘English Votes for English Laws’ has gained in currency politically and popularly. A recent YouGov poll for IPPR found that 79% of English voters either agreed or strongly agreed that Scottish MPs should be barred from voting on laws that affect only England. Only 12% disagreed. It is fast becoming a political necessity to find a solution.

However, in reality ‘English Votes for English Laws’ is fraught with technical and constitutional problems, not least that parliamentary bills are rarely ‘English laws’; territorial extent is usually UK, GB or England and Wales. Lines are blurred even where a policy is completely devolved, given under the current Barnett formula spending cuts in England on, say, Health, will have knock on effects on the grant given to the devolved institutions, and so force them to also find cuts. And of course there are implications to creating two-tiers of MP, the likely outcome being a parliament within a parliament.

Which leaves the question of England’s place in the Union. There have been calls for a separate English Parliament but constitutional experts query whether it is sound to create a federation of four nations wherein one is so dominant – representing 85% of the UK population.

The debate on Scottish Independence adds a new dimension and pressure to the debate and while no immediate answer appears to be forthcoming it seems the English question is not going anywhere.

 

We will resign to vote against the programme motion. We want to ensure that the bill drags on and on and on in the Commons with filibustering speeches through the night. This should bung up the government’s entire legislative programme.”

Now we can understand why unelected Lords might have little time for accountability or manifesto commitments. But these MPs have no such excuses.

So to aid MPs as we head towards the coming Queen’s Speech, here’s a little recap on what was taken as gospel back in 2010:

We will work to build a consensus for a mainly-elected second chamber to replace the current House of Lords, recognising that an efficient and effective second chamber should play an important role in our democracy and requires both legitimacy and public confidence”

Invitation to join the government of Britain, Conservative Party Manifesto 2010

Sitting MPs who ran on that Manifesto – 306

Every one of these wannabe-rebels ran for parliament on a promise of Lords Reform. But now they seem prepared to sacrifice their own government’s entire legislative programme to bury it. It sends a strong signal to their constituents that their manifestos weren’t worth the paper they were printed on.

Next stop then, their coalition partners. As you might expect the Lib Dems had an unambiguous commitment to reform:

Liberal Democrats will: Replace the House of Lords with a fully-elected second chamber with considerably fewer members than the current House.”

Liberal Democrat Manifesto 2010

Sitting MPs who ran on that Manifesto – 57

And of course there’s the small matter of the coalition agreement:

We will establish a committee to bring forward proposals for a wholly or mainly elected upper chamber on the basis of proportional representation. The committee will come forward with a draft motion by December 2010. It is likely that this will advocate single long terms of office. It is also likely that there will be a grandfathering system for current Peers. In the interim, Lords appointments will be made with the objective of creating a second chamber that is reflective of the share of the vote secured by the political parties in the last general election.”

The Coalition Agreement: Our Programme for Government

Coalition MPs 363

So what of the opposition? Labour were fairly clear:

We will ensure that the hereditary principle is removed from the House of Lords. Further democratic reform to create a fully elected Second Chamber will then be achieved in stages. At the end of the next Parliament one third of the House of Lords will be elected; a further one third of members will be elected at the general election after that.”

A future fair for all, Labour Party Manifesto 2010

Sitting MPs who ran on that Manifesto  - 255 (down from 258 at the election)

Denis MacShane and Eric Joyce are currently sitting as Independents – so they probably have some excuses for voting no. The SNP for their part propose abolition of the Upper House, while the DUP have little to say on the matter. And parliament’s latest addition, George Galloway, is an unknown quantity.

But as for the other parties, the Greens, Plaid and the Alliance are all pledged to reform.

So that’s 623 MPs who represent parties elected on manifestoes in support of Lords Reform – or 95.8% of the chamber. Discount the 5 abstentionist Sinn Fein MPs and the Speaker and that figure hits 96.7%. However it would be more than a little surprising if the House of Commons divides along quite those lines cometh the vote.

The government are right to stick to their guns. No major party went into the last election defending the status quo, and if Lords Reform is ever to see the light of day it will require all parties to stay committed.