Olly Glover

I thank the hon. Members for Leeds Central and Headingley (Alex Sobel) and for North Herefordshire (Ellie Chowns) and my hon. Friend the Member for Hazel Grove (Lisa Smart) for securing a debate on this important topic. I will endeavour not to repeat the remarks that have been made so eloquently by other Members, but I must start by also thanking the hon. Member for Hamble Valley (Paul Holmes) for referring to the question that I asked the Deputy Prime Minister a few weeks ago: that is perhaps as close to fame as I will get in this Chamber. He was right to observe that the Deputy Prime Minister requires persuasion on this point, although hopefully the eloquent and articulate contributions of Members on both sides of the House will help to achieve that and gain her support for the APPG’s request for a national commission on electoral reform. For me, there are three key arguments in favour of proportional representation. First, there is currently a clear gap between how people vote and the outcome—namely the Parliament that they get, and thus the Government—and they do not necessarily feel invested in the result. Let me address the point made by the hon. Member for North Durham (Luke Akehurst). The 2024 general election was, probably for the first time, quite a proportional one for the Liberal Democrats in its ratio of vote share to the number of MPs we have. Indeed, if I may be perfectly candid—at the risk of incurring the wrath of my colleagues—in parts of the country where we have more proportional systems, we do not always perform quite so well, so we are certainly not campaigning for this change on the basis of self-interest. It has, in fact, been a very long-standing Liberal Democrat and, indeed, Liberal commitment, and I will say more about that shortly. Secondly, the current system is not engaging people. As has already been mentioned, turnouts are declining. In 2024, a record low of 58% voted for the two largest parties, Labour and Conservative, while one in three said that they had voted tactically for someone other than their preferred candidate or party member. Indeed, when many voters were telling me on the doorstep that they would be voting tactically for me, I pledged to commit myself wholly, so that I would not have to ask them to do that again in the future, and that is partly why I am here today.