Jeremy Corbyn

It is a pleasure to follow the right hon. Member for Islington South and Finsbury (Emily Thornberry). She rightly reminded the House about the role of the Chartists in Islington South. I remind her and the rest of the House about the role of Mary Wollstonecraft in the north of the borough, and of course the fact that “The Rights of Man” was written in her constituency at the Angel. Our borough has made a massive contribution to radical thought and radical development. This debate should be much longer and wider, because we need to look at wider issues of democracy in our society. We have an elected House of Commons. We have an unelected House of Lords. We obviously have an unelected Head of State. We have a massive disparity in regional influences on political decision making. We do not really have regional government. We have mayors and a local government system that is essentially dependent on central government. We are not a fully democratic society by any manner of means. Indeed, this House of Commons is really meeting on sufferance of the Government. Its agenda is basically set by the Government. It is not an independent chamber of power over the Government; it is one that tries to hold the Government to account—there is a big difference. So we need to think a bit more about how our democracy could develop. Perhaps a good idea would be a commission on democracy, where there could be wide-ranging thoughts on democracy in our society. The Bill contains a number of issues that I want to refer to quickly. I say that as a former agent in many elections, and as a parliamentary candidate in many more after that. The question of the funding of elections comes up all the time. Massive amounts of business money flows into politics both at election time and between elections, funding parties, so-called political interest groups and so on. We need to get a grip on this. Our democracy is being sold to the highest bidder, and it is getting worse and worse with the levels of political influence and money that goes with it. There is also the question of the power of the media between and within elections. We need to extend broadcasting rules into print media during elections. As others have said, we need to look very seriously at the damaging interests of social media and the algorithms that go with it, which direct political views. It is almost impossible to find out how much money has been spent on social media campaigning. Lastly, I will turn to the right to vote. I have raised the question of homeless people having the right to vote; if we had a universal registration system, it would be much easier to ensure that everyone who is entitled to vote is able to do so. While I absolutely support votes at 16, I also think we should extend votes beyond just Irish nationals to those who are legally resident in this country and have a stake in the future of this country, and should be able to vote accordingly.