Patrick Hurley

Patrick Hurley

Labour — Southport

Speaking in the House of Commons on 17 January 2025

Debate

Absent Voting (Elections in Scotland and Wales) Bill

Contribution

I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Edinburgh North and Leith (Tracy Gilbert) for bringing this valuable debate and Bill before the House today. As has been made clear by many speakers, for as long as we have known it, there has been a weird hotchpotch of different regulations concerning different elections in the UK. We have different voting systems for different elections; we have parliamentary boundaries that take little account of the boundaries for local elections; and we have age differences for different elections in different parts of the country, with votes at 16 in some parts of the country for some elections. We have voter ID regulations. We have the single transferable vote, top-up systems and first past the post. That whole hotchpotch of different regulations needs to be simplified and standardised.

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