Clive Jones

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Mr Turner. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Richmond Park (Sarah Olney) for securing this important debate. Our politics is not fit for purpose and is not working for people up and down the country. It is becoming increasingly adversarial and divisive. The first-past-the-post system actively encourages parties not to work together, which allows the Government to avoid accountability and ignore the voices of the people who put them into Parliament. I have heard from so many of my constituents in Wokingham who are sick of feeling ignored by politics in Westminster and feel that the system—and, therefore, the Government—does not work for them. People in Wokingham and across the country want to know that they will be represented in Parliament by somebody they have an affinity with, and they want their vote to have counted. As a very young teenager, still at school and unable to vote, I witnessed the general election of February 1974. I wanted the Liberals to win. They increased their vote to 18%, and their seats in the House of Commons increased from eight to 14. If the result had been proportional, they should have had 110 Members, and it would have been a properly balanced Parliament, which I am sure would have dealt with the issues of the day better than the Wilson and Callaghan Governments. I saw that as a massive injustice, and it helped to drive my interest in politics. My Lib Dem colleagues and I have long called for fair votes through proportional representation. As a party, we have spearheaded the campaign for electoral reform in Parliament. Electoral reform is by no means a panacea for this country’s problems, but a much better, more democratic electoral system is a fundamental step towards politicians representing the country properly. That is why this Government must replace the first-past-the-post system with proportional representation for both general and local elections in England. Democracy can be revived by strengthening our democratic institutions and by taking the big money out of politics. The Government need to cap donations to political parties and stop foreign oligarchs and crypto billionaires interfering in our democracy. How can anyone think that a £5 million gift with no strings attached, or whatever the reason for the gift is, can be nothing to do with anyone except the recipient? These attitudes in our politics are very dangerous. Politicians should represent and be accountable to their constituents first and foremost—not some millionaire, or even billionaire, who may or may not pay UK taxes. Politicians cannot afford to take voters for granted as successive Labour and Conservative Governments have. We need to repair the damage of years of sleaze, cronyism and rule-breaking and end the era of neglect. We need a political system with fair representation that makes politics work for all our constituents again.