TORY victories on votes including the controversial policing bill, Covid-19 quarantine and free school meals would have been lost under a more representative voting system, according to new analysis.
A project has set out what parliamentary votes would look like if the seats in Westminster matched the votes a party received.
Proportional Commons, @PropVoting on Twitter, weights votes of MPs to make each party’s voting power proportional to their share of the popular vote in the December 2019 General Election.
Division 44, 2021-07-05: Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill: Third Reading
— Proportional Commons (@PropVoting) July 5, 2021
Aye/No: 365/265
PR recount: 293/343
If seats matched votes, result would CHANGE from Aye (by 100) to No (by 50). #MakeVotesMatter #FBPPR pic.twitter.com/OAan9YAb1D
The project noted that the first 50 divisions – or votes – of this Parliament changed around 72% of the time when allocating seats using proportional representation (PR).
The Westminster Parliament is elected using the First Past The Post system which garnered the Conservatives 365 seats – and a majority – in the most recent election.
Under PR the Conservatives would have received 288 seats – short of a majority by 37, meaning they would be unable to pass policies through parliament unopposed.
The Police, Crime and Sentencing and Courts Bill was voted through parliament just yesterday but would not have passed in a PR system with a Labour, SNP and LibDem led total of 343 – a majority of 50.
PR2028, a group campaigning for the adoption of PR in UK general elections by 2028, called the bill – won by the Conservatives and DUP by 100 votes – “anti-democratic” and “human-rights trampling”.
A division on Covid-19 “secure borders” asking the government to provide a “strict hotel quarantine system” so as not to “risk undermining the UK’s successful NHS Covid-19 vaccination programme” was won by the Noes – the Conservatives and the DUP – by 107 but would have been won by the Ayes by 44 under PR.
Another division which could have been won by 52 seats for the Ayes – mainly Labour, SNP and LibDem – was around free school meals.
The division was instead won by a Conservative majority of 60.
Six Labour MPs – including opposition leader Keir Starmer – proposed Amendment (j) to the Queen’s Speech (Motion for an Address) which would require the government to publish the Department of Health and Social Care’s internal review of their operation during the Covid-19 pandemic.
This was won by the Noes in Parliament with the Conservatives and the DUP gaining a 103-vote majority but would have passed in a PR system with the Ayes taking it by 49.
In one tweet, Proportional Commons noted that “70% of the time, the MPs on the losing side represented MORE than the winning side.”
The Scottish Parliament already uses the Additional Members System which combines the FPTP and proportional representation systems using what is known as the d’Hondt method.
READ MORE: Everything you wanted to know about D’Hondt voting system before Holyrood election
This means that whilst the governing party in Scotland has held a majority in the past, it is ultimately more difficult to achieve leading to cross-party support being needed to pass bills into law.
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