Spiralling size and cost of the Lords shows it’s time for an overhaul The House of Lords has again come under scrutiny this week as the Times reports that peers will see their daily pay rise by 3.1% to £323 per day if they attend from April. This development comes... Posted 13 Feb 2020
ERS in the Press – January 2020 Following December’s General Election we have continued to make the case for a fairer, proportional voting system, highlighting the warped nature of December’s results and the negative effect of First Past the Post on our... Posted 07 Feb 2020
People are rightly losing faith in politics, it’s time for democratic renewal A new report by the recently established Centre for the Future of Democracy at the University of Cambridge has found that dissatisfaction with democracy has reached an all-time global high. Westminster-style democracies (the UK, Australia,... Posted 31 Jan 2020
What we learnt from the ERS / Open Labour leadership hustings Labour’s leadership candidates backed a range of constitutional reforms at Sunday’s joint Open Labour/Electoral Reform Society hustings, as they were challenged on how to fix Britain’s broken political system. When asked about their views on... Posted 27 Jan 2020
It will take more than moving the Lords up north to mend our broken politics The phrase ‘moving the deckchairs’ has never felt so apt. Over the weekend, we learnt that Boris Johnson is mulling plans to move the House of Lords permanently to York. Or maybe Birmingham. Speaking of... Posted 23 Jan 2020
ERS in the Press: 2019’s electoral reform news roundup As the year draws to a close, here’s a snapshot of some of the work we’ve been doing at the ERS to put real political reform on the agenda in 2019. January We kicked off... Posted 23 Dec 2019
Policies for a fairer politics: How we can fix a broken system This election, the political system is more distrusted by voters than it has been for years. It’s not hard to see why. The sense that people do not feel ‘heard’ is growing: an ERS poll... Posted 08 Nov 2019
The current crisis has been a long time coming – and Westminster’s system is behind it It’s easy right now to get caught up in the daily drama of politics – to focus on individuals, and the game playing, and to forget that the current political chaos is all part of... Posted 24 Sep 2019
Why unions are getting serious about the need for political reform A week before the court case over prorogation reached the Supreme Court, the ERS’ Dr Jess Garland told TUC Congress delegates: “Our constitution is just a set of gentlemen’s agreements, with weak parliamentary checks and... Posted 19 Sep 2019
An elected House of Lords wouldn’t just be a clone of the House of Commons The Electoral Reform Society has long campaigned for the House of Lords to be abolished and replaced with a new modern, fairly elected democratic second chamber. We also want to see the one ‘democratic’ chamber... Posted 10 Sep 2019