On 2 September 2025, the House of Commons held the second reading of the English Devolution & Community Empowerment Bill. While the bill covers many areas, one of the clauses is something we have been calling for – the cutting short of the failed imposition of First Past the Post for Mayoral and Police and Crime Commissioner elections.
There are a few more legislative stages to go, but the Bill passed its 2nd reading by 365 – 164 votes.
Traditionally, voters could put down a second choice when electing these positions – it was meant to stop them being elected with the support of just a small portion of the local community. But the last government sneaked plans to impose First Past the Post on Mayors and Police and Crime Commissioners into the 2022 Elections Act during the Committee Stage – avoiding scrutiny from MPs.
The inevitable happened, and this year we saw a mayor elected with the support of fewer than a quarter of voters. So, we’re pleased that MPs have voted to cut short this misguided electoral experiment.
The Electoral Reform Society briefed MPs ahead of the debate, and thousands of our supporters emailed their MPs to ask them to attend.
We can do better than the Supplementary Vote
The traditional system for electing Mayors and Police and Crime Commissioners is the Supplementary Vote, which is a big improvement on First Past the Post. But this bill has the opportunity to not just repair the damage, but improve on what we had. Why limit voters to just a single back-up choice? The Alternative Vote allows voters to express their views on as many candidates as they wish.
Along with other MPs, the Liberal Democrats’ Vikki Slade MP picked up this line of argument from our briefing:
“it is ridiculous that one of the mayors elected this May won on just 25% of the vote—but the Government must go further in making votes fair. We believe that the Government should bring in the alternative vote system so that voters’ voices are properly heard.”
What about Councillors?
The government has accepted that First Past the Post doesn’t work for Mayors, but what about councillors? We called in our briefing for England and Wales to adopt the system successfully used in Scotland’s local elections for the last two decades, the Single Transferable Vote (STV).
Labour MP Euan Stainbank referred to his experiences getting elected under Scotland’s system in 2022.
“In 2022, I was elected as a local authority councillor in third place under the multi-member system, and it did work… I do think it is worth looking at that system, as I was about to touch on as a member of the all-party parliamentary group for fair elections”.
As councils get larger, we still need neighbourhood governance
The bill will get rid of the two-tier structure of district and county councils in England. This will create new councils covering much larger areas than many current district councils, so there is a danger that some voters may come to feel further away from local democracy.
The government plan to deal with this by ‘a requirement on all local authorities, in England, to establish effective neighbourhood governance’ but doesn’t say what this actually means. We warned MPs that this can’t just be left to be filled in by the minister after the bill has passed, as is currently planned.
Labour’s Maya Ellis raised concerns about how these vague proposals will interact with the existing system of Town and Parish Councils
“I am concerned that the Bill does not fully appreciate the role that town and parish councils currently play and that the accountability of such neighbourhood area committees does not seem to be enshrined.”
This is an area that the government need to put some thought into and where genuine consultation with local people is vital.
MPs will now have the opportunity to propose amendments to the bill, and we will be making the case in all of these areas. Thank you to all of our supporters who emailed their MP – the government have made the case themselves, we need every representative elected with a fair electoral system.
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Behind every campaign win is months of detailed research and advocacy. For this Bill, we produced evidence-led briefings for MPs and ensured your concerns were front and centre in the debate.
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