Elections: First Past the Post

Euan Stainbank Excerpts

Wednesday 24th June 2026 Westminster Hall

[Euan Stainbank (Falkirk) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Mr Turner. I thank the hon. Member for Richmond Park (Sarah Olney) and congratulate the Richmond Liberal Democrats on their universal victory in last month’s Richmond upon Thames council elections. I declare an interest as a member of the all-party parliamentary group for fair elections.

Increasing political participation in a democracy is not just a nice thing to have; it is an imperative that all of us must focus on in the service of our constituents. In the years to come, I genuinely believe that it will be the difference between a politics that serves and engages all and one that continues to obscure decision making from communities, fuels rather than addresses discontent, and pushes reasonable people in the United Kingdom to lose faith in democracy and seek increasingly radical solutions.

Progress has been made to increase structural participation, with the Government bringing forward votes at 16 in the Representation of the People Bill, finally aligning the voter age in general elections to that of Scottish local and devolved elections. Among other measures, the Government are taking steps in the Bill to strengthen our democracy. However, I believe that there is an omission in it: an acknowledgement that serious questions are now being asked about how we elect people to this place.

Look at the general election results: turnout is decreasing. I may have won my mandate to this place by trebling my vote share in Falkirk, but that was possible only because my second-place opponent halved their vote share. The diminishing threshold for electing MPs and Governments demands a more pluralistic politics, or at least one that gives a greater number of people something to vote for instead of against.

First past the post structurally embeds negative political campaigning into how we participate in democracy; it enables parties, the media and the public to crystallise in our subconscious pretty early on that only two people have the chance to be the victor in a majority of seats in the country.

[Gordon McKee (Glasgow South) (Lab)]

Like my hon. Friend, I have constituents who use proportional representation to elect people to local government or the Scottish Parliament. Does he agree that we have to learn lessons from both the positive and the negative elements in those electoral systems?

[Euan Stainbank]

I completely agree that there is a wider point about the culture of politics, especially in how we should drive everybody in this place and local government to work together collaboratively, rather than pursuing the most populist option or blaming every problem on previous Governments. That has to be broader than simply reforming how we elect people to places, but I believe—I will bear this out later in my speech—that that is an essential first step.

In preparing this speech, I recalled bemused family members handing me SNP leaflet after SNP leaflet, desperately shoved through their letterbox, that warned them to vote SNP to avoid electing a Tory MP. I believe that even the most optimistic Scottish Conservative in Falkirk would have found that a pretty remote possibility in 2024, or at any other time. But when normal people who do not spend all their time obsessing about politics read that, it tends to turn them off a wee bit.

If we spend our entire time campaigning in general elections against a proposition and defining ourselves against a particular political party or perspective, we fail to lead our campaigns with our solutions to the problems the public face and want us to address. We diminish the opportunity for genuine scrutiny of our propositions, out of fear that the party or person we are running against will use it against us. It tends to encourage us to hide from debate, to reduce the utility and quality of public discussion and to disengage those people do not vote in our elections from that discussion.

It is irrelevant how those of us with the privilege of sitting here as Members of Parliament may personally view the politics of certain political parties; when they are voted for by millions of people and they see only a sliver of representation in Parliament, it closes people off from this place, and it feeds into toxic populist narratives that can be weaponised by those parties against those of us who sit as MPs. They are able to pit us as for the system and pit those excluded from it as outside of the system. It also allows them to avoid a proportionate level of scrutiny that reflects the amount of support they have in the country. A system that enables voters to see their views, and the views of those with similar political allegiances, proportionately reflected in this place will go a long way to addressing many of those issues.

My hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow South (Gordon McKee) touched on the more pluralistic electoral system used in local elections in Scotland and how it works to reflect views more broadly. Councillors of different political parties are often elected to serve the same people. Although that should culturally compel people to work together more effectively in communities, that is still a political challenge that we must address in tandem while we seek to replace the first-past-the-post system.

Populist opposition for opposition’s sake is still rife. The relentless assignation of a problem’s cause to a sole person or political party in a particular office at a particular time creates a reductive and inadequate political debate that would be better spent evaluating multiple proposed solutions to the problems that people rely on democratic structures to resolve—especially because, out there in the real world, there is a substantially greater consensus on what problems we face as a country than would be suggested by the tone of conversation in this place, in council chambers and in devolved assemblies when they are evaluating the solutions.

Whether the debate is on immigration, taxation or the defence of the realm in the House of Commons, or schools, bins or housing in Falkirk council chamber, a proportional system gives us a better chance to compel political parties to use their privileged elected positions to put forward competing solutions consistently. Our desire to strengthen democracy should lead us to create a crucible that enables multiple proposals to compete and for us to come to the best resolution. Our constituents would be better served by a voting system that empowers us all to do better than lazily harass from the sidelines those who happen to be in a particular office at any particular time.

A cultural change is clearly needed, which cannot be achieved by simply replacing the electoral system, but replacing first past the post is an essential step. However, and this could be a point of contention, if we are to replace first past the post, we have to acknowledge that there is not currently an elected mandate to do so. There is also no consensus on which system should replace it, but we can see in the country that the current system is no longer commanding adequate participation to sustain a healthy democracy. That is why I and the members of the all-party parliamentary group support a national commission on electoral reform to be set up by the Government. I encourage the Minister to put that in the Representation of the People Bill when it returns to the House.

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[Susan Murray (Mid Dunbartonshire) (LD)]

It is a pleasure to speak under your chairship, Mr Turner. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Richmond Park (Sarah Olney) for securing this debate. The House of Commons Library has called the 2024 general election the least proportional election in British history. Labour won 411 seats out of 650—almost two thirds of the Commons—on a third of the vote. The problem is not that a party can win power; the problem is that first past the post inflates that power beyond what the public voted for. A system that turns one third of the votes into two thirds of the power and a massive majority is not representing the public’s choice; it is warping it. As we have all seen, it allows wildly unpopular policies to be forced through with little pushback.

I may not agree with Reform, but they came third on vote share with around 14% and won just five seats. The Greens won roughly 7% and returned only four seats. The truth is that my own party, the Liberal Democrats, took 72 seats on around 12% of the vote. The system rewarded us where our support was concentrated. That means that under first past the post, where you live decides whether or not your vote counts. We have all been told that this gives us a strong and stable Government. Clearly, that is not true. A system that hands enormous power to one party on a minority of the vote does not produce consistency; it produces lurches. One Government builds solutions; the next tears them down and creates their own.

I represent the Scottish seat of Mid Dunbartonshire. Scotland shows both how far reform can take us and why it must go further. The Scottish Parliament has used a form of proportional representation since its creation in 1999. Of its 129 Members, 73 are elected to represent 73 constituencies and 56 from regional lists using the D’Hondt system. That is a complicated system of proportional representation that very few voters fully understand. Last month at the Scottish elections, the SNP won 58 seats and was the party with the highest number of seats. Following a deal with the Scottish Green party, which had 15 seats, the Scottish Government are calling for the UK Government to agree to a second independence referendum. However, taken together, pro-independence parties now hold 73 of the 129 seats on around 43% of the vote.

[Euan Stainbank]

Does the hon. Member that if we are to move to an alternative system in Westminster, parties should agree not to game the system, as the Scottish Greens do when they fail to stand in constituencies such as Strathkelvin and Bearsden or Falkirk West and focus their campaigning on the regional seats, which leads to the iniquitous outcome of the 2026 Scottish parliamentary elections that I think she is suggesting?

Oral Answers to Questions

Euan Stainbank Excerpts

Monday 23rd February 2026 Commons Chamber

[Alison McGovern]

I do not think it is funny either. We will meet before too long and get on with it, because local government reorganisation is very important.

[Euan Stainbank (Falkirk) (Lab)]

In Falkirk, an allocation from Labour’s impact fund has addressed the funding gap that would otherwise have risked the delivery of Scottish Canals’ national centre of excellence for canals and traditional skills. Will the Minister visit this regeneration project once it is completed to celebrate this Labour Government’s investment in supporting Falkirk?

English Devolution and Community Empowerment Bill

Euan Stainbank Excerpts

2nd reading
Tuesday 2nd September 2025 Commons Chamber

[Euan Stainbank (Falkirk) (Lab)]

Delivering a more representative system locally, as well as one that empowers local government, is necessary now, given the palpable long-term frustration with decision making that is perceived by communities to be exclusively dictated by those confined to Planet Westminster or—especially in Falkirk—Planet Holyrood. We know from experience that devolution works best when it is rooted in economic regeneration, with a real impact on ordinary people’s lives. I agreed with the hon. Member for Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross (Jamie Stone), who is no longer in the Chamber, when he said that Scotland is a cautionary tale. The cautionary tale for local government from 19 years of SNP government is about what happens when we do nothing, which is what the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats will vote for tonight.

Local leaders can more effectively deploy policy levers in the collective national interest. For instance, the transport procurement policies of Manchester and Liverpool’s mayors have delivered hundreds of orders from Falkirk’s bus manufacturer. That was essential, especially while our own devolved Scottish Government had their eye off the ball and on shiny new Chinese buses. When local leaders with popular mandates have been able to take charge of industrial strategy and regeneration, we see confidence return to communities that for decades have felt left behind. Reflecting on the centralising tendencies of my absent SNP colleagues, I observe that they have persistently ignored, constrained and harmed local authorities in Scotland. I am still waiting for the council tax abolition that I heard about in primary 3.

If we are asking our constituents to invest trust in their local leaders, and to engage in local decision making with the hope that it can change something, we must also take a microscope to the health of our democratic structures nationally. Turnout has been going down, and we know why: we keep hearing from folk on the doorstep that they do not think their vote changes anything.

[Dr Opher]

With the removal of first past the post for mayoral and police and crime commissioner elections, is it not time that we gave local government the option of dropping first past the post, as Wales has done? Is it not also time for a national commission on electoral reform?

[Euan Stainbank]

That is the point I was just about to get to. In 2022, I was elected as a local authority councillor in third place under the multi-member system, and it did work. Many people would not have gone to a different political party, or would not necessarily have come to speak to the Labour representative, but it helped that they had diverse representation. 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. That is why the provisions in the Bill concerning voting systems are welcome and why, to echo my hon. Friend, we should consider a national commission on electoral reform—a commitment to foster a national conversation about how we should be elected in modern Britain, and to build consensus and a way forward.

Different voting systems are already used across the country—for example, for the devolved legislatures in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, for our councils and for mayoral elections here in England. Disillusionment did not start yesterday, and any change to a voting system will not solve the degree of disengagement that we have seen in communities, but it could allow people to see their views always reflected in the institutions that represent them, as we saw with Falkirk council under the multi-member ward system. Continuing to rely on a voting system nationally, when nearly two thirds of people want change, risks crystallising the disillusionment.

By formalising and extending devolution, the Government are today moving to strengthen trust at a local level. By engaging in a serious exercise about how we are sent to this place, we can go a long way towards renewing it at a national level too.

Absent Voting (Elections in Scotland and Wales) Bill

Euan Stainbank Excerpts

2nd reading
Friday 17th January 2025 Commons Chamber

[Patricia Ferguson]

I absolutely agree with my hon. Friend. That is something I am particularly aware of in my constituency, which—as I will talk more about later on—has an ageing demographic. The online service is vital.

The option to apply by post is available for UK parliamentary elections and for police and fire commissioner elections in England and Wales. Voters in England can also use the service to apply for postal or proxy votes in local elections, but voters in Scotland and Wales currently have more limited options, as a paper form is still required for absent voting applications for a devolved Parliament or local election. The Bill will remove that restriction for voters in Scotland and Wales, and will also make the conduct of elections possibly cheaper and certainly more manageable for electoral administrators.

In Scotland, we use three different voting systems, which in and of itself can be complicating for voters. We ask them to vote by first past the post for elections to this place; we ask them to vote using the additional member system for elections to the Scottish Parliament; and we ask them to vote by single transferable vote for local authority elections. In spite of the fact that some of those methods have been in place since 1999, I have encountered voters over the piece who still find that confusing, so anything we can do to take away any complexity or complication from the process of voting must be very welcome.

The Bill is also respectful of the devolution settlement —something that is very important to me as a former Minister for Parliament in the Scottish Government. This Bill seeks to give the power to enact those parts of the system that are devolved to the Scottish and Welsh Governments, but importantly, it also allows enough time for the process to be introduced in time for the next round of Scottish and Welsh parliamentary elections in 2026.

[Euan Stainbank (Falkirk) (Lab)]

rose—

[Graeme Downie]

rose—

[Patricia Ferguson]

I give way.

[Euan Stainbank]

Does my hon. Friend share my concern that many young voters—especially first-time voters—at the most recent election in 2024 will believe that they have already signed up for a postal or proxy vote, and that this Bill will be the first step in allowing people to permanently register for all elections in Scotland and Wales online?

[Patricia Ferguson]

I thank my hon. Friend for that intervention—I was rather spoilt for choice. I absolutely agree: young people will think that. Young people are particularly used to signing up online and think that once they have done something online, it is probably there in perpetuity. In most cases, they are correct; in this, they are not. The Bill will help to resolve that issue.

I mentioned that we are going to have Scottish Parliament and Welsh parliamentary elections in 2026, but in Scotland, those elections will be quickly followed by local authority elections in 2027, so it is very important that the Bill is enacted in time for those elections to use this new system. This is a crucial step towards ensuring a consistent and straightforward voting process for people in Scotland and Wales.

--- Later in debate ---

[Ruth Cadbury]

Absolutely. Many neurodiverse people find the process of voting difficult, and that is one example of why postal voting is so valuable to so many people.

Up until 2001, one needed approval from either a doctor or an employer to be able to get a postal vote. People could not just say that they would prefer, or would find it easier, to vote at home; they had to justify that, which was easier said than done. There were huge discrepancies in whether doctors could sign off such a request, and in whether employers were prepared to say that an employee would be away and unable to vote in person on election day. We have seen a huge improvement. Only 2% of voters had postal votes before the change, but the figure had grown to almost 20% by the time of the 2010 general election. We have, over the years, made postal voting easier.

The variation is quite high: 50% of voters in Sunderland vote by post, while only 8% of voters in Lewisham do so. The most important thing of all—and why postal votes make such a difference to engagement in our democracy—is that 80% of people who have a postal vote use it. Would we not like that kind of overall voter turnout? That is hugely important.

[Euan Stainbank]

My hon. Friend is making a good point about turnout. Does she agree that although there may be multiple reasons why someone might not choose to come out and vote, ease in accessing a ballot should never be one of them?

[Ruth Cadbury]

I absolutely agree. That is why voters in Wales and Scotland need equality of access with voters in England, and I hope that the Government will support the Bill. In 2023, the then Government launched online voting applications for postal and proxy voting. If I have read the explanatory notes correctly, that is the discrepancy that the Bill is set to address.

We do not knock on doors only at elections—of course, we cannot get anybody to sign up for postal votes for the next election during the short campaign period. Most of us, and I hope all of us on the Labour Benches, are door knocking week in, week out, not just for the next election—and sometimes not even for the next election—but because, as elected representatives and community and party activists, we need and want to engage with our communities. Part of that conversation is, “I find it difficult to vote,” “I can’t vote,” or, “I missed the last vote because of this.” That is where we ask, “Well, what about a postal vote?”

--- Later in debate ---

[Euan Stainbank (Falkirk) (Lab)]

First, I wish to apologise to my hon. Friend the Member for Dunfermline and Dollar (Graeme Downie) for nicking his point in an intervention earlier. In mitigation, I am sure he will agree that it is hardly likely to rank particularly highly in the list of rude interactions between people from Dunfermline and Falkirk.

I declare an interest as a member of the all-party parliamentary group on fair elections, and I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Edinburgh North and Leith (Tracy Gilbert) for introducing the Bill. Like many hon. Members I am sure, for six months last year—all the way up to 9.30 pm on polling day on a remarkably damp 4 July—I was out chapping on doors, speaking to thousands of Falkirk residents, discussing their views and seeking to persuade them of the benefits that Labour representation could bring to the issues they cared about. I have been doing that sort of thing since I was 15, which despite what some might say about my experience elsewhere has made me a bit of a canvassing veteran. I have stood in two elections and won both of them—I have nine to go to match the record of my hon. Friend the Member for Brentford and Isleworth (Ruth Cadbury).

Fellow experienced canvassers will know that conversations on the doorstep can often stray from the alleged topic, and the question can change from why the person should vote in a particular way to how they can access their vote. That is often the case when you are the first person to chap on their door to talk to them about politics for a while, or perhaps ever. My team and I faced countless questions during the election about where the polling station is; whether people need to bring their polling cards; for the first time six months ago, whether they needed to take ID to the polling station; and how they could apply for a postal or proxy vote, especially in Scotland because it was during the start of the Scottish summer holidays, as colleagues have mentioned. I may swear by my powers of persuasion on the doorstep, but I have no doubt that in some of the elections I have participated in, the time it takes to apply for a postal or proxy vote has deterred some people, potentially even those who I thought to be guaranteed voters for Stainbank or alternative Labour representatives in Falkirk.

The Bill would provide easier access by giving powers to implement the same additional online registration option that was open to Scottish and Welsh voters in the 2024 elections for local and devolved elections, as in England. Looking at the substance and the context of the Bill, I am in some confusion about why legislative consent was not passed over as part of the Elections Act 2022. I would definitely be interested if anyone can provide some clarity on that. Currently, if someone wanted to do it in a oner and register for a postal and proxy vote for all elections for which they could cast a ballot in Scotland or Wales, they would have to do so on a paper application, despite the online option being available for a general election. That shows the contradiction that the Bill seeks to solve.

I hope we all agree that we should be making the right to vote in our elections as easy as possible, and we should recognise that the responsibility sits with the devolved Governments for devolved and local elections. I commend my hon. Friend the Member for Edinburgh North and Leith on seeking to correct that with the urgency that it warrants before the 2026 Scottish and Welsh elections, and the 2027 Scottish local elections.

As a former councillor, like many colleagues who have spoken today, I remain concerned that turnout in local elections in Falkirk and across Scotland has been remarkably poor. It was 44.8% in 2022 across Scotland, down 2.1% from the previous election and nearly 10% from the first time we used the single transferable vote system in Scottish local elections in 2007. As I mentioned in an intervention, there are many reasons cited by those on the doorstep for choosing not to vote in election. Difficulties accessing a ballot paper should never be one of those.

It is a well-known fact that those who register for a postal ballot are far more likely to turn out. While researching my speech I found that that is true in my seat. According to the Falkirk Valuation Joint Board, 81% of those registered for a postal vote in Falkirk in the 2024 election cast a ballot. Standardising the process for postal and proxy votes in UK, Scottish and local elections will ease applications. Importantly, the consistency that that will provide the electorate will give people confidence to register and use their vote time and again, especially first-time voters in the recent 2024 election who may be under the misapprehension that they have already competently registered for a postal and proxy vote for every election, including devolved and local elections.

[Gill German]

I am a mum to not one but two 16-year-olds, who I am pleased to say are newly eligible to vote in both the local and Senedd elections in Wales. Because of that, I know at first hand how all-encompassing exam periods are. Elections often occur at these times. Does my hon. Friend agree that allowing young people to apply for a postal or proxy vote online—a way that will be most familiar to most of them—is important to get around that issue?

[Euan Stainbank]

I wholeheartedly agree. I am a fantastic example, as I was sitting my higher English exam the first time I voted as a 16-year-old in 2016 in Scotland. Given the exam stress and other considerations in young people’s lives and that online is the presumptive option to register for everything, it should be available to them. It will be essential in driving up turnout. We should extend that to UK elections as well, for the benefit of consistency.

The impression from the Electoral Commission report on voting systems and trust in voting is that, although trust remains high in the integrity of the electoral process in the UK, an increasing proportion of the electorate are concerned that our elections are not well run. Consistency, especially avoiding the appearance of arbitrary difference in the administration of elections, is an important feature to rebuild that trust.

Elections in the devolved nations of the United Kingdom can often be unduly different: for example, 16 and 17-year-olds can vote in Scotland for their MSP, but not for their MP in a general election. Members may be able to guess my age from this: I was permitted to vote for my MSP in the 2016 Scottish parliamentary election, but in the 2017 general election the following year I was unable to cast a ballot for my MP. With the passage of the Bill, I hope to see the options available to those in England extended to Scotland and Wales. Votes at 16 is an area for another day, and I hope that this Parliament will choose to converge with Wales and Scotland on that.

This inconsistency in voter eligibility in our electoral systems in Scotland led to concern that there would be a depression in turnout among 16 and 17-year-olds in the 2016 Scottish parliamentary elections. That fear was ingeniously and partially cured by an examiner at the Scottish Qualifications Authority who, as part of a higher English exam scheduled on the exact same day as the elections, included an article by Julia Hartley-Brewer with a headline stating that letting 16-year-olds vote would be a disaster. To my delight, my pals were indignantly flocking to the Dobbie Hall polling station to exercise their democratic rights before discussing how well we had done in the exam that day. I doubt that anybody is forthcoming with an article saying that letting people register for a postal or proxy vote online would be a disaster. This is an inconsistency that we should seek to fix now.

Access to proxy and postal voting is not a theoretical concern. When the former Prime Minister called the election in the early days of the Scottish summer holidays, I and my team had to field countless questions about which postal and proxy voting applications were available, and the turnout in particular Scottish seats reflected that. The Electoral Commission report found that in Scotland, confusion, late postal ballot arrival and the timing of the election disproportionately impacted turnout. That was due to direct interaction with confusing systems —people going away on their holidays were unable to get a postal or proxy vote, or did not know how to do that—and the media commentary around it. Standardising the way we do this across the United Kingdom and across the various elections would help remarkably. This is an arbitrary difference that we should seek to resolve.

In conclusion, the Bill would allow online registration for postal and proxy voters in Scottish, Welsh and local elections, which simply would make life easier for the electorate, give folk another option and hopefully drive more people to the polls, whichever way they choose to vote in 2026, 2027 and beyond.