29 November 2016
The Boundary Commission's consultation deadline on its proposed new Parliamentary constituencies is coming up on December 5th, and I will be submitting a Green Party response calling for a better deal for Oldham.
But there are even more important issues with our democracy that need fixing.
The government claims equal sized constituencies will make all votes count equally, but that won't happen as long as we have an unfair voting system where almost 4 million votes gets only one UKIP MP, but less than half this number of votes gets 56 SNP MPs! The current 'first past the post' system means the winner takes all even where most people have voted against them and creates a Parliament where the views of millions are not represented. That's why we need a fairer, more democratic voting system – based on proportional representation.
The government also wants to reduce the number of MPs in the name of efficiency, but meanwhile our unelected second chamber continues to grow, with over 800 unelected lords.
The case for genuine democratic reform is glaring, and as long as the government ignores these much larger flaws in our system it's hard to justify their boundary review as anything more than naked Tory self-interest.
The ultimate irony of these "democratic reforms" is that these changes are being pushed through by a government that only managed to gain the votes of 24% of those registered to vote.
Andy Hunter-Rossall
Oldham & Saddleworth Green Party
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