Speakers Corner: It’s time to change our voting system

I didn't win but it was a highly competitive contest. I'd like to congratulate our new MP for the Peterborough constituency, Andrew Pakes, and to thank the outgoing MP, Paul Bristow, for his five years of dedicated service to local people.

This was a quite extraordinary General Election. A triumph for the Liberal Democrats.

We won 72 seats across the UK, our best ever result by far and the highest number of seats for a third party for over 100 years.

Labour won a massive majority of over 170 seats but with only 34 per cent of the vote. The Greens increased their seats from 1 to 4, Reform won a few seats and the Conservatives had their worst result since 1832 winning only 121 seats.

There was a strong feeling in the country that the Conservatives had lost control of the economy and had to go. This led to massive tactical voting, where millions of people felt forced to vote not for their prefered party but against the party they least wanted: usually the Tories.

This is a complete corruption of democracy. We urgently need to replace our antiquated "First Past the Post" voting system with a fairer system of Proportional Representation. Our new MP, Andrew Pakes, supports this view, as did the Labour Party conference recently, but unfortunately the new Prime Minister says it is "not a priority" for his Government.

The new Government has got off to quite a good start in some areas of policy, They have reversed the previous government's effective ban on new onshore wind turbines and they say they will legislate to give a financial reward to local communities who have wind and solar farms built in their areas.

They have pledged to amend the planning system both to get more houses built but also to ensure that they are well insulated and have onsite renewables such as solar panels. That's great but a lot more also needs to be done to insulate existing homes.

They are adopting a pragmatic approach to rail re-nationalisation, taking rail operating companies back into public ownership only when their contracts end or when they persistently fail to provide the required level of service to passengers.

They have promised sweeping bus reforms to enable councils once again to control and/or operate bus services for public benefit.

But on the downside, the new Chancellor has announced that the previous government's handling of the public finances was so incompetent that tax rises will be needed. And regretably they have postponed yet again the much-needed reforms to adult social care, which is one of the main factors crippling our National Health Service, and seem to have no plans to sort out a fairer funding model for local councils.

Our much expanded group of 72 Liberal Democrat MPs have a clear role in holding the new Government to account but also pushing them to go further and faster on many key areas, such as political reform, preventing water companies from polluting our rivers and restoring our health and social care services.

We can't expect the decimated and divided Tory party to fulfil this role, as they failed to do any of it during their 14 years in charge of the country.

Nick Sandford

Parliamentary Spokesperson for Peterborough Liberal Democrats