Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill — No Second Reading — rejected — 6 Sep 2010 at 21:43

The majority of MPs voted against a proposal to reject a second reading of the Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill^[1][2] on the grounds it combines measures relating to a referendum on the Alternative Vote system with measures related to redrawing constituency boundaries.

MPs voted on an amendment to the motion which replaced the original text - "That the Bill be now read a Second time" - with the following :

• "this House, whilst affirming its belief that there should be a referendum on moving to the Alternative Vote system for elections to the House of Commons,
• declines to give a Second Reading to the Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill because it combines that objective with entirely unrelated provisions designed to gerrymander constituencies by imposing a top-down, hasty and undemocratic review of boundaries, the effect of which would be to exclude millions of eligible but unregistered voters from the calculation of the electoral average and to deprive local communities of their long-established right to trigger open and transparent public inquiries into the recommendations of a Boundary Commission, thereby destroying a bi-partisan system of drawing boundaries which has been the envy of countries across the world; and
• is strongly of the opinion that the publication of such a Bill should have been preceded by a full process of pre-legislative scrutiny of a draft Bill."

Following the rejection of the above text a vote on the original motion ("That the Bill be now read a Second time") was held, and was passed.

• [1] Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill 2010-11 UK Parliament page showing progress of the bill
• [2] Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill as introduced on the 22nd of July 2010

Debate in Parliament | Source |