Restoring Trust in Our Democracy

Our political system isn’t working as it should. For many people, it feels adversarial and distant, detached from the struggles of everyday life for voters.

Recent polling by YouGov found that just 4% of Britons believe politicians are out to do what’s best for their country, that loss of trust cuts across party lines and has been hardening in both the UK and around the world in recent years.

The Representation of the People Bill contains several welcome measures to address this crisis in confidence. Lowering the voting age to 16 marks the first expansion of the franchise in half a century, and is a reform we have championed for many years.

Alongside this, modernising voter registration, strengthening know‑your‑donor checks, and improving safeguards around digital campaigning are all positive steps. Yet these reforms merely tinker at the edges of a system riddled with loopholes and increasingly vulnerable to ‘cash‑for‑access’ concerns.

To safeguard our democracy, we must go further and introduce a cap on donations. After Elon Musk’s threats to funnel as much as $100m into UK parties and the Conservatives failure to stop Russian money from flooding into our political system, the brandishing of such stark influence sends one message to UK voters: that our democracy is only for those who can afford it.

But above all, there is a glaring miss – the lack of action over our voting system. First Past the Post was built for a two-party era, Britain is no longer a two-party country, as millions of people feel their vote simply doesn’t count. This Bill represents a real opportunity to radically alter that creaking system and rebuild voter’s trust; to do so, the Government must replace it with a fair proportional voting system that accurately reflects how people voted.

As the Bill moves through Parliament, I will continue to work with Liberal Democrat colleagues to push the government to do exactly that.