Applied to the House of Commons

TR preserves the UK’s constituency and electoral systems but adds a limited, sensitively judged element of proportionality in order to mitigate the worst side-effects of the First-past-the-post system while avoiding the perils of the proportional representation system.

Under TR, Constituency MPs (CMPs) continue to be elected by voters in their constituencies and represent the interests of his or her constituency in Parliament.  The people continue to vote for individuals, not just the Parties to which they belong. This important feature of our present constituency system in the UK, crucial as it is in terms of a well-functioning representative Parliamentary democracy, would be maintained.

As is well known, however, the first-past-the-post (FPTP) constituency system also has serious disadvantages. While the votes cast for the successful candidate are represented in Parliament, the rest of the votes cast (notably those cast for the unsuccessful candidates) are left unrepresented; and in many constituencies the numbers of votes cast for unsuccessful candidates are substantial. Taken together, they often can exceed the number of votes cast for the successful candidate.

At a national level, as a result of the way voters are divided between constituencies, the political Party which receives the most votes may not have the most MPs. More generally, the numbers of MPs of individual political Parties in the House of Commons may fail (and have indeed signally failed in recent years) to reflect the numbers of voters in the country as a whole who voted for the Parties concerned.

The TR-adjusted constituency system is based on the premise that, without sacrificing the constituency principle, every single vote cast in an election should be reflected by some form of representation in Parliament.

Proportional Representation (PR) of course allows representation for all votes cast and gives them equal weight (subject to any threshold levels which may be defined before any representation is permitted). But such systems, unlike the single-member constituency system, make no provision for a direct link between members of the electorate and their individual representatives in Parliament and make it difficult for regionally-based Parties to secure any representation in Parliament. The link between local people and individual MPs is broken; representation is effected instead at the aggregate level of the Party nationally. A further, serious issue with PR is that it encourages small political parties and splinter groups, resulting in weak coalition governments where such small groups obtain disproportionate power and influence; and factional rather than national interests then take over.

The TR-adjusted constituency system is designed to combine, as far as possible, the positive elements of both systems in a hybrid solution. The direct link with the voter of the Constituency FPTP system would be combined with a sensitively-judged degree of proportionality stopping a long way short of pure Proportional Representation. 

In order to implement TR, Parliament would have two classes of MP who would be equal in every respect save for the manner by which they are elected. One class would be the Constituency MPs (CMPs) who would be elected in each constituency on a FPTP basis, exactly as they are today. They would continue to fulfil their duties and obligations towards all their constituents, dealing with individual problems and grievances at regular meetings in the local MPs’ offices (called surgeries in the UK) or addressing wider national issues in local public gatherings.

The other class of MP, Party MPs (PMPs), would be elected by pooling all the “wasted” or “unsuccessful” votes cast for candidates in the constituencies and allocating quotas of PMP seats to individual Parties in proportion to the number of such “wasted” votes cast for their candidates across the country.

The PMP seats within the Party quotas would then be assigned to individual candidates of the Party concerned as follows. Before the election, each Party would have announced a list of all its constituency candidates. These Party lists might be arranged with the Party Leader at the top, followed by its strongest and most prominent candidates, in order to appeal to the electorate as a Party. Immediately after the Election, however, once the constituency results are declared, all the candidates elected as CMPs would drop off the Party lists, which would now consist of all the unsuccessful candidates re-arranged in accordance with the number of votes each of them had attracted in the constituency where he/she was competing. The candidates who had received the most votes would then be appointed as PMPs until the Party’s allocated quota of PMPs had been reached. Individual PMPs too, therefore, would be directly elected by voters.

This procedure would provide added incentives for all candidates to fight for each vote in the constituencies, as this could be crucial in their being selected as PMPs if they failed to be elected as CMPs. Voters’ incentives for tactical voting would likewise be much reduced.

Once selected, PMPs would be expected to discharge their Parliamentary duties like any other MP but would concentrate on serving the Party in Parliament, initiating new policies and bringing coherence to its legislative programmes while waiting to compete in the next election.

The relative numbers of CMPs and PMPs would be a significant issue. The more CMPs there are, the more closely the overall outcome would resemble that of the present Constituency FPTP system. The more PMPs there are, the more closely the overall outcome would resemble that of a PR system.

There is no perfect or correct ratio of CMPs to PMPs. The ratio would be a matter for judgment and political decision. The optimum ratio would be likely to vary between countries and over time.

In the UK, in the interests of avoiding unnecessary disruption the number of constituencies and CMPs could remain at 600, as presently planned, and that perhaps 75 PMPs could be added alongside, implying  a CMP / PMP ratio of roughly 89:11. With a ratio such as this, Parliament would consist predominantly of CMPs, thus enabling a continuing high degree of government stability.  

Other ratios would of course be possible. In the interests of caution, however, there is a case for having a relatively low number of PMPs, initially at least. By way of comparison, CMP / PMP ratios of 90:10 or 80:20 would mean having 67 PMPs or 150 PMPs, respectively, alongside the 600 CMPs. 

The presence of a significant number of PMPs, along the lines suggested, would also help to ensure the existence in Parliament of a built-in opposition, backed by representation. Representatives of minority interests would be able to speak with authority on the floor of Parliament. Members of the majority (and therefore the government) Party and members of the minority opposition would draw their sovereign authority from the self-same body of voters in the constituencies. Both would directly represent the country’s sovereign people.  

Even in an extreme scenario where one Party had won all the constituency seats, opposition parties would win most of the PMP seats and therefore a substantial number of MPs overall. This built-in opposition within the system lies at the heart of any democracy based on genuine representation, countering in some degree the ‘tyranny of the majority’ that John Stuart Mill warned against

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