Local Liberal Democrats are continuing to press the case for all of the major political parties being able to field a candidate in the Speakers constituency at General Elections. There were protests across Buckingham constituency when the main parties followed the convention of mounting no challenge to the Speaker at last year’s General Election.  Over 1000 voters spoiled their ballot papers in protest. 

Buckingham Lib Dems are determined to make sure that this never needs to happen again.  We raised the issue at the national conference in September and received support from Lib Dems in parliament. At our recent Regional Conference in Oxford we gained overwhelming support for our proposal to award the Speaker an honorary constituency so that electors in his former seat would be able to vote for the party of their choice.The full text of our motion was as follows.

Restoring democratic rights to vote in general electionsConference welcomes the progress being made by the Coalition Government in the area of constitutional reform including the moves towards an elected second chamber, fixed term Parliaments and the introduction of the Alternative Vote system for future elections. However, Conference believes that further reform is necessary on the effective disenfranchisement of the constituency represented by the Speaker of the House of Commons. Conference notes that:1.      This year, the main parties followed the Parliamentary convention of not standing against the Speaker. Consequently, thousands of voters were denied their democratic right to vote for the party of their choice. 2.      There were 1067 spoilt ballot papers in the Buckingham constituency in the recent election. This is massively more than the average in other seats.3.      The Buckingham local party were inundated with letters and emails from local people angry that their democratic right to vote for the party of their choice was being withheld from them by an archaic convention.  Conference therefore urges the Coalition Government to add a provision to the constitutional renewal bill which would automatically appoint the Speaker as MP for an honorary constituency, freeing his former constituents to exercise their democratic right to vote for the party of their choice.The motion was proposed by Buckingham Lib Dem member Bette Melling and summated by Cllr Llew Monger and received overwhelming support.  We will now be working with Liberal Democrats in Parliament to take this idea forward in an amendment to a  Bill which is expected to come to forward in January.