In a previous article, We Need Election Debates for a Parliamentary Democracy, I wrote about the current deficiencies in our broadcasted election debates, a recent innovation in British politics given their debut in 2010.

In short, I wrote about how First Past the Post has resulted in a failure to scrutinise the vast majority of parliamentary candidates, with candidates able to actively avoid limited public forums and tempted into committed egregious behaviour when in office that erodes public faith in politics. This in turn has resulted in election debates misrepresenting general elections as quasi-presidential elections for a Prime Minister, especially by the head-to-head debates between the Conservative and Labour leaders which serve to reinforce their artificial duopoly.

While endorsing the return of policy area debates that were a feature of the 2010 and 2015 elections, I proposed the innovative measure of holding parliamentary candidates’ debates. Intended to be held in every constituency during general election campaigns, these debates would be conducted under Ofcom-produced rules and streamed online with public service broadcasters acting in collaboration to provide technical capabilities. These debates would be open to all candidates regardless of party, providing a chance for smaller parties and local-minded independents to press their cases which they would otherwise be denied in national campaign coverage. Being well-publicised, they would force favoured candidates to actively fight for their seats and justify their candidacies. While this was originally conceived as part of general election campaigning, they could also be held during by-elections.

Having formulated the idea of constituency-level parliamentary candidates’ debates in reaction to the shortcomings of FPTP, I later considered how this proposal would interact with one of our key policies: the replacement of FPTP with Single Transferable Voting. STV is a candidate-orientated proportional system whereby voters rank candidates in order of preference. As multimember constituencies are a feature of this system, parties would likely field multiple candidates per constituency.

Much like a FPTP election, debates may be predilected on there being only one winner. However, if such debates were to take place under STV, including parties’ full slates of candidates could have many working at cross-purposes or repeating each other. Some mechanism would need to be considered to ensure that participation in debates is restricted to one candidate per party, regardless of how many parties are competing.

During elections for the Dáil Éireann, parties endorse a prescribed candidate preference order which they would encourage voters to follow, with first preference candidates usually being frontbenchers or spokespeople. While first-preference candidates under this system would make for natural choices for these debates, the process may be fraught with complications. Apart from this system being adopted by convention rather than law, prescribed first-preference candidates would not be guaranteed election – as has been witnessed in recent elections – and top-heavy vote distributions could have negative results for lower preference candidates from their party, namely premature elimination.

Instead of ordained first-preference candidates participating in these debates, parties could each nominate a debate representative; broadcasters could organise the random selection of parties’ representatives from each multimember slate; or multiple debates could be held in every constituency but featuring different combinations of candidates.

As independents theoretically serve as the sole candidate of extremely minor parties, such participation rules should not apply to them. Although, for that matter, they may need to be subject to rules different from those for formal parties. To prevent independents from acting in accord as an unofficial party over purely local concerns or anti-party sentiment, they should be deterred from formally endorsing each other’s candidacies, such as joint campaign literature or media, or joint funding of their campaigns.

While we believe that STV would help ameliorate the symptoms of FPTP, we do not claim that it is a panacea. The lack of public faith in politics that FPTP has generated may now be ingrained, necessitating further reform. While the idea of parliamentary candidates’ debates was conceived in response to the shortcomings of FPTP, it can help boost voter participation under any voting system by bringing the needs of local communities to national attention and forcing all candidates to consider how they can serve as their champions.

* Samuel James Jackson is the Chair of the Policy Committee of the Yorkshire and the Humber Liberal Democrats and had served as the Liberal Democratic candidate in Halifax during the 2024 general election.