Tag Archives: pairing

Jo Swinson on the lack of urgency to change Parliament’s voting system

By The Voice | Thu 23rd August 2018 - 2:45 pm

Jo was understandably furious when her pairing arrangement with the Tory chair, Brandon Lewis, was violated. She spoke about the experience at the Edinburgh International Book Festival yesterday evening.

According to the Express and Star, she said:

The mechanism of pairing is outdated and just doesn’t work.

We need a different system, which would be proxy voting, so that when you had an MP that was on parental leave, they would entrust another MP of their choice to vote on their behalf.

This is something that the House of Commons actually discussed earlier this year, and one of the committees went away and did a lot of work on how technically that could work, and produced some motions that parliament could vote on.

But those changes have been “kicked into the long grass” by the Government.

Posted in News | Also tagged Jo Swinson | 4 Comments

Leadsom, Lewis and Smith in trouble over Jo Swinson pairing scandal

By Caron Lindsay | Thu 19th July 2018 - 4:16 pm

Remember when the Tories cheated in order to win the tight vote in Parliament, just like Vote Leave cheated to win the EU Referendum?

Tory Chairman Brandon Lewis, paired with Jo Swinson who was at home with her two week old baby, should not have voted on Tuesday night. He honoured that in the first few, but in the really crucial ones, on the European Medicines Agency (which the Government lost) and the customs union, (which the Government narrowly won), he cast his vote. Now, had he voted in the earlier divisions, Alistair Carmichael, our Chief Whip, might have noticed …