Fair, transparent and local politics

Britain’s political system is broken. One party can gain control of Parliament even if only a quarter of the people support them. The worst cases of abuse in the expenses scandal were by MPs in safe seats. Big money has dominated politics for far too long.

Liberal Democrats are the only party who have always been committed to fixing our broken politics. We will take power from the state and give it to the people. Liberal Democrats want to change parliament forever by introducing a fair, proportional voting system for Westminster, European and local elections. This would put an end to safe seats. We will allow constituents to recall MPs who have broken the rules. We will involve the people in producing a written constitution. We will reform the House of Lords and replace it with an elected second chamber. We will make Parliament easier to petition and lower the voting age.

We also want to see more powers devolved to councils and communities. In particular, the planning system has been blighted by rules that override local wishes – such as the top-down housing targets and the requirement to treat back gardens as ‘brownfield’ sites.  We will scrap national housing targets and give councils the power to decide whether to treat back gardens as brownfield sites or not.