Peter Grant, MP for Glenrothes and Central Fife, has criticised the House of Commons’ traditional manual voting system, urging the parliamentary authorities to upgrade to electronic voting as part of a planned programme of restoration.

Peter questioned the current voting procedure, whereby MPs file into the ‘aye’ lobby or ‘no’ lobby and are manually head counted by staff, during questions to the House of Commons Commission.

Commenting afterwards, Peter said:

“It’s about time the House of Commons was brought into the twenty-first century with a system of electronic voting akin to most other modern democracies across Europe. The current practise of traipsing into the voting lobbies is both cumbersome and inefficient, eating into valuable debating time and wasting significant resources in the process. Each vote takes around 20 minutes - in sittings between 2012 and 2014, it took over seven complete days to cast 500 votes. Electronic voting would allow votes to be counted in mere seconds.

“In my view, before we spend astronomical sums refurbishing the House of Commons, we should at the very least build in the capacity for electronic voting in the future. The Tories, however, are determined to keep the House of Commons in the middle ages.”

The transcript of Peter’s question and answer can be found here: https://hansard.parliament.uk/Commons/2017-10-26/debates/B792224C-1764-403B-AE24-3A6D01E1A0B8/HouseOfCommonsCommission