VOTING IMPROVEMENTS URGED

Press, Volume CIV, Issue 30823, 7 August 1965, Page 15

VOTING IMPROVEMENTS URGED

(Special Crspdt N Z P A ) LONDON, Aug. 6. Proxy voting for sick M.P.s and electronic voting for fit ones has been recommended by a group of Labour members. tn its report, a working party of the Labour Parliamentary reform group said that the present system of bringing seriously injured or sick M.P.s to the House of

Commons by ambulance is “both totally unnecessary and medically indefensible.” Under the system, sick members who could produce medical certificates would be included on a daily proxy list. Each day, the Commons would be asked to approve the lift. In a conscience vote, the ill member would tell his proxy which way he wanted to vote. Otherwise his party whips would record the vote Voting Stations The group’s radical proposals for electro-mechanical vjting would end the ritual of trooping tfrough the division 'obbies. Instead, when the division bells rang, an M.P. would go to an electronic voting station. He would tell a clerk which way he wanted to vote, and the clerk would push the appropriate button alongside the member’s name. This would illuminate a tin- light against the M.P’s

name on a separate “check panel.” It would actuate numerators mounted at both ends of the chamber, which would record the votes as they were being registered. Some of the voting stations would be at strategic points in the House, and possibly in Government departments, so that ministers and members would not have to go far from their work. The working party estimates that ‘he whole division could be over in five minutes: they now take about 15 minutes. So far this session, 62 hours hive been spent in the division lobbies. The chairman of the working part.-, Mr Atkinson (Tottenham), who was chief designer in Manchester University’s engineering department, estimated that the system would cost a little more than £lO.OOO.