Calls for the Speaker of the House, Lindsay Hoyle, to resign reveal a deeper, structural problem with the representation of smaller parties in the Commons. Aside from the SNP, there is a total of eight small parties with MPs, most of them representing UK’s devolved regions. The dominance of the two-party system in Westminster currently undermines the democratic representation of all parts of the country, argues Louise Thompson.

The chaotic scenes witnessed in the House of Commons following Speaker Lindsay Hoyle’s decision to select a Labour amendment to the Scottish National Party’s (SNP) opposition day motion on a ceasefire in Gaza have led to growing calls for his resignation. Plaid Cymru has added their name to this list, with their leader Liz Saville-Roberts referring to the Speaker’s actions as showing the ‘profound disregard for smaller parties in Westminster’. This seems a long way from Hoyle’s own promise in his election pitch for the Speakership back in 2019 that he would continue to ensure that “whatever the size of a party” they would have their voice heard in the Commons chamber. The political and procedural ramifications of last week’s opposition day have been well discussed. But a question that hasn’t been asked is what this episode reveals about party rights in Westminster and whether it’s time for things to change.

Wherever you go in the House of Commons you see evidence of just how much it is fundamentally driven by the historical dominance of a two-party system. The architecture of the Commons chamber, with its two despatch boxes, formalises the relationship between the Government and the Official Opposition. The same goes for debates in the chamber, where the Government minister and Official Opposition spokesperson usually make the first two speeches. The same goes for the rules and procedures of the Commons, which privilege the two largest political parties, formalising their rights around things like committee memberships and giving the majority of allotted opposition day debates to the Official Opposition party. There is little reference to small parties anywhere. The Commons Standing Orders make reference only to the Government, Official Opposition and to the ‘second largest opposition party’, while Erskine May describes the ‘normal condition’ for the conduct of business as being the division being two main parties. The presence of smaller parties is described here as something which “complicates” but “does destroy the broad principle”.

This means that while the SNP as the second largest opposition party receives some guaranteed party rights, including speaking rights in debates and oral questions, places on Commons select committees and bill committees and the right to a handful of opposition day debates, smaller parties receive no guarantees at all. It is this lack of any guaranteed rights which can seem unfair to the other eight parties who currently have representation in the House of Commons. Even the third-party rights given presently to the SNP are something of a grey area. Pushed for by the Liberal Democrats in the 1990s, only two political parties have ever held them. There is no size requirement, nor has the position ever been formally contested. With the SNP predicted to lose some seats at the next General Election and the Liberal Democrats predicted to make gains, it is unclear what would happen if this third party position was tied. Would a party’s overall percentage of the total UK vote be a deciding factor? The current situation has not been future-proofed and could easily lead to further upset in the months to come.

Every single representative of a Northern Ireland constituency sitting in the Commons right now is a member of a small party.

There are other issues which further complicate the lack of formal party rights in the Commons. Firstly, there are times when small political parties feel that they have a strong geographical claim to more guaranteed participation in the chamber. We saw this with the SNP during the UK’s withdrawal from the EU where it positioned itself as the “voice of Scotland” on the basis of gaining a 50 per cent share of the popular vote in Scotland at the 2015 General Election, as well as winning 56 out of the 59 Scottish constituencies. The party still uses this claim when it feels locked out of participation as a result of Westminster procedures. We can also recognise a geography-based justification for more party rights by looking at the constituency locations of the other small parties and their concentrations in the devolved regions of the UK. Every single representative of a Northern Ireland constituency sitting in the Commons right now is a member of a small party, along with 80 percent of all MPs representing Scottish constituencies. One could make a strong case that when small parties are unable to participate in Commons business, it locks devolved nations out of guaranteed democratic representation.

Secondly, small party rights don’t only lie with the Commons Speaker. The lack of any formal recognition of small parties in the Standing Orders mean that they must constantly negotiate with a range of key actors. This includes the Speaker and his Deputies, but also the government whips, the Leader of the House and even the leaders and whips of other small parties. This negotiation is the reason that one small party representative is now able to ask the Prime Minister a question on Wednesday afternoons, something which the Speaker has taken care to rotate among the small parties each week. It’s also how small parties can serve on select committees or on bill committees and how they receive information about Commons business and upcoming votes. They are not automatically entitled to receive this information from the Government and so work informally with other parties to ensure that this key information is passed on. When an election occurs and the changing party and parliamentary dynamics change, all of these ‘rights’ to participation and information must be re-negotiated.

Although the small parties re currently calling on the Speaker to resign, the problem of party rights is much broader than the decisions taken by one individual.

Finally, larger parties have little understanding of what it is like to be a small party because they’ve never been in their position. Only those who defect from larger parties experience life outside the two-party structure. The manner in which the breakaway Labour and Conservative MPs who formed Change UK in 2019 were quickly removed from their select committee positions was testament to the way in which smaller parties are treated. During the coronavirus pandemic, government MPs insisted that the impact of changes to parliamentary business were being felt equally by all parties, despite evidence suggesting that it was disproportionately impacting smaller parties. Given that most changes in the House of Commons can only happen with the backing of the government, smaller party rights are unlikely to be at the top of the agenda. Even the Procedure Committee, which regularly makes recommendations to strengthen House of Commons rules, has no representatives of the smaller parties beyond the SNP in its membership.

Although the small parties are currently calling on the Speaker to resign, the problem of party rights is much broader than the decisions taken by one individual. Making changes requires a rewriting of the two-party culture that pervades Westminster, providing more access points for small parties to put forward requests for change. The Northern Ireland Assembly, Scottish Parliament and the Senedd would be good institutions to look at here – all provide stronger guarantees for small party groups, with much fairer systems for participation in debates and on committees. Providing more guarantees and consistency in the treatment of small parties in Commons business would not only quieten some of the discontent from the small party benches, it would also ensure more consistent democratic representation for all parts of the UK.

All articles posted on this blog give the views of the author(s), and not the position of LSE British Politics and Policy, nor of the London School of Economics and Political Science.

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