Compass is joined by The Equality Trust, Tax Justice UK, The 99% Organisation, and a range of campaigners and academics including Nick Dearden of Global Justice Now, Professor Ruth Lister and Professor Kate E. Pickett, to call on our Government's ministers for Health and Social Care, Levelling Up, and Work & Pensions to endorse a change in our voting system as the cornerstone of a new approach to tackling poverty and inequality.

When people can’t feed their families it is clear that democracy is not working. The scale of the suffering and crises we now face is a consequence of a broken system - and just changing the party sitting in Whitehall will not fix that.

There is a particular feature of the UK’s democratic structure and culture that has been developing over decades to block the path to greater equality.

The problem is something we can fix – it is our voting system.

First Past the Post amplifies the votes of a few people in a few places so only a tiny percentage of voters get a political voice. Policy has to pass through the lens of what motivates a small number of swing voters in swing seats, and the majority can be ignored. Our voting system enshrines the influence of the already rich and powerful such as corporate lobbies and media owners and their interests. This makes policies for social and economic justice so much harder to pursue.

Proportional Representation (PR) is the idea that the number of MPs a party has should be in direct proportion to the number of votes it receives. Under our current voting system, the power of your vote (or lack thereof) is dictated by the brute luck of where you live. PR would ensure that every vote is equal and our parliament is no longer held hostage by swing voters in marginal seats. If everyone's votes count equally then ideas and policies to deal with poverty have a fairer chance of being debated and enacted.

Our ability to win equality in this country rests on breaking open our centralised, and narrow politics. By opening the system up by making the entry barriers fair, PR allows new ideas, new people and parties into the system. As ever, there is no guarantee that all of these will want greater equality - but that is the fight to be had - on a level playing field.  

We have come together as organisations and individuals committed primarily to issues of poverty, inequality, fairness and justice to ensure that democracy is a first order issue.

We need an approach to tackling poverty that centres on empowering people all across our country, putting power into people’s hands and more income and wealth back in their pockets.

Join us in calling on the Cabinet ministers for Health and Social Care (Steve Barclay), Levelling Up (Michael Gove) and Work & Pensions (Mel Stride) to endorse a change in our voting system as the cornerstone of a new approach to tackling poverty and inequality.

You can read the full paper making the case for PR as a tool to tackle inequality here.