Reform UK MP Lee Anderson was slapped with a community note on X over misleading claims that Labour has ‘modernised how Parliament works’.
Despite only being in power for a few weeks, Labour is already on the receiving end of accusations that it is tearing up democratic processes that have existed for generations.
On Thursday the Government proposed a motion to establish a modernisation committee that would consider reforms to House of Commons procedures, standards, and working practices.
The Leader of the House of Commons Lucy Powell said the modernisation committee would “bring a more strategic lens” to implementing the recommendations of existing committees.
The party balance of committee membership is intended to reflect the balance of seats in the House, and membership elections are held within each party.
But not everyone is happy about it.
Reform UK MP Lee Anderson (Ashfield) intervened to say: “This for me seems a little bit unfair.
“We have a political party represented in this House that got over four million votes at the last election and we will have no representation whatsoever on the committees.
“Yet we’ve got a party (the Liberal Democrats), they’ve got three and a half million votes that will have plenty of representation on the committees, does the Leader think that’s fair?”
Ms Powell responded: “The House is considered in terms of its members not in terms of the popular vote, and that is a consequence of those formulas which are long standing and have brought about effective representation on many select committees.”
Anderson was also slapped with a community note on X which pointed out that Labour has not changed the existing Committee system as he claimed on social media.
It has always been the case that the number of seats a party has in committees is proportionate to the number of MPs a party has in the House. Reform are a smaller party with just 5 MPs.
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