Following the Unit’s January seminar, Can the House of Commons handle multi-party politics?, panellist Louise Thompson explains the procedural and logistical obstacles facing small parties in the House of Commons. She calls for parliamentary institutions to adapt their processes, and concludes that formalising some current informal arrangements and looking at ways to increase equalities of opportunity across all opposition parties would be sensible next steps.
The 2024 general election broke many records. While the media focused initially on Labour’s landslide victory and the ‘bloodbath’ on the Conservative benches, the election was, in many respects, all about the smaller parties. The Liberal Democrats ousted the SNP as the third largest party, returning to the Commons with 72 MPs, a massively improved performance from the 11 MPs they returned in 2019; Reform became the most successful challenger party ever, receiving 14% of the vote and five MPs, and the Greens quadrupled their parliamentary representation to four MPs, the highest Green showing ever in the Commons. This reflects broader electoral and parliamentary trends over the last 30 years, whereby the number of votes for parties other than the Conservatives and Labour have increased almost consistently since 1997 and in which the number of political parties with representation in the Commons has also increased. The 2024 election saw over 40% of voters choose parties outside the two main party labels and a larger proportion of small party MPs elected (117) than ever before. As a result, we elected the least ‘two party’ House of Commons ever seen.
Despite this increase in multipartyism across the electorate and our MPs, the House of Commons itself remains stubbornly embedded in an institutional design and culture of two (or perhaps two and a half) parties. This is partly enforced by the physical design of the House of Commons with a governing party facing an ‘official’ opposition party who are granted a visibly superior status in the House, with shadow ministers directly facing their government counterparts and making speeches from a formal despatch box. However, it is also enforced by an underpinning set of procedures and conventions which privilege the Official Opposition party. Both the Standing Orders of the House of Commons and Erskine May (a guide to parliamentary procedure used by MPs and Commons officials) refer to the broad distinction between government and Official Opposition, noting that this is typically the ‘two major parties’, with some limited rights for the ‘third party’ in the House. No reference or rights are explicitly given to any other opposition parties. In fact, Erskine May describes the presence of these smaller parties in the Commons as a complication. These formal rules are accompanied by other conventions regulating things such as seating in the chamber and parliamentary questions, which further privilege the Official Opposition at the expense of other parties.
In practice, these rules and customs mean that the Official Opposition is privileged in debates, questions and committee appointments. For example: they ask six guaranteed questions to the Prime Minister on Wednesdays while the Liberal Democrats ask only two; they make a guaranteed first response to government statements and speeches while the Liberal Democrats typically speak next; they receive 17 slots for opposition day debates in each session while the Liberal Democrats receive three; and both parties receive guaranteed places on every select committee. Other opposition parties receive no such guarantees at all. They may not always be called to respond to statements, there is no ‘guarantee’ of a question to the Prime Minister on Wednesdays and they receive no committee places by default, barring perhaps the regional select committees. Several small parties from Northern Ireland for instance currently have representation on the Northern Ireland Affairs Committee.
There are three reasons why this can be seen as problematic. Firstly, these privileges do not appear sustainable when we look at the numbers of MPs elected under each party label. With the lowest number of Conservative MPs ever, the Official Opposition is the smallest it has been in modern politics (119 MPs), close in size to the Liberal Democrats (72 MPs). The Official Opposition is also currently outnumbered by the other non-government MPs if we include Sinn Féin (its MPs do not take their seats) and hold exactly the same number of seats as other non-government MPs if we do not (this includes independent MPs, some of whom will be temporarily excluded from their party). It is difficult to justify democratically such a huge imbalance of opposition rights between the Official Opposition party and a third party at things like question times, and harder to see why other opposition parties are so often completely excluded from things like select committees. Even in a situation where the Official Opposition had just one MP more than the third party, they would still receive all of the spoils.
Secondly, while the Commons usually considers small party MPs to occupy a similar position to Conservative or Labour backbenchers, this is somewhat inaccurate. MPs from smaller parties carry out the same constituency role as other MPs, but they are also occupying a frontbench role in the Commons, often acting as spokesperson for multiple policy portfolios. Carla Denyer, for example, acts as the Green Party spokesperson for Energy and Net Zero, Science, Innovation and Technology, and Women and Equalities. Her colleague Sian Berry holds six different portfolios, as does the group’s Westminster leader, Ellie Chowns. These MPs will typically spend a large amount of time in the chamber, as they will need to be present regularly at debates, questions and statements which relate to any of these portfolios in order to express the views of their party. This is in addition to any constituency-related parliamentary work which they may perform. The two-party environment of the Commons adds an additional layer of constraint to their position as frontbench MPs in a backbench position.
Thirdly, the inequalities between party groups in the Commons reinforces a bigger democratic or representational deficit. This is particularly noticeable where the Northern Ireland parties are concerned. With no large party MPs at all, there is no guaranteed representation either in the chamber or on committees, with the exception of the Northern Ireland select committee where some places are always allocated to small parties (though not the chair). We can also see it in the informal routes used by small parties to achieve extra visibility. While the Greens and Plaid Cymru have been able to negotiate places on some key select committees, Reform have not.
Opposition parties have consistently called for better representation and inclusion in Commons procedures. As third party between 2015 – 2024 the SNP were frustrated by their underrepresentation on select committees and lack of speakers in some debates, most notably at the committee stage of the Article 50 bill. There have been some very positive changes in recent years. After highlighting the importance of making sure all party voices are heard in the House, ‘whatever the size’, Lindsay Hoyle has called opposition spokespersons frequently during debates and statements during his tenure as Speaker (and is very clear when the views of some party groups are not needed), and maintains an arrangement whereby small parties are called at PMQs on an informal rota basis. These steps forward have not quelled the frustrations felt by opposition parties though. In the 2024 parliament the DUP, Greens, Reform and the SNP stressed the unfairness of creating a new Modernisation Select Committee which was comprised only of members from the three largest political parties. The government’s response was that it was an ‘unfortunate case of the mathematics’. Meanwhile Nigel Farage chose to sit in the public gallery for Prime Minister’s Question Time last year, claiming that the rules on oral questions to the Prime Minister made him a ‘mere spectator’.
There are several ways in which the lack of parity between opposition parties and the Official Opposition could be fixed. One option would be to provide greater rights on an informal basis, but ensuring that these include all of the spaces used by party groups (the Commons chamber, Westminster Hall, select committees and bill committees). A small party MP could ask questions as the representative of small party interests in meetings with the main party whips. This option relies on good working relationships between parties, something which is not necessarily always the case, particularly where party groups are some distance from each other ideologically. A stronger option is perhaps to formalise existing arrangements, incorporating them into the Standing Orders for the first time. This would clearly set out the guarantees of representation or speaking slots which small parties can expect. It would also ensure parity across all opposition parties, allowing perhaps all party groups to sit on at least one select committee should they wish to do so. This path may also enable the House to distinguish between party group size and/or geography. Parties such as the DUP, Plaid Cymru and SNP may appreciate greater representation on the Northern Ireland, Scottish and Welsh Affairs Committees, while the rules of the devolved parliaments show how thresholds could be applied for party group representation in some aspects of Commons business. In the Scottish Parliament, party groups of five or more MSPs receive representation on the Parliamentary Bureau which discusses weekly business, while in the Welsh Senedd parties of three Members or more receive recognition as a ‘political group’ in the standing orders and thus receive rights around plenary business as well as allocations of committee places, including chairs.
The Procedure Committee agrees that the status quo is not a good option. In a report published in July 2025, it noted that ‘the case has been made for further codification of the status of small parties’ in Commons procedures and recommended that the House be ‘given an opportunity to express its views on the matter’. The government’s response however, was less encouraging, suggesting that the matter be put to the Backbench Business Committee, rather than being considered in government time.
It appears then, as though a further push will need to come from small party MPs themselves. Small parties may be less visible in the chamber and may not all seek to become the next government, but they play a hugely important role in our representative democracy, supporting the chain of accountability between government and the electorate in every parliament. Multi-party politics seems unlikely to go away, so at some point our parliamentary institutions will need to change to facilitate it. Formalising the current informal arrangements and looking at ways to increase equalities of opportunity across all opposition parties would be a sensible way forwards.
Louise was one of the panellists at the Unit’s January seminar, Can the House of Commons handle multi-party politics?. The event was recorded, and is available as a podcast. It is also accessible on YouTube. The Unit runs events on a monthly basis: to be informed of future seminars, subscribe to our mailing list.
About the author
Dr Louise Thompson is a Senior Lecturer in Politics at the University of Manchester.
Featured image: Dr Ellie Chowns MP (North Herefordshire, Green Party) © House of Commons.