Press Association Reporting Of Local Election Results

EDM number 1236 in 1993-94, proposed by Mike Gapes on 17/05/1994.

That this House congratulates the electors of the London Borough of Redbridge, who have for the first time in its 30 year existence thrown out of office the Conservatives and elected a Labour-led Redbridge Council; notes that the Labour Party increased its representation from 17 to 29 councillors, while the Liberal Democrats went up from three to nine and the Conservatives were slashed from 43 to 24; regrets that these historic changes were not reported in the national newspaper press coverage nor in the Teletext and Ceefax results service on television due to the outmoded practices of the Press Association, who compile the results used by the media; deplores the fact that because of boundary changes affecting only three of the 21 wards in the London Borough of Redbridge the electorate of Redbridge and the country at large were only told that Redbridge had gone from Conservative to no overall control and denied the detailed knowledge that the Tories had lost 18 seats, 12 of them to Labour and six to the Liberal Democrats; and calls on the Press Association to change its practices and for the television companies and newspapers to publish full and comprehensive local results in future.

This motion has been signed by a total of 35 MPs.