Members back scrapping early release and nationalising trains

The sharpest tension of the day came on foreign policy. Should the UK suspend foreign aid to countries with the death penalty? won narrowly, though many of its strongest arguments became a broader vote against foreign aid itself. The most-respected case against asked why the death penalty should be the red line when aid policy raises far wider questions.

The verdicts

Should Ed Miliband be removed as Foreign Secretary for meeting the Iranian commissioner? produced a comfortable No. A meeting one side called literally the foreign secretary job description was treated by the other as a damning photo opportunity; the sharpest clash was not over whether the Iranian government was objectionable, but whether diplomacy itself could justify the encounter.

Should the prison early release scheme be scrapped? carried comfortably. "Prison is also public protection and incapacitation" was the hardest edge of a debate in which both sides agreed overcrowding is a failure of the system, not a solution.

Should the ‘Get to Work Allowance’ replace Universal Credit for 18 to 24 year olds? also won comfortably. Young people were told to accept daily job-centre attendance and the prospect of a benefit cut, though the debate’s most respected arguments warned that attendance cannot create jobs.

Should the government bring all remaining train companies into public ownership? passed overwhelmingly. Yes voters backed public ownership to stop private operators extracting profit from a railway already dependent on public money; No voters answered with a warning from memory: "Anyone who remembers British Rail will vote NO." The argument was no simple vote of confidence in government.

Should union political funds be donated to parties in proportion to members’ stated voting intentions? won comfortably. Union members backed proportional donations, but the most-respected Yes argument went further: "Unions shouldn't fund any political parties." The debate exposed a deeper doubt about whether unions should bankroll parties at all.

Has the level of misogyny in the UK risen over the last 10 years? carried comfortably. A vote for Yes came with a debate less settled than the result: the most-respected arguments on both sides blamed migration for misogyny, while one Yes voter insisted her own experience pointed elsewhere.

Should the UK make the assessment basis for tax and welfare the same? won comfortably, though the case against alignment was sharper than the Yes side’s agreement on what alignment should mean. One No voter’s distinction was the debate’s clearest dividing line: "Tax is about what you earn. Welfare is about what you need."

Voting continues today on refnation.

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