Verdicts

The verdict

Three to one against, and the chamber's most respected voices did not equivocate: the top-rated argument called the trial part of a pattern of "mutilation" that "needs to stop," and it drew five times the backing of anything the Yes side could muster.

The verdict

Nearly two in three votes backed tightening benefit conditions for young people, yet not a single word in the debate spoke up for tightening them — every opinion left on the page argued the opposite case.

The verdict

The chamber's most respected argument was also its least persuasive one: the top-rated opinion called the war on drugs a proven failure, yet two in three voters rejected decriminalisation anyway, 96 votes to 43.

The verdict

This was as close to a coin toss as a self-selected chamber gets — a four-point margin from 127 voters, with No's win resting on a case the floor barely bothered to elaborate.

The verdict

A clean win for the 0.48% property tax masks a floor that argued mostly against it — reform carried the day on the numbers even as the loudest, most-respected voices worried about who gets caught out.

The verdict

Two to one against, and not a single Yes voter thought the case worth writing down — a rout in which the winning side barely bothered to argue and the losing case was never made at all.

The verdict

Two to one, the chamber told Sadiq Khan his own statistics were not enough to win the argument, rejecting the claim that falling headline crime figures prove London is safe.

The verdict

The chamber's arithmetic case lost to its comparison case: three in five voters kept the triple lock, unmoved by warnings about an unpayable bill once the argument turned to how little UK pensioners get compared with the rest of Europe.

The verdict

A four-point margin from 104 votes is a coin toss dressed up as a verdict, and the chamber's own arguments barely rose above a shrug — the most-respected case for Healey came wrapped in more caveats than conviction.

The verdict

A modest majority backed charging prisoners for their keep, but the closeness of the vote and the threadbare arguments on both sides suggest the floor was more comfortable with the instinct than the mechanics — 74 to 60 is a verdict without much conviction behind it.

The verdict

Two to one against, and with hardly a spark from either flank to explain the size of it, this was a rout on numbers rather than rhetoric — the No camp piled up votes far in excess of the arguments it bothered to make.

The verdict

A single vote separated ban from no-ban, on a question about outlawing an entire faith practised by some 4 million people in the UK, leaving a chamber of 147 as evenly cleaved as the country's own arguments about religion, law and belonging.

The verdict

The Reform funding row gave the chamber a clean hook, and it took it two to one: a ban on company donations to political parties, prompted by a police probe into £250,000 payments routed through a Tice-controlled firm, carried with 99 of 147 votes.

The verdict

Two to one, the chamber backed the biggest peacetime rearmament in Britain's history — but the case that carried most respect wasn't really about Moscow or Beijing at all, it was about the border.

The verdict

A margin of six points is a thin verdict for what looked, on the page, like a lopsided debate: four of the five opinions left made the case for Slaughter, only one against, yet the floor still said no to his appointment as Solicitor General.

The verdict

The chamber backed the premise by a clear two-to-one margin, yet the sharpest, most-respected words on the page came from the side that lost — a mismatch that says more about this vote than the scoreline does.

The verdict

A chamber unconvinced by the new Prime Minister's flagship pitch handed his devolution model a clear defeat, with No winning by 14 points, and did so on arguments that treated regional power-sharing not as remedy but as risk.

The verdict

Three in five voters here refused to trade away a tax on big tech for the promise of American goodwill, holding by a two-to-one margin that the digital services tax should stay even as Washington dangles further tariffs over it.

The verdict

Three in five voters backed folding welfare into the tax system, but the chamber's sharpest complaint was about fairness upward, not just downward — taxing benefits only bites if the same net is thrown over accountants and offshore schemes.

The verdict

A dead heat, six votes apiece, on a question with a real body count behind it: staff who work for MPs report threats, racist and sexist abuse, and clinical-level distress in numbers that would trigger action in almost any other workplace, yet the chamber here split exactly down the middle on whether that adds up to an urgent case for tighter security.

The verdict

The chamber rejected a legally binding 87% emissions cut by 2040 by nearly two to one, and the sharpest voices against it did not quarrel over the science so much as the fairness of going first, one voter arguing for linking UK cuts to "China's" trajectory rather than racing ahead alone.

The verdict

A question that should have produced a rout instead produced a virtual coin toss, with the chamber splitting 67 to 65 against reintroducing national service — a margin of two votes that leaves the policy dead but the argument very much alive.

The verdict

A narrow but clear majority backed scrapping the farm inheritance tax changes, with 16 of 27 voters siding against the policy Andy Burnham's government inherited — though none left a word to explain why.

The verdict

A hypothetical reshuffle drew a real verdict: asked to imagine Ed Miliband running British diplomacy under a Prime Minister Burnham, the floor split against the idea by roughly four to three, 19 of 34 unconvinced he could strengthen UK foreign policy.