An early day motion (EDM) is a formal mechanism used by MPs to record their views or highlight particular issues. In essence, EDMs function as parliamentary petitions for MPs, allowing them to express an opinion on a particular issue, publicise a campaign or congratulate an individual or organisation.

Once an EDM is submitted, other MPs can add their signatures to show their support. While technically, the motion calls for the topic to be debated “on an early day”, in practice, EDMs are almost never debated. Their real purpose is to draw attention to a subject and to gauge the level of support for it within parliament.

Due to the convention of collective responsibility, EDMs are typically not tabled or signed by government ministers, and are therefore largely the reserve of backbench and/or opposition MPs.

How MPs table EDMs

The process for tabling and signing an EDM follows a set procedure managed by the House of Commons authorities.

Any MP can draft a short motion and submit it to the House of Commons Table Office. The motion must be expressed in a single sentence, beginning “That this House…”, using semi-colons to separate each clause and using “and” to start the last clause. They must have a short and neutral title.

MPs can only table an EDM when the House is sitting.

Before an EDM is published, it is checked by staff in the Table Office to ensure it complies with the rules of the House. An EDM must be no longer than 250 words. It must not criticise other MPs, peers, judges or members of the royal family, unless this is the main subject of the motion; contain unparliamentary language; refer to matters currently before a court of law (the sub judice rule); or constitute an advertisement for a business.

The official MPs’ Guide to Procedure provides an example of the title and text of an EDM. The title reads: “Mobile Coverage in Rural Areas.”

The motion states: “That this House condemns the poor mobile coverage that many people currently suffer from in rural areas of the UK; notes that this issue is of ever-increasing importance as many local businesses require mobile phone coverage for their customers to pay by card; and calls for legislation to be implemented to require all parts of the UK to be covered by at least one service provider.”

Once checked and approved by the Table Office, each tabled EDM is given a consecutive number, beginning at one each session. It is formally published on the UK Parliament website and in the House business papers. Other MPs can then add their names in support, which is now typically done via a digital portal. The list of signatories is updated daily.

Amendments to EDMs can also be proposed. They must be within the scope of the original motion and must not seek to alter the motion in such a way as to make it longer than 250 words.

Why do MPs use EDMs?

Despite not being debated, MPs table thousands of EDMs during a typical parliamentary session for several reasons:

• Raising awareness: EDMs are a tool for publicising a specific cause, campaign or perceived injustice. They are frequently used by MPs working with charities or campaign groups to raise the profile of an issue within Westminster.
• Gauging support: An EDM can act as an internal barometer to test the level of support for a particular idea or policy proposal among parliamentary colleagues. A large number of signatures can demonstrate a significant body of opinion.
• Continue the debate: EDMs frequently contain criticism of government policy, and can be used as another parliamentary avenue to express discontent – even if it is only a minority view among MPs.
• Expressing concern: Government backbenchers can use EDMs to signal their unease with a government policy without having to openly rebel in a parliamentary vote. A well-supported EDM from the government’s own side will send a message to ministers.
• Celebrating local achievements: A very common use of EDMs is for MPs to formally congratulate constituents, local community groups, businesses, or sports teams on their achievements, ensuring their success is recorded in the official parliamentary record.

Conservative MP Robert Halfon was among those who defended the use of EDMs during an evidence session for the House of Commons procedure committee in 2013.

Halfon argued that EDMs served two important purposes. First, he said that external organisations viewed EDMs as a meaningful indicator of the “strength of opinion” on an issue. Second, they provided a useful mechanism for “raising parliamentary issues”.

Halfon also noted that EDMs could play a practical role in securing debates. He explained that support shown through EDM signatures – often from MPs across different parties – helped him make the case to the backbench business committee.

He also argued that EDMs were “valued” by organisations in his constituency as a way of drawing parliamentary attention to issues of concern.

Criticisms of the EDM procedure

The EDM system is often subject to criticism for several reasons:

• ‘Parliamentary graffiti’: EDMs have been dismissed by critics as a low-cost, low-impact form of political signalling that has little to no real-world effect on government policy.
• A false impression: Linked to this, is the criticism that EDMs give a false impression – to constituents or campaign groups – that action is being taken on a particular issue or campaign.
• Lobbying: External organisations, from charities to commercial lobbyists, often run concerted campaigns encouraging their supporters to write to their MP and ask them to sign a specific EDM, turning the system into a proxy lobbying tool. In April 2013, Conservative MP Sarah Wollaston, speaking to the procedure committee, expressed “concerns about the fact that it is clear that some of these EDMs could not have been written by the member who tabled them. Many of them are very obviously written by lobbyists.”
• Overuse: One argument against EDMs has been that they have been devalued by their sheer volume. In another procedure committee oral evidence session, Liberal Democrat MP Norman Baker noted that “there are too many and therefore the good ones, and the use to which EDMs can be put, become diluted by the ones which are chaff.”

In February 2012, Conservative MP Graham Evans secured an adjournment debate on the use of EDMs, during which he set out a series of objections to the procedure.

Evans noted that almost 3,000 EDMs had already been tabled during the parliament, at an estimated annual cost to the taxpayer of “around £1 million every year”. He argued that, at a time when the spending review had scrutinised all areas of public expenditure, it was right to question the “cost-effectiveness and value of early day motions”.

Evans urged his colleagues to consider “whether a mechanism that does not ensure a parliamentary debate on a subject, no matter how many members sign a motion, is an effective mechanism for backbenchers to raise important issues.

The MP argued that EDMs had been devalued both “by the sheer volume that have been tabled” and the “utter ridiculousness of many of them”.

He stated: “There are motions congratulating football teams on promotion; motions congratulating two celebrities on their engagement; motions arguing about the origins of Robin Hood; motions suggesting a common hash tag to be used by MPs on Twitter; motions praising Ann Widdecombe’s dancing ability; and even a motion expressing support for an asteroid wiping out the entire human race.”

Cost of EDMs

There is an administrative cost associated with processing and publishing each EDM. With several thousand often being tabled in a parliamentary session, this leads to criticism that public money is being spent on a low-value activity. The estimated cost to the House of administering and processing EDMs in the financial year 2009-10 was approximately £1 million.

From the start of the 2009 session, the practice of printing older EDMs on a weekly basis was stopped, saving 2.5 million sheets of paper and up to £300,000 in printing costs each year. The cost of tabling and printing an EDM was calculated by the Table Office for the financial year 2011-12. It reported the cost of tabling an EDM was approximately £360 – including staff and printing costs.

In October 2024, a written parliamentary question, tabled by Labour MP Laurence Turner, asked “what the average cost was to the public purse of administering an Early Day Motion in the latest 12 months for which data is available.”

Responding on behalf of the government, the minister Nick Smith said the Table Office estimated that processing an EDM required around five minutes of staff time “if it is submitted electronically, 10 minutes if submitted by email and 15 minutes if submitted in hard copy”

Smith also provided the following estimates of staff costs:

• Electronic submission (via MemberHub): £2.70
• Email submission: £4.10
• Hard copy submission: £5.50

Smith added that, once processed, EDMs are published by the Procedural Publishing Unit. He said that this involved “downloading script, moving the information into a template, checking the content and publishing to the website.”

He concluded: “The average cost for publishing each EDM to the website was therefore £0.86. In 2023, the average daily cost for printing paper copies of all EDMs tabled on each sitting day was £43.

“Therefore, the average cost of administering an EDM submitted electronically in 2023 is estimated to be £11.90, which as noted above does not include certain fixed costs or expenditure on digital systems.”

Evolution of EDMs

In a 2006 memorandum to the House of Commons procedure committee, the then clerk of the House, Dr Malcolm Jack, outlined the origins of EDMs. He noted that they emerged largely “by chance” in the mid-19th century. At this time, when backbench MPs had far more opportunities to secure debates on the floor of the House, they would usually write to “give written notice of a motion he proposed to move on a particular future day.”

Jack added: “Towards the end of the session, when the programme was uncertain, it was more difficult to name a specific future day, and the practice of simply naming ‘an early day’ began.”

The number of EDMs tabled has generally increased steadily since the 1950s.

In the session 1959-60, for instance, 111 EDMs were tabled. This had risen to 2,574 tabled by the 1992-93 session, according to a 2014 procedure committee report. That report recorded that the number of EDMs tabled had “fallen slightly” in recent sessions – which it suggested reflected the “increased opportunities that backbenchers have to raise issues through other avenues, such as the backbench business committee.”

EDMs and the Post Office Horizon scandal

Early Day Motions proved to be a notable tool for MPs seeking justice for sub-postmasters wrongly prosecuted in the Post Office Horizon IT scandal. MPs from across the political spectrum used EDMs to raise awareness, apply pressure and demonstrate the growing cross-party consensus on the issue.

In September 2015, Labour MP Kate Hoey’s motion, titled “Post Office Horizon computer system” (EDM #427), secured the support of 40 cross-party colleagues. It allowed MPs who had been contacted by constituents affected by the faulty Horizon software to express their “concern” in a formal manner. The EDM expressed “disappointment with the dismissive response from the Post Office”.

As the campaign grew, motions calling for an independent investigation or for the Post Office to mediate with the sub-postmasters regularly attracted signatures from dozens of MPs across the political spectrum.

EDM #593, entitled “Judge-led public inquiry into the Horizon scandal”, was tabled in June 2020 by notable campaigner Labour MP Kevan Jones. The motion, signed by 151 MPs from eight different political parties, expressed the “deepest sadness” of parliamentarians and urged the government, which was accused of “prolonging this crisis”, to institute a judge-led public inquiry.

In September 2020, it was announced that retired high court judge Sir Wyn Williams would chair the government’s inquiry into the Post Office Ltd Horizon IT dispute – which was converted to a statutory inquiry on 1 June 2021.

Further examples of motions that formed part of this persistent campaign include:

• EDM #1216: Post offices and sub-postmasters, November 2020 (24 signatories)
• EDM #822: Post Office Horizon compensation scheme, January 2022 (137 signatories)
• EDM #252: Removal of CBE awarded to Paula Vennells, January 2024 (12 signatories)
• EDM #253: Sub-postmasters, January 2024 (89 signatories)
• EDM #402: Alan Bates and the Freedom of the City of Liverpool, February 2024 (49 signatories)

How Conservative eurosceptics rallied around EDM 174

On 3 June 1992, Conservative MP Sir Michael Spicer tabled an EDM calling for a “fresh start” to the development of the European Economic Community (EEC) – a key moment in corralling eurosceptic sentiment within the party. The motion, EDM 174, was tabled amid the bitter parliamentary battles over the ratification of the Maastricht Treaty, which deeply divided John Major’s Conservative government. The treaty significantly deepened European integration, prompting rolling rebellions from a determined group of eurosceptic backbenchers.

Spicer, a former minister, had at this point established himself as the effective leader of the so-called ‘Maastricht rebels’.

The EDM, titled “Future Development of the EEC”, was tabled after Denmark had rejected the Maastricht Treaty by 50.7% to 49.3% in a referendum.

It stated that “this House urges Her Majesty’s Government to use the decision to postpone the passage of the European Communities (Amendment) Bill as an opportunity to make a fresh start with the future development of the EEC”.

The EDM, which received 91 signatures (discounting the five signatures withdrawn), became known as the “fresh start motion”.

It was claimed that government whips threatened to frustrate the career progression of those MPs who refused to remove their signatures. 26 of the 62 Conservative MPs elected in 1992 were said to have signed it – including John Whittingdale, Bernard Jenkin, Iain Duncan Smith, Alan Duncan, Geoffrey Clifton-Brown, David Lidington, Cheryl Gillan, Liam Fox, Nigel Evans and Michael Fabricant.

The EDM provided the starting point for a new collective of eurosceptic Conservative MPs, the Fresh Start Group (FSG).

The creation of the FSG is said to have marked a “distinct move away” from the informal structures and ‘tendencies’ that previously characterised the Conservative parliamentary party. The FSG, rather, was an organised faction with a membership base, mostly ideologically coherent outlook and unofficial whipping system.

On 24 September 1992, shortly after ‘Black Wednesday’, Spicer tabled a second EDM calling for a “fresh start” in the government’s economic policy, “in particular the abandonment of fixed exchange rates and a commitment to sound finance, stable money and the right climate for steady growth.”

It was signed by 71 mostly Conservative MPs, including Whittingdale, Jenkin, Duncan-Smith, Duncan, Fox, Evans and Fabricant.

In 1994, Spicer gathered his fellow FSG rebels with the intention of founding a new caucus that would be “slightly less militant and aggressive”.

The European Research Group (ERG), the bane of Conservative prime ministers for decades to come, was born. A highly organised “party within a party”, the ERG was a leading advocate of Brexit and a seemingly insatiable critic of Theresa May’s attempts to deliver it.

The 2024 ‘no confidence’ motion in the speaker

Despite having no direct procedural force, early day motions can generate significant political and media pressure. The motion of no confidence in the speaker, Sir Lindsay Hoyle, tabled in February 2024, is a case in point.

The motion followed a dispute over the speaker’s handling of a Scottish National Party (SNP) opposition day debate on a ceasefire in Gaza. In a break with long-standing commons rules, the speaker accepted both the government and Labour’s amendments. By parliamentary convention, an opposition party amendment (in this instance Labour’s) to a motion submitted by another opposition party (the SNP) is not put to a vote when there is also a government amendment. As such, Hoyle’s decision caused fury on the government and SNP benches – as a series of Labour MPs, under pressure from their constituents, had been planning to vote for the SNP motion. In the end, the government withdrew its amendment, and the Labour motion was carried by “voice vote” – meaning no formal division took place.

House of Commons leader Penny Mordaunt said the speaker has “undermined the confidence” of the House in him. Stephen Flynn, the leader of the SNP at Westminster, described the speaker’s position as “intolerable”, arguing his party has been treated with “complete and utter contempt”.

This episode prompted Conservative MP William Wragg to table EDM #412, titled: “No confidence in the speaker”.

The motion secured the support of more than 90 MPs from the Conservative Party and SNP. It dominated the news agenda, fuelling speculation about the speaker’s future.

The campaign, however, was ultimately unsuccessful. An EDM is not a binding procedure and cannot, by itself, force a vote of no confidence in the speaker. That would require a substantive motion to be debated on the floor of the House, for which the government of the day would have to make time. The government confirmed it still had confidence in the speaker, effectively ending the prospect of his removal.

EDMs as a populist campaigning tool?

Beyond traditional awareness campaigns, Early Day Motions have also been used – including by one vocal MP in particular – as a populist campaigning tool. This effective strategy sees MPs use EDMs to build ideological alliances and to generate media attention for causes that lie outside the political mainstream. The motions function, in effect, as an ideological purity test – placing colleagues on the record in support of a specific, often contentious, position.

Rupert Lowe, the MP for Great Yarmouth, has made effective use of the EDM procedure to build parliamentary alliances.

His motion calling for the mass deportation of illegal migrants (EDM #1142), tabled April 2025, and another concerning the imprisonment of Lucy Connolly (EDM #1302), tabled May 2025, attracted a small but notable group of signatories from different parties.

The former EDM expressed “grave concern at the continued presence of over one million illegal migrants in the United Kingdom” and urged the government to “implement a comprehensive national strategy to identify, detain, and deport all individuals found to be residing in the United Kingdom illegally, and to ensure that such policies are backed by the necessary legislative, diplomatic, logistical and financial resources to restore confidence in the rule of law and the security of our borders.”

It was signed by 18 mostly Conservative MPs – including former cabinet minister Sir Gavin Williamson, and ex-minister and notable backbench organiser Sir John Hayes.

The EDM concerning the imprisonment of Lucy Connolly received 10 signatories, with some considerable and potentially significant overlap. Conservative MPs Williamson, Peter Bedford, Andrew Rosindell and Lewis Cocking were signatories to both EDM #1142 and EDM #1302. For Lowe, an independent MP with little other parliamentary recourse, this de facto ideological alliance provides his activism with a wider platform.

This internal alliance-building can be amplified externally; Lowe uses his X (formerly Twitter) account to publicise the list of signatories.

The nine MPs who have signed my motion outlining concerns around the continued imprisonment of Lucy Connolly – thank you to all.

The motion in full:

“That this House notes with concern the continued imprisonment of Lucy Connolly, a young mother, for a non-violent offence;… pic.twitter.com/GcbiBJnknM

— Rupert Lowe MP (@RupertLowe10) June 10, 2025

Williamson and Lowe, in particular, established something of a rapport, having worked together across several campaigns.

Labour MP Mary Glindon was listed as a signatory of Lowe’s EDM concerning the imprisonment of Lucy Connolly. This development was seized upon up by the Spectator, which reported: “Labour MP backs Lowe’s calls to free Lucy Connolly”

Lowe’s activism demonstrates both the effectiveness and ineffectiveness of EDMs. No direct policy progress is made, but the motions serve as a tool to make political noise and create media narratives for a cause an MP cares about.

Notably, Lowe’s motion calling for a ban on full-face coverings in public spaces (EDM #1444), tabled June 2025, attracted just one other signatory.

Additional resources

• Searchable database of EDMs tabled since the beginning of the 1989-90 session: https://edm.parliament.uk/
• Hansard record of Graham Evans’ 2012 adjournment debate can be read here: https://hansard.parliament.uk/Commons/2012-02-06/debates/1202074000002/Early-DayMotions