THE £500 deposit required to stand as a general election candidate should be scrapped to give voters a wider choice of would-be MPs, regulator the Electoral Commission said today.

Ability to pay a deposit — which is lost if the candidate fails to obtain 5 per cent of the vote — was not a “relevant or appropriate” factor in determining whether a candidate should be on the ballot paper.

The proposal is one of a series of reforms put forward by the watchdog to modernise the system for deciding who can contest elections in Britain.