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The English parliament was first summoned by Simon de Montfort in 1265, after he defeated King Henry the third in a civil war. As this ancient institution marks its 750th anniversary, thoughts are turning to how to modernise it.

Our guest editor John Bercow is chairing a Commission on Digital Democracy to look into how to bring the House of Commons into the 21st Century. We sent the ultimate online expert, founder of Wikipedia Jimmy Wales along to the Commons to offer his advice. Our politcal editor Nick Robinson was also there.

Jimmy Wales told Today: ‘There are many good reasons for voting electronically within Parliament. The security risks would be minimal, you would have a good record of what people said and you would speed up the process so that Parliament could get more done.’

However Jimmy was sceptical about the idea of digital voting in elections: 'Eletronic voting in elections give no paper trail, furthermore voting from home and not behind a curtain in a public pace may mean that for certain kinds of people in society there votes may be coerced or bought.'

First broadcast on the Today programme 26 December 2014