Representation of the People Bill
Monday 2nd November 2026
(2 days, 22 hours ago)
Lords ChamberRepresentation of the People Bill 2024-26 View all Representation of the People Bill 2024-26 Debates Read Hansard Text Watch Debate Read Debate Ministerial Extracts Amendment Paper: HL Bill 47–I(b) Amendments for Committee (Supplementary to the Marshalled List) - (2 Nov 2026)
Baroness Lister of Burtersett (Lab)
My Lords, I will speak to Amendments 59 and 67 in my name. Amendment 67 requires publication of a plan for the implementation of registration without application, and Amendment 59 requires two government databases to be in use for such registration ahead of a 2029 general election.
I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Pack, and the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett of Manor Castle, for their support, and now to the noble Lord, Lord Rennard. I very much welcome the Government’s commitment to improving voter registration, which chimes with public opinion as, according to the Electoral Reform Society, a YouGov poll found that four-fifths of the electorate support automatic registration, almost half strongly so.
As the Explanatory Notes to the Bill note, in 2023, the Electoral Commission reported that an estimated 7 million to 8 million eligible citizens were either incorrectly registered or not registered at all. The IPPR has pointed out that young people, renters, working-class and minority ethnic citizens are more likely to be unregistered and that electoral turnout is shrinking, particularly among younger, lower income and renter populations. Registration is thus crucial to achieving greater political equality, a point emphasised also by Generation Rent.
We compare badly with other countries as, in most liberal democracies, forms of automatic or assisted voter registration are the norm. Research in 159 countries by the Electoral Integrity Project at the University of East Anglia shows that it has led to more accurate and complete electoral registration. The project also found that at the 2024 general election, four-fifths of poll workers turned away citizens because they were not registered. Although it was usually only a handful of people, a few workers reported turning away over 100.
The UEA academics, together with Generation Rent and Unlock Democracy, criticized the absence of any timetable for the introduction of automatic registration. This is what Amendment 67, with the assistance of Unlock Democracy, would supply through the introduction of a clear implementation plan, while Amendment 59 helps to inject an element of urgency. The amendments would help to meet the aspiration of the Electoral Commission, which, in emphasising the importance of complete and accurate registers to democratic participation, has urged
“the Government to work quickly to introduce automated systems to enable voters to be added to UK parliamentary electoral registers … in time for the next general election.”
Amendment 59 takes up its suggestion that this could be built on existing services, such as applying for a passport, updating a driving licence or receiving a national insurance number at the age of 16, which has been referred to earlier.
The Government’s election strategy, published in July 2025, made it clear that they were planning to deliver significant voter registration improvements, including registration without application, in this Parliament, yet the briefing on this year’s King’s Speech suggested that implementation during this Parliament is now unlikely. Where is the sense of urgency, when as many as 7 million to 8 million of our fellow citizens could remain excluded from full democratic engagement without automatic registration? These amendments would help to inject it by ensuring a suitably ambitious implementation plan.
I quite understand the need to pilot arrangements, but we can learn from others, such as Wales, which, with more limited resources, will have its system of automated registration ready for May 2027, despite it becoming law less than two years ago. There will be no compromise when it comes to security and accuracy, as no voter will be registered without the standard checks carried out by the electoral registration officers, as now. The EROs would have much better and more reliable data to work with. According to Unlock Democracy, the Electoral Commission, leading academics and international experts all believe that automated registration using some government databases, as proposed by Amendment 59, is deliverable within two years.
Florence Eshalomi MP was sponsoring a timeline amendment to the Bill before her promotion to ministerial office. A commitment to a timeline or plan of some kind would represent an important statement of intent on the part of the Government. If automated registration is not in place by the time of the next election, it could be as long as 2034 before it took effect for a general election. How many of our fellow citizens would be effectively disfranchised in the meantime?
These amendments are designed to support the Government’s goals. I hope, therefore, that even if my noble friend cannot accept them, she will give a commitment to bring forward a timetable herself, preferably before Report, so that noble Lords can consider it.
Baroness Royall of Blaisdon (Lab)
My Lords, I agree with the point my noble friend makes about urgency, but I rise very briefly to support Amendment 52, to which I have added my name. It is virtually the same as an amendment I moved to the Higher Education and Research Bill, as the noble Lord, Lord Rennard, said, in 2017. At the time, my amendment was adopted at Report. I then had negotiations with the Government and I agreed to a compromise, which was rather weaker than my original amendment. The compromise was to introduce guidance to ensure that electoral officers were encouraged to share data with universities, so that students could easily be registered, thus maximising the number of young people voting and ensuring that students could vote when an election took place during term time.
At some universities, students are semi-automatically registered when they register at university, but it is certainly not happening at every university. It should be mandatory at every university, hence my support for this amendment. I have one question for my noble friend the Minister. When automatic registration comes in, will a student automatically be registered both at their home and at their university? They have the option to vote in either and it is important that they are registered in both places as soon as possible.
Lord Udny-Lister (Con)
My Lords, my Amendment 47 seeks safeguards that would require the verification of nationality and immigration status before an individual is automatically added to the electoral register.
I fully recognise and uphold the importance of ensuring that every person who is legally entitled to vote should have the uninterrupted opportunity to register and to participate fully in our democratic process. That is a fundamental right and has long distinguished us internationally. There is an equally important principle, however, which I fear risks being overlooked in this Bill—that only those who are legally entitled to vote should be entered on to the electoral register in the first place.
I fear that, left unamended, this part of the Bill will weaken the integrity of elections. Clause 17 introduces a significant change to our electoral arrangements. It would place a duty on electoral registration officers to register individuals automatically where certain conditions are met without those individuals having to make an application to register themselves. I recognise that there could be a potential administrative benefit in this, but it is for your Lordships to ask whether the safeguards accompanying this fundamental change are robust enough, especially on establishing nationality and immigration status.
In presenting Clause 17, the Government are attempting to allow for the modernisation of the system. I welcome that, but I caution that modernisation must never come at the expense of electoral integrity and that operational convenience must never take precedence over establishing voter eligibility. Therefore, through this amendment, I am seeking to introduce an additional safeguard that will require an electoral registration officer to positively verify that the person satisfies the relevant nationality requirements and, where applicable, the necessary immigration status before being registered.
The parliamentary franchise rightly extends to Irish citizens and qualifying Commonwealth citizens. Different nationality and residency requirements apply to other elections. An individual’s immigration status may determine whether they qualify for that registration. For example, a person may be lawfully resident in the United Kingdom in employment, paying taxes and accessing public services, without necessarily being entitled to vote in a particular election. That is not a criticism of the individual but simply a recognition that lawful residence and electoral entitlement are not the same thing. It is precisely why we must make sure that this Bill distinguishes between verifying someone’s identity and their electoral eligibility. A government database may confirm somebody’s name, address and date of birth. A national insurance number may assist in establishing identity. However, neither by itself necessarily establishes nationality or entitlement.
I have tabled this amendment as I am concerned that, as the Government move towards an automated system, we risk treating the existence of an administrative record as sufficient evidence of electoral eligibility. The Electoral Commission has emphasised that the success of registration will depend entirely on the accuracy and reliability of the underlying data, so that only eligible individuals are registered. Having been around the upper echelons of government and local government through much of my adult life, I must confess that an unquestioning faith in the accuracy of government-held data is something that I have not been able to acquire. This is not a question of the dedication of the many officials who maintain the system, but my experience over the years has taught me that our systems are far from infallible.
I also appreciate the responsibilities already placed upon the electoral registration officers. They have a mammoth task in maintaining the accuracy and completeness of the registers, often against a background of considerable administrative and financial pressure caused by a lack of local government funding. My amendment does not intend to place further obstacles in their path—quite the opposite. It would establish a statutory requirement, supported by prescribed evidence or information lawfully obtained from public authorities.
I would therefore be grateful if the Minister could address three questions. First, what arrangements would exist to distinguish between a person’s identity and their legal entitlement to vote when records are obtained from government departments and other public bodies? Secondly, will electoral registration officers have timely access to the information necessary to verify immigration status where it is relevant, and who will bear the administrative cost? Thirdly, what safeguards will prevent an individual being entered on to a register for an election in which they are not legally entitled to participate?
Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)
My Lords, the motivation of the noble Lord, Lord Udny-Lister, is very important; it relates also to the earlier comments by the noble Lord, Lord Jackson, on Amendment 51 about ensuring that eligibility is strictly adhered to. There can be nothing more destructive of democratic trust than believing that anyone is playing fast and loose with who is allowed to vote in an election. We have just sat through an incredibly complicated Statement about the various degrees of the new immigration status. That will have to be taken into account in terms of eligibility and we have to be confident that the system can cope with it.
In that spirit, I thought that the noble Lord, Lord Fuller, did us a real a favour earlier when he talked specifically about the nuts and bolts of how we deal with the fact that children will now be voting and they will not necessarily have at their fingertips the usual adult forms of ID, as he illustrated rather wittily and very well. I was rather disappointed that the noble Lord, Lord Rennard, was so cynical that he saw these comments as somehow partisan. In fact, I thought that cynicism was itself rather partisan rather than anything else. It is really important, if you are going to extend the franchise in the way that we have been discussing, that you ensure that the franchise is strictly and absolutely foolproof and safe. One of the things that the noble Lord, Lord Rennard, said was that surely we want as many people to vote as possible. In that sense, you could just carry on expanding the franchise ever younger, or you could also say that anybody who happens to be wandering in can have—
Lord Rennard (LD)
I was absolutely crystal-clear that I meant all those people legally entitled to vote; “legally entitled” is very important and a part of the principle of everything I have argued for.
Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)
Clarification understood. Therefore, I ask the noble Lord to consider that the noble Lord, Lord Fuller, was trying to ensure that people who were entitled to vote were checked up on. The accusation was that he was somehow trying to limit the franchise and I was defending him in relation to that point.
I want to ask the Minister about something that was in a government amendment in an earlier group—we kind of run out of time but it relates to this—which is that registration officers will now have to obtain information, or will be given the right to obtain information, about 14 and 15 year-olds throughout the land and to retain that information for use when inviting them to then register to vote. I thought the point about any Government’s history—I am not making a sectarian point—of looking after data and keeping it safe was a point worth noting, especially if children’s data has been gathered up.
On registration officers collecting data, could the Minister say whether there will be any consideration of the suggestion from the noble Lord, Lord Fuller, about using national insurance numbers? I thought that was a really good suggestion, but I am really asking the Government whether they are open to detailed discussions on the nuts and bolts of how we are going to make this work in relation to both immigration status and the expanded franchise for 16 year-olds. Will there be an opportunity or are there plans to ensure that this is watertight?
To reiterate, if people believe that elections are happening that are not safe, with people being able to vote who have not been strictly checked on or are not registered, then it will undermine democracy. I know that that is the very opposite of what the Government aim.
Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)
My Lords, I will be very brief. I have signed three amendments in this group—Amendments 52, 59 and 67—that all address the issue of the “missing millions”. This phrase has been used multiple times in this debate; it is a real scar on our polity and a reflection of inequality in our society and in access to participation in the democratic process.
Very briefly on Amendment 52, I commend the noble Baroness, Lady Royall, for her previous work in this area. It is really time to see this finally nailed on, as this amendment would.
I will focus particularly on the two amendments in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Lister. We suffer a great deal of distrust in our politics that comes from us having seen a great number of successive Governments’ Ministers saying, “Look, I’ve pulled a lever”, but everyone knew that that lever was not attached to anything. Promises were made and not delivered. Just two cases that particularly come to my mind are sustainable urban drainage systems, which were promised in planning but have still not been delivered; and the promise to exclude at least illegal deforestation from the supply chain has, again, still not been delivered.
We need to see the Government not just making promises but setting out a reasonable timeframe for delivery. As the noble Baroness, Lady Lister, said, Wales is showing that this can be done. That was an interesting cross-reference to our earlier debate on the ways in which the devolved nations can be a real model from which England can learn. It can save itself a great deal of work and effort by seeing what works and just copying it.
Baroness Coffey (Con)
My Lords, I have tabled a clause stand part notice on Clause 17 to try to understand the pros and cons of automatic voter enrolment. We had 48.2 million electors at the last election. About 3 million people registered in the month before the election happened, which is about 7% or about 4,500 per constituency, on average, but I am sure it differed. Speaking candidly, that included the person who is now the MP for Suffolk Coastal, who defeated me. They managed to declare themselves as resident in that constituency before they were on the electoral roll. So there is a point here about the real authenticity of the people who are registering, which is where I come to the pros and cons.
There is a lot to be said for not having a huge rush of people registering at the last moment, but there is also something about getting it right. I am conscious that the pilots of the automatic process in Wales saw an increase of between 2% and 8%. Admittedly, only a handful of parts of Wales were covered but, basically, 14,500 people were added through the automatic process and there was a lot of manual checking. I do not know the cost of that, and the Electoral Commission said that it would need to be evaluated based on that cost, but it is worth while trying to get a sense of what happens in a regular process around the country where people have second homes. A lot of second home owners get turned down if they apply in the normal way but not based on their principal residences. I will discuss students and children at boarding school in a different set of amendments, so will not get into the detail on this right now.
On the broader scale, in the review after the last election, an estimate of between 7 million and 8 million people had not registered. There is a law in this country that people are supposed to register, and the council can, if it so wishes, pursue them with a fine of £1,000 per person for not registering. I am not suggesting that councils are going to start trying to generate lots of money, although it feels like a lot of money could be generated if that were the case, but rather that we think about how we do this in a sensible way. That is why there is a sense of ambition—it is not overambition—but how accurate will it be?
Other amendments propose the DWP issuing information to electoral registration officers. I think that the amendment that refers to those issued in the last year being sent on is fine. Actually, HRMC is responsible for the national insurance database and is the overall guardian of that; what happens with the DWP is linked to what happens in HMRC. For example, for people who have not claimed child benefit, it does not happen and they end up going through a manual process to get a national insurance number. But the broader point here comes back to accuracy.
That leads on to the question of what is going to happen about who is entitled to vote in that place if we suddenly have a huge expansion of the electorate. Research has shown that it often becomes an issue if people have moved during the year and end up being registered in more than one place. How does that get resolved? When it comes to parliamentary voting, what is supposed to happen is that the only place where you are allowed to be registered is the principal place in which you live. There is very strict guidance from the Government and the Electoral Commission that this is the case for local registration officers. My concern is that what often happens in the rush at the end is that none of that is gone through, so we end up having a lot of people registering in places where, if they had registered in normal time, their registration might have been turned down because it was not their principal place of residence. There is a risk of overinflating the electorate.
What does that mean for the consideration of constituency boundaries—for example, in the Cities of London and Westminster constituency and in Leeds Central and Headingley? Of course, they often match up to university towns and places of transience where people might move. Things might change under the Renters’ Rights Act, but this is something that the Government need to think through.
I would be grateful to hear from the Minister what lessons the Government have learned from the Welsh Government pilots and how they intend to ensure accuracy. I think there is a case here of rushing to an outcome that, instead of improving democracy, could significantly undermine it. So, as I said, I would be grateful to hear what the Government are doing to manage the risks as well as big-up the benefits.
What guarantees will prevent personal information that is supplied to, for example, HMRC, the DWP or the DVLA from being disclosed to the electoral register? Who bears legal responsibility if somebody is incorrectly registered, omitted or, indeed, registered at an address where they are not entitled to vote? Will automatically created registrations at secondary addresses be excluded from constituency election calculations where appropriate? Most importantly of all, what level of erroneous registration would the Government consider acceptable? How will they measure that, and how will they address it?
This is why, on the surface, it might seem very convenient to have automatic voter registration, but when we are talking about integrity and, ultimately, who forms a parliamentary constituency and who forms a Government, a lot more detail needs to be had than what we have in the Bill.
Lord Hayward (Con)
My Lords, I shall follow on from my noble friend’s comments and pick up the question that the noble Baroness, Lady Royall, referred to earlier about double, if not treble, registration. The noble Baroness said that she hoped that all universities and academic centres will ensure that they have maximum registration of people resident in that town or city as voters. However, those people will have a home residence as well. Therefore, one is inflating the electoral roll in university cities to the disadvantage of those communities in other parts of the country that do not have university cities nearby.
The noble Lord, Lord Rennard, referred to boundary reviews and political advantage. I must admit that I enormously admire his comments about parliamentary boundaries in these circumstances. The places with high levels of student registration that will benefit under automatic registration are the big cities—the Londons, the Manchesters, the Birminghams. As he explained to his Lib Dem colleagues, come the next boundary review, there will be fewer constituencies in Somerset, Wiltshire, Dorset and other similar counties, such as Gloucestershire, a fair number of which, much to my chagrin, currently have rather large numbers of Liberal Democrat MPs.
I make the point quite seriously that, if one is going to include all those people who register for a second residence, one will be expanding the electoral rolls dramatically in London, Manchester and Birmingham to the disadvantage of the shire counties. I do not think that is an appropriate route to go down. There may be solutions where people register at their first home and their second residence is not included for, for example, parliamentary boundary revision, but we cannot have a position whereby large numbers of people are registered to the disadvantage of resident communities in neighbouring shire counties.
I make these comments on the basis that I have heard from a number of people, particularly the Liberal Democrats, that they want free and fair elections. Free elections are that people should be allowed to register to vote themselves—encouraged, yes, but they should have the freedom not to do so. The Bill goes through at inordinate length, saying, “Oh well, we’ll register everybody, and if you don’t want to be on the electoral roll you can deregister”. However, the process involved is pretty tortuous, and large numbers of people genuinely want to hide where they are for a whole series of reasons; I take, for example, abused women as a case in point. They are going to be on the electoral roll, and it will not be a case of, “We will take you off immediately”, because people will not know that they are on until they are notified that they are on.
That takes me to another point, which is that we have to register all these people so that we can improve turnout. Might it not be a good idea if politicians—and I include in that category noble Lords and those in the other Chamber—improved their reputation with the public at large so that those people want to turn out to vote?
Talking of which, the Government have a very good website where you can register to vote. I could walk out of this Chamber now and register immediately. People might wonder why I had nothing better to do, but on Saturday evening I actually went on that site. What astonished me was that 54 people had registered in the preceding few minutes. I challenge noble Lords to go on it on Christmas Day; they will be astonished by how many people register to vote on Christmas Day and Boxing Day. It is not that difficult.
My noble friend Lady Coffey referred just now to the fact that, in an election period, 2.8 million people registered to vote—it was just between 2.8 million and 2.9 million. The problem there was that some 40% of those people were already registered. One thing we have not done today is given enough credit to both the Public Bill Office here in the House of Lords, for the speed with which it has drafted and ordered our amendments, and the day-to-day work of returning officers around the country. I shall return to this subject at a later point, but those officers do a phenomenal job. If you have 2.8 million extra people registering to vote during an election, as I say, that seems to show it is not that difficult to do it—and, by the way, if all those students who are moving off to university are unable to go on to a website, I have a serious doubt about whether some of them should be at university in the first place.
The 40% of people who registered at the last election who were double-registered imposed an enormous burden on the returning officers. I have said over and over again that we should move to a read-only access process. In other words, if Robert Hayward wants to check whether he is on the electoral roll, he just goes on the website with his password and can check that he is there. Instead of that, because Governments of all persuasions have refused to introduce a read-only system, we impose a burden on returning officers which is unacceptable at the time of an election, when they are trying to administer all sorts of other things.
It is not difficult. We have been told by government and officials over and over again that it is an expensive and difficult process. Is it? Local authorities—
Lord Fuller (Con)
My noble friend has correctly highlighted how the process actually works if you go on the Government’s website, and so many of the district councils or other local councils which are registration authorities have their own skin in that same machine. When you type in your name, date of birth and national insurance number, the system goes automatically to HMRC and the DWP to validate you before you have even pressed the button; they will validate you almost immediately. I think the point my noble friend is making, which is absolutely correct, is that having this unique identifier—the national insurance number or some other method that might be defined by regulations—gives an absolutely unambiguous way of determining whether you have a duplication.
Lord Hayward (Con)
I thank my noble friend for his intervention, which was slightly longer than I had hoped for, since I want to keep to my time. As I say, there is a system; we were told it is impossible, but what have the Northern Irish done? They introduced a read-only system and have done that themselves. It operates effectively in Northern Ireland without any problem.
These massive changes are, I believe, unnecessary—although, yes, they were advertised—and without great benefit. I will quote now from the impact assessment, to which I may return on another occasion. On page 113 it says that
“we assume that the completeness of registers will increase by 3 percentage points (from 85.9% to 88.9%) by the end of the 10-year … period”.
Are we going through all these changes for that?
In conclusion, I must pick up the noble Lord, Lord Rennard, on his comments about my support for automatic registration. I believed that I had made it absolutely clear that I support it for attainers, whatever age they may happen to be, because I want to introduce them to the democratic system. Thereafter, I do not support automatic registration for that very small gain.
Lord Pack (LD)
My Lords, we have heard two interesting contrasting themes in this group. Some of us are very keen on automatic voter registration and want to see it introduced sooner and better. Others are nervous about the potential implications of automatic voter registration. I think it is worth starting with a recap of the reasons why something like automatic voter registration is required, particularly as the noble Lord, Lord Hayward, eloquently put the case against.
In part, it is because making good use of data is, when done well, an effective way of improving services and reducing administrative burdens. It is worth contrasting how a registration process would start under AVR with the current system. Several noble Lords have expressed concerns about how a database might result in registrations flowing from that data. However, under the current system anyone can request and be sent a paper form that they can fill in, without having to provide a national insurance number. That, under our existing system, is enough to start the process rolling for registration. If we are relying on the right, good-quality datasets, that is a much more secure starting point than anyone being able to request a paper form that anyone could fill in. It is also worth bearing in mind that the current system was very well described by one of the international experts in elections we are lucky to have in this country: Professor Toby James. He called it a
“Victorian system in need of repair”.
I think this Bill’s efforts to repair it are very welcome.
A good example of that is the surge in registration applications we typically have in the run-up to a general election. The Electoral Commission’s latest research estimated that between 7 million and 8 million people are either missing from the electoral register or registered at the wrong address. There is a substantial problem that needs addressing. We have heard that in the run-up to a general election there is a surge in applications; for example, last time, there was a surge of nearly 3 million. As was rightly pointed out, many of those were duplicate applications. When you strip those out from the numbers and compare that with the 7 million or 8 million missing and wrong addresses on the register, even the general election surge is not getting us that far towards fixing the problem.
Action is needed. Of course, we should not therefore think that any action is wise. But I hope, therefore, we will hear positive noises from the Government, particularly on Amendments 49, 50 and 52 from my noble friends Lord Rennard, Lord Wallace and Lady Thornhill, and the noble Baronesses, Lady Royall and Lady Bennett, all of which in different ways would improve the supply of data into the system.
My Amendment 58 would provide ward-level data, which I think is important, particularly with local government reorganisation increasing the size of many councils. Council-level data will not tell us how well or how badly registration systems are working in future; we need that data at ward level. We need it to understand how the system is working. We need it for researchers and experts to figure out whether the promises are being delivered. We need it for the campaigners, of all parties and none, who are trying to improve involvement and engagement with democracy, to be able to see where their efforts are most needed. We need it for media, and indeed for us politicians, to be able to understand how systems are working.
I turn to some of the other amendments in this group. On Amendment 8 from the noble Lord, Lord Fuller, I must admit I am not convinced by the case that the noble Lord made. Under the current system, with a voting age of 18, we register attainers with some aged 16 and most aged 17. The current system is that some people who are two years below the age for voting get registered as attainers. That is because of the use of the 1 December cut-off date and the following one-year window, which means that some people may be more than one year away and need to be in the records.
If we are changing 18 to 16, it seems absolutely sensible that 17 and 16 should, in turn, also get reduced by two years to 15 and 14. Therefore, with respect, the amendment from the noble Lord, Lord Fuller, would achieve the opposite of what he argued for. We have an existing system that is well established, that people are used to using and that works; by reducing the years across the board, we are essentially transferring the existing system over to the new voting age, rather than creating a new system that would not work with the 1 December window and following 12-month period.
Baroness O'Neill of Bexley (Con)
My Lords, I will speak to Amendments 48 and 63 in my name and that of my noble friend Lord Jamieson, and address the wider concerns raised by amendments in this group. The fundamental question before us is not whether electoral registration should be accessible—of course it should be; it is, as a number of colleagues have referenced tonight, whether the Government’s proposals for automatic registration will maintain the accuracy and integrity of the electoral register.
Individual electoral registration was introduced to ensure that people were properly identified, and responsibility for registration rested with the individual. Some areas have been particularly successful in ensuring a good level of registration. The Government have now proposed to move away from that principle without having demonstrated that automatic registration will provide equivalent safeguards. Therefore, Amendment 48 would require a person’s existence to be verified against three separate datasets before they are automatically registered. My noble friend Lord Fuller earlier referenced my own surname and the variance you can get in different registers. Some databases do not acknowledge apostrophes, and they certainly cannot cope with two capital letters allied with one another. Therefore, for a fairly simple name, as I would think it, you get different variations coming out. It is important to recognise that not all databases are the same.
This is a modest safeguard against what is a substantial change. Government databases contain errors, and this is particularly prevalent in areas with high population turnover, including student accommodation and the private rented sector. This could lead to postal and proxy voter fraud. The noble Baroness, Lady Royall, referenced students at university, and she is absolutely right, but you can go one step further: would it be the university building, the halls of residence or wherever their accommodation is? There are a number of variants that could cause issues.
An inaccurate register is not simply an administrative inconvenience; it creates an unnecessary risk for the integrity of the entire voting process. There is a possibility that certain parts of the electorate could vote twice in the same election by virtue of having two different registered addresses, or indeed even more. In short, this Bill creates unnecessary risks for the integrity of the polling process. Therefore, can the Minister tell us precisely which databases will be used for automatic registration? How will their accuracy be assessed? Why do the Government consider verification through fewer than three independent datasets sufficient?
We believe that the EROs should have access to database information, and I agree with my noble friend Lord Hayward that it is certainly a profession that should be called out, given EROs’ professionalism and the extent of their service. That is worth putting on record. Most importantly, will electoral registration officers retain the discretion to refuse automatic voter registration where necessary—for example, if information is incomplete or contradictory, as I have said?
Amendment 63 would make it clear that the proposed voter registration pilot powers cannot be used to alter the franchise for parliamentary or English local elections. There is an important distinction between determining how an eligible person is registered and determining who is entitled to vote. The latter should be decided through primary legislation and full parliamentary scrutiny, not merely through powers designed to test administrative arrangements. Will the Minister confirm that these pilots will not extend or alter voter eligibility?
If automatic registration is introduced in some areas and not in others, registration figures may cease to be comparable and may then be arbitrarily based on some parts of the population. Does this not seek to prioritise some parts of the population over others and test only their opinion rather than the whole electorate? This could distort the 2029 parliamentary boundary review and the 2028 mayoral elections. Can the Government guarantee that pilot locations and selection criteria will be published and their effects independently evaluated?
I welcome my noble friend Lord Udny-Lister’s amendment, which rightly seeks to address the verification of nationality and immigration status. That is essential. Possession of a national insurance number or inclusion in a government database does not in itself establish your entitlement to vote. The rules governing qualifying Commonwealth and EU citizens are not straightforward, and an automated system must be capable of applying them correctly. Can the Minister explain what steps the Government are taking to ensure that checks will be undertaken against Home Office records before an individual is registered? Who will be accountable when an ineligible person is added? Will it be the Secretary of State?
These questions were echoed by my noble friend Lord Jackson, who proposes that automatic registration should be restricted to British citizens. There are practical concerns. Does the Minister accept this, and will she consider these sensible amendments? Moreover, my noble friend Lord Fuller highlights that, if votes are introduced at 16, younger voters who are registered at 15 will not meet the national insurance criteria. Can the Minister tell us how their identity will be verified where national insurance information is unavailable? My noble friend referenced the manual intervention required and how many hours’ extra work that might need for validation.
The amendments concerning implementation tables, information sharing and independent assessment also deserve careful consideration. The Government’s own impact assessment anticipates only a limited improvement in register completeness over several years, while significant costs associated with the necessary computer system remain uncertain. Can the Minister provide an estimate of the full cost to the local authorities, including software, staff training, data checking and correcting erroneous entries? Who will bear those costs? I appreciate that the Minister may not have all the answers with her today, so I would accept a response in writing.
The objective should not simply be to produce a larger electoral register; a register containing more names with the risk of more errors does not represent progress. Administrative convenience should not take precedence over proper determination of electoral eligibility. Amendments 48 and 63 seek to establish two essential protections: reliable verification before automatic registration and a clear constitutional limit on the use of pilot powers. I hope that the Minister will address these concerns in detail, because public confidence in our elections depends not only on participation but on the integrity of the system through which the participation takes place.
Lord in Waiting/Government Whip (Lord Wilson of Sedgefield) (Lab)
My Lords, it has been a really useful debate, with a lot of technical questions. I will do my best to get through them all. I will start with Amendments 8 and 9, which would change the age at which individuals can register to vote to 15 and change the age at which national insurance numbers are issued.
We all agree that no young person should miss the opportunity to participate in an election for the first time because there was insufficient time to be correctly registered to vote. By extending the age of registration to 14, this two-year window of registration ahead of turning 16 allows for enhanced links between the classroom and active engagement in our democracy, beginning with the act of registering to vote. I recognise the noble Lord’s concern that 14 and 15 year-olds will not yet have their national insurance numbers—and I understand the issue of 15 years and nine months—but national insurance numbers are automatically allocated to most young people in the UK before the age of 16. This age is set in line with the age at which young people become liable to pay national insurance contributions and the creation of an adult taxpayer record. I assure the Committee that we will put in place an alternative mechanism using central government data in England to ensure that 14 and 15 year-olds are able to proceed effectively through the registration service. I hope, therefore, that the noble Lord will not press these amendments.
On Amendment 47, I share the determination that only those who are eligible should be registered. I assure the Committee that, as set out in the Bill, EROs must be satisfied that the person is entitled to be registered to vote before they are registered without an application. That includes assurances that they hold eligible nationality and, where relevant, immigration status.
What data will the Government use as part of the measures to improve voter registration? I think the noble Lord, Lord Udny-Lister, mentioned this. As set out in the Government’s policy paper A Blueprint for Modern Digital Government, technology presents us with the opportunity to improve the way in which government delivers for the public. In line with this vision, our ambition is to transform our electoral registration system, enabling EROs to use data available to them to move towards an automated system so that voters can easily register to vote and keep their registration details updated. We are exploring whether government data could also help to identify people who may not be registered, and we are working closely with the Information Commissioner’s Office to ensure that appropriate safeguards will be in place.
Baroness Coffey (Con)
Can the Minister give way on that matter? I ask because the Electoral Commission, in its evaluation of the Welsh Government’s pilot, said that it should be a minimum of two databases. I am interested to hear why the Government have not at least taken notice of what the Electoral Commission has to say.
Lord Wilson of Sedgefield (Lab)
We are saying here that we do not want to legislate for a minimum number of datasets that should be used to determine someone’s existence. The level of assurance provided by a dataset will depend on its quality and the information it contains. In some cases, one or two robust datasets may provide sufficient evidence that individuals are entitled to be registered, but others may not. Requiring EROs to consult additional datasets in every case could therefore impose unnecessary administrative burdens without improving confidence in the outcome. I hope that this assurance shows the Committee that the Government are fully committed to maintaining the integrity of the electoral register and that the noble Lords will feel able not to press their amendments.
I welcome the intention behind Amendment 49. The Government are committed to working towards making better use of data across government for registration purposes, but we do not believe that creating a new obligation for the Department for Work and Pensions is necessary or that it would achieve the desired outcome. We intend to utilise the powers in the Bill to make regulations to facilitate the sharing of data between government bodies and to assist EROs in carrying out their functions on the basis of agreed data-sharing arrangements. As part of this, we are exploring the use of DWP data.
MHCLG already has a successful agreement in place with the DWP to check the identity of individuals applying to register to vote, and we are exploring the potential to make greater use of DWP data for registration purposes. However, we know that the DWP’s database, including national insurance data, does not hold all the data required to determine eligibility for registration. Therefore, we could not rely solely on the DWP data. For those reasons, the Government do not think this proposal is the right way forward.
Lord Jamieson (Con)
I just have some questions, which are to help purely with my understanding. We are talking about auto-enrolment and auto-registration, which effectively means that we have an electronic system which will review a series of databases and will then throw out that, for example, Fred Smith should be eligible to vote in this area. In order for it to do that, the Government are going to have to programme the system, and the guidelines will be within the system. It cannot be up to the electoral registration officer to have a whole load of data thrown at them which they have to manually trawl through.
The Minister does not necessarily have to answer me today, but it would be quite helpful to have a flowchart showing how the Government envisage the auto-enrolment working, with the data coming in and the information the system throws out that the electoral returning officer will then have to review. The Minister is making comments about the electoral returning officer not being certain, but he or she can only be certain based on the information fed into the database and the information received out of it. I appreciate all the statements the Minister has made, but I find that flow-through a little bit hard to understand. I think it would be very helpful for Members of the House if they had that guidance.
Lord Wilson of Sedgefield (Lab)
We are working on the guidance. At the same time, we are going to set off with a whole series of pilots to work out what works and what does not, and how we can improve it. If noble Lords look at other countries, such as Canada, they started the whole process of automatic enrolment in the 1990s and they are improving the system all the time. At the end of the day, if there is a problem, the EROs can make the final decisions if they think the information they are going to base decisions on is not accurate enough.
On Amendment 50, we have explored the possibility of using the occasion of issuing national insurance numbers to teenagers when they are approaching their 16th birthday as an opportunity to register them to vote. However, I understand that nationality is not routinely recorded against all entries in the DWP data. In addition, not all young people are on the DWP database—for example, due to having been in care or their parents not having applied for child benefit. In line with the powers proposed in the Bill, individuals will also need to be of voting age—which for reserved elections is currently 18 and soon to be 16—before they can be added to the register without submitting an application, once the relevant provisions are in effect. For these reasons, while sympathetic to the intention, the Government have serious concerns about the effectiveness of this approach.
Amendment 51 prevents non-British citizens who are eligible to register to vote from being registered without an application or their entry being altered without an application. Amendment 62 also seeks to extend this exclusion to any pilots of registration without application. The Government have no plans to change the eligibility criteria for who can register to vote in reserved elections. We also do not think it would be fair to establish an automated voter registration system in which some eligible citizens cannot be directly registered or their details directly updated.
Amendment 52 would require higher and further education providers in England to share data with electoral registration officers to enable young electors to be registered. This Government are committed to supporting more university and college students being registered to vote. Under the powers in the Bill, we plan to test registration without an application using locally available data in a number of areas around the UK. The Electoral Commission will then review the effectiveness of the new approaches tested.
As part of this, electoral registration officers will be able to enter into data-sharing agreements with higher and further education providers in their local area so as to identify eligible individuals who are unregistered or who have moved. Further detail will be set out in secondary legislation and in guidance. I hope that provides reassurance to noble Lords.
On Clause 17, I note the noble Baroness, Lady Coffey, and the noble Lord, Lord Hayward, intend to oppose Clause 17 standing part of the Bill. Voter registration is core to our democratic system. It is right that changes to voter registration be carefully scrutinised and assessed. Direct registration, alongside other measures, will support the objective of improving the completeness and accuracy of electoral registers. Together with Clause 18—which will create a new duty for EROs to update people’s personal details in the electoral register when they are aware that these have changed—these changes have the potential to reduce the estimated 7 million to 8 million people who are unregistered or inaccurately registered, a figure that has been used more than once today.
Direct registration also has the long-term potential to reduce burdens on EROs, who should need to spend less time following up with individuals who have not responded to invitations to register to vote.
In using data for direct registration, EROs must be assured that the person is eligible to be registered to vote. Those who will be directly registered will be informed and have the right to opt out of the process during a response period. Particular categories of elector, such as anonymous electors, will also be exempt.
I hope noble Lords will be reassured that direct registration will at first be tested in pilots in a number of areas. This will be in different locations and settings, with different characteristics and challenges. We are working with the Electoral Commission to develop the assessment criteria and ensure a wide range of different areas can participate. I appreciate the interest of the noble Baroness and others in voter registration, and I recognise the importance of getting this right. The Bill—and secondary legislation—will lay the foundations for more automated voter registration in safe and responsible ways.
I recognise the intention behind Amendment 58, which seeks to promote transparency around the operation of the electoral registration system. It is in support of that objective that substantial information on voter registration is already made publicly available. Noble Lords may be aware that the public may easily access information on registration applications at the online register to vote performance dashboard. These arrangements already provide a significant degree of transparency regarding applications to register to vote, while recognising that applications are determined by registration officers who are statutorily responsible for maintaining the register for the area for which they are responsible. The amendment would also permit the publication of information at ward level. However, the Secretary of State does not hold registration data at that level of granularity and would therefore not be able to publish the information envisaged by the amendment.
I welcome the enthusiastic support of the noble Baronesses, Lady Lister of Burtersett and Lady Bennett of Manor Castle, for the cause of automated voter registration through their Amendment 59. I reassure noble Lords that the Government are committed to moving to more automated registration, and we are putting the necessary foundations in place through the Bill. I assure the Committee that officials are working closely with counterparts at the Home Office, the Passport Office, DWP and HMRC to explore data sharing in support of more automated registration. However, these are extremely complex new approaches, and we will need to be certain we have the right arrangements in place and that we have tested those very robustly before they are rolled out widely. Setting a firm deadline in primary legislation, before we can be certain that we will be ready, would not, in my view, be the best way to secure the progress that we all wish to see.
On Amendment 61, our plans for voter registration without application are about making registration simpler and easier. These are significant reforms and we need to test them to ensure we get them right. We hope pilots will commence soon after the necessary legislation is in effect. The Electoral Commission will undertake an independent review to inform decisions about wider implementation, so there will be a significant degree of external evaluation of the new approach. The Boundary Commissions for England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland are independent of government. The timings of parliamentary boundary reviews are set by legislation, which the Government have no plans to change. Amendment 61’s commitment to ensuring all eligible voters can participate and are appropriately represented in our democratic process is one I share, but I do not believe a further independent review is needed.
On Amendment 63, if the concern is that these powers could be used to alter who is entitled to register and vote, I assure the Committee that this is not the case. Clause 20 of the Bill creates a new power for the Secretary of State to make regulations to pilot changes to the voter registration process. Those powers are carefully defined and are limited to what the Bill describes as “voter registration provision”.
The Bill goes on to make clear what falls within that definition at Clause 21. It is made clear that this is limited to provision about registering individuals who are entitled, under existing franchise eligibility criteria, to be registered. It also allows for existing register entries to be amended or removed. Crucially, it does not provide a mechanism to alter the eligibility criteria for registration.
Amendment 67 would require the Secretary of State to publish a plan for implementing Part 2 of the Bill within two months of this part of the Bill coming into force. I agree with and share the goal that we must move as fast as possible. I am sure that the House will welcome the news that more information about the direct registration pilots will be published shortly. This will include further information about how the pilots will work in practice and the prospective timetable.
Lord Hayward (Con)
The Minister just referred to pilots. I ask this question out of genuine ignorance; I am not trying to make a point. Can he provide us with details about the level of accuracy that the Northern Ireland register now has, given that its process of read-only access has been in operation for some two years?
Lord Wilson of Sedgefield (Lab)
That is not a figure that I have to hand, to be fair. We will look into that and get back to the noble Lord.
I am pleased to reassure noble Lords that our plan is for secondary legislation on the direct registration pilots to be introduced quickly after the Bill comes into force. Under the Bill, there is a statutory requirement for the Electoral Commission to evaluate the effectiveness of the pilots after they have finished.
With that, I thank noble Lords for the spirit and intention of their amendments; I hope that this information reassures them.
Lord Rennard (LD)
I am trying to get in my mind why it is that the things around automatic voter registration that the Minister and his colleagues supported in opposition are now considered not to be so practical. I note his point that the DWP data is not sufficient to include somebody on the electoral register. But, under the present arrangements, either online or by paper, you give your name, address and national insurance number—and hey presto, you are registered. I am not sure there is such a barrier now—but if there is, surely the only bit of data required is to confirm that you are a UK citizen. Since the Government must know who is a UK citizen, if you have their name, address and national insurance number and you know they are a UK citizen, you should simply put people on the electoral register.
To help the Minister answer the questions he has been asked about costs, I say that this will be a great cost-saving exercise compared with many forms being printed and sent out in the expensive post, and human beings having to go round door to door doing this. We could cut costs considerably if we sped this up.
Lord Wilson of Sedgefield (Lab)
What we want to do is to get this right and to keep the costs to a minimum. We have said that we are looking extensively at all the databases at the Passport Office, the DVLA, HMRC and the DWP, and we want to get this right. My assessment of this is that it is not straightforward—it can be difficult—but we want to make it as efficient as possible, because it will save money in the long run if we have an automated system that delivers what we want to see: a vibrant democracy.
Baroness Coffey (Con)
I would be grateful if the Minister could look at some of the questions that I asked, which I do not think he has had a chance to answer, and write to me.
Lord Fuller (Con)
My Lords, it is late, so I will be brief, especially as the new guidance in the Companion tells me to be so. I was confused by the noble Lord, Lord Rennard; he first stood up to excoriate me and then his Amendment 50 proposed something like the same. Nevertheless, there are no hard feelings, which is why I have moved towards him, because I sense that we are as one on the national insurance issue.
I am concerned by the Minister’s winding, because it has become clear for the first time that so much of the foundations of the democracy that our society depends on is to be left to secondary legislation: “Don’t worry, it’s going to be all right”. I heard no reassurance from the Dispatch Box on how we will deal with the 14 and 15 year-old attainers, although I listened carefully to what he said about everybody else. He is placing impossible burdens on the electoral registration officers.
I suggest that that the Minister needs to spend time not only with those officers but possibly with some of the participants in this debate. It is clear—I am in danger of sounding like the noble Lord, Lord Rooker—that no consideration was given to this in the other place, and this is the House of Lords at its best.
I am really concerned about all the unintended consequences here, whether it be with regard to identification, as my noble friend Lord Jackson said, or on immigration status. I am concerned about the number of duplicates and the different spellings of the name O’Neill, for example—and is that one L or two? What is the role of the Electoral Commission? We will deal with some of these issues. Ultimately, however, we need to be concerned about the integrity of the register.
I hope that the Minister will commit here and now to having follow-up meetings on a cross-party basis with those who have participated in this debate so that we can thrash this out. What we have had up until now is a recipe for disaster on Report unless more clarification is given. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Baroness Coffey
Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment, and another in the name of Baroness Coffey, removes exemptions for child voters regarding various duties of election and registration officials.
Baroness Coffey (Con)
My Lords, I will also speak to Amendment 11, then I also have a more general debate on whether Schedule 1 should stand part.
That last debate was fascinating. I have already heard people ask why unelected Peers are interested about elections when we do not get elected to this place. Of course we care, because we care about democracy. I know that several Peers are also elected as councillors and to other legislatures. Indeed, we are concerned to try to make sure that we get this right.
Building on from the previous debate—I appreciate that the Minister said that he would look through it and then write to me on various matters—a response to a Question I asked basically said that the Government do not hold all these different things, so they cannot effectively know whether people are misregistering or voting in more than one place and the like. To some extent, they should. However, an important thing, as has just been articulated, is to make sure that the electoral register is correct and authentic. That is why I raised my concerns about this schedule, in particular, if people are looking, about paragraphs 4 to 6 on page 129 of the Bill and then paragraph 11 on the following page. Indeed, I will refer more broadly to Amendment 12 and its proposed new paragraph 21(3) on page 5, which we have already debated and are due to agree to.
Where I am going with this is that we need to make sure that the register is as authentic as possible, yet the Government have said that, for safeguarding reasons, lots of canvassing cannot be done if somebody is under the age of 16—they are blocking it out. I understand the broader issues about that, but it is the Government’s desire to introduce voting at the age of 16 in all the elections across the United Kingdom, and it is specially reserved. Therefore, we need to make sure that the people going on that electoral roll are genuine, and that is the whole point of canvass. Canvass is largely focused on households which do not return the registration—that is canvassers’ principal role. I do not mean canvassers as in party-political canvassers but people working on behalf of the electoral registration officer to try to get as complete a register as possible. However, it is also to check and validate people who are in that residence and who have registered to vote.
At the moment, it is not clear to me how soon we will be in a situation where the automatic registration will have happened, based on our current debate, but it feels like it will be possible for young people to register far more quickly—and who knows when the next election will be? Therefore, I do not understand why the Government are ruling out the opportunity for registration officers to make house-to-house inquiries regarding somebody who has put themselves forward to register on the electoral roll simply because they are under the age of 16.
I am conscious that there are plenty of vulnerable people on the electoral roll—people of no fixed abode, anonymous electors, a whole series of people who could be deemed “vulnerable”. I understand the broader point, but electoral registration officers and the people whom they employ should be trusted to deal with such sensitive matters or, if necessary, we could turn this into a regulated activity, which would mean that it became eligible for a DBS check. This comes back to the integrity of the electoral roll. That is why the canvass should be included.
I am not so focused on paragraph 5; I am more concerned with the paragraph 6, which states:
“A requirement under subsection (4) may not be imposed on a person under the age of 16 in relation to registration”.
I am also concerned that paragraph 11 provides that provision
“may not authorise or require a registration officer taking steps in relation to a register of parliamentary electors … to visit a particular address in order to speak to a person under the age of 16”.
I am particularly concerned about the proposed new paragraph 21(3), which would be inserted by government Amendment 12, which does not include the power to make inquiries. The question is: why not? Why is it that something that is as precious as having the opportunity to vote in a general election does not come with an opportunity for that to be validated?
How people get added to the electoral roll concerns me. The whole point of the electoral registration officer is that they must be satisfied—we heard that extensively in the last debate—and now, all of a sudden, we are expected to take somebody’s word for it that X, Y or Z can be added to the electoral roll without any validation whatever if they purport to be of that age. My question to the Government is: why?
Lord Jackson of Peterborough (Con)
My Lords, I have three amendments in this group. Amendments 124 and 128 are essentially probing amendments. The other is of much more significance and import in terms of protecting the integrity of our electoral system. I will elucidate on that a little later. I will be as quick as I can.
Amendment 124 concerns the commencement of counting at local elections. A bugbear for a number of us over the years has been an increasing tendency for returning officers to delay the commencement of counting, particularly in local government elections, until the following day. It is understandable when you have a very significant local election. For the Greater London Authority election of a directly elected mayor for a world city of 9 million people, it probably does take longer to put the arrangements in place. However, most recently at the May 2026 local elections, only 46 out of 136 local authorities were scheduled to count and declare results overnight.
We have talked about the size of the country. The UK is a relatively small country. We are not talking about an Australian-style parliamentary seat, which is the equivalent of the length or width of three countries; we are talking about relatively small geographical areas in which to collect ballot boxes from polling places.
Lord Rennard (LD)
My Lords, Amendment 125 in my name and that of my noble friend Lady Thornhill would insert a new clause to confer on the Secretary of State statutory powers to establish pilot schemes for flexible voting options. We worry that low turnout in general elections, which was less than 60% in 2024, is caused, in part, because it is easy for people who are retired or not working to vote on a particular Thursday, but harder for other people to vote then. That is why we want to extend the ways in which people can cast their vote and, we hope, increase participation.
People who are busy working, or are working shifts, long hours or with long commutes, or those who have caring responsibilities or who are looking after children, do not find it so convenient to vote, and we believe they may be discriminated against. Our amendment would establish a few possibilities, on which we would like to see more controlled, evidence-based innovation. We are aware that the Electoral Commission is carrying out a number of pilots. In particular, we would like to see an extension of advanced voting in the days preceding the main polling day. We would like to see additional polling days, in particular weekend voting, which I do not think is being piloted anywhere. On weekends, people with families and those who still have Monday to Friday jobs may have much greater flexibility.
Community voting hubs situated in accessible, busy locations could help, as could different polling stations, allowing voters choice over where they can vote within their electoral district. Transportable or mobile polling stations could bring the ballot box directly to underserved rural communities or into care environments. Flexible voting is a modernising necessity, but it would require some other changes to the way in which we conduct elections, in particular by-elections and general elections, which can be called at short notice.
The Electoral Commission is seeing some pilots at the moment. We believe that they should go further in scope and at a faster speed. We would like to see these schemes evaluated, but we also need the commission to consider whether to extend the election timetable.
There is a problem with postal voting; perhaps 26% of the votes in the last general election were cast by post. If early voting is used—say, 10 days before the normal polling day—many votes would be cast at a halfway point in the election campaign. If we move to alternative methods of voting, we will need to consider again the election timetable, to ensure that electoral registration officers can conduct the process fairly, safely and securely, and that voters have sufficient time after the calling of a by-election or general election to consider the issues before they have to cast their votes.
Baroness Thornhill (LD)
My Lords, I will be brief in speaking to Amendment 125—I will chop out a large paragraph—in my name and that of my noble friend Lord Rennard, and then talk to Amendments 136 and 124, in the names of the noble Lords, Lord Walney and Lord Jackson of Peterborough, respectively.
Amendment 125 is a modest amendment and a sensible proposal. My reason for supporting it was to share with noble Lords my experiences during my time in local government in Watford, where we participated in a number of electoral pilots. We had a very go-ahead ERO, so we piloted voting in supermarkets and weekend voting, alongside other things.
Some of those approaches worked better than others, and not every innovation produced the increase in turnout that we had all hoped for. In fact, one pilot involved voting at the weekend, after the whole country had already cast its ballots. It felt distinctly odd that everyone seemed to be discussing the results before we had even voted. It did not work, but we did it and we learned from it and that is the important point that my noble friend made. That is why pilots matter—they allow us to test assumptions against reality. We should be more eager to try them, rather than finding lots of reasons to stick with the status quo.
On Amendment 124 from the noble Lord, Lord Jackson, I absolutely understand the attraction of overnight counts. Those of us who have stood for election know the adrenaline rush and, indeed, have felt the frustration of going to bed without knowing the result and probably not sleeping. I have certainly felt that myself. For us, the whole count experience is a buzz and an important occasion, which definitely feels diluted the next day. But we should be honest: the main beneficiaries of immediate counts are not the voters, who are all tucked up in bed; they are the campaigners, candidates and commentators. The people who have to make it happen are our election officers, council staff and many casual workers, many of whom have already worked a very long day, especially since the hours have been extended. We have had counts going on well into the night—more so when we have not had enough people, meaning fewer people have had to count more votes, which makes it quite challenging.
There was a period when we had this argument every single year, until we came to an understanding of what worked for us. That is what my argument is leading to. Different councils face different staffing, logistical and financial pressures. Even the geographical location of where they are counting can be an impediment to counting at 3 am. On what we need to do about this, our instincts are to trust EROs and local returning officers, who often discuss this with the party-political agents—as they should—to make the right decision for their own circumstances. That can vary from year to year and election to election.
There can be compromises. We have verified on the night and counted the next day. A good counting agent can tell a lot from the verification, even if it is done face down. In short, our view is that it is not an issue for central diktat.
I have sympathy with Amendments 129 and 136. I am disappointed that the noble Lord, Lord Walney, is not in his place—I am sure there is a good reason—because I would have liked to have heard his views, as he has worked on this. The concerns raised by the noble Lord, Lord Jackson, are not theoretical. I have seen occasions outside polling stations where behaviour has crossed the line from legitimate campaigning to outright intimidation and aggression. I have seen it very often against women. Sometimes it has required police involvement. That is wrong, whoever is responsible. What may appear to some as merely political disagreement can in reality be an attempt to influence voters through pressure and coercion.
As a liberal, what concerns me most of all is any assumption that people should vote in a particular way just because they belong to a particular family, faith, community or ethnic group. Democracy does not work like that. The ballot paper belongs to an individual voter, and the choice belongs to that individual voter. No faith, family, community leader or political party owns that vote. This is not about any one religion or community. Pressure can arise in many different settings. We have seen recent examples of this around the world—organised efforts by religious leaders to influence voting behaviour. The principle is the same wherever it occurs.
The concern underlying these amendments is a legitimate one. Every voter, regardless of background, belief or circumstance, should be able to enter that little polling station and go into that booth with the stubby pencil the Minister referred to and know that the decision they make is theirs alone. That is a principle worth defending.
Lord Wilson of Sedgefield (Lab)
This seems a convenient time to pause proceedings for the day. I therefore beg to move that the debate on this amendment be adjourned.