Representation of the People Bill

Lord Fuller Excerpts

Committee stage
Wednesday 4th November 2026 Lords Chamber

Moved by

[Lord Fuller]

18: Clause 15, page 21, line 15, at end insert—
“(2A) A local authority in England, Wales or Scotland must ensure that information given to relevant young people relating to registering to vote in an election is neutral or politically balanced and not designed to favour one outcome or party over another.”Member's explanatory statement
This amendment is intended to ensure that all sides of the argument are presented to relevant young people under clause 15 regardless of the local authority's political control.

[Lord Fuller (Con)]

My Lords, I have Amendments 18 and 19 in this short group. Both are related to the way in which looked-after children are encouraged to register to vote and the information that has been provided to them to inform that choice, and they would ensure that party politics can play no part in that decision if there is automatic registration, so that one political outcome was not unduly influenced over the other. Both my amendments relate to the entirety of the United Kingdom, with Amendment 18 referring to Great Britain and Amendment 19 the mirroring provision for Northern Ireland. It is the local state in Great Britain—the councils and their agents—that has responsibility as corporate parents for looked-after children, the “relevant young people” referred to in these amendments. In some cases, that corporate parenting responsibility lasts all the way up to the age of 24.

There are some things that should be apolitical, but it is an inescapable truth that councils are political organisations. While this amendment does not suggest that councils behave politically in every decision they take, given the importance of this Bill to the underpinning of democracy in the United Kingdom, the amendments take a belt-and-braces approach to being explicit that, in encouraging young people to come on to the register, that choice cannot, or should not, be tainted or otherwise influenced by party-political considerations. We must remove the temptation for anyone to improperly influence the register by tilting the balance so that only some cohorts are registered but not others.

Nothing in this group is meant to imply that councils are seeking to act improperly. We have to recognise that councils now engage with certain external organisations, such as private care homes, privately run caring establishments or even charitable bodies, to deliver their caring and corporate parenting responsibilities. They may be within the council’s own territory or in another part of the country. Together, my amendments would ensure that the duty of neutrality would be extended to not only the local authorities or health boards but those in that wider care ecosystem that benefits children and is paid for by local government wherever they are. Those organisations, councils or care homes, are in an extraordinarily influential position in the care of relevant young people. They provide food and accommodation, are responsible for health and welfare and all the other issues of day-to-day life.

By definition, without the guiding hand of their natural parents, these children are more socially vulnerable and susceptible to undue influence. These amendments therefore provide an additional level of certainty and assurance to ensure that such vulnerabilities are not taken advantage of politically by the council, through its policies, or more subtly by the political predispositions of individual care workers, wardens or other members of the professional staff on the front line, as well as by that ecosystem of contractors and charities. It is as simple as that. I beg to move.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)]

My Lords, in speaking to my Amendment 18, I will also touch on issues raised in the similar amendments, Amendment 43 tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Lister, and Amendment 44 tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett of Manor Castle.

We are very much concerned that the reduction of the age limit to 16 has to be accompanied by a real effort at proper civic education. As a Liberal, I would say there should be a much greater effort at civic education anyway. The extent to which our young are not taught about British values and the rights and obligations of British citizenship is profoundly worrying and needs to be overcome.

Others will speak about some of the surveys that have been done on the thinness of civic education in schools. I went around three schools in the spring, one in Yorkshire and two in London, just to see from a very unrepresentative sample what they were doing, and was shocked, even in the public school I attended—one of Britain’s best public schools—at how little time was spent on this. I was given the lesson plan by the head of PSHE at one school for all the things she had to teach in one hour a week each year, including sexual behaviour, financial education, disease, and heaven knows what else, and of course, with political education fitting into that. All the teachers I spoke to said, “This is simply not possible to achieve; we need to have more time”. That is part of the message we want the Minister to give us some answers on: that the current curriculum review recognises this and that it will be expanded.

For Liberals and for people who believe in liberal democracy, the teaching of citizenship is a fundamental part of teaching people how to take their part in a democratic society. I am well aware that there have been many, particularly in the Conservative ranks, who are doubtful about the possibilities of teaching people political education, particularly in state schools. As a historian, I have read a number of debates from the early 19th century in which Conservative Peers doubted that education as such should be provided to the working class, because it would give them ideas above their station. Education is, of course, subversive. It teaches people how to question the conventional wisdom and how to think for themselves. That is part of what we should be doing.

In the United States, we have seen recently an even more fundamental attack on liberal education in the Trump Administration’s attack on American universities as unavoidably left-wing and liberal institutions, because they are concerned about evidence, doubt, argument and a number of things that the Trump Administration appear not to like. I hope none of us here share such a view.

As we see in some amendments in this group and later, there has been some concern about the possibility of neutrality. I declare an interest as someone who spent much of my career teaching politics and international politics in various universities. Of course, we all come with our biases, but we try to teach people how to think for themselves. At the London School of Economics, I had a number of Hong Kong and Singaporean students. The hardest job I had with them was to persuade them that they were supposed to disagree with their teacher. I see the noble Baroness, Lady Royall, nodding in agreement.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Leigh of Hurley (Con)]

My Lords, it is always a pleasure to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Fox, in the debate on this Bill. I will speak to two amendments. On Amendment 24, I congratulate my noble friends Lord Farmer and Lady Meyer, who know a huge amount in this field and are experts in this area. I am very grateful to them for their contributions and their amendments today.

The area I want to focus on is peer pressure. The noble Baroness, Lady Royall, is right; we did discuss this two days ago. But this is a slightly different perspective. When I raised the issue of peer pressure last time, the Minister responded by saying that the Government do not go into cognitive development and do not wish to, which I accept. But this is a different issue; this is about peer pressure.

Last time, again, the noble Baroness, Lady Royall, challenged me on the scientific evidence I cited, and my noble friend Lady O’Neill gave an answer, which was independently confirmed by my noble friend Lady Meyer. The expert in this field, Professor Laurence Steinberg of Temple University, has written extensively, both on his own and with others, about peer pressure and the inability of children to resist it. It gets better for children as they reach the age of 18 and beyond. That raises important questions. I say this in a co-operative spirit: the Government need to recognise that there is a potential problem of peer pressure for voters aged 16 and take steps to ensure that children are able to make decisions without that peer pressure.

The noble Lord, Lord Wallace of Saltaire, after he had gone into the internal machinations of the Conservative Party, which is one of his favourite subjects, made the very good point that it is vital that voters make independent decisions based on their own experiences and determination. My fear is that there will be gangs and influencers, and in certain communities extensive family pressure on people to cast their vote a certain way. The earlier response from the Front Bench—that there is always peer pressure—is fair, but we are saying that there is evidence that 16 to 18 year-olds are more susceptible to peer pressure than people over the age of 18. What steps will the Government take to ensure that they are protected?

[Lord Fuller (Con)]

My noble friend has just mentioned people who are aged 16 to 18 and can vote, but the Bill throughout assumes that people aged 14 or above, as attainers, are going to prepare to vote. I wonder whether my noble friend might think a little bit about not just people who have reached 16 but also those who are under 16 and even more susceptible to peer pressure?

[Lord Leigh of Hurley (Con)]

I could not agree more. I did not want to go down that route, because the counter argument would be, “We are only giving the vote to 16 year-olds”. But who knows? In future, it might be 14 year-olds. My noble friend Lord Fuller is absolutely spot on.

In the absence of my noble friend Lady Berridge, I want to address Amendment 44A. I am very worried about this. I have done a lot of canvassing. I have canvassed in every election since 1979—all for the same party I hasten to add—and not always with much success. Nevertheless, I have been out there regularly in a multitude of constituencies. Regularly, particularly in my own constituency of Queen’s Park and Maida Vale, which was previously Westminster North, I have found myself canvassing people who literally speak no English. When I knock on the door and try to communicate with them, they immediately pick up the phone and speak to their spouse or someone—I do not know who—and ask for instructions on what to say.

That is one issue, but the particular issue in Amendment 44A is about protecting children. Again, as a canvasser—I am sure that all noble Lords have done their share of canvassing—in the past, when the door is answered by a 16 year-old, one has simply said, “Can I speak to your parents?” Now, we will have to engage with 16 year-olds, which presents some challenges.

I am not particularly comfortable with the idea of having to knock on the door and engage in conversation with a 16 year-old to try to persuade them to vote for my party. I just do not want to be in that position. I am comfortable with an 18 year-old; I am not comfortable with doing that with a 16 year-old. Indeed, the Government recognise that 16 year-olds have to be protected. If I want to interact with 16 year-olds at the various schools with which I am involved, I have to be cleared to do that. I cannot just rock up at the classroom without having various checks, but as a canvasser, I can knock on the door and engage with a 16 year-old without any checks. I am not worried about me, but I am worried about other people.

Let us take this to not an absurd but a logical conclusion. What is to stop predators identifying children now on the electoral roll and going to see them, supposedly to canvass them but actually with other purposes in mind? I am very worried about this. They can justify to the authorities that they are entering into a dialogue with a 16 year-old because, they will claim, they are out canvassing, but they have an ulterior motive. I want to know from the Government what protection they plan to give in those circumstances.

It gets a lot worse if we are saying that 14 and 15 year-olds need to be educated. What happens if someone says, perhaps with some credibility, “I want to go and talk to 14 and 15 year-olds because they need to be persuaded to vote for my party”? Heaven knows what is going to happen on the doorstep. When I go canvassing, I am regularly invited in to discuss the subject over a glass of wine, a cup of tea or whatever. I always refuse because that is the guidance, but that does not mean that other people will. We are giving people the opportunity to enter vulnerable people’s homes and, if children are on their own at home, to have a discussion with them, supposedly about political matters—but who knows?

I do not have the answer to this problem, but I can see that it is a real problem, and I would be grateful if the Minister could address it now or later.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Fuller (Con)]

My Lords, it has been an interesting debate, and I of course entirely support the comments from the Front Bench, that we understand that votes at 16 is a manifesto commitment. But what this last hour and 20 minutes has shown is how much the consequences of that manifesto commitment are going to mean for the safeguarding of children, the impacts on education and for people who have not really had to participate in economic society before. These are unintended consequences and we are going to have to iron them out, not just for the 16 year-olds but for those attainers from 14.

For all the warm words about strengthening democracy and improving transparency, which are littered throughout the impact statement, when it comes to amendments that would give effect to those noble causes, what I think I heard the Minister say was that they are prepared to leave it to chance: we are not going to cast aspersions, but we are going to address these issues—

[Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)]

If the noble Lord would kindly give way for a moment, I did not say we are leaving it to chance. I said that we welcome the Speaker’s Conference recommendation to establish codes of conduct on this subject, and we have committed to work with the Speaker, the Electoral Commission and political parties to support the development of a code which is fit for purpose.

[Lord Fuller (Con)]

I thank the Minister, and I accept those words entirely, but earlier on in the wind-up, when referring to the noble Baroness, Lady Fox of Buckley, the suggestion was made that we were casting aspersions on teachers and social workers, and that the Government would address those as they came along. I just do not think that is right. The Bill should be explicit about neutrality, particularly for schools and for looked-after children’s environments, so there is no risk. We must remove the temptation for those in positions of authority over some of the most vulnerable people without supportive natural parents to do it. If it is not a problem because there is no prejudice, then there is no problem in introducing it into the Bill.

I was very taken with the other comments about—

[Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)]

I am sorry to intervene on the noble Lord again—I do not like to do this—but I made it clear that schools are already subject to clear legal duties on political impartiality, and I gave the details of that.

[Lord Fuller (Con)]

That is covered in group 6, which we will return to later.

I was taken with the point made by the noble Baroness, Lady Fox, about schools. This has really been a debate not so much about schools but about young people more generally. I associate myself with the comments of the noble Lord, Lord Wallace, about the practical preparation, and the watchword of this part of the Bill, the protection of minors.

This may be something we return to on Report, and we need to catch up time, so I will beg leave to withdraw my Amendment 18. But we really need to think about some of these practical consequences before we get to Report, and I hope the Minister will meet with me and others in furtherance of that objective.

Amendment 18 withdrawn.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Pinnock (LD)]

My Lords, Amendment 37 in my name seeks to consider the consequences of the two major changes proposed in the Bill on the size of constituency and council ward electorates, which could be significant. Improvements to voter registration are designed to make the electoral roll more complete. In some areas of the country, the difference between the number of people registered for health services and the number on the electoral register is stark. For instance, the Electoral Commission estimates that only 70% of 18 to 34 year-olds are registered. For those in private rented accommodation, the figure is as low as 66%, and for those who are in homes at social rent, it is 80%—so the electoral register is skewed against the young and those in rented accommodation. That discrimination obviously has an impact on election results, but also on the size of constituencies and then constituent council wards.

The other major change proposed in the Bill is the addition of 16 and 17 year-olds to the register. The House of Commons Library has a very helpful breakdown of people in each age group in every constituency. Adding 16 and 17 year-olds to the register has a disproportionate effect on constituency electorates and hence ward electorates. For example, Birmingham Ladywood has 5,070 16 and 17 year-olds, while Bradford West has 4,236. Both constituencies will then have more than 81,000 electors. The upper limit at the last boundary review was 77,000, so they will easily break the 5% tolerance criterion that was applied at that stage.

The additions then impact on ward electorates. In my council of Kirklees in west Yorkshire, based on the data, there will instantly be an additional 10,000 electors in the 16 to 17 year-old age group. On average, this will add 450 voters to each ward. However, in the Dewsbury part of the borough, there will be 600 additional electors per ward. Kirklees wards are already expected to have 15,000 electors. Some wards will then have nearly 16,000—and this is before attempts to improve registration have been included.

Unlike parliamentary constituencies, wards across the country are not required to have a roughly equal electorate. In many unitary authorities, there are fewer than 3,000 electors per councillor, whereas in others, such as my own, there are more than 5,000. This inequality of representation needs to be discussed. Is it fair on citizens that some are more equal than others?

Hence my Amendment 37, which requires the Secretary of State to lay a report before Parliament within six months to review what effect extending the franchise will have on the size of constituency and ward electorates. Will the Minister, who is not in her place, provide the estimated increase in electors for each constituency—it is possible to do it, given the figures in the House of Commons Library, certainly for 16 and 17-year-olds—and say whether that inequality is acceptable in a democracy? Will she also consider whether the wide disparity between ward electorates contributes to the equal access to democracy which this country is pledged to provide?

[Lord Fuller (Con)]

My Lords, I am very taken with the points just made by the noble Baroness, Lady Pinnock, about the distorting effects on existing boundaries from extending the franchise to 16 and 17 year-olds, but I think she could have gone further. The way in which automatic registration, which is also part of this group, takes into account the universities will have a further distorting effect, particularly on urban constituencies, in another insult to the country mass. This Government are always focused on the imbalance in the cities, but this particular case puts the rural areas at a disadvantage because, if a student from out of town is registered at home but is automatically registered at university, that person has two votes, which will disproportionately affect the concentrated urban situations.

I am sure the Minister, when she returns to her place, will dismiss the point made by the noble Baroness, Lady Pinnock, as wholly unnecessary and say this is nothing to be worried about, but I would like to give a lesson from history. The noble Baroness, who is returning to the Chamber, and I participated on some of those Covid calls during the pandemic in 2020, and there was a rush from the city to the countryside. People who lived in London, for example—but other cities are available—chased to north Norfolk in particular.

I see my noble friend Lord Prior on the Bench in front of me; he was a Member of Parliament for North Norfolk in a previous life. These people were not registered with the NHS and were not registered to vote, yet they consumed all the services in North Norfolk. My concern is that automatic registration will not reflect the reality. It is not just distorting the boundaries, important though that is, and the electoral numbers. The degree of automatic registration could distort the access to services that just do not keep up with these registers. So, I support the noble Baroness, Lady Pinnock. She has identified more unintended consequences from the double whammy of extending the franchise and automatic registration.

That leads me on to my Amendment 45 in this group, which is a probing amendment that asks how, with automatic registration, the electoral registration officer will know when a person is eligible to be registered, or just passing through, or has indefinite leave to remain, or is just a tourist. It seeks to say that, if you are not a British or Commonwealth citizen, you have to apply under individual electoral registration and demonstrate your eligibility, as you do at the moment. The duty is on these overseas electors to provide absolute proof of entitlement to vote, rather than pressurise the electoral registration officer to make guesses. The chances are that these people will not have national insurance numbers and will not be present on many UK databases.

How on earth is the ERO to know? How will he know to prevent a duplicate when a wife keeps her maiden name for professional purposes but has already registered for a married name? Just because there is a Mr Smith who pays the council tax, it does not mean that Mrs Smith is eligible if she happens to be a foreign-born spouse. I think the Committee can start to see quite a lot of different practical complications here.

I mentioned Mr and Mrs Smith, but there are some cultures where the husband and the wife have different surnames. I am thinking particularly of President Zelensky in Ukraine, whose wife is Mrs Zelenska. Neither of them is eligible to vote in our elections, but that is an example of the way in which foreign cultures have different mores to ours. Each ERO, if there is to be automatic registration, potentially of foreign subjects, will have to understand all these peculiarities. That is an unreasonable burden on the ERO.

My amendment is a small one, but it seeks to probe the burdens we place on the electoral registration officer to register people who have no legal or digital footprint in this country and who cannot be validated or authenticated. It would make it clear that if you are not a British, an EU or a Commonwealth citizen, and you are entitled to participate in our democracy, you must apply just as you do today. Let these people make their case with the appropriate documentation, so that the registration officer can scrutinise rather than make guesses. If the register is based on guesswork, it undermines the integrity of our democracy and, with it, trust in the democratic process and the institutions that flow from it.

[Lord Jackson of Peterborough (Con)]

My Lords, I do not really understand the amendment from the noble Baroness, Lady Pinnock, because she will know that local government boundaries are essentially informed as a result of physical or natural features and community links. Her amendment would have been more coherent if it had linked the delivery of key public services within an expanded ward which was the result of a greater registration of 16 and 17 year-olds, but I fail to see the point of producing a report saying, “There are going to be more people in this ward vis-à-vis other wards”.

If one is talking about the delivery of public services, that is a fair point to make. But equally, in places such as Christchurch, Worthing and Hove, you would also therefore talk about the delivery of services for older people, where there is a greater preponderance of them. Unless I am being particularly obtuse, I cannot see the point of the obligation she is seeking that the Government produce a report on the number of 16 and 17 year-olds, which numerically we will already know.

--- Later in debate ---

Moved by

[Lord Fuller]

34: After Clause 16, insert the following new Clause—
“Age-appropriate election informationThe Secretary of State or Electoral Commission must take steps to publish neutral and impartial information relating to the conduct of elections on social media channels, which is suitable for those who may be a “relevant child” under section 214A(2) of the Online Safety Act 2023 (power to require providers of internet services to prevent or restrict access by children to internet services), but who are registered to vote and may be under 16 years of age.”Member's explanatory statement
This amendment seeks to ensure that politically impartial information is published suitable for 15 year olds who are registered to vote and who will have never voted before.

[Lord Fuller (Con)]

My Lords, I am calming down. This group, in which most of the amendments are mine, is related to the third group but there is more detail this time. I am trying to put your Lordships’ House in the shoes of the 16 year-old casting their first vote on their birthday. Statistically, 1,917 16 year-olds are likely to be able to go down to the polling station and vote on their birthday, and I am thinking of them. This cohort will not have voted before. There is a serious need for neutral information about the mechanics of the election for those whom the Government want to vote for the first time.

My Amendment 34, which goes with the rub of the Bill, proposes that the Electoral Commission is given a special statutory duty to design media that appeals to the inexperienced cohort about how elections work, how you prove your identity, how not to invalidate the ballot paper by marking it with your initials—a mistake I once made as a youngster—and so forth. I spoke to the noble Baroness, Lady Benjamin, earlier; times have changed since we were young. We were brought up on “Play School”, “Blue Peter”, “Bagpuss”, “Crackerjack!”, and Kate Adie and Alastair Burnet reading the news. Nowadays, news is consumed in snippets on social media, phones and tablets—at home or on the go—and youngsters are not interested in what the BBC says any more, still less than the noble Baroness, Lady Fox. It is important that the information produced by the Electoral Commission is not just produced in an age-relevant manner but distributed appropriately, and that means online.

That brings me to the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Act 2026 and the amended Online Safety Act, which give the Secretary of State powers to restrict access to social media for those under 16. We understand the reasons, but sometimes legislation requires a trade-off to prevent a greater harm. The Act gives powers to segment that ban by age and material, so I am not proposing something revolutionary that would nullify Parliament’s decision. I want to use the powers in the Act to carve out an exception for people under 16 who are, importantly, registered to vote, allowing them access to election-related materials on social media in advance of an election. This would include those who will vote on their 16th birthday, who would otherwise have been excluded up to and including the day before.

How can these children be expected to form a view of whom to support at the ballot box if they cannot see in advance the full gamut of election materials through social channels, including practical information from the Electoral Commission about how the mechanics of the vote work? My probing amendment seeks to bring into focus the obvious dichotomy that, on the one hand, youngsters are mature enough to play their part in choosing the governance of our nation but, on the other, they are so immature that they need to be shielded from the messages on which that election depends. This is the consequence of the muddle that this Government have created in blurring the boundary between childhood and adulthood.

My amendment says that a social media ban that keeps youngsters away from the candidates, and more particularly from the Electoral Commission’s information, would be the greater harm, by undermining the democratic foundations of our nation. Technically, Section 214A of the Online Safety Act 2023, added by Section 70 of the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Act, would be amended—if you are registered to vote, you would be able to join the social media revolution. The Government say that they want to improve young people’s engagement in democracy; I cannot think of a stronger recruiting sergeant for democratic involvement than incentivising youngsters who are preparing to vote by giving them access to the socials. That is why I suggested in group 3 on Monday that the age of voter registration should be set at 15, not 14, partly because 15 would be an appropriate age as those who had registered could access social media. I am sure that we will return to this on Report.

However, there is another second-order consequence of my proposal. We currently have no definitive method to authenticate somebody under 16 proving their age for the purposes of the Online Safety Act. Ofcom is getting in a right muddle, trying to think of four different ways by which youngsters can prove their age. If they were registered to vote, they would be on the database and that would be enough, so there are some other areas in which this would enable internet service providers to fulfil an identity and age check. At a stroke, it would lift a weight from parents, who are subject to intolerable peer pressure from their children and their friends to let them have a social account when we know that, if they are too young, it is just not in their best interests. Amendment 39 would strengthen the hand of parents and the current system of age verification.

Amendments 35 to 37 cover the schools angle, which was covered in group 3 earlier today. At Second Reading, I warned that the Bill brings party politics into schools. I am not talking about the pedagogy of politics but of political partisanship. The Bill puts teachers in a difficult position. It drives wedges between pupils and invites parents to complain that their own political prejudices have not been adequately reinforced. It is our job to set the statutory ground rules for how electoral politics is treated in our schools. I heard the Minister earlier, but we need to show teachers, pupils and parents that we will not permit a Wild West that disrupts classrooms and increases tension. We need to strengthen their hand and resist providing a conduit for party activists.

My amendments do not suggest that schools should not discuss the election at all. After all, the young people will not have voted before, and teachers will have a role in explaining the process. However, that does not mean that schools should be a dumping ground for all manner of party leaflets. Otherwise, schools will become a magnet for activists, who will conclude that they can reach hundreds of voters at once—which is a damn sight easier than knocking on hundreds of doors.

My amendments are not just about party activists; I am also interested in protecting children from the undue influence of a teacher’s personal political predispositions. My Amendment 35, on the duty to be impartial, is intended to strengthen teachers’ ability to insulate themselves from outside influence and ensure that learners aged 14 to 18 can make neutral, informed decisions about their vote. My Amendment 36 prohibits the display of election materials in educational establishments outside the structured classroom environment, which must be scrupulously impartial. Amendment 38 seeks to ensure that hustings held in schools are politically balanced and that all candidates are given reasonable notice and the opportunity to attend, although whether they actually turn up will be up to them.

This is an important group. The other place failed to consider the practicality and second-order consequences of extending the franchise to those who are so young that they are still at school. We must stop turning schools into political battlegrounds, sowing division and reinforcing sectarianism. This happens in some areas with campaigning in Urdu, which places teachers and schools in an invidious position. Just as importantly, this group will allow those who are mature enough to vote to look at the socials, provided that they have exercised the privilege of registering to vote in the first place. I beg to move.

[Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, Amendments 34, 35, 36, 38 and 39 in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Fuller, do us a favour in that they force us to consider the second-order consequences of a very big constitutional change. Regardless of one’s views on votes for 16 or 17 year-olds, it is a hugely important shift in the franchise and we should take seriously what it means for how society and politics operate. I therefore found just thinking through these issues very important.

I want to raise something I have been wondering about, which is not quite reflected in this but comes from it, which is a nervousness about electoral or party politics coming into the classroom. Will there be a different atmosphere among teachers who are actively engaged in politics—and we want them to be; that is what you want citizens to be like—when instead of just educating pupils, they might want to win their votes and not just win their hearts and minds to ideas?

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Fuller (Con)]

My Lords, this debate has not quite gone in the direction I anticipated. My noble friend Lord Pickles, who was Secretary of State when I was a council leader many years ago, once addressed a meeting of the Conservative local government group, and he said: “If you don’t trust the folks, don’t go into politics”. True words.

Politics is about cherishing and promoting the freedom of expression and freedom to explore, which is the bedrock of democracy. The Government are getting themselves in a muddle here. They cannot say on the one hand that these youngsters—I am thinking particularly of attainers aged 15 and above—are mature enough to vote or prepare to vote on their 16th birthday and make their own decisions but then, in the same breath, say that they are so immature that they need to be protected from socials.

Where this debate has gone in an unexpected manner is that we have now started to think about what information these youngsters will be permitted to see—and I am concerned about indoctrination, groupthink and censorship. Only state-approved media will be permitted for these rising attainers. We have to have a process whereby these attainers have access to social media, which in turn will do more for the promotion of registration to vote than any electoral registration officer or automatic registration. Rising attainers need to have access to make up their own minds—otherwise, they could be forced underground, and I think that is really dangerous.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Hayward (Con)]

My Lords, this amendment is essentially about the operation of the impact assessment and the way in which it looks at costs in general. I have chosen one particular example, but I will come back with more detail about one or two other elements of the impact assessment overall.

Before I do so, I make a broad observation that I am interested in the inclusion of Clauses 15 and 16, which put in an obligation to educate in relation to 16 and 17 year-olds. When we pass legislation in relation to obligations imposed on teachers, doctors or large numbers of other groups, there are no similar clauses in legislation. I do not know whether it is going to be a new development that each time we pass a Bill, we finish up introducing a clause that says there must be an education of farmers, seagoers or whatever it may happen to be. I call into question whether these two clauses should actually be in the Bill.

My other observation is in relation to impact assessments in general. They started several decades ago. The original intention of impact assessments, as I understand it—I have looked back—was to look at the burdens imposed on particular groups. That was all they were intended to do. I say that as somebody who was for a period the chief executive of the British Beer & Pub Association and had to deal with the changes associated with the Licensing Act. Impact assessments nowadays seem not only a question of an assessment of costs and burdens but—and I say this in particular in relation to this impact assessment—a justification of every decision that has been taken. It is quite striking: you read paragraphs that explain why the Government have taken a decision in relation to whatever it may happen to be. That certainly was never the aim of the impact assessment.

Coming on to my major concern, I pray in aid the impact assessment that went with the Football Governance Bill. Only a few weeks ago, it was identified as being out by over 100%, in 12 months. I have gone through this impact assessment and find myself in exactly the same quandary. I do not understand how many of the figures have been arrived at. I therefore ask the Minister: did the same people who drew up the impact assessment for the that Bill draw up this impact assessment, or others who have operated to the same broad rules? There are explanations of the principles that they have followed—I have read every single line of the impact assessment—but if they are following the same rules that resulted in another impact assessment being out by over 100% in 12 months, the Treasury will have quite a surprise when it discovers the actual costs of this Bill.

The chart with the assessment of costs that I want to refer to is on page 62. It relates to the costs associated with the introduction of votes for 16 and 17 year-olds. We heard from my noble friend Lord Fuller on Monday about the information that he had received on the costs for local authorities in registering new voters. The other side of the costs, which we have heard about persistently today, is the obligation to educate. The noble Baronesses, Lady Royall and Lady Lister, the noble Lords, Lord Pack, Lord Rennard and Lord Wallace, and any number of other noble Lords have said that there needs to be much greater levels of education for this group—and there does. It is about ensuring that they are not just registered but fully aware, as has been identified on any number of occasions, of the issues on which they are ultimately being asked to vote.

I will quote one or two parts of the impact assessment. In relation to staffing costs, paragraph 122 of page 55 says:

“Extra staff may be needed to deal with the additional demand in some LAs”.


Which local authorities are not going to have the extra demand? I am talking here about both registration and education. Paragraph 160 on page 61 says:

“Wider staffing costs associated with the Votes at 16 policy have been excluded, in line with the treatment of MHCLG departmental staffing costs in this impact assessment”.


Paragraph 174 identifies a particular issue and then says:

“Therefore, this cost is not monetised”.


I do not have the IT capacity to go through the whole document and find out how many times it says that a cost is “not monetised”, but I do not have to look much further than paragraph 174; I just have to go to paragraph 178, where the phrase is used again:

“these contributions are not considered significant in cost terms and have therefore not been monetised”.

What are these costs in paragraph 174 that have not being monetised? It says:

“There is an additional resource implication arising from the collaborative development of this policy, with staff time from other government departments, principally DfE”—


which comes as no surprise, given the debates we have had—

contributing meaningfully to its design … There is also a potential impact on education staff”.

That means education staff in every single local authority across the country. Therefore, how on earth does one come back to “may” have implications for some local authorities?

There are many other examples that I could quote, but, in conclusion, I come to paragraph 166 on page 59 of the impact assessment. The Electoral Commission was asked to submit its assessment of its costs, and there is no question that it has very substantial costs. In the central scenario, these are given as £39.8 million. You might think that the Electoral Commission has certain work, but think of all these local authorities, government departments and registration officers. If the Electoral Commission has £39.8 million of extra costs, what have all the other government departments and local authorities got? The figure is given as a mere £48 million. It is almost the same as it is for the Electoral Commission. I was going to use a word that I would normally hear more on a rugby pitch than in the Chamber, but all I will say is that this impact assessment, in so many ways, is not credible. I beg to move.

[Lord Fuller (Con)]

My Lords, I have not spent as much time as my noble friend Lord Hayward going line by line through the impact assessment, but I have spent some time with text search trying to find the paragraphs that relate to the issues that have concerned me most as we have debated the Bill thus far. They are the attainers and the 16 to 18 year-olds. Because so much of it says “non-monetised”, I have made my own inquiries of one the more senior electoral registration officers in the country, who also happens to be a police area returning office, or PARO.

We have heard in the debate hitherto how many assumptions are made about what the powers may be by extending the franchise and also from auto-enrolment. There is going to be so much more hand work and so many more duplicate entries created automatically. There will be a need to de-duplicate the duplicates that have been created, for the best of reasons: that is just where the legislation is. There are so many moving parts.

I did not realise that the noble Lord was going to mention the figure of £48 million, but I want to dwell on the provisions for registering the attainers alone: those aged between 14 and 16 who the Bill proposes will come on to the register but who do not have a national insurance card or a gas bill, because their parents do that bit. They do not have a driving licence and may not have a passport. In effect they do not really exist to the state.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Hayward (Con)]

I did not make reference to the question of automatic registration, but since my noble friend has encouraged me to do so, on page 101, improving registration is given as costing £5.2 million.

[Lord Fuller (Con)]

I think that would be characterised as the downpayment, but there we are.

So much is to be done by secondary legislation. I am not going to trespass too greatly on a future group, but when it comes to identification and bank cards, there are all sorts of unintended consequences. There are going to have to be huge changes in bank card systems if they are to be fit for purpose.

The noble Baroness, Lady Pinnock, who is not in her place, posited earlier that automatic registration and the duplicates may lead to more frequent boundary reviews. One thing is absolutely for sure: given the way the legislation is today, we are going to need duplicate and parallel IT systems, which will have to be reconciled, and that is going to be expensive. My focus has been on the 1.4 million attainers, but there are a further 1.4 million 16 to 18 year-olds, many of whom will also not have the documentary evidence.

I know that democracy has a cost. We live in a free society, and that costs money. But what we have not worked out are the costs in this impact assessment. The figure the noble Lord has referred to is just a downpayment; it is a drop in the ocean. Chances are, it is probably four times greater than that, and we should be told.

[Captain of the Honourable Corps of Gentlemen-at-Arms and Chief Whip (Lord Kennedy of Southwark) (Lab Co-op)]

Front Bench.

Representation of the People Bill

Lord Fuller Excerpts

Committee stage
Wednesday 4th November 2026 Lords Chamber

[Lord in Waiting/Government Whip (Lord Wilson of Sedgefield) (Lab)]

My Lords, before we continue to debate Amendment 10, I remind the House that this is an adjourned debate. Therefore, unless Members were present at the start of the group, they are are not able to contribute. The Clerk at the Table has a full list of those who were present.

[Lord Fuller (Con)]

My Lords, I was here on Monday evening at the point of adjournment, and not only am I in my place but I am next to the noble Lord, Lord Rennard, who was in the same place as well. Things move on.

On nearly every amendment to this Bill, and in other parts of the work of your Lordships’ House, I support my noble friend Lord Jackson of Peterborough, but, regrettably, I cannot support his Amendment 124, which would require by law that election counts be started overnight following the polls closing. It is important to explain why.

Running an election is a complicated task for election staff. You have to recruit presiding officers, polling inspectors and count staff, and handle all matter of other ancillary tasks, such as fetching and carrying the ballot papers. I know that this happens at a general election, and it is important that we maintain the requirement for overnight counting in those contests, but we have to recognise that local government works over a much larger geographical canvas. It often encompasses multiple constituencies. There are many more electors in the race. We have multi-member wards. We have funny business when it comes to alternative and supplementary votes for some contests. More people and different and more complicated systems add complexity and time.

Local elections are different to the national elections, where, simply, the person with the most votes wins. Let us not forget that, unlike a parliamentary vote, where there is just one election to count, local elections may have many wards interspersed with town council by-elections, so the number of contests is not just greater; it is an order of magnitude larger.

Attracting presiding officers and count staff, who have historically come from our high street banks—tellers and other high street financial workers—is harder. In the age of tap and pay, we just do not have tellers who are used to handling banknotes any more, so we have ended up with a diminished pool of talent to operate the election. The facts of life are that, oftentimes, we rely on presiding officers, who have done a stretch from 7 am until 10 pm, to turn up again the following day to do the count. If we want to have confidence in our democracy, we cannot have people working for 24 hours non-stop in the most delicate and mentally taxing work, which requires huge concentration not just for validation but for the count, banding, bundling and tallying. Local elections have many more types of parties and candidates and therefore a higher propensity for recounts, where many contests are decided by just a handful of votes or even a coin toss.

As I warm to my theme, this short debate gives us the opportunity to remind the Prime Minister that if he is minded to change the current parliamentary voting system, any changes are likely to prejudice the ability for overnight counts if greater complexity is introduced. The voters rejected electoral change in a referendum in 2011, but he does not seem to be listening. The consequences of change are likely to be that the ability to count overnight is diminished or, at the very least, the announcement of the results and the clarity the electorate deserve will be delayed. I do not believe that has been taken into account in any other forum; here is my opportunity to mention it.

To return to the amendment, this is detailed work. It needs staff who are as bright as a button and on the ball to do these local elections, which are more complicated, take more time and provide more opportunities to go wrong than parliamentary contests, where there are often just two or three main candidates slugging it out and the majorities are weighed in handfuls of thousands, not handfuls of votes. For these reasons, I cannot support my noble friend in his endeavour, attractive though it may be. It is better to take your time and get it right than rush and live with the consequences.

[Lord Jackson of Peterborough (Con)]

Does my noble friend at least concede that this is not a prescriptive amendment but rather a probing amendment? Clause 4 allows electoral returning officers to disregard the obligation in emergencies or specific circumstances. It is not a draconian amendment forcing every ERO to do the same.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord McCobb (LD)]

My Lords, I will add to the comments of the noble Lords, Lord Fuller and Lord Hayward, some of the practical implications of Amendment 124. I make it clear that, like many people here today, I love an overnight count as much as anyone else. I have been to more than I can remember—including, ironically as it happens, the count at which the noble Lord, Lord Wilson of Sedgefield, was elected as a Member of Parliament in 2007.

Like everybody else, I understand that election nights are special, and I understand the desire to preserve the excitement that comes with overnight counts, as well as, for the broader public, a quick understanding of the implication of local election results for the country as a whole and what they mean for the Government of the day. However, this amendment would not deliver that in practice. It requires only that verification begins on polling night, not that a single vote is counted or a result declared. What it would do is remove a returning officer’s ability to plan a count properly on those nights where, in practice, that judgment matters most.

Let me take an extreme, but real, example. On 6 May 2021, voters in the village of Waterbeach in Cambridgeshire went to the polls, to be handed five ballot papers. They voted for their county councillor, a district councillor in a by-election, a parish councillor in a by-election, the combined authority mayor, and the police and crime commissioner. The law as it stands allows the returning officer to have ballot papers cast into either separate ballot boxes or into the same one for elections happening at the same time. Suppose the returning officer had, as they are permitted to do, provided a separate ballot box for each election. If this amendment were implemented, three of those five elections would, by law, have to have begun the verification in the two hours between the close of poll and midnight, and the other two would not.

However, it is not uncommon for voters to put ballot papers into the wrong ballot box, so in order to carry out the task in this complex scenario and make sure that, for example, a parish council ballot paper sitting in the police and crime commissioner ballot box was found and properly included in the count, in effect, all five ballot boxes would have to have been opened before midnight for those counts to be completed in parallel. Today, a returning officer can use one trained team to verify each election in turn, whereas this amendment would force all five verifications to happen in parallel at the same time before midnight. That would mean more staff, more tables and more supervisors for already pressed local authorities trying to run elections effectively. That would be simply impractical.

The exemption that the noble Lord referred to does not help either because it covers emergencies and safety risks but does not cover the ordinary, foreseeable complexity of running multiple elections on the same day using parallel or shared ballot boxes. While the Waterbeach example is an extreme example of what might happen, it is a real one that happened in practice. Returning officers are already accountable for how they run their counts and, ultimately, as one of the previous speakers said—

[Lord Fuller (Con)]

I would like to make a supportive comment. I used the Waterbeach example at Second Reading. Not only were there five different ballot papers, there were three different voting methods—first past the post, STV, and AV for the mayor and the PCC. That adds a further complexity to the point I think the noble Lord is trying to make.

[Lord McCobb (LD)]

I am grateful for that additional point. Returning officers are already accountable for how they run their counts, and, ultimately, accuracy matters more than speed. However much we love a traditional election night, we should not allow that desire to impose unworkable or unnecessarily restrictive practices on already stretched returning officers.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Shamash (Lab)]

My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow my noble friend Lord Hayward. I woke up this morning thinking that I would love to quote Martin Luther King—that I had a dream. I will give a tiny bit of history. The Representation of the People Act 1983 is the core legislation that everything has sprung from. It was 18 years from 1983 to the creation in 2001 of the Electoral Commission, in which I, and maybe others here, was involved. It is now 43 years since the 1983 Act came into being, and there have been repeated amendments and additions: the Electoral Administration Act, the Elections Act, and so on. We are getting to the point where, to move election law, you need a pick-up truck. It is completely crackers that we are in this situation.

The most important thing, as mentioned by my noble friend Lord Hayward, is consolidation. I have discussed the possibility of that with others, including my noble friend the Minister, and it is a major undertaking. But there is a new kid on the block, and that is AI. We must get to a situation where we can do this, because it is impossible to operate. I should have declared my interest as a former election lawyer to the Labour Party for many years. Having to deal with this legislation is very difficult, and you can miss things out very easily. My plea to the Minister is to take this idea away to the officials, so that my dream can actually come true and we can have a bit of consolidation in this Act.

[Lord Fuller (Con)]

My Lords, I support the comments made by my noble friend Lord Hayward and by the noble Lord, Lord Shamash. We have heard in the debate so far that we need a consolidation. The points made by the noble Lord, Lord Shamash, are very persuasive. Not only do we not have consolidation but the Bill contains all sorts of contradictory provisions and inconsistencies. I cannot wait to see what the government amendments will be—I am sure there will be several groups of them.

Representation of the People Bill

Lord Fuller Excerpts

Committee stage
Monday 2nd November 2026 Lords Chamber

[Lord Jackson of Peterborough (Con)]

My Lords, I am pleased to have the opportunity to support the amendments in the name of my noble friend Lord Udny-Lister. I have a significant concern about the Government’s proposal, notwithstanding that it was in the manifesto—a manifesto, incidentally, supported by about 20% of the electorate, with the lowest turnout since 2001 and Labour polling at 33.7%, so one line in one manifesto needs to be taken within a broader context.

My concern is that a really robust case has not been made with real-world evidence. We are looking back to the halcyon days of the past. If young people—16 and 17 year-olds—were so concerned about being part of the franchise, then their close approximation, 18 to 24 year-olds, would have voted in significant numbers at the 2024 election. In fact, the turnout in that age group dropped from 47% to just 37%, so it was not actually a great vote-getter.

If you listened to the noble Lord, Lord Murphy of Torfaen, for whom I have a great deal of respect, you would believe that Wales was a hotbed of psephological excitement and exuberance. But in fact that is not the case: this May, barely 51% voted for the national Parliament of the proud Principality of Wales, and as little as 42% voted in 2011. So there has not been a significant change in the number of people taking part in the ballot.

The comments of my noble friend Lord Bailey of Paddington were interesting. In 1950, 84% of people turned out to vote. But it was a different world then. People were encouraged, principally by their families and their social background—it was often a battle between capital and labour—as well as by public meetings, newspapers and the radio, although obviously not television. My noble friend made the vital point that young people are sometimes deeply influenced by a monoculture of social media. We can have many debates about that, but it would be wrong and completely irresponsible to ignore the context in which 15, 16 and 17 year-olds are making important decisions about how they vote.

In the past, the number one determinant for how a woman would vote was how her father voted. I am not saying I support that, but that was a societal psephological fact in those days. We are in a different world now, one where people do not read national newspapers or watch terrestrial television news programmes. They are very much interested in what other similarly aged people are saying on social media, and that will be a factor.

The main point is consistency, as my noble friend Lady Coffey brought up. Lowering the age while other adult thresholds stay at 18 is incoherent; it does not make sense. My noble friend Lord Leigh of Hurley made some very important points, and I would be interested in the Minister’s comments about how what is good for the constituency Labour parties and the Labour NEC should be good for the franchise for young people as well. My noble friend Lord Udny-Lister made an important point. It seems incongruous and odd that you can vote in an election but not for someone who is the same age as you. That seems very strange. If you are given the franchise—the responsibility of choosing someone to represent you in Parliament—surely you should be able to vote for someone who is your age.

As for international comparisons, we have already heard that, in mature liberal democracies such as the US, Canada, Australia and New Zealand, they all set the voting age at 18. This reflects a widely accepted understanding of what adulthood is.

There is weak evidence on benefits. I have already talked about turnout, which has traditionally been very low, for many years, among 18 to 24 year-olds. That is a function of a wider democratic malaise about the faith and trust that young people have in politics and government. I fear that, in the absence of a coherent argument from the Government for why they are bringing this forward—other than out of psephological and electoral self-interest, in that they believe that thousands of young people will turn out and vote Labour—I cannot understand the evidential basis for this policy.

Public opinion does not support it either. The House of Commons Library notes that polling suggests that the public are unsupportive of lowering the voting age to 16. It is not just old or very old people—given where I am speaking, I will not define “old” or “very old” here in your Lordships’ Chamber—but all manner of people from 18 onwards who are, at the very best, lukewarm and in some cases hostile to these proposals.

We have talked about undue influence and interference, and my noble friend talked about foreign interference via the internet. I do not think it is wrong to focus on the issue of maturity. I know that there is not accepted definitive science about the development of the human brain among young people. Obviously, colloquially and anecdotally, one is told that people are fully formed—physically, mentally, emotionally and socially—at the age of 25, but I understand and concede that that will happen to different young people at different ages. I joined a political party at the age of 16, which made me rather an old weirdo, frankly—the noble Lord, Lord Rennard, would probably say that nothing much has changed. The fact is that I was atypical. Most people are not politically engaged and they get their information on political policies second hand, through hearsay and through close family and friendship groups.

I make one final point about Scotland and Wales, which are, of course, an integral and important part of our country. The fact that they have decided to go their own way, in increasing the franchise to 16 year-olds, does not mean that England should back into that. This is the sovereign Parliament of our unitary state—our one country—the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. It is for us in this Parliament to make the decision. I do not believe that our Front Bench will oppose the principle of this, but it is beholden on the Government, and disappointing that they have not done so, to bring forward a much more comprehensive, convincing and coherent argument for these proposals.

[Lord Fuller (Con)]

My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Rennard, posed a question: do we want another referendum? Of course we do not, because, in 2011, there was a referendum where we asked the people whether they wanted to fiddle the franchise and mess around with the voting system, and the people said no by a very large majority. All noble Lords need to recognise that that is not the way we want to go.

I certainly agreed with the noble Lord, Lord Young of Acton, when he proposed his amendment about social media—something I will return to later, in group 9. I will not go under the bonnet now, save to say that I think he omitted, in thinking about 16 year-olds, to consider the attainers who will need to prepare to vote on their 16th birthday but may not be 16 yet.

I associate myself with the comments of the noble Baroness, Lady Hoey, and my noble friend Lord Jackson, who has just spoken, about the muddle that we are in within our United Kingdom relating to the vote and to the franchise. The Bill ought to be the opportunity to bring an end to the hotchpotch of different arrangements in different parts of our United Kingdom. At Second Reading I spoke about the different systems. Clearly, there is first past the post, where the person who gets the most votes wins—easily explainable in the pub, although obviously there are no 16 year-olds there. There is the alternative vote, which now is just used for the Scottish Crofting Commission elections. There is the supplementary vote, with open and closed lists. The noble Lord, Lord Foulkes, who is not in his place, entertained us at Second Reading when he explained to us how he got elected to Holyrood without standing in that election. Then there are thirds and all-outs. The franchise is also different: in Scotland, any resident, of whatever nationality, can vote, but you must be English, from the Commonwealth or from the EU for local elections here. And of course Peers cannot vote at all.

I was taken by the comments of the noble Baroness, Lady Hoey, who said that such arrangements risk the peace in our nation that flows from the Belfast agreement and the Windsor Framework. I am concerned that this is a slippery slope. The Prime Minister has already declared that he wants to review still further the voting system to consider proportional representation. We all need to be careful what we wish for, because PR will lead to more sectarianism, more minority voting and more campaigning in Urdu, where single-issue activists seek to hold the rest of us over a barrel, reducing trust in democracy and elections, and the institutions they serve.

I will consider Amendment 279, in the name of my noble friends on the Front Bench and the noble Lord, Lord Brady. Some months ago, I attended a Learn with the Lords session at the education service in Victoria Tower Gardens. I was surprised to be paired—I do not know why—with a load of gobby kids, each of them egging each other on, promoting and lionising the Tate brothers and, in my presence, voicing all sorts of unacceptable, misogynistic opinions about immigrants and women. It turned out that it was not Learn with the Lords but “learn from the kids”. I was really concerned.

This plays to the point of Amendment 279 and that which the noble Lord, Lord Hayward, has mentioned about where the boundary between childhood and adulthood is. I do not propose to go through another laundry list of the things you can do aged 16, although you can sell scrap metal to a dealer and you can get there on a moped—that would not be a big deal—or, in Scotland, get married without parental permission. I say to my noble friend Lady Coffey, who is in her place, that you may not be able to get a tattoo but you can certainly get a piercing. These are trivial examples, but it goes to the muddle we are in. When you are 18, you can fight on the front line, get a credit card, take out a loan, buy a pint and sit on a jury, as other noble Lords have said. You can make a will, buy land and property, hold a tenancy and rent an adult video—not that anyone rents videos of any sort nowadays. It illustrates the point that we must have the review contemplated by Amendment 279, to be fair not just to the adults in the room but—

[Baroness Royall of Blaisdon (Lab)]

My Lords, it is true that one can join the forces at 16, but one does not fight on the front line, as the noble Lord put it, until one is 18.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Fuller (Con)]

That is exactly the point I was making, and I gave a list of the things you can do at 18. Let us move on.

We need to have this review not just because we must be fair to children and adults but because we need to be clear where the boundary sits. It is not at all clear now; it is drip, drip, drip, which leads to confusion and insecurity.

My final point is that, when we consider votes at 16, we have to prepare people—the attainers—who are either 14 or 15, in a further blurring of the line between childhood and adulthood. As another noble friend said, I do not suppose that the Front Bench will oppose votes at 16, as it is a manifesto commitment, but we need to know what we are getting into before we get there.

--- Later in debate ---

Moved by

[Lord Fuller]

8: Clause 3, page 3, line 15, leave out “14” and insert “15”
Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment provides for registration at age 15, rather than 14, as registration at 15 gives sufficient notice for young people to register to participate in elections.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Fuller (Con)]

My Lords, it is a pleasure to lead this debate; I have the first two amendments in this group. Turning first to my Amendment 8, I think that registering to vote a year before the possibility of voting would give election officials sufficient time to draw up the register at the annual canvass. It is not as if many will be able to vote on their 16th birthday. By arithmetic, that excitement will be restricted to just 1,917 youngsters, who can then celebrate by going down to the scrapyard on a moped to sell some metal—two of the rites of passage that are permitted at that age, alongside piercing and opening a bank account without telling your mum. I do not agree with votes at 16. I will not repeat the reasoning here, but, if that is the proposal on the table, then registration at 15 seems to be quite sufficient. After all, we have an annual canvass for a reason.

If there is a theme to the Bill as it relates to young voters, it is that the Government have failed to integrate these attainers aged 14 and above into the existing registration system. The propensity for these attainers to move around is much greater than for the older population: they churn schools, colleges, jobs and apprenticeships, while some leave home for the first time. My Amendment 8 does not seek to fetter democracy or deny anybody access to the vote; it is aimed simply at reducing the administrative burden of collating the register, and it works along with the existing pattern of electoral registration and administration in this country.

That leads me to my Amendment 9, which looks at the mechanics of how a person under 16 can unambiguously be identified and authenticated by the electoral registration officer before they come on to the register as attainers. These youngsters may not have a passport, and they certainly will not have a credit card. Inevitably, they will not pay an electric or council tax bill, or any tax for that matter, to identify themselves—as you or I might. In the world as it is today, you register to vote by providing your national insurance number. Whether you use the centralised online form on GOV.UK or download a paper copy or form issued by the local council, you need to provide your national insurance number; if you do not, they want to know why. That is because there is a secure automatic authentication system that uniquely matches a person to a national insurance number across the HMRC, the DWP and other databases. It protects the register’s integrity and, in theory, helps identify duplicate entries.

Even in Scotland you need to give your national insurance number—although, helpfully, if you do not have one, the ERO invites applicants to provide a utility bill. Call me old-fashioned, but I do not know how many 14 year-olds pay the electricity bill, which is normally paid by their parents, but we will put that to one side.

If you cannot supply an NI number, it triggers a complex and intrusive manual validation system. Local officers are working hard enough as it is without more handwork burdens being thrust upon them. Today, I spoke to one electoral registration officer, who is a returning officer. As it is today, when somebody cannot provide a national insurance number, two hours over several weeks per person—which may lead to an attestation in court—is needed to finally authenticate them and validate their application to come on the register. Put simply, the 14 or 15 year-olds who do not have this NI will not be easily identifiable through the usual channels because these youngsters do not have the normal sets of identifiers.

Google, summarising the ONS census statistics, tells me that there are 1.4 million 14 and 15 year-olds in the UK who will be admitted to attain on their 16th birthday. They do not have NI numbers, so these youngsters are in a bind. How will they prove their identity? The electoral registration officer will not be any the wiser after; there is no standard administrative method. These young people will not have a driver’s licence—only certain 16 year-olds will have a moped—and they may not have a passport or gas bill, so how do they prove their identity without reinventing the entire wheel of administrative process that goes on in getting them on to the register?

Consider the child from a broken home. Perhaps he lives with mum on Acacia Avenue during the week and with his dad in a city apartment at the weekend. I am trying to prevent the introduction of duplicates into the system. It is possible that the mum and dad live in different electoral areas. The parents would think it was their duty to register their child and are not necessarily forced to tell the other. We have the prospect of automatic registration, perhaps by reference to the school roll. The child might want to register himself—after all, if he is trusted to choose a Government, he ought to be capable of filling in the form.

In this example, there are two EROs, two addresses and possibly two different names, because some children will assume double-barrelled names. Perhaps some of them are relatives of my noble friend Lady O’Neill—is that with or without an apostrophe? Multiple registrations of youngsters is not a possibility but a certainty, with all these people looking after the interests of the little boy, falling over themselves to duplicate him on the register—and the ERO will not have a clue about how to weed out the duplicates. I ask the Minister: who will be responsible for cases of double registration and, still worse, double voting by the child who did not realise that others were usurping him? Without my amendment to change the rules to issue national insurance numbers at 14, this is a ready excuse for ballot stuffing and family voting.

The impact assessment covers none of this, and it should. Although streamlining voter registration using other government services might be possible for those over 18, it is fraught with difficulty with those under 16. Why did the assessment not calculate, as I have done, that just registering 14 and 15 year-olds will take 2,000 extra local government staff for this provision alone?

We have an identifier already: the national insurance number. My amendment proposes a review so that the Government consider reducing the age of issuance of NI numbers to 14 under Regulation 9(3) of the Social Security (Crediting and Treatment of Contributions, and National Insurance Numbers) Regulations 2001—SI No. 769 of that year. This is an integral part of the voter system. No IT systems need to be changed and no new interfaces need to be created. It is the same system that the ERO can use to dedupe the surplus records. Critically, it will maintain the integrity of the register. I call for a review because it is the integral part that will reduce duplicates and ensure confidence in the register.

As I will explain on group 9, issuing national insurance numbers will significantly simplify the muddle that Ofcom has got into in trying to identify youngsters for social media. Its proposals include four different methods that put regulators and parents in an impossible position. Let us sort it out. Let us issue national insurance numbers at 14 and if it helps the children themselves think more closely and carefully about the world of work then that cannot do any harm either. I have said enough. I beg to move.

[Lord Rennard (LD)]

My Lords, in looking at this group of amendments, we all have a duty to try to discern which of them might be considered to be motivated by partisan considerations. My view is that Amendment 8 in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Fuller, is simply about reducing the number of people legally entitled to vote who are registered and therefore able to vote. I cannot see how it can be anything other than partisan to reduce the number of people legally entitled to vote who are able to do so.

Amendment 48 in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady O’Neill of Bexley, again seems to be a deliberate barrier to registering people who are legally entitled to vote but would not be able to do so because they would not be registered. Is that not a partisan consideration? Other amendments seek to block, delay or make the registration process weaker and less effective. I therefore consider those amendments partisan. The amendments in my name—

[Lord Fuller (Con)]

I cannot see how any of my proposals would be discriminatory in any way, shape or form because they provide that everybody would be given—not have to apply for but be given—a national insurance number, not at 16 but at 14, which is the age at which the Government propose these attainers would come on to the register. There is nothing discriminatory; it is actually enabling because it would get the state organised and individuals waiting to get that number so that they can get on to the register. I am sorry, but the noble Lord has misdirected himself as to the effect of my proposals.

Private Rented Sector Database Regulations 2026

Lord Fuller Excerpts

Wednesday 28th October 2026 Grand Committee

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government (Baroness Taylor of Stevenage) (Lab)]

My Lords, the Government committed to reforming a private rented sector that has too often left renters facing insecurity and unfairness. The Renters’ Rights Act 2025 delivers that commitment, and the regulations before the Committee are an important step in implementing it.

This phase of reform includes the private rented sector database, which will begin to be rolled out regionally from 15 December 2026. The service will be publicly known as the Register Your Rental Property Service, but I will refer to it as “the database” for the purposes of this debate. The database will record information about private landlords and privately let properties in England. It will help landlords to understand their obligations, give tenants better information before entering into a tenancy and support local authorities in enforcement. The regulations before us are essential to enable the rollout of the database; they set out the registration framework for the database.

Primary legislation establishes the purpose of what the database is intended to do. These regulations provide the practical framework needed for registration: who can make entries, what information must be provided and how the database can be kept accurate over time and up to date. A landlord entry will contain information about the landlord, including their name and contact information. Where the landlord is not an individual, it will include information about the organisation and its management. Joint landlords will each need their own landlord entry, while sharing the dwelling entry for the property.

A dwelling entry will contain information about the rental property, including its address, ownership, property type, rent level and relevant management details. Once occupied, it will also include tenancy and health and safety information, including uploaded certificates and information relating to gas, electrical and energy performance.

The regulations also allow entries to be made or updated by others in specified circumstances. This primarily concerns letting agents, as well as, for example, those acting under a power of attorney, a deceased landlord’s estate or a mortgage company in repossession cases. Landlords may delegate the supply of certain information to an agent or property manager, reducing administrative burden. They will, however, remain legally responsible for registration, payment, renewal and compliance.

Entries will need to be kept up to date. Recorded information will be treated as out of date where the details no longer reflect the landlord, property, tenancy or relevant compliance position, and generally must be updated within 28 days. The database operator will be able to correct errors and remove entries that do not meet the requirements for inclusion. Further operational detail, including on verification of entries by local authorities, will be addressed through guidance.

The regulations require a fee to be paid to make or renew a dwelling entry. The fee is not set in this instrument but delegates the setting of the fee to the database operator, who is required to set it by reference to the relevant costs as specified in the Act. We have separately announced the fee as £65 per property per year, on a pro rata basis during initial rollout, to ensure that those registering first do not unfairly have to pay more.

Subject to parliamentary approval, these regulations put into motion the regional rollout that will begin on 15 December 2026. Landlords in each region will then have three months to register, in turn, with all relevant entries required to be made by 14 November 2027.

This is the first of two statutory instruments needed to implement this database. The second, to be commenced as soon as possible following completion of the initial rollout, will cover the public-facing side of the database, the addition of specified breaches and offences committed by landlords, and further data sharing. This will concern what information is made visible to the public and wider data-sharing arrangements. Those matters are therefore not in scope of this legislation.

To conclude, these regulations provide the operational framework needed to begin rolling out the PRS database and to make the registration duties in the Act take practical effect. They are the next necessary step towards a more transparent and enforceable system, supporting compliance while giving tenants better information about the homes they rent. I beg to move that the Committee do now consider the Private Rented Sector Database Regulations 2026.

[Lord Fuller (Con)]

My Lords, I suppose we should be used by now to a Government who say one thing and do another, expecting everybody else to play by one set of rules while they do something else. This week, in a move that surprised nobody, we learned that the annual costs of the football regulator were to be twice what the impact assessment suggested, and that there was a £45 million set-up charge to boot. In the same vein, here we are with this licensing database for rental properties. I declare an interest: I am the director of a firm that lets rental properties and I own a rental property in Norwich, in my own name, as appears on the register.

Nothing in what I want to say diminishes from the positive outcome that regulators and tenants should have confidence in landlords and their properties to weed out the rogues. But, when we debated the Renters’ Rights Bill, we took the impact assessment at face value and assumed that it would reflect reality. It was said that, once it was enacted, landlords would pay a modest fee of about £30 every three years to register their properties under the regulations. As we have just heard from the noble Baroness, these regulations contemplate a £65 charge per property every year. That is a material change. Why is there this 900% increase from inception to reality and why was there not more candour at the outset? Could it be that it was not thought through?

We know that the Government are trying to purge the accidental landlord from the system by regulating him out of existence. This of course reduces choice, reduces supply and drives up rents. We are seeing the near extinction of student accommodation, meaning that students are herded into ever more expensive, specialised service accommodation at ruinous cost. Elsewhere, those with the weakest covenant strength have been put to the back of the queue, and everyone is paying more for less, along with the 190,000 fewer homes that the OBR has assumed will be built in this Parliament.

So we are moving to a system where only the largest professional landlords have the scale, expertise and finance to operate rental properties in the market. We know that Grainger, the institutional landlord, has well in excess of 10,000 properties for rent. Lloyds Bank is chasing a number, alongside some pension funds. While not all landlords operate at that scale, a number of large national agents—Chestertons, Hamptons and Foxtons—sit alongside regional and smaller players that manage many hundreds of thousands of properties on behalf of the smaller-fry landlord.

They were promised a bulk upload system to streamline populating the national database, but that is not how it is turned out. Each property must be added one at a time, and paid for with a separate credit card transaction to boot. Although the Government assumed that it would take about 10 minutes per property, the professionals have still not completed an entry in less than 20 minutes. For the largest landlords or the most popular agents, it will take 200 working days—a whole working year, Monday to Friday, without a break, not a moment—just to register their hold. That is before each landlord has confirmed his agent’s draft entry and the rigmarole is repeated. That 28-day extension deadline is a nonsense that invites people to write their own offence, because they just cannot get it done for want of a system that was promised to do bulk uploads. We have seen the Government cobble together a system used by software remnants from other departments, having totally forgotten the specification, as well as the principles of software design, data and security.

There is to be no concept of a validated Government Gateway login to securely authenticate an entry to a real personal business registering a property. The way in which the agent may communicate with the landlord one at a time is by web permalink relating to an individual property, presumably emailed between the parties—a link that never changes from one year to the next. That process breaks every cyber security rule. It is the sort of behaviour by shady operators that we debated on Monday in the Cyber Security and Resilience (Network and Information Systems) Bill. That legislation is meant to prevent this sort of practice. This invites cyber criminals to hijack a critical system related to our fundamental national property rights. Can the Minister say which of the cyber experts at DCMS, or any of the other 17 cyber regulators, has certified this obvious non-compliance in an age of AI warfare? Only this Government could press legislation regarding everybody else to follow secure and encrypted data protocols while introducing a system, within a month, that does the opposite. I am surprised there has not been a legal challenge—perhaps there should be.

If that was not bad enough, there is a further aggravation. Some local authorities have decided to introduce selective licensing. Landlords face the prospect of entering the same data twice into two wholly incompatible and separate systems in a further insult to efficiency. I ask the Minister: on inception, why can the appropriate housing standards officers in local authorities not be trusted to access the national database to further their duties? The national scheme should be the death knell for the small schemes. As she knows, some in this sector have considered mining the data from their existing IT systems, formatting it appropriately and sending the printouts to the department in pursuance of their duties. The only person I am going to feel sorry for is the postman carrying those hundreds of thousands of forms into Marsham Street—at least once a year, with repeat visits for gas safety, electrical installation and other regulatory certificates on top of every single tenant change. The Minister might like to reflect on whether she has enough staff in the department to process all these letters, while pretending that a system that is insecure and incomplete, and that creates an extra huge administrative burden and reuses credentials over inherently insecure communication protocols, is good enough.

Put simply, the Government are foisting an unready system with four weeks to go that is simply not ready, documented or to specification. Why are the Government pressing ahead when all the dashboard lights are flashing red? Only a delay at this stage will do to maintain that long-term confidence in, and the integrity of, the database, which has worthy long-term objectives. I invite the Minister to withdraw this regulation and represent it on a later occasion when she can demonstrate that the system is compliant and meets the obligations and promises set out in the Bill. Otherwise, it will be dead on arrival.

[Lord Best (CB)]

My Lords, I declare an interest as my wife owns rented property. I also note that I have been active for several years promoting the regulation of property agents. I am delighted that the Housing Minister Matthew Pennycook last month announced legislation in the forthcoming parliamentary Session to introduce a regulator of property agents with requirements for licensing, qualifications and adherence to codes of practice.

On the PRS database regulations before us, I welcome the introduction of the database, but the Minister will know that there has been much concern, not least from letting agents who manage privately rented accommodation on behalf of landlords. It seems that there are a large number of outstanding issues around the smooth running of the database, many of which were adumbrated by the noble Lord, Lord Fuller. Some of these matters are of a technical, detailed nature, requiring more debate between the sector and the MHCLG.

I want to pick up on a relatively straightforward point. Agents and representatives of landlords are worried that the onus being placed on the individual landlord to start and end the registration process for the database, and to fill in the necessary forms within the required timescales, will create significant problems. This is a function which agents would expect to take on if the landlord asked them to do so on their behalf, just as they do for all other aspects of managing the property and just as an accountant would handle the tax affairs of a client on their behalf. Indeed, I understand the Government’s own impact assessment assumed that letting agents would be able to register on behalf of landlords, which seems entirely sensible.

--- Later in debate ---

The noble Lord, Lord Fuller, mentioned the Grainger input that we received. We have sent a detailed response to Grainger. Our point back to it was that dwelling-level registration is essential for key aims of the service. The core information required for local authority enforcement, as well as for tenants and other public bodies, is at a dwelling level, rather than at a block level. I have listened to all the arguments put forward but, for organisational landlords, this is a digital system. It is not hard to cut and paste data between different systems—we all do that.

[Lord Fuller (Con)]

Perhaps the Minister might allow me to intervene briefly. I do not speak for Grainger, but I have spoken to a large number of institutional landlords, and they have no objection to providing information one property at a time. They understand the point the Minister is making. It is just that they want to bulk upload them all at once so that they can upload a large number in one go and, just as importantly, pay for them in one transaction. That is the point these institutional people are making. We are talking at cross purposes. We understand what the Minister is saying; it is just that the software is not delivering on that simple outcome.

[Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)]

I am happy to take back that feedback. The point about paying in one go is fair. It was my understanding that that could happen, but I will take that back and respond to the noble Lord, Lord Fuller, in writing, if that is okay.

The noble Lords, Lord Fuller and Lord Jamieson, raised the security of the database. That is important. We are all concerned about cyber security. The database has been developed with security and privacy at its core, using established government and cyber security standards. The department is assessing the database against the National Cyber Security Centre’s cyber assessment framework, and the database will also be subject to penetration testing to identify and address vulnerabilities before and during operation. We are working with the department’s data protection officer on the necessary data protection work, including an impact assessment, data-sharing arrangements and privacy arrangements for landlords, local councils and agent users. The database will also use monitoring tools to help identify potential vulnerabilities and support ongoing security assurance.

The noble Lord, Lord Fuller, talked about the potential duplication with selective licensing. The database will not duplicate or replace selective licences, because the two systems have entirely different purposes. The national database will provide consistent information about private landlords and rental properties across England, supporting transparency, compliance and local authority enforcement.

Selective licensing remains a targeted local tool used by councils to address specific local issues through more intensive proactive enforcement—for example, anti-social behaviour and those types of issues. We recognise the important role that licensing can continue to play where it is used appropriately, and we will continue to review how licensing and the national service interact as implementation progresses. Organisational landlords will use the GOV.UK One Login service to log in and authenticate. This is a service widely used across government and is built in accordance with government technology standards.

The noble Lords, Lord Best, Lord Howard and Lord Jamieson, all asked why letting agents cannot register on behalf of landlords. One of the key goals of the database is to improve landlord awareness and capability, and requiring landlords to initiate registration directly supports that by ensuring that they engage with their legal responsibilities from the outset. Letting and property agents will still be able to support landlords by providing certain information once the landlord has started the registration process. Where an agent agrees, the landlord will be able to delegate the provision of specific tenancy health and safety information to them.

Responsibility for ensuring that the registration requirements are met will remain with the landlord throughout. Letting and property agents will not have a mandatory role in registration and will not be separately registered through this database. I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Best, for his response on the regulation of property agents and I will feed that back to my right honourable colleague in the other House.

The noble Baroness, Lady Thornhill, asked about what data will be published. This instrument does not decide what information will be published; the public-facing database will be brought forward through secondary legislation once the initial rollout period is complete. At that point, tenants will be able to access necessary and proportionate information about landlords and rental properties, including some of the issues that the noble Baroness referred to about landlord enforcement actions that have been taken. We will carefully balance the benefits of transparency with landlords’ privacy rights, safety concerns and data protection requirements.

The noble Baroness, Lady Thornhill, also asked how to identify landlords who do not register. When the public-facing database is available, tenants and others will be able to tell the database that their rental property is not registered, as they will be able to check. That can be passed on to the local housing authority.

To conclude, this instrument is the practical next step in delivering the PRS database. It sets the registration framework that landlords, local authorities and the database operator will need as regional rollout begins. By doing so, these regulations will support landlord compliance, strengthen local authority enforcement and give tenants better information about the homes they rent. I beg to move.

Tourism: Overnight Visitor Levy

Lord Fuller Excerpts

Thursday 17th September 2026 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Blake of Leeds (Lab)]

I am absolutely convinced that Mayor Rotheram knows what is best for his local area. He is a passionate advocate of everything to do with Liverpool. Liverpool and Manchester have already introduced a flat-rate levy at the behest of the business community in their areas. It is the businesses that have worked with the leaders to bring forward those levies. I am pretty sure that I will be in Liverpool fairly shortly, so I look forward very much to finding out more about it.

[Lord Fuller (Con)]

My Lords, UKHospitality has calculated that this tax will cost 33,000 jobs, raise £1.6 billion and reduce GDP by £2.2 billion. That is its assessment. What assessment have the Government made of the financial impacts of this proposal and will they publish it?

[Baroness Blake of Leeds (Lab)]

It is fair to say that we do not recognise the figures that UKHospitality has put out. We have been working with it incredibly closely through the consultation and will continue to do so. This is a vital part of our economy and we are here to give the support that is needed to make sure that these areas thrive. The conversation is ongoing, but I suggest the noble Lord looks at the wider evidence from around the world of how successful such a levy can be.

Representation of the People Bill

Lord Fuller Excerpts

2nd reading
Monday 14th September 2026 Lords Chamber

[Lord Fuller (Con)]

My Lords, it is always a pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Sikka, though I must say I think I have heard some of those arguments before.

This is a big Bill, but it misses the big point. Instead of strengthening democracy, it fiddles around the edges. I fought many elections in a career in local government. I often have to remind people that, to become the leader of the council, as I was for nearly 20 years, you have to win three elections very quickly: once in your ward, once among your political friends and the other among the whole council. You have to learn how to count. But the rules are pretty clear; in order to win, you just get more ballots than the next person. The candidate with the most votes win. You can explain that to anyone in a few seconds: plain and simple, done and dusted.

Yet, as I survey the state of democracy in our nation, I see so many complex and contradictory voting systems. There is first past the post, then the supplementary vote for PCCs and mayors in England. We have the single transferable vote in Northern Ireland, although that is also open to EU citizens. There is a hybrid proportional scheme with additional member top-ups of party chums in Scotland. I note that the noble Lord, Lord Foulkes, is not in his place, but he entertained us with his accidental election earlier in this debate. There is a closed-loop system in Wales, where only the chums can win. Thank goodness the voters rejected the alternative vote in May 2011 in that referendum, but somehow that method persists with the Scottish Crofting Commission elections—apparently.

They are not the only differences. Anyone can vote in Wales or Scotland, regardless of nationality, as long as they live there, but not in England. Then we get all-outs or thirds for councils, and single or double or multimember wards, and four or five-year terms in some councils but not others. In London—I echo the points made by the noble Baroness, Baroness Pinnock—it takes 3,108 electors on average across the whole of London to choose a councillor, but it takes 15,000 in parts of Essex. There are more councillors within the M25 than in the entirety of all the county councils of England. We heard from my noble friend Lord Mackinlay, who is not in his place, about overseas territories. With all this complication, are you still with me?

I remember the case a few years ago in Cambridgeshire. On the same day, there were elections for five different layers of local government, with three separate voting systems. No wonder people were confused. We are meant to be a United Kingdom, but in terms of the electoral system, there is more that divides us than brings us together.

Given a choice in 2011 in a referendum, voters expressed a clear preference for first past the post. The problem is that, when you depart from the simplicity and purity of the principle of the person with the most votes winning, you end up with funny business—and nothing is more harmful to faith in democracy, the legitimacy of politicians and trust in our institutions than funny business.

But this Bill does nothing to address that or the abuses. Recently, we had the unseemly rush to pass the supplementary vote regulations in the Manchester mayoral elections in June. There was the attempted cancellation of local government elections last year. Thank goodness that has been unwound for next May. Thanks to the Government’s screaming U-turn, handbrake turn, on LGR last week, we have all been spared the unseemly debate relating to the gerrymandering of Labour councillors in the formerly proposed Lincoln unitary, where there would be three councillors per ward in the city of Lincoln but only one in the rural hinterland around. That scheme would have betrayed and disgraced a banana republic. How the Labour Party considers itself fit to pass this piece of partisan legislation, I do not know.

There are other omissions in this Bill. Where are the guardrails referred to by the noble Baroness, Lady Pinnock, for equality in the value of votes? I am entirely with my noble friend Lord Jamieson that a bank card can just be picked up from the sideboard: there is no security there.

The Bill introduces new jeopardies in the classroom, bringing divisions between teachers and children and among the children themselves. Back in 2018—I am thinking of unincorporated institutions here—the Minister and I together put the Local Government Association on a proper footing. It was previously an unincorporated body. There are plenty of others, such as the Ipswich Suffolk Business Club, a monthly dining club that henceforth would be prohibited from engaging in politics. How many other organisations, clubs and charities would be caught in this crossfire? I do not stand for Reform, but retrospection is clearly wrong in principle.

The Bill puts tinkering before simplicity. It is a missed opportunity that fails to reinforce confidence in the voting system, and it fails to call out the funny business that disavows the principle that you win the election fair and square when you get one more vote than the next man. This Bill should correct it but does not.

Home Owners and Home Ownership

Lord Fuller Excerpts

Thursday 10th September 2026 Lords Chamber

[Lord Fuller (Con)]

My Lords, it is common ground that we need more homes, but this Government are going entirely the wrong way about it. We are on track to complete fewer new homes in this Parliament than in the last—a period that was disrupted by Covid and the strategic supply shocks unleashed by a European war. It is not hard to understand why we are failing, but to mask the failure to grow in our cities, impossible unachievable new targets have been set in the countryside, and have undermined the equity and collateral in the largest sites with the greatest entry costs. Any old orchard for a handful of homes has economic preference over the strategic allocations, which are being left to moulder. Yes, the five-year land supply is part of the problem, not the solution. New levies, fees and charges amount to between £30,000 and £40,000 for a new dwelling house, and I now learn that regulatory costs for high-rise flats amount to about £70,000—a real fiscal disincentive, borne disproportionately by the young and the first-time buyer making a start.

There are three elements to sustainability, but Natural England has been granted a veto on the creation of new homes in the largest parts of the country with the greatest housing potential—as if not building new homes is going to clean up our rivers. All those ecological and archaeological reports, which can only be done at certain times of the year, add delay, cost and increased risk. Failure to dot an “i” or cross a “t” means growth is postponed for a year by quangos acting as judge and jury in their own court, using the consent process as a make-work scheme for university chums and colleagues, while bricklayers, tilers, roofers and ground workers are put out of work. The Labour Party, which was established to represent the journeyman, has nothing to say to these people.

Only last week, the Home Builders Federation told me about the case of a small piece of ground suitable for nine homes that cost about £40,000, but was burdened with proposed biodiversity charges of over £200,000. That was before the madness of the nutrient neutrality levies. No wonder the developer walked away—no homes built there. Now there will be more mayoral taxes, and building safety levies in London—£90 a square metre in Fulham—are chilling our capital’s housing growth. The fiscal incontinence of this Government, unable to get spending under control, has led to the highest interest rates for two decades, which have killed off nearly all the small builders. Even the largest operators, public companies, are now struggling with the number of active sites, which is down 20% in London since this Government started.

Only this morning, the Times reports that worse is to come: 140 of the 166 developers operating in London are working on projects due to complete in 2027. Without a pipeline of work from 2028 onwards, the Times says they will “effectively exit London”. Of course, the Government try to blame councils for this sorry situation, but to find the culprits they just need to look in the mirror. This is their calamity.

Looking at the situation for families who have aspired to, and own, a stake in their own home, we have a Prime Minister who tells them that their land and property is not taxed enough; the politics of envy, and a mansion tax that falls on the old widow eking out a pension while living in a home bought generations ago; second home surcharges that are crashing the tourist economy of coastal communities; a resistance to addressing the injustice in the balance of power, and sharp practice, between shared-ownership owners and the RSLs, where the residents cop all the costs and the landlord gets off scot-free; and crazy stamp duty rates that damage labour market liquidity, trap people in their homes and discourage inward investment in our economy.

The Government are trying, of course, but their medicine is making the patient worse. Vibes alone will not build these homes. The new town programme is dead on arrival, not even going so far as to long list schemes with fast rail connections, grade-separated junctions and all the land assembled in the adopted plan, with the unanimous support of the local planning authority. It is just incompetent.

The emergency relaxations on high-rises in London will expire before they can do any good, so that is another three years wasted. On 1 January, the Government plan to implement even more taxes—on steel and cement. How many more burdens can the construction industry take? We have to call time on these delusions, because build costs have leapt while house prices have fallen. Can they not see the jeopardy here? Why would anybody want to catch a falling knife like this?

The property market is being taxed to death. Whether you are building, buying, selling, owning, renting or being a landlord, this Government are crushing aspiration while missing their own numeric manifesto target by miles. This matters because workers cannot move about, growing families cannot get on, the old cannot downsize and the young cannot upsize. Worst of all, the journeymen are being put out of work.

The economist Arthur Laffer, with whom I had dinner last night, says that you cannot tax yourself to success. But Britain is taxing itself to death, no more so than in building, construction and housebuilding, with a dogmatic whole-economy experiment on housing that is killing home ownership and aspiration. It is just not working.

National Infrastructure Projects: Devolution

Lord Fuller Excerpts

Wednesday 9th September 2026 Lords Chamber

[Lord Bailey of Paddington]

To ask His Majesty’s Government what assessment they have made of the impact of the devolution of powers on the delivery of national infrastructure projects.

[Lord Fuller (Con)]

My Lords, in the absence of my noble friend Lord Bailey of Paddington, I beg leave to ask the Question standing in his name on the Order Paper.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government (Baroness Taylor of Stevenage) (Lab)]

My Lords, nationally significant infrastructure projects do what they say on the tin: they are national. No devolved powers have altered the consenting of the decision-making route for NSIPs, so no assessment of impacts has been made. Decisions on nationally significant infrastructure projects remain nationally accountable, with the relevant Secretary of State taking decisions, of course following examination and recommendation by the Planning Inspectorate. Devolution supports infrastructure delivery by giving local leaders stronger tools to align housing, transport growth and supporting infrastructure.

[Lord Fuller (Con)]

My Lords, water companies have warned that there is enough water supply to handle only another 420,000 new homes—far fewer than the 1.5 million planned by the Government. How will the Government ensure that sufficient water infrastructure is built to keep pace with the building of new homes—homes our nation needs?

Local Government Reorganisation

Lord Fuller Excerpts

Monday 7th September 2026 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Pinnock (LD)]

My Lords, I too thank the Minister for repeating the Statement. Across England, there will be thousands of councillors and council officers who have worked for months, sometimes years, to deliver an effective solution to the Government’s top-down reorganisation diktat. They will have devoted scarce resources in both funding and precious time. Today, they will be despairing. With the stroke of a ministerial pen, all their careful planning has been consigned to the waste bin.

The principle of devolution is the right one. Unfortunately, the Government have conflated devolution with local government reorganisation, and that has resulted in this sorry mess. There are any number of questions that the Minister must answer, given that, in July, she gave an assurance in this Chamber that a decision on the final reorganisation plans for the remaining councils would be made in October.

I am confident that there will be many specific questions about individual councils, so I will restrict my questions to general principles. First, given that the Government’s decision has been made following legal advice, can the Minister publish that advice and provide a summary for us in her response? Will she tell the House when those councils with agreed plans were informed? Some councils had already developed financial planning on the basis of agreed reorganisation. What support will the Government provide for those councils now facing severe financial pressures?

Today’s announcement has left councils and their residents in limbo. The Statement makes it clear that elections for districts will take place next year. That indicates a longer timeframe for reorganisation than a speedy review. Asking people to become councillors for a non-specific period is difficult. Equally, encouraging voter enthusiasm will be more challenging. What are they voting for? How long will it last? Local democracy has been the real loser in all this, with elections cancelled and democratic terms of office extended on a whim.

The process by which the Government determined the parameters of this reorganisation defied the importance and relevance of local communities. For example, new councils were told they had to have a population of at least 300,000, with a maximum of around 500,000—although, of course, one of the new Surrey councils has a population of 700,000. That was stated despite many existing unitary metropolitan councils being smaller than that. For instance, Calderdale, in my own west Yorkshire, has a population of just over 200,000. Many councils in the Manchester mayoral authority have a population of around 300,000 or fewer. That was one reason why communities lost out in this top-down reorganisation.

This is a thorough and embarrassing dog’s breakfast for the Government. It has all stemmed from the flawed notion that the financial crisis facing county councils could be resolved by changing the seats around the table and going for reorganisation, while ignoring the historic community ties around which many councils were created. The Government have much to do to put the “local” back into local government. I look forward to a thorough explanation from the Minister.

[Lord Fuller (Con)]

My Lords—

[Noble Lords]

Minister!

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Fuller (Con)]

My Lords, first, the un-cancellation of local government elections and now the embarrassment of this one, from a hapless MHCLG. Back in April, when your Lordships debated local government reorganisation, I characterised the proposals for Norfolk as a cut-and-shut job that would shame Arthur Daley. It would create England’s poorest council in east Norfolk and throw up in the air the authorities responsible for homelessness, housing, economic growth and planning. No wonder we challenged it. Today, the leader of my council tells me that the Government will refund our legal costs, well into six figures. Can the Minister tell us quite how much money the Government will be refunding to councils across the country to reimburse them for challenging decisions which we now conclude were unlawful and should never have been taken in the first place?

[Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)]

The strength of the representations of the noble Lord, Lord Fuller, on this matter shows the differing opinions that we have seen throughout this process. There are strongly held, different views on all sides, and it is important that we continue to take those into account as we go through the review process.

First, as I should have emphasised more when I was speaking earlier, I recognise the amount of work that councils have already put into preparing for reorganisation. As I said, this work will not be wasted, but I appreciate that it comes with a cost. Financial commitments may have been made, and we will look at this as part of the review.

I have already spoken about transition costs. The overall costs of reorganisation are of course to be taken into account, but we also know that reorganisation can save money. There has been a £90 million saving in North Yorkshire and £75 million in Buckinghamshire since their unitaries were established. I know that the noble Baroness, Lady Scott, saved money when she reorganised Wiltshire into a unitary.

There are also associated legal costs. LGR is often contested in the courts. It is a right and proper part of our democratic system that important issues can be challenged in the court system. The Government engage legal advisers to defend those decisions whenever challenges are brought, and that brings costs with it. But the questions are so significant, and the implications so long-lasting, that the extent of legal costs should be viewed in that context. Legal costs will be determined in the usual way.

Nature Restoration Levy Regulations 2026

Lord Fuller Excerpts

Thursday 3rd September 2026 Lords Chamber

[Lord Fuller (Con)]

My Lords, environmentalists are up in arms on the nature restoration fund and EDPs because they break the link between a development and its nature mitigations. Developers are saying that the cost, risks and delay are making development unviable, while everybody argues that nothing is getting built in those areas of the country with the greatest housing potential.

Taken together with all the environmental fees, charges and other levies, it has put the price of a new home up by about £30,000 to £40,000 in the last five years. The hard truth is that well-meaning but counterproductive nature levies and other levies are damaging our economy, with brickies, ground workers, sparkies and chippies all sitting idle. Of course, the simple truth is that not building new homes—especially social homes, which are the first to get the chop when viability is in question—is not going to clean up the rivers. The organisation that is meant to grip this has singularly failed in the five years since it misdirected Ministers that families trying to get their feet on the housing ladder should bear the brunt of upgrading the sewage treatment works, rather than the water companies whose job it really is.

The situation we find ourselves in today is a direct result of Natural England misdirecting itself as to the science and arithmetic of nutrient mobility. It confused absorption with adsorption and has misrepresented scientific papers that it purports support its position when the reverse is true. By way of a declaration of interest, I am involved in the fertiliser industry, so understanding nutrient mobility in soils is one of my specialist subjects.

About four years ago, when it became obvious that Natural England had stymied housebuilding in my area and was incapable of addressing river pollution, I established the Norfolk Environmental Credits company, which is owned by all the councils of Norfolk, to do the job that Natural England has the staffing, powers, software and responsibility to do, but does not. I was the person who set up that green financial market referred to by my noble friend Lady Coffey. Five years on, if it were not for people like me rolling up my sleeves to get this problem addressed—and franchising it to other council areas in other catchments—no new homes would have been built in the entirety of this Parliament. I would like to take credit for this, but I am anxious that all this hard work will have been for nothing if Natural England takes our homework, runs away with it and leaves us high and dry.

The problem is that Natural England has been allowed to get away with being simultaneously the regulator, adviser, enforcer, operator, pricer, procurer and competitor in a market in the grossest case of multiple conflicts of interest that, in any other walk of life, would be closed down for being contrary to the public interest. Its advice has caused us to sleepwalk into an Alice in Wonderland situation where a fertiliser colleague could sell a farmer a kilo of phosphate for 85p, but a developer must spend £50,000 to remove it from the treatment works at the other end.

If that was not crazy enough, the Government have made the river problem even worse by subsidising the production of over 20 million tonnes of biogas digestate—applied to the land at the wrong time of year—which does more than anything else to turn the rivers green. Yet these polluters do not pay a penny into the fund. It is wrong.

All these levies have brought developers to their knees. All they wanted to know was how much, when, where and how these charges would be applied, as well as the scope, extent, cost and regulation that the EDPs require in an evidence-based and transparent manner, with a degree of consistency from one place to another. But it was too much to hope for. When the regulations were laid in June, the first were all about how Natural England could charge and enforce its fees. We are still none the wiser on the important things. The credibility of the nature restoration fund ultimately rests on a simple question: will levy income be sufficient to fund conservation measures for as long as they are required to deliver the promised environmental outcomes?

When we went through the then Planning and Infrastructure Bill, we warned of the consequences of allowing Natural England to lead on this when it could not even get their stories straight on the jumping spiders or the ponies or the advice on bird flu, which was used as a bogus pretext to license shooting in the land use framework. It has ceased to be trusted. Through its indolence, we still have no idea whether the EDPs would issue some sort of permit or a licence for the resident to flush his lavatory in his new home. That distinction is important. A permit is an asset that is tradable on the secondary market—repeating the milk quota disaster of the 1980s—whereas a licence, if no longer needed, perhaps because a sewage treatment works has been upgraded, can be surrendered so that the mitigation can be applied again for the benefit of the taxpayer for the remainder of the 80-year term. Is it a licence or a permit? We do not know. It is an important matter.

Now we get to the pricing. The market for phosphate credits has settled at around £5,000 per dwelling. That fee covers not just the immediate costs of introducing a mitigation but those tail liabilities of management for at least 80 years together with inspection and regulatory costs along the way. As I explained during the passage of the Planning and Infrastructure Bill, this is an actuarial evaluation problem. The problem is that Natural England exhibits little understanding of this simple economic reality. All indications are that it will just pick a number out of the air that is wholly unrelated and untethered to those liabilities, and, in so doing, chop off at the knees people—like me, through our councils—who rolled up their sleeves to fix the problem when Natural England would not.

If it does that, it will at a stroke further damage our economic reputation, because there is one area in which the UK has developed some quite interesting and valuable intellectual property: the running of nature markets. All the indications are that Natural England’s cack-handed ignorance would completely destroy the accumulated value of these nature markets. Our company has already had to take an impairment.

When are the Government going to get a grip and rein in this organisation that has so wilfully misunderstood the science, made our economy smaller and homes more expensive, left social homes unbuilt and workers and professionals sitting at home, delayed mitigations and imperilled our global leadership in the nature market—all when Natural England’s first priority, through its regulations, was simply to featherbed their own bureaucracy?