Representation of the People Bill

Debate between Lord Fuller and Baroness Royall of Blaisdon

Committee stage
Monday 2nd November 2026 Lords Chamber

[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.

English Devolution and Community Empowerment Bill

Debate between Lord Fuller and Baroness Royall of Blaisdon

Committee stage
Thursday 29th January 2026 Grand Committee

[Lord Fuller (Con)]

My Lords, I will speak to my opposition to Clause 16 standing part of the Bill. It in no way conflicts with the series of amendments in the name of my noble friend Lord Gascoigne, so ably presented by my noble friend Lady O’Neill. I agree with the thrust of all she said. There is no doubt that, if Clause 16 is to be sustained, improvements to it, alongside those in the government amendments, would be useful. However, I do not favour that approach. I just do not believe that any part of Clause 16, which amounts to an unjustifiable fettering of the electorate—elect a good candidate or otherwise hand it to an elected mayor in office—should be sustained. Therefore, none of it should stand part.

The public are tiring of funny business in elections. I have laid amendments to later parts of the Bill that would make the cancellation of local council, mayoral and PCC elections illegal without the super-affirmative procedure, which would require a vote in both Houses. Labour is playing fast and loose with democracy—a cancellation of a vote here and a postponement there, asking those with the most to lose whether they would like to stay a little longer, and bogus capacity excuses from councils that do not even run the elections. We read today in the Daily Telegraph a Labour NEC member of many years standing disclosing threats with menaces to Labour council leaders to connive to strip the franchise from more than 4 million electors this May.

When I was a young man, my noble friend Lord Pickles told me, “If you don’t trust the folks, don’t go into politics”. He was right then, and that advice is still correct today; it should never go out of fashion. We need to encourage as many people as possible to serve the public at every level. In my public life in local government, I took the view that I did not have the time to be a double hatter, or even triple hatter, by seeking to serve my community as a parish, district and county councillor—combining it with a business career was quite enough for me—but that is not how it is for others.

The fundamental principle here is that the public should get to choose their elected representatives. If somebody wishes to serve at more than one level, that option should be available to them, but they should be accountable to the electorate, not anyone else. It is the public’s choice. We often have people who serve at more than one level, amplifying the experience they gain at one level to the benefit of another; that was not for me, but it worked well for others.

I listened carefully to what my noble friend said, but Clause 16 is nothing more than a grubby stitch-up to prevent the public having their free say. It would stain a banana republic for certain citizens to be denied the chance to stand, especially those who had demonstrated a track record of success. I have not had time to consult my noble and learned friends but I am sure that I could get an advisory opinion that such action is contrary to international law. You would think that that would be enough to put the black spot on it, but not for this Government.

I sense that, in drafting Clause 16, there was some intent to prevent my noble friend, who served with distinction as mayor in the north-east—and whom the public elected once, then again—standing as a mayor and being in the legislature. It might have been the case that, as in the last Parliament, a county council leader is also an MP. In those cases, the Bill would force that person to choose, but, if you believe in democracy, it is not for him to make that choice—it is for the public, via the ballot box. Clause 16 is state overreach and a case of party-political interference. That why it should be deleted. I read the newspapers and have been in politics long enough to know what is going on here.

It transpired in the past week that the Labour Party’s own internal rules prevent a Labour mayor from sitting in Parliament. That is a choice for Labour and one that should be available to other parties, but it is not a compulsion to be forced on parties that have a different outlook and better principles. Do not just take my word for it. There are others who cherish democracy more than this Government. The Electoral Commission and the Speaker of the other place have had cause to criticise the debased commitment to the sanctity of the vote. We heard from the Prime Minister himself earlier this week that the reason why the Mayor of Manchester cannot stand in this mother of Parliaments is that it is part of Labour’s rules and has nothing to do with the candidate’s suitability—it makes no judgment on whether the candidate has the appropriate experience. No, the Prime Minister told us that the decision was driven solely by the unwelcome financial cost to the Labour Party of running a second-order mayoral election—so not by statute but by internal rules, which we all know change from time to time. That was coupled with the inconvenience of spreading more thinly the campaigning capacity of Labour’s demoralised and depleted activists.

The Government may have thought that they were being clever with Clause 16, by preventing local leaders from exercising national influence, but they have been pricked by the back-draught from the good folk of Gorton and Denton, which tells me that there is widespread support for the notion that Clause 16 should be excised from this Bill. The public know a lemon when they see one. The former Deputy Prime Minister, who introduced this Bill in the other place, now appears to have a case of buyer’s remorse, as the measures that she published are now being used to deny her Manchester mate from putting himself forward to the voters. That is some irony: it is not just back-draught; it is blowback. Of course, in the case of the Manchester man, that is for future service. However, I am anxious that in other cases there might be a question of retrospection. My noble friend highlighted Johnson and Khan, which is a case in point.

When I was the leader of the council in South Norfolk, which is an electoral authority, I was always careful, in so far as elections were concerned, to separate my role as leader of the controlling group from the administration and operation of the election and electoral matters. If successive returning officers who served me were here, they would confirm that approach. However, that is not how it works in Clause 16. The Prime Minister told us that he would put country before party, but those who continue to promote this Bill clearly did not get the memo, because Clause 16 is about putting the wants of the Labour Party before of the needs of the electorate. It prevents the electorate from having their say on who should be elected, especially somebody who has done rather well in one area of politics and who might do well in the other. It is an abuse of the people, the law and democracy.

We have heard it said that your Lordships’ House is standing in the way of the will of the Government and somehow it is improper and, as a result, we need to be reformed. However, with these amendments, we show that noble Lords are standing up for democracy and community empowerment. The denial of a free vote on candidates is the pure expression of community disempowerment. Labour should be ashamed of itself for Clause 16. It does not trust the folks, as my noble friend Lord Pickles advised all those years ago. No, for them, it is party first and public second. This clause proves this, which is why it must go.

[Baroness Royall of Blaisdon (Lab)]

Can I just make a brief statement? While it is right and proper that each and every amendment and clause is debated, I deeply regret how party-political the last two contributions have been. What we are all doing here is trying to do the best for this country and not make these things party-political. I deeply regret some of the comments that have been made by people opposite.

[Lord Fuller (Con)]

I am sorry if the noble Baroness regrets those, but the facts stand. A mayor who has done a rather good job in one part of the country is now going to be prevented from standing as a result of applying Labour’s rules for all the other parties. That is a statement of fact. I do not deny that Labour has the right to have its internal rules, but those rules should not be forced on all the other parties. I am sorry that the noble Baroness feels that way, but that is how we in the other political parties feel when another party’s internal rules are applied to everyone else. It is anti-democratic. As I say, I am sorry that she feels that way, but the feeling is equal on this side of the Committee. That should be placed on the record, too.