Voting at 16

Debate between Lord Khan of Burnley and Baroness Smith of Llanfaes

Thursday 24th July 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Khan of Burnley (Lab)]

My Lords, let me say first that I always welcome encouragement from the noble Lord, and I will take that back. To address his question directly, we intend to actively explore and test new and more automated methods of registration, including better use of data to identify people who are eligible and integration with other government services to make it easier for people to register. Online registration for voting has been a resounding success, particularly for postal voting. I will take that back and I hope that I can come back to the noble Lord with some meaningful outcomes as a result of our strategy.

[Baroness Smith of Llanfaes (PC)]

My Lords, in light of the Government’s want for more young people to be registered to vote, will they consider a national “Register to Vote Day” for schools, when young people are encouraged to register to vote online in their registration classes?

[Lord Khan of Burnley (Lab)]

My Lords, the noble Baroness makes a very strong point. I will take it away, because ultimately we want to get more people registered and able to take part in our democracy. We anticipate that there are between 7 million and 8 million eligible individuals who are currently unregistered or incorrectly registered to vote. We want to make sure that our policies identify and engage underregistered groups, and we will take all measures to ensure that that people can participate comfortably and positively.

Shared Prosperity Fund: Wales

Debate between Lord Khan of Burnley and Baroness Smith of Llanfaes

Wednesday 4th December 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Khan of Burnley (Lab)]

My Lords, the noble Baroness makes an important point. The short answer is yes: we will ensure that our counterparts in Wales have those discussions. I will pass the message on to my honourable friend in the other place so that the third sector is also a part of his discussions with the Welsh Government on how we can work closely together as central government, devolved government and the third sector.

[Baroness Smith of Llanfaes (PC)]

My Lords, at present, Wales gets 23% of the shared prosperity fund. If the SPF is included in local government funding in England, this risks money being redirected through the Barnett formula. Will the Minister agree that a needs-based formula is better than a population-based formula for funding?

[Lord Khan of Burnley (Lab)]

I understand the noble Baroness’s point. However, we have to recognise that there were no plans from the previous Government for the funding going to the devolved Governments. We have brought in a transitional year to prepare for post March 2026. All these conversations are yet to be had. I cannot make any particular comment on them, but I will come back to the noble Baroness once we finalise our proposals for after March 2026.