Representation of the People Bill

Lord Pack Excerpts

Committee stage
Wednesday 4th November 2026 Lords Chamber

[Lord Pack (LD)]

My Lords, as several noble Lords have illustrated in their speeches and in their amendments in this group, it is important that we get the information and educational framework right. That would be the case even if this Bill did not contain a change in the voting age, but it is all the more so given that it does. I hope we will hear some positive noises from the Government in due course on that important topic.

As we all know, whether we agree with it or not, the decision that this Bill legislates for, to reduce the voting age to 16, was a manifesto commitment from the party that won a clear majority under our voting system—and I know some noble Lords near me are particularly keen on that voting system. The Labour Party won an overwhelming majority with a clear manifesto commitment. I am therefore not sure how good a use of time it is—given the many other important issues we need to get stuck into in Committee—to be continually relitigating that basic point of principle, which was a manifesto commitment that has been debated extensively already. Having said that, I will follow my own advice and bring my remarks to a close.

[Baroness O’Neill of Bexley (Con)]

I will start where the noble Lord left off. I am grateful to all noble Lords who have contributed to this debate. The amendments in this group raise many important questions about the responsibilities that accompany the Government’s proposal to lower the voting age to 16. It is a manifesto commitment, we accept that, but there are responsibilities that go alongside that and things the Government need to be aware of and address, because there is no doubt that people out there will be asking about this.

We should all agree that young people ought to understand how our democracy works, how to register to vote and how to exercise their democratic rights, but we must consider whether the Government have put sufficient thought into the education and safeguards necessary if the change to the franchise is to go ahead. My noble friend Lord Fuller’s Amendments 18 and 19 would sensibly require politically neutral and balanced voter registration to be provided to young people. These amendments seek to prevent local authorities run by any particular party from influencing election material one way or the other. We must not forget that councils are fundamentally political organisations.

My noble friend Lord Fuller has accurately identified that looked-after children are socially vulnerable and at risk of being influenced by the authority that looks after them. We should be aware of that fundamental point. Information provided by public authorities must be impartial, especially when it concerns young people who may be engaging with the electoral system for the very first time. Can the Minister explain what safeguards will ensure that registration information provided by local authorities, and the relevant bodies in Northern Ireland, is politically neutral? How will be compliance be assessed and monitored?

I welcome my noble friend Lord Farmer’s Amendments 24, 280 and 287, concerning the decision-making abilities of 16 and 17 year-olds. I congratulate my noble friend Lady Meyer on putting the case for considering the safeguards around that as well. These amendments ask the Government to assess the evidence before implementing a significant constitutional change. They are not saying that that change is not going to happen but that they should consider it beforehand. Can the Minister explain what assessment the Government have undertaken of the decision-making abilities of 16 and 17 year-olds, and will she commit to publishing that evidence before the new voting age comes into effect?

The amendments concerning citizenship education and political literacy are also relevant. Amendment 43, in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Lister, proposes a programme of education and citizenship in secondary schools. The noble Lord, Lord Wallace of Saltaire, has also raised that the Secretary of State should report on progress in the changes to citizenship education. Thus, there is clearly a shared recognition across your Lordships’ House that extending the franchise cannot be considered in isolation from the education that young people receive—everyone is in agreement on that one.

However, I must respectfully disagree with Amendment 44, tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett, albeit that it was not spoken to. While I welcome the underlying suggestion that children should be educated about their duty to vote, we should not single out groups of children and educate them based on supposed groupings. Different children must not be educated differently about the vote they share. As we saw in the fruitful debate on ballot secrecy, we must be careful that political education does not become political persuasion. Can the Minister tell us what guidance will be provided to schools and teachers to ensure that such education remains balanced, and what additional resources will be made available to deliver it?

My noble friend Lady Berridge is, unfortunately, unable to be in her place today. My noble friend Lord Leigh of Hurley referred to her Amendment 44A, in which she raises a very valid point. I think most of us in this Chamber have canvassed and knocked on doors. When we see a young person, we generally say, “Can we speak to Mum and Dad, or your carer?” We will now have to assess what age that young person is and maybe engage in conversation with them. We really need to consider that as a consequence of this proposal as canvassers will be engaging with younger voters.

My noble friend raises whether there will need to be necessary safeguarding guidance for political campaigners engaging with children. We should be thinking about that particularly important issue. If political parties and campaigners are to engage more directly with younger voters, appropriate safeguards must be in place. Will the Minister explain what guidance will govern contact between political campaigners and those children, and whether the Government intend to consult safeguarding professionals before the relevant provisions commence?

As I have said in earlier debates, electoral reform should strengthen public confidence in our democratic system, not introduce uncertainty about the protections on which it depends. The Government have chosen to lower the voting age as a manifesto commitment. It is therefore incumbent upon them to demonstrate that young people will receive impartial information, sufficient education and appropriate safeguarding. They should be properly prepared and protected when exercising that right. I hope the Minister will address these questions in detail and provide reassurance that the practical consequences of this change have been fully and properly considered.

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[Baroness Coffey (Con)]

My Lords, I too support these amendments, and I am grateful to my noble friend Lord Frost for making sure that people of Irish citizenship can definitely continue to register. I have heard other people ask: why displace the Commonwealth and not the Irish? We have a very different relationship with Ireland and the people of Ireland, and that is why I hope we see these amendments come back on Report.

[Lord Pack (LD)]

It is worth starting by paying tribute to the many Commonwealth citizens who, in both peace and wartime, have made very many significant contributions to our country. But it is also right, as several noble Peers have mentioned, that the Commonwealth is the creation of an unusual set of historical circumstances. If we were starting completely from scratch, maybe with a new written constitution for the country, we might take a slightly different approach to some aspects of it.

In the spirit of the noble Lord, Lord Frost, saying that these are probing amendments, there are two points worth highlighting. One is that some restrictions exist on which Commonwealth citizens are able to register to vote. The combination of the requirements under the RPA 1983 and the linked requirements under the Immigration Act 1971 does not provide the fully open door that was perhaps touched on in some of the speeches earlier. Also, this is only one part of a wider question, because one could similarly reasonably ask why, when it comes to the local government franchise, somebody who is living in this country for decades, legally here and diligently paying their taxes every year, and who has no criminal record, is not allowed to vote for their local council.

I use that as an example of how there are many related issues. It would be wrong to single out Commonwealth citizens as the only part of that complex picture, as if they are the only group about whose right to vote we should in some way feel concerned. If the Government decide to look further at this issue, I hope it will be in the spirit of seeing it as part of a wider, more complex issue, rather than there being a specific problem that means we should single out Commonwealth citizens above and beyond all those other aspects of the issue for consideration.

[Baroness O'Neill of Bexley (Con)]

My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Frost, for tabling these amendments and giving us the opportunity to have this important discussion on the voting rights of Commonwealth citizens. I also thank my noble friends Lord Mackinlay of Richborough, Lord Jackson of Peterborough and Lady Coffey for their thoughtful contributions.

It is right that the right to vote in our parliamentary elections and choose our Government is restricted to British citizens, although there are some exceptions for those with close historical links to our country. I have already spoken about our concerns in relation to the consequences of devolved arrangements in Scotland and Wales. The exceptions that I mentioned and that noble Lords have discussed during the debate are long-standing provisions that were implemented to reflect the special status of Irish and Commonwealth citizens in particular. I suppose I should declare an interest here, as both my parents were Irish. I do not remember them ever voting in Irish elections, but they always voted with pride here.

The arrangement we have with the Republic of Ireland precedes the EEC and the EU. It stems from the establishment of the Irish Free State in the 1920s and the administrative agreement on the common travel area. The two countries have broad, reciprocal voting rights. I appreciate the concerns that have been raised today about Commonwealth citizens’ eligibility to vote—especially what was said earlier, which is difficult for anyone to justify. However, these matters are complex, and we should be careful about rushing into changes without wider consideration of broader government policy on citizenship and integration.

No changes to election laws should be rushed, and we will be discussing the consequences of doing so throughout this Bill. I thank noble Lords for raising this issue and look forward to the Minister’s response.

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[Lord Hayward (Con)]

My Lords, I shall comment briefly on one or two aspects of the debate. I first make the observation that I have a group of clause stand part debates later on, and it was my error that probably caused the officials serious concern when briefing the Minister as to why I wanted to have stand part debates on Clauses 18, 19 and 20 but had not included Clause 17. I shall leave that aside.

I have two other observations. One is in relation to the comments and amendment from the noble Baroness, Lady Pinnock. I have strong sympathy with her on the size of local government wards and the burdens imposed on some councillors in some parts of the country and not imposed on others. There appears to be no logic behind the position that we have from the size of one council or another. I could understand it if one was talking about large geographical areas—that is a perfectly good reason for saying that a councillor has difficulty in serving an area. The noble Baroness, Lady Pinnock, referred to Kirklees; there are other metropolitan authorities where the number of voters per councillor is substantially less than in places such as Kirklees and Birmingham—the noble Baroness cited London. There is no logic to that whatever.

I shall not go on to the question of parliamentary boundaries, because I referred to it during a debate earlier. I merely make two other observations. One is that Clause 17, in new Section 12A(1)(c), refers to

“the person appears to the officer to be of voting age”.

I am not sure that I am happy with that phraseology. Equally, my noble friend Lord Jackson referred in passing to Christchurch, and I am not happy about that reference either, although the noble Lord, Lord Rennard, because of his experience in winning the by-election that crushed my candidacy, would probably get more pleasure out of the reference than I did.

[Lord Pack (LD)]

My Lords, I was about to say that I would pick up where the noble Lord, Lord Hayward, finished, but I shall skip over Christchurch and come to the points that my noble friend Lady Pinnock made about her amendment. There is one important knock-on factor that has not yet been raised in this debate. The age profile of the population varies significantly across the country and hence varies between parliamentary constituencies and councils, but it also varies significantly within many councils. There are in many councils areas of, on average, much older population and, on average, much younger population. Therefore, it is very plausible that the extension of the franchise to 16 and 17 year-olds will have a very unequal effect on different council wards around the country as to the electorate in those wards. Hence there is a knock-on effect on councillor workload, the ability of voters to get a good service from their councillor and that fundamental democratic principle of trying to give everybody an equal vote. There is also a knock-on in terms of, for example, the work of the ongoing local government boundary reviews, which needs to be tied into giving 16 and 17 year-olds the vote. I hope that we will be able to hear from the Minister what thought has been given to how that process will be properly integrated with the potential knock-ons from this Bill.

In turning to some of the other amendments in this group, I simply observe that Amendment 32 from the noble Lord, Lord Blunkett, would be an excellent amendment to a Bill that introduced democratic elections to this place, and I hope that we have a chance to debate such a Bill in the near future.

On Amendment 45 from the noble Lord, Lord Fuller, I simply observe that there are some datasets in which EU citizens and Commonwealth citizens absolutely are present, which may turn out to be usable depending on how the automatic voter registration pilots continue to play out. I would not quite describe that group of people as completely unmoored from the data that is available.

I perhaps slightly pre-empt Amendment 55 from the noble Baroness, Lady O’Neill, and the noble Lord, Lord Jamieson, because I think there is a useful point to highlight here. I can understand why that amendment seeks in particular to prioritise providing information in writing. It certainly was the case in the past that being written to was a gold-standard form of communication that, rightly, was often prioritised: if something was legally important, it had to be in writing. It is, however, reasonable to say that we have moved on quite a long way from that, and for two reasons. The first is, sadly, the decline in the reliability of postal delivery services, whether it is Royal Mail or alternative delivery mechanisms. Saying that you are sending a letter to somebody does not have the same guarantee that it used to. Secondly, conversely, people receive information in a wide variety of other ways now. I take the example of HMRC. Every time I log in to its website, to do my tax return or to check things, HMRC is keen to encourage me to switch to having legally required notices about any tax return I might have to do sent to me electronically in future. Many people choose that. I happen to find it more convenient to have those notices sent to me the old-fashioned way so that I can scribble on them and so on, so I have not opted in yet, although I am sure that the incessant notifications will wear me down at some point. That illustrates why it is important to have a range of options available for providing information. Embedding in legislation that it must be in writing is not necessarily the best course. It is a regular feature of secondary legislation at the moment. It is something for which I think the Government should be given credit that we regularly see SIs come to this place that require legal notification to be given in some way and the Government put in quite modern wording that provides flexibility to use modern forms of communication, where appropriate.

Finally, on the right to vote, the split of amendments between this group and the previous group illustrates the point that I made earlier that there is an issue that may be worth looking at, but it should be looked at in the round, as a whole. There is a risk that, if we always single out particular groups of people who we are worried might get registered when they should not be, or who we think maybe should not have the vote, it can give the impression of being unduly fearful of, or uncomfortable with, those groups if we are not at the same time looking at the full, rounded picture. That is much the better way to proceed.

[Baroness O'Neill of Bexley (Con)]

My Lords, this has been an interesting debate on a variety of issues, and I thank noble Lords for their contributions. Amendment 32 from the noble Lord, Lord Blunkett, would allow sitting Members of this House to vote in general elections. Our disenfranchisement can be traced back centuries in common law as well as to a Motion passed by the other place in 1699 which stated that,

“no Peer of this Kingdom hath any Right to give his Vote in the Election for any Member to serve in Parliament”.

As Members of your Lordships’ House, we have a voice in Parliament. It is right that we do not also have our voices heard through elected representatives in the other place.

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[Baroness Lawlor (Con)]

My Lords, I support my noble friend Lord Fuller’s Amendments 34, 35, 36 and 38, which would require non-partisan teaching and non-party political posters, which would require balanced hustings, with all the candidates invited and with proper notice. They are very important amendments. It may be argued by the Minister that they are already covered by law under Sections 406 and 407 of the 1996 Act. Indeed, the law requires schools to

“prohibit the promotion of partisan political views”

and

“take steps to ensure the balanced presentation of … views”.

There are also teachers’ standards, which require teachers not to use their standing or position to influence pupils who may or may not be vulnerable due to their age. We also have the duties under the Human Rights Act and the Equality Act, as well the promotion of British values. All these are there.

I do not know how the Minister will respond to these amendments, but they are important because we are now looking at an entirely new category of people aged 16 and 17. The law as it stands was framed for the general teaching of youngsters at school, most of whom would not be going to the polls during their school years —maybe some at the very end but mostly not. Therefore, the idea of what teachers are doing is a pretty abstract notion. But now we are going to be teaching impressionable youngsters—children—who will be going to the polls and for whom this is not an abstract matter at all.

As other noble Lords have said, there is a danger of influence—maybe not intentional, but non-intentional —by the kind of material displayed and the kind of teaching mentioned by the noble Baroness, Lady Fox. How can somebody who is a committed member of any party avoid somehow influencing youngsters? It is necessary for the Government to think about how to put in special provisions for people at school who will be voting, as opposed to the cohorts at whom we have, to date, aimed the law, most of whom will not be voting in parliamentary or other elections.

[Lord Pack (LD)]

My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Fuller, touched on perhaps the most interesting element of this group, which does not directly affect the Bill at all. It is the potential wider knock-on effect on the Online Safety Act. If we get to a place where we have 16 and 17 year-olds registered, the existence of that electoral register, as the noble Lord rightly mentioned in passing, may become an important building block in future age-verification processes under that Act. So, I suspect that in some ways the most important issue these amendments raise is not for this Bill but for other areas that exercise us at other times.

A general point has come out through these amendments and in several earlier groups, which is that we will have two fundamentally different processes. Under this Bill, we will have the right to vote from 16; under the Online Safety Act the key age threshold is 18. I will not relitigate the previous debate, particularly in light of my comments earlier, but just observe that those two ages being different is not a reason to be particularly hostile, because we have many variations in all sorts of other areas, as was noted in previous debates. However, we should recognise that those two numbers are different. It would be helpful to have more clarity from the Government about their plan to ensure that the different age threshold under the Online Safety Act does not provide inadvertent, unwanted consequences that damage the extension of the franchise to 16 year-olds.

I do not agree with all the details of the methods that the noble Lord, Lord Fuller, has chosen in his amendments, but one important point is worth drawing out, which comes under his Amendment 35. Lawyers might argue over the word “outcome”. I think it is reasonable for schools to teach children about the values of democracy. If we look at, for example, the decisions made about the national curriculum under previous Conservative Governments, there is a very clear direction that we, as a nation, are not neutral between democracy and dictatorship. Therefore, it is reasonable for schools to communicate that we want people to participate in elections. It has to be done in a way that is fair and that recognises there are people who may wish to spoil their ballots or not to vote as a matter of principle, but promoting democracy is a reasonable part of our education system. Although there are some details I disagree with, the basic point about how the Online Safety Act world and the world to be created by this Bill are going to interact is one on which it would be helpful to hear more from the Government.

[Lord Jamieson (Con)]

My Lords, I am grateful to my noble friend Lord Fuller for his amendments, which raise important questions about young people’s access to electoral information and the need to ensure political balance in our schools. We have had a number of useful contributions. This has been one of the shorter debates, but some important issues have been raised.

As I recollect our discussions so far on this Bill, most, if not all, noble Lords have been in almost universal agreement about civic education. The noble Lord, Lord Murphy of Torfaen, who is not in his place today, said he spent 17 years teaching the British constitution. In fact, my first exposure to democracy was learning the British constitution, and I am pleased to say I passed.

My noble friend Lord Gascoigne made an important point on the first day that votes at 16 cannot be seen as an end in itself but must be accompanied by an understanding of what citizenship is and what playing a part in our free, liberal, democratic society means and entails. It is important—and we are spending quite a lot of time on it—that we consider those two things in parallel.

This group again addresses the complete inconsistency in the Government’s approach to votes at 16. As my noble friend Lord Markham told us at Second Reading, if we consider a 16 year-old old enough to choose a Government, we must accept that they are old enough to hear all the arguments. The noble Lord, Lord Pack, raised the fact that we have a distinct difference between the Online Safety Act age of 18 and votes at 16. We need somehow to reconcile that and recognise that we need to make sure that those who are going to vote have the information they need.

My noble friend’s Amendment 34 would require politically neutral, age-appropriate election information to be published on social media; that recognises the reality that young people, as has been said several times today, obtain their information online on social media and not through the more traditional channels of newspapers or TV. If the Government intend to extend the franchise, they must ensure that newly enfranchised voters can access the information necessary to exercise that right. Will the Minister explain how the Government intend to ensure that young people can receive accurate and politically balanced electoral information?

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

Front Bench.

[Lord Pack (LD)]

That was an enthusiastic heckle, there.

I think it fair to say that the impact assessment, weighing in at 130 pages, is very on brand for election law, especially given our comments earlier about how voluminous election law is. I was struck, though, on looking through it, by how little there is about police time and resources. As the Minister will know well from previous questions and debates, councillors, MPs and members of political parties are already often quite frustrated, when they raise issues with the police—perhaps fears for personal safety due to harassment—by how often police resources are not really available to properly follow up such concerns.

In the parts of the Bill to do with political finance, which we will come to on future days rather than this evening, some of the issues we are looking at there, around, for example, crypto transfers, will require quite sophisticated and advanced investigatory techniques. It will not simply be a matter of whether the local police team has the resources to take seriously issues raised with it to do with election law; I am sure there will be quite a lot of pressure on many specialised parts of the police service, the National Crime Agency and so on.

It is striking that the impact assessment seems to be just about completely silent—I say that in case I missed something in my reading of it, but I did not spot any reference at all—on the potential costs to the police and the associated law enforcement apparatus of the range of offences that the Bill will create, toughen up or put a greater focus on. I hope the Minister can tell us a little about what assessments have been made of the potential costs to the law enforcement apparatus and what reassurance we have that, whatever form this Bill takes when it is passed—and then, we hope, commenced by the Government—the necessary resources will be available to actually enforce it.

Representation of the People Bill

Lord Pack Excerpts

Committee stage
Wednesday 4th November 2026 Lords Chamber

[Lord Frost (Non-Afl)]

The noble Lord makes a good point. It has been touched on already that the situation is much more complicated than it used to be. But those practical angles cannot be the only thing that is brought into the debate. We have to remember what we are doing here. We are marking the achievement through democracy of a shift in political power, potentially, from one set of people to another. How that is accomplished, how people see it happening, and the media discussion of it are just as important. It should not be neglected when we consider how local elections are conducted.

That balance is important. Of course, different authorities can reach different judgments on that balance. The amendment from the noble Lord, Lord Jackson, as he noted, allows for that balance to be reached in certain cases, but we must not forget that these are elections about the shift of power. Administrative and bureaucratic convenience—how it is done—cannot be the only determining factor. We have to think about what is happening here and that is why the amendment from the noble Lord, Lord Jackson, deserves discussion and support.

[Lord Pack (LD)]

My Lords, I will start with a different amendment in this group, Amendment 123 on the issue of poll cards, because they are a topic that is well suited to the sort of scrutiny that we rightly pride ourselves on in this House. It is a niche issue and a serious one, but also, I concede, not the largest of issues. But we should not be too blasé about the issue, even though it is not the largest of issues, because a very considerable amount of money is spent on the production and distribution of poll cards. In the second half of 2019, for example, £19 million was spent, excluding the local and European elections that year. That was just for the general election. So, millions of pounds are spent each year on poll cards. And yet, I think it is fair to say, if any of us was involved in a recruitment process for a graphic designer and they were to show us proudly the main item in their portfolio a modern poll card, we would quite rapidly be thinking, “How can we bring this interview to an end?” Because, clearly, it is not very good.

In fairness, one should say that everyone involved in the process has a good alibi for why it is not their fault, because there is a complex interaction of legislative requirements, IT systems and their capabilities, and time pressures on returning officers. All of those interact. Everyone can say, “It’s not my fault”. But the reality is, we spend millions of pounds every year on something that we all know when we look at it is not very good.

We should also bear in mind that it is the one official communication that everyone on the electoral register receives about the election. If that is, as it were, the front door or the shop window of democracy to voters, it is both a poor use of money and also slightly embarrassing in terms of how we present democracy to people. So, I hope we will hear some positive noises from the Minister in due course on Amendment 123. I certainly welcome the fact that, elsewhere in the Bill, some of the proposals will simplify the legislative framework underpinning poll cards and will make it easier to improve their design in future.

I turn to the issue that has taken up most of our time on this group this morning. I, along with others, admire the irony of the timing of debating whether or not counts should be overnight on a morning when many of us would rather have been able to stay up later to watch the elections from the US. There is an important lesson from those elections, which is that we should not underestimate the importance of speedy election counts in terms of giving confidence in the security of the system.

Thankfully, in Britain, those concerns, broadly speaking, are a long way in the past, but the reason we have the system where it used to be the norm that just about everything was counted overnight was because of the fear that ballot boxes would be interfered with. We should not be blasé about the risk of those fears in the future, but, as several noble Lords, including the noble Lords, Lord Hayward and Lord McCobb, have pointed out, there are significant good, practical reasons why overnight counts are not always possible. Indeed, in some cases, they would be so difficult to practically organise that one would even go so far as to say that on some occasions they are not even desirable. So, while I sympathise with the thrust of the amendment from the noble Lord, Lord Jackson, I do not think a central, top-down mandate in the way that it suggests is the right way to progress on that.

I will speak more positively about a couple of other amendments in this group, including one from the noble Lord, Lord Jackson: Amendments 125 and 128. Their proposals are welcome. We saw in our discussions on the first day of Committee the value of election pilots. In this case, several references were made to the pilots that have been carried out in Wales around automatic voter registration. Those pilots properly inform our decision-making. It is fair to say that the election pilots on other topics that we have discussed so far have not been hugely successful. There seems to be a relatively small number of ideas that are piloted and never turn out to be particularly effective. So, the spirit of Amendments 125 and 128 is very welcome, and I hope we may hear in due course from the Government a willingness to be a bit more imaginative about what is piloted.

I will throw in one example of what I mean. In academic research into the turnout in local elections, the evidence is pretty strong that, if you have to walk more than 600 metres to your polling station, turnout drops significantly in local elections. There are different possible ways of piloting having more polling stations so fewer people have to travel long distances to them, which is the sort of slightly more imaginative approach to piloting I hope we can hear about in the future.

Finally, on Amendments 129 and 136, I have little to add to what my colleague and noble friend Lady Thornhill said eloquently about them and what others have contributed today. I simply add that it is fair to say that, as we saw, for example, with the Gorton and Denton by-election, there are significant differences of view about what may be the exact scale and nature of the problems that these amendments seek to address. But that seems to me a good reason to want to face up to that—to want to have a good evidence base and careful consideration, rather than simply ignoring the issue completely.

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I strongly support my noble friend and the noble Lord, Lord Shamash, in their claim that we should bring this together. The Bill, thick though it is, fails to address the fundamental problem, especially in a world of AI and the complexity of the electoral system, which I will not dwell upon again. I strongly support my noble friend.

[Lord Pack (LD)]

My Lords, this may be the group on which we have the most widespread agreement from all corners of the Committee. I very much agree with the broad thrust of the comments from the three noble Lords who have spoken so far.

To give one further illustration: in preparing my ring binder of things that I thought might be useful to have with me during Committee, I thought it might be useful to print off copies of the Representation of the People Act 1983 and PPERA 2000, the two pieces of primary legislation that we will, I hope, amend through this legislation. I dutifully downloaded the PDFs for both from legislation.gov.uk. One comes in at 543 pages and the other at 524 pages, which is about the length of the last copy of War and Peace I saw. I decided not to print those off, but it illustrates the problem, which was quite rightly touched on earlier, about how staff and volunteers have to grapple with understanding large parts of what is a very complex legal landscape.

However, I would not want to disappoint the noble Lord, Lord Hayward, by not taking the chance to quibble just a little over a couple of his amendments in this group. His Amendment 16 would remove a cross-reference, but I would go the other way and say that we need more cross-references in legislation. But he is absolutely right with Amendment 17. I am sure that there is some fine legal brain in this House who will be able to elucidate why the definition that would be removed by Amendment 17 is not simply a rearranging of the words. That definition adds very little meaning.

Overall, it is welcome that we have seen, in one of the more recent government amendments tabled, a tidying-up by the proposal to repeal some previously uncommenced legislation. I hope that the debate on this group will encourage the Government to look at further steps for tidying up as we progress through the Bill.

[Lord Jamieson (Con)]

My Lords, I will be part of the agreement across the Committee on this one. I am grateful to my noble friend Lord Hayward for introducing these amendments and agree with all of them as a point of principle—to be slightly different from the noble Lord, Lord Pack.

We need this debate on the complexity of electoral law and administrative bureaucracy. I echo the Minister in recognising and thanking electoral returning officers for their job. It is not an easy job, as various noble Lords have made clear, to deal with all the legislation. The noble Lord, Lord Pack, said that just two Acts added up to over 1,100 pages. They are long, complex, inconsistent and, on occasion, in conflict. Electoral returning officers have to deal regularly with new regulations, guidance and changes. It is a surprise that anybody actually wants the job.

In addition to dealing with that, there is the sheer difficulty of running the operation. You may be dealing with 200-plus polling stations. You have to make sure that you get all your polling booths to them. You have to send out thousands of postal votes and rely on the postal system, which itself always has the potential for error. You have to make decisions on the spot in order to overcome all these various things. The Bill then prescribes, as my noble friend Lord Hayward has said, exactly how someone is supposed to do the job and who in the council is supposed to do the job and, as my noble friend raised, includes that specific point about requiring all staff to be made available. What happens if all staff are not willing to be made available? What sanction can the chief executive have? Will it be part of their work contract? What about needing them potentially to be made available to another neighbouring authority that needs more people? The system works. The EROs get the job done. It is a difficult job and, as I said in my previous speech, we should trust them.

I will go through some of these amendments, beginning with Amendment 13 to Clause 7(4)—reiterated in Amendment 16 to Clause 14—which defines “absent voters records”, “overseas elector lists”, “overseas elector’s declaration”, “registration officer” and “voter register”. Subsection (5) then clarifies the roles of a deputy electoral registration officer and a person assisting the electoral registration officer. My noble friend has already raised concerns over how other Whitehall departments determine this. I can go on through all the various clauses—and that is before I get on to the clauses that my noble friend has opposed in order to prompt this debate.

It is clear that our electoral system, local government and layers of administrative bureaucracy are complex. We are fortunate to live in a parliamentary democracy and to work in a system that has evolved, relatively organically, over time. Some legal complexity is perhaps expected, but we are concerned that, rather than seeking to improve the situation, some provisions in the Bill risk unnecessarily increasing the bureaucracy and practical complexity. I will not go through it all, but it is very clear from across the Committee that the Bill is overly complex, adds complexity and does not do what it should do, which is to make life simpler and more certain.

I hope that the Minister will take on board some of the recommendations made by noble Lords on how and where electoral law and administration could be made a little less complex without weakening the system’s strength, especially at the local level. In fact, by increasing consistency and simplifying where appropriate, it would strengthen the system. Perhaps the Minister can give an indication of what further government amendments we can expect.

Representation of the People Bill

Lord Pack Excerpts

Committee stage
Monday 2nd November 2026 Lords Chamber

[Lord Deben (Con)]

My Lords, I am very much opposed to a system other than first past the post, but it seems peculiar that we have a devolved system and then we are to say that people in the devolved Administrations cannot decide how they choose their Government. I find that a very odd argument. The fact of the matter is that Wales has an odd system of election. It is not one that I would campaign for, but the Welsh have decided that it is the one they want. I find it out of all proportion with the world we live in today. We are a country made up of a number of countries. Yes, of course, we are the United Kingdom, but the Welsh—and I speak as someone who had a Welsh-speaking father—are different from much of the rest.

However, where one party tends dominate election after election, there cannot be anything but the suspicion, at least, that that party will use its dominant power—to use the words of the noble Lord, Lord Wallace, in another context—to fiddle the constitution.

Finally, this is important not just for transparency but consistency. The Government, in their Explanatory Notes, refer to the importance of consistency as one of the reasons for this Bill. If we are to be consistent, we should ensure that the franchise is consistent across the country.

[Lord Pack (LD)]

My Lords, this group provides us with a choice between devolution or top-down centralised uniformity. I acknowledge that the noble Lords, Lord Frost and Lord Jackson, are perhaps surprising voices for enforcing centralised uniformity on a range of nations, regardless of the views of those nations, but that is in effect what these amendments would do. However, as the noble Baronesses, Lady Bennett and Lady Smith, pointed out, this is not quite the case, because a special privileged position is given to the City of London. It is a position that may be justified for some of the reasons we heard earlier, but which these amendments would not grant to the people of Wales or Scotland. As a Londoner for nearly all my life, and who is very proud to often argue the corner for London, I think giving the City of London a special place above and beyond Scotland and Wales might be going just a bit too far.

[Lord Harris of Haringey (Lab)]

On the important issue of the City of London, if you give it its name as the City of London Corporation, and you treat it as essentially a trading estate which happens to have 14,000 people living on it, then maybe the electoral arrangements it adopts are indeed a matter for that trading estate rather than for the rest of us.

[Lord Pack (LD)]

It is an interesting point but, as the noble Lord said, there are several assumptions leading up to its inclusion, all of which I would share.

We have also heard the argument that the ability of Scotland and Wales to make their own choices might result in pressure on us here in Westminster. In a way, that is quite an advantage. After all, if Scotland or Wales decide to do something and it works, that is a good bit of pressure that we should welcome. Of course, if it fails, it achieves the exact opposite. Seeing how variation plays out is not a bad thing to be scared of.

Indeed, there is much more variation than perhaps the noble Lord, Lord Jackson, is aware of. He made reference to the United States. I point out that the voting system for Congress varies between states, and two of them use preferential voting. I very much hope that all sides of this Committee will pay more attention and maybe learn from the States in that respect.

[Lord Jackson of Peterborough (Con)]

The noble Lord pre-empts my response to my noble friend. For clarity, I checked, and he is quite right. I stand partially corrected, in that the states of Maine and Alaska have ranked choice elections, one for governor and senator and the other, I think, just for senator. I am touched that he is interested in those issues. My general point is that the vast bulk of elections are based on the same kind of electoral system across the United States.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Pack (LD)]

Indeed, but variation is present. There are many other examples of variation. The argument was made that there are some administrative burdens in allowing variation. I would simply observe that with devolution we have the ability to vary things such as speed limits and tax rates. If one is going to take seriously the argument that there are problems with variation, one should be up front and say, “That is an argument against devolution full stop”. It is not possible with powerful logic and consistency to argue that variation for the franchise is somehow a problem while variation for, say, tax rates, is acceptable. That goes to the argument about constitutional logic. The constitutional logic argument works exactly the other way: the very constitutional logic of devolution is that different people end up being able to make different decisions. That is the inescapable logic of devolution.

Finally, on the point about gerrymandering, some slightly more politic phrases were used earlier. I always think it very unwise to attempt to set rules for elections on the basis of partisan self-interest—partly, obviously, for the reason of principle, but also because it so often backfires. Returning to the United States, we may see some Republicans rueing what they thought was very clever drawing of boundaries when the election results come in tomorrow. Of course, all of us will have to be here bright and early on Wednesday morning, so we will not be able to stay up quite as late as we may have wished to watch those results coming in.

Fundamentally, this is a question about devolution: about whether we believe that it is right for different places which have powers devolved to them to make different decisions. I join with those who have argued in this debate that, yes, that variation is right. Therefore, on this occasion, I very much hope we will not be hearing warm words from the Minister in due course, but that she too will defend the rights of different parts of the United Kingdom to make their own decisions under devolved settlements.

[Baroness O'Neill of Bexley (Con)]

My Lords, I thank my noble friend Lord Frost for his probing amendments, including those supported by my noble friend Lord Jackson of Peterborough. This has been a much quicker debate, but worthy no less, and I thank all those who have contributed to it.

These amendments seek to standardise voting eligibility across the UK, with the exception of the City of London ward elections, as has already been said. The SNP in Scotland and Labour in Wales have already given the right to vote in devolved and local elections to all foreign residents. Those decisions were not minor technical differences between the UK’s constituent parts, and they are deserving of debate at national level.

This issue also relates to automatic voter registration. While Wales has conducted four automatic registration pilots, it did not have to verify the nationality of an elector as a result of the changes at a devolved level. I am sure we will debate the security of automatic voter registration in greater detail in due course.

In addition, we are concerned about the consequences for UK political donation rules as a result of the changes made by the two devolved Administrations giving voting rights to every foreign resident. This has given foreign citizens the right to make unlimited donations to politicians and political parties across the UK, opening the door to foreign finance as well as direct electoral influence. For example, a foreign student resident in a Scottish university can legally make political donations to any political entity.

At Second Reading, the Minister, said that this Bill will

“reduce the risk of foreign money entering our politics … The threat to our democracy from foreign influence and hidden sources of political funding is an ever-growing danger—one that we cannot afford to delay tackling”.—[Official Report, 14/9/26; col. 971-72.]

Will the Minister therefore commit to closing this loophole without delay? If not, why is there an inconsistency when it comes to foreign interference?

This debate has touched on fundamental questions. The balance of devolution matters, but so does citizenship. It is not meaningless, as so many of those residents who have proudly chosen to become citizens can attest. I look forward to the Minister’s response.

Representation of the People Bill

Lord Pack Excerpts

2nd reading
Monday 14th September 2026 Lords Chamber

[Lord Pack (LD)]

My Lords, I too thank the Minister for opening such a long and detailed debate, one that has shown the broad range of expertise in this House, including that of the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Lichfield, whose presence we will certainly miss. Even if it is not quite a one-for-one swap, it was very welcome to hear the maiden speech of the noble Lord, Lord Macintosh, and I am sure he will contribute much to the Bill and other topics in the future.

As someone with a PhD in the Great Reform Act, I am tempted by the reference made by the noble Baroness, Lady O’Neill, to digress deep into the 19th century but, mindful of the time, I should perhaps rather concentrate on some of the common themes we have heard in the debate: the need to strengthen and protect our democracy, so that it is the voice of the ordinary citizen that is dominant, not that of the billionaire or the foreign Government and so that the necessary bureaucracy of elections serves the citizen and helps them exercise their democratic say, rather than obstructs or frustrates them.

There are important measures to welcome in the Bill, such as the introduction of votes at 16, the progress on automatic voter registration and the strengthened independence for the Electoral Commission. But there are other areas where the Bill as it currently stands falls short, where it leaves too many loopholes or even creates some new ones, and where there will therefore be much to test out in Committee—when, let us hope, the Government will be open to persuasion.

The Government themselves have acknowledged the need to do more. They tabled a very large number of amendments late in the House of Commons process for the Bill—a subject to which I suspect the noble Lord, Lord Rooker, may return shortly. The Government have also talked of the need for further amendments to help implement the Rycroft review, as well as requesting that the Electoral Commission review spending limits, and made that late commitment given by the Minister in the House of Commons to a new task and finish group looking at mega donors. Clearly, there is much more still to do.

So often, reviews, proposals and good intentions run into the sand of “when legislative time will allow”, but we have a primary legislation vehicle available here and now, so it will be crucial that we make full use of Committee and Report to polish, fix and improve the Bill. There is a certain urgency about it as well, given the dangers and strains that our existing systems face. There are dangers from abroad, as set out by the new chief of MI6 in her first public speech just before Christmas, and those set out by the director-general of MI5 when briefing political parties earlier this year. There is also the unprecedented concentration of donations to political parties from just a handful of the super-rich, a trend accelerated in the last few days but present before then too. For example, more than 80% of all the declared donations ever received by Nigel Farage’s party have come from just two people.

It goes wider than that. For example, as the noble Lord, Lord Wills, mentioned earlier, Transparency International has shown that the proportion of donations coming from those giving £1 million or more has surged thirtyfivefold in under a decade—and those figures are even before last week. We are moving rapidly from a broad-based, democratic system of financing parties to one of unprecedented sums coming from a tiny number of people.

There is no one magic solution to solve that. Action on multiple fronts is required, which is why we need this Bill but also an improved version of it. For example, as the noble Lord, Lord Wallace, the noble Baronesses, Lady Royall and Lady Goudie, and others have mentioned, there is a question about the breadth of donations that need capturing by rules covering transparency.

There are also some important loopholes in what the Bill proposes. I have mentioned before the Donald Trump loophole, as one could call it: the ability for him to split ownership of one of his firms with several members of his family, thus bringing each of them individually underneath the threshold at which the protections in the Bill in terms of foreign ownership of firms would kick in. The threshold set in the Bill is a much more generous one than the threshold set for controlling foreign ownership in our newspaper sector. I am not clear why our democracy should deserve lower protection than our media landscape. Although the measure to add transparency to donations direct to candidates is very welcome, it also creates a new loophole as the Government are not planning aggregation rules—so one large donation could be, completely legally, split into multiple small donations to candidates and kept secret.

We will have to explore these and other examples further in Committee, along with toughening up the proposed corporate donation limits, where in particular the Electoral Commission has quite rightly warned that there is again scope to split multiple donations among multiple people and therefore have them become acceptable because they are not aggregated. But such closing of loopholes can get us only so far, and that is why we on these Benches welcome the many suggestions in the Commons, including from the Labour Benches, for progress towards a donor cap so that a small number of very rich people cannot drown out the democratic voices of millions of ordinary citizens.

I hope the principle of protecting our democracy as one in which every individual gets their fair voice—but also, perhaps, the strong support we have heard from so many in the Labour Party in this debate today, as well as the support from many other parts of this House, including from the noble Lords, Lord Evans and Lord Carter, and the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett, as well as many on the Labour Benches—will encourage the Government to have a very open mind on this topic as the Bill progresses.

That, though, is just the “money in” part. We also need to do much better at regulating the “money out” part, as there are significant gaps in the controls on campaigning expenditure. The Government’s letter to the Electoral Commission asking it to review certain cap levels is certainly welcome, but we also need to move away from the Government being in the driving seat on setting the limits that will apply for their own re-election bid. It should be an independent regulator that is in the driving seat.

We need to recognise that political campaigning is not a part-time activity. As we all know very well, it happens all year round, year after year. Yet expense limits are part-time. They do not apply all year round, year after year. That leaves a huge gap in our democratic defences, one that needs closing with year-round spending controls. As the noble Baroness, Lady Pinnock, mentioned, we also need to close that gap because we are now in a world where national mailshots at local election time, unless it is near to a general election when the general election limits apply, are in fact a completely uncapped, unlimited form of campaigning that can completely drown out the campaigning that takes place at a local level.

I would not want to disappoint noble Lords by not mentioning the merits of electoral reform. First past the post is designed for a two-party system, yet we now have five and six-party systems around the country. While I commend the modesty of the noble Lord, Lord Foulkes, in feeling that an election system that results in his own election is flawed, it is possible to take a different view of that. So often, supporters of first past the post have talked about the stability and the clear mandates that it provides. I humbly suggest that the evidence of the last few years suggests that perhaps now is the time to look again, so I very much hope that talk of a national commission to draw up proposals to change our electoral system will turn into action.

I turn to an area of much greater cross-party agreement: the need to tackle abuse and intimidation of those taking part in a democratic system. It is a topic that I know the Minister is committed to and that has rightly been mentioned as an important issue in this debate by the noble Baronesses, Lady Leaman, Lady Morgan and Lady Smith, and others. There are undoubtedly some welcome moves in the Bill on that topic, but they are pretty limited compared with the number of excellent reports and recommendations such as from the recent Speaker’s Conference or those set out by the Jo Cox Foundation or the Online Safety Network. There has been very little movement, in particular, in the online aspects of those problems, so I very much hope that is an area where we can make progress in Committee.

I have one final area to mention. There is of course that question of electoral consolidation, as mentioned by the noble Lords, Lord Hayward, Lord Norton and Lord Shamash, and indeed by many other Peers in the other recent debate that the noble Earl, Lord Kinnoull, held in this House. The statute book is an overcomplicated mess; reviews and experts have consistently concluded that for decades, but the situation keeps on getting worse. That is a problem for returning officers and for the public sector staff working at the front line to try to make our elections function. It is a problem because of the risks of foreign influence that it opens us up to, as the Rycroft review has set out. It is bad for the ordinary citizen and for civil society because, far too often, to work out how you can use your democratic rights, you need to call on a lawyer. Lawyers are wonderful people in many ways, but the need to call on them should be safely limited.

To give just one illustration of the complexity of election law, the Explanatory Notes to the Bill point out that it refers to and amends 20 Acts and 19 statutory instruments. To be fair, there is a very welcome piece of what one could call mini-consolidation in the heart of the Bill on the rules to do with election forms, and those would certainly help us avoid situations such as the ludicrously long 72-page statutory instrument that was required simply to add the veteran card as an acceptable form of ID. Having tempted the Government to one step of tidying up election law in this Bill, I hope that in Committee we may be able to tempt the Government to a little more. Why, for example, are the Parliamentary Elections Act 1695 and the European Parliamentary Elections Act 1993 not fully repealed? I give those as two simple examples of how there is tidying up that could be done that would make things clearer and would clear the road to full consolidation in due course.

Our democracy is a precious thing. We have warnings from other countries of how quickly democracy can decay if it is not properly nurtured and protected. Much of the Bill is welcome, but much of it needs improvement to go further. There is an urgency about those improvements, because in legislative time the next general election is already near. What we do not fix in the Bill, we may well not be able to fix before the next election. I look forward to the Government continuing to engage with other parties and outside experts, and to Peers working collaboratively across the House so that the Bill ends up being a major milestone to improve our democracy rather than a missed opportunity that we all regret.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Hayward (Con)]

My Lords, I strongly support what the noble Lord, Lord Rooker, has just said. He has identified a problem. It is not new. It has evolved over a period of decades, but it is a real problem that this Chamber is facing now. I strongly support the detail outlined by the noble Lord, Lord Rooker, which we face and which the Commons has not addressed.

[Lord Pack (LD)]

My Lords, conscious of the time, I will very briefly say only that I fully agree with both noble Lords, Lord Rooker and Lord Hayward. Were what is being proposed what we were used to having, we would think, of course, it is completely obvious that we would never abolish the provision of such straightforward information that would help us do our job better, so I very much commend the proposal of the noble Lord, Lord Rooker.

[Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)]

My Lords, the amendment that my noble friend has tabled seeks information on the amendments debated in the Commons, so I thought it would be helpful to the House if I set out the scrutiny that the Bill had in the House of Commons.

The Bill had its Second Reading in the House of Commons on Monday 2 March. The House of Commons then ordered that the Bill should be committed to a Public Bill Committee. The Public Bill Committee itself decided on its sitting pattern. The Committee completed its scrutiny in nine sittings over five days. As usual, all clauses and schedules were considered, as were all proposed amendments and new clauses that were selected by the chair. Report took place on Wednesday 2 September. The House of Commons ordered that consideration should conclude no later than five hours after it commenced. All proposed amendments and new clauses selected by the chair were considered.

I have no doubt that noble Lords will add to the work of the Commons with their usual high-quality scrutiny. There will, I am sure, be time to debate all the issues that noble Lords raised in detail as the Bill progresses through the House.

Electoral Commission Investigations

Lord Pack Excerpts

Wednesday 2nd September 2026 Lords Chamber

[Lord Pack (LD)]

My Lords, successful investigations require the right powers to be available, yet both the National Crime Agency and the Met Police have warned that they cannot use their full sweep of powers because the maximum sentences for many political finance offences are too low and do not trigger them. Both the Rycroft review and the Joint Committee on the National Security Strategy have highlighted this loophole. Can the Minister reassure us that the Government will be using the Representation of the People Bill to table amendments to close this loophole so that the full power of law enforcement can be used against politicians who might or might not be breaking the law?

[Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)]

We want to see all the loopholes around this issue closed, and we are taking very strong and clear action. We have accepted all of Philip Rycroft’s recommendations, and we are taking forward a comprehensive package of reforms to strengthen the safeguards against foreign political influence and interference in our politics. I look forward to debating this Bill with Members of your Lordships’ House—we start on 14 September.

Foreign Interference in UK Politics

Lord Pack Excerpts

Thursday 9th July 2026 Lords Chamber

[Baroness O’Neill of Bexley (Con)]

My Lords, I thank the Minister for the opportunity to ask questions on this Statement and thank Philip Rycroft for his thorough review. We on these Benches have consistently supported measures to tackle foreign interference in our democracy and recognise the value of Philip Rycroft’s review. However, an independent review is not a substitute for ministerial engagement with political parties where recommendations affect the rules by which political parties compete with one another. The Government have traditionally sought broad political agreement before legislating.

The threats posed by hostile states are real and growing, so protecting the integrity of our democratic system is fundamental to maintaining public confidence in our elections. Every political party represented in this House has a shared interest in ensuring that foreign interference, illicit finance and attempts to undermine our democratic processes are robustly addressed. However, we remain concerned about both the process the Government have adopted and aspects of the proposals now being taken forward.

As my noble friend Lady Finn said during last week’s debate, there is a simple constitutional principle at stake. The rules governing political finance are not ordinary legislation; they are the rules by which political parties compete with one another. Governments are therefore the trustees of those rules, not their proprietors. The reason why that convention exists is straightforward: Governments should not use their parliamentary majority unilaterally to legislate on the finances of their political opponents. Once that principle is abandoned, it becomes easier for future Governments of any political persuasion to do the same and risks importing the kind of hyper-partisan approach to electoral law that has proved so damaging elsewhere.

For many years, Governments of all political persuasions have recognised that changes in this area should, where possible, be developed through consultation and broad cross-party agreements, rather than imposed unilaterally by the Government of the day. That is why the Government’s approach is so disappointing. Rather than waiting for Philip Rycroft’s review to conclude, Ministers introduced the Representation of the People Bill before publishing their response. They have now chosen to cherry-pick two recommendations from that review and insert them into the Bill through significant government amendments during the stages in the other place without first engaging in proper cross-party talks. Simply informing political parties of changes after they have already been drafted is not consultation. Why did the Government not publish a consultation paper, formal or informal, or convene proper cross-party discussions before deciding to legislate?

Constitutional conventions exist precisely because changes to the rules of democratic competition should not come as a surprise to those expected to operate within them. An independent review is valuable, but it is not a suitable political consensus on the rules governing political competition. However, the Government have immediately accepted two recommendations from the Rycroft review—a moratorium on cryptocurrency and a £100,000 annual cap on donations from overseas electors—before publishing their full response to the review or consulting political parties on how these proposals should operate.

More troubling still, these measures are intended to have a retrospective effect from March this year. Political parties are therefore expected to comply with legal requirements whose detailed legislative provisions have not yet been debated by Parliament or, indeed, published in draft. That is full-on retrospective legislation and is constitutionally very difficult to justify.

More fundamentally, why was the Representation of the People Bill introduced before the Rycroft review had reported? Given that there was no imminent general election, why did Ministers not pause the Bill for a matter of weeks to bring forward a coherent package of reforms? Alternatively, if the Government wished to proceed urgently with electoral reforms, why were the political finance provisions not introduced in separate legislation, as previous Governments have done? Can the Minister also outline the consultation that has taken place with the Electoral Commission, parliamentary authorities and political parties on these proposals? What additional resources will be provided to ensure that any new regulatory responsibilities can be implemented effectively?

Finally, legislation is only one part of the answer. Effective enforcement is equally important. Can the Minister therefore tell the House what additional resource will be provided to the Electoral Commission, and to any other enforcement bodies, to ensure that these reforms can be properly implemented and enforced?

Good policy requires more than good intentions; it requires proper consultation, careful scrutiny and, in this area above all, broad political consensus. We will continue to support proportionate measures that genuinely strengthen our democracy against foreign interference, but we urge the Government to return to the long-established constitutional principle that the rules governing political competition should be made with political parties, not simply imposed upon them. Protecting our democracy should unite Parliament and not become another area for partisan legislation.

[Lord Pack (LD)]

My Lords, I will resist the temptation to ask the Minister to remind us what consultation the previous Conservative Government carried out with either his party or mine over, for example, changing the electoral system for elections of mayors or expense limits for general elections.

Instead, to go to the heart of the matter, these Benches very much share the concerns set out in the Rycroft review about the risk of foreign money influencing, or even corrupting, our politics. We therefore broadly welcome the Government’s commitment to implementing the report. However, I have some concerns about the intended speed of implementation, some of the loopholes that will remain, and one particular issue that is not mentioned in the Government’s response, which I suspect the Minister can successfully predict.

I turn first to the intended pace of implementation. On recommendation 4, regarding non-party campaigners and related issues, the Government have said they will

“commit to consultation and further work”.

They are not even committing to action on that one. On recommendation 14, on internet advertising, the Government have promised “proposals in due course”. On recommendation 16, on think tanks and associated issues, the Government’s commitment is that they will

“consider opportunities for further work”.

I fear that you can almost hear the wheels of Whitehall grinding to a halt as you consider that phrase. I hope the Minister can set out clear timelines for the Government’s intended progress on those recommendations, which are, after all, on substantive major issues such as the role of online advertising.

On loopholes, I have raised before the question of the Government’s apparent inconsistent approach to politics and the media. They appear to be sticking to a significant control test for companies that permits greater foreign ownership of a company that donates to our politics than is permitted for a company that owns one of our newspapers. It remains unclear to me why the Government think that a lower level of protection against foreign interference in our politics than in our media is appropriate. I hope the Minister might be able to clarify that.

The Government are proposing—in a broad sense, this is a welcome step in the right direction—introducing a new threshold of £2,230, above which pre-campaign donations to individual candidates would need to be declared. That sounds a reasonable threshold, until one remembers that British-wide political parties will typically stand 633 candidates across the country, or, if not contesting the Speaker’s seat, 632 candidates. Therefore, 632 lots of some £2,000 gets you to nearly £1.5 million-worth of donations that could be made legally, legitimately and in secret, unless the Government also propose to go a little further and introduce aggregation requirements around those donations to individual candidates. I hope the Minister can tell us what is intended on that front.

Indeed, the Government Statement is rather silent on whether similar protection will be extended to, for example, elections for the Mayor of Greater Manchester or the Mayor of London. Those, among other elected posts at other levels of election, have important power, and, although we have not yet had a track record of having to worry about foreign money in such elections, it would seem to me prudent to extend such protections.

Finally, I turn to the consolidation of election law and the dangers, costs and complexity that arise from the messy and fragile state of election law, In the past, I have used the parallel of a teenager with a messy bedroom—the Government never quite decide that now is the time to start cleaning up that bedroom The Rycroft review said:

“I urge Government to consider”


action in this area. Because that was a boxed-out urging of the Government to consider, rather than a formal recommendation, the Government’s response so far has been silent on that particular part of the Rycroft review. I hope the Minister, having been urged by Rycroft to consider this issue, can tell us what consideration the Government have come to.

To push on one specific example, consolidation does not have to a be a big project, put off for ever only to be done in one big bang. It is possible to pick off little individual issues. For example, it is possible to look at redundant legislation on the statute book, the repeal of which would have no or only minimal knock-on consequences. It is a bit like picking up the dirty crisp packet from the middle of the floor—we are not going to tidy the whole bedroom but can at least pick up some of the easy bits. I have one specific question. The Parliamentary Elections Act 1695 seems to me to be the perfect crisp packet—an easy thing that could be picked off and repealed under the Representation of the People Bill. I hope the Minister can tell us that that is going to be added to the Government’s plans.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government (Lord Lemos) (Lab)]

My Lords, I will come to that question at the end, if I may.

The Secretary of State commissioned Philip Rycroft to conduct an independent review of risks posed by foreign financial influence in UK politics. In March, we welcomed Mr Rycroft’s comprehensive assessment and announced immediate plans to accept two recommendations responding to urgent risks. A week ago, in your Lordships’ House, I said that the Government would publish their response very soon, and I am delighted to say I was right. They have now published their full response and, as noble Lords know, the Government have accepted all of Mr Rycroft’s recommendations. I will come to the specific points that the noble Lord, Lord Pack, made in a moment. I welcome the support—I would not say it is qualified support—from all the Benches opposite for Rycroft and our acceptance of the recommendations.

In response to Mr Rycroft’s recommendations, we will strengthen our political finance rules through amendments to the Representation of the People Bill. I should note, because this is an important point that the noble Baroness made, that the Minister will be writing to political parties to set out these measures in much more detail, and that letter will be publicly available on GOV.UK. I will come to the question of discussions and engagement in a moment.

We will introduce an annual £100,000 cap on donations and regulated transactions from overseas electors. It is materially more complex to trace the true source of political donations made by voters living overseas, and this creates a clear avenue for the channelling of illicit funds. There is a simple principle at stake here, which I think we all share: we want the people who make donations to political parties to have a genuine stake in the life of the UK. That is the principle we are seeking to achieve. A cap recognises legitimate participation while ending the risk of unlimited overseas money entering our politics. The noble Baroness referred to those risks, and the Government are very alive to them.

Recognising that risk continues when British citizens return to the UK, and therefore we are introducing a minimum residency period. The risk is very clear. An overseas elector returning to the UK must be here for a full calendar year before that cap is lifted, to prevent circumvention of the regime. Once the measures come into force, that minimum residency period will apply retrospectively, from the date of our original announcement on 25 March. I note the comments that the noble Baroness, Lady O’Neill, made about retrospection, but the Government’s view is that there are clear risks and we should address them in the way that we have.

We will apply the same cap and the minimum residency period to anyone who moves to the UK after the date of the Statement and was not previously an overseas elector, to ensure these individuals cannot circumvent the rules before commencement. That is the risk. A modified cap will apply retrospectively and an annual cap of £100,000 per recipient will apply to donations they make between today and the date of the commencement of the measures, including any regulated transactions they enter into from today. On commencement, the cap and the minimum residency period will apply in the same way as for those who were formerly overseas electors.

As we previously announced, we will introduce a moratorium on all political donations of any amount made via cryptocurrency. The arrangements around crypto are simply too opaque.

Building on previous announcements, and in response to the review, we will go further to strengthen our political finance safeguards. We will amend the corporate donation test, so that it is based on post-tax profits rather than revenue, measured over five years to prevent double counting. We will introduce a new donor declaration to be made by anyone donating above a specified threshold. We will engage with the Electoral Commission and political parties as we develop the declaration, including an appropriate threshold. We are introducing a raft of transparency measures.

We will also strengthen rules and transparency on donations to candidates. Candidates will have to declare that donations to fund campaigning—as the noble Lord, Lord Pack, said—made prior to formally becoming a candidate are from permissible sources. Donations in that period above £2,230 will need to be cleared. The noble Lord, Lord Pack, asked me about aggregation. We have no plans to legislate on aggregation at the moment.

We recognise how vital it is for the health of our democracy that we have a regulator that is fearlessly independent and, to the noble Baroness’s point, properly resourced to do the job that we are asking it to do. That is why, to ensure its independence, we are also repealing the Government’s powers to designate a strategy and policy statement for the Electoral Commission. Beyond political finance, we will take steps in the Representation of the People Bill and more broadly to implement these important reforms.

If I do not manage to cover everything in the time I have left, I will come back to noble Lords. On consultation, I do not have anything to add. The noble Lord, Lord Pack, gave a very adequate response on the history, so I shall not go over that again. I do, however, accept the noble Baroness’s point that we are trustees, not proprietors, of the political finance system. I take that very seriously. I take very seriously the risks of tit for tat—I said this in the debate last week—and the risk that future Governments might get into a prisoner’s dilemma.

I do not, however, accept that these reforms are partisan, hyper-partisan or otherwise. I agree with the noble Baroness that that is not a scenario we want to see. The Parliamentary Parties Panel of the Electoral Commission has continued discussions between parties. I assure the noble Baroness that I will, as this legislation proceeds—I will be taking it through your Lordships’ House—engage in a lot of detail with anyone who is keen enough to talk to me. The noble Lord, Lord Hayward, has already had the pleasure of my company on these matters; I bow to his superior knowledge. I can see him waiting to rise to his feet. On the resources of the Electoral Commission, I take the point that the noble Baroness made.

On a point from the noble Lord, Lord Pack, I take very seriously the question of online adverts and, indeed, misinformation online generally. I see the noble Lord, Lord Clement-Jones, nodding. I do not think any of us feel we have cracked it, to be blunt, and this is an area that we will have to continue to think about in relation to political representation, online advertising and so on. We will all be here on this subject for some years to come.

On foreign ownership of the media, I hope the noble Lord, Lord Pack, will forgive me if I do not get drawn into that, but I take the point he made. I have already discussed our plans on aggregation.

On consolidation, I think I did answer this last week, but I am very happy to repeat my answer, which is that the Government want to fulfil the commitments they made in their manifesto. I was going to say “as a first step”, but I had better not say that because it might get me into a whole lot of trouble. That is our priority, and noble Lords can understand why. I understand the arguments, and the noble Lord, Lord Hayward, made the same arguments to me yesterday about consolidation.

On the 1695 Act, I will have to come back to the noble Lord. I commend the Statement, despite that absence in my knowledge, to your Lordships.

Lobbying Transparency (In-house Lobbyists) Bill [HL]

Lord Pack Excerpts

2nd reading
Friday 3rd July 2026 Lords Chamber

[Lord Pack (LD)]

My Lords, I congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Hayter, on winning the legislative lottery. I too am envious of her luck and thank her for choosing this focused but important topic.

I used to work for a consultancy firm and some of that work involved lobbying, so I have personal experience of being subject to the regulatory regime that we are talking about. It is perhaps no surprise, therefore, that I share the view that others have expressed about the benefits that good, reputable lobbying can bring in fostering useful dialogue and a useful exchange of information and expertise that can inform and, therefore, improve decision-making. However, as the noble Viscount, Lord Stansgate, said, sunlight is the best disinfectant. There absolutely are aspects of lobbying to be concerned or nervous about, but the best way of protecting the good, genuinely beneficial side of lobbying is a strong dose of sunlight to distinguish that from other activities and behaviour.

I will talk a little more about the light-touch nature of the current set-up in a moment, as that has come up in some of the speeches this morning, but first, it is worth highlighting just how back-to-front the situation we have ended up in is. We had a bit of a history lesson as to how we have ended up where we are, but it is a very odd, back-to-front situation. Normally when we talk about regulation, we do it on the basis that the larger, the more powerful, the richer you are, the more important it is to be regulated. Instead, we have ended up with the opposite situation: the small outfit that cannot afford an in-house lobbying operation employs consultant lobbyists and is therefore regulated, while the large, rich, more powerful organisation that can afford an in-house team escapes regulation. It is the exact opposite of what we have repeatedly legislated for in all sorts of other areas.

It is also a back-to-front situation in that normally, when we discuss regulation in one form or another, one of the elements of the debate is hearing the people who will be most directly affected by the regulation saying, “Please don’t go too far. We don’t want too many burdens placed on us”. We obviously have to judge that against the wider interest, but in this case it is again back-to-front. As we have heard from the CIPR and other industry bodies, the view of the lobbying industry overall, collectively, is very much that they wish the regulation to change. It feels a little Alice in Wonderland, in that we have been doing the exact opposite of what we usually do in other areas.

As there have been some references to the potential administrative burden of extending the current regime, it is worth highlighting a couple of points. One is that it is a pretty light-touch regime. I certainly did not feel that I was being unduly burdened. There was certainly a little nervousness each time I collated the list of things that we needed to make sure that we were declaring, because you really do not want to leave something out of that list by mistake, but it is fundamentally a light-touch, low-cost regime.

The noble Baroness, Lady Finn, said that, in some ways, this is not a cumbersome step. I disagree only slightly: I would say that in every way it is not a cumbersome step. However, I would also say that if we compare the administrative and financial burdens, small though they are, that the Bill would extend to some firms to the burdens that, for example, any of those firms who export goods or services to the European Union now face following Brexit then this is extremely small compared with those additional burdens that some in this House, at least, have enthusiastically argued are reasonable and acceptable.

There has also been some reference to the Government’s transparency data, the extent to which it provides an appropriate form of regulation of lobbying and whether we therefore need to extend the current regime. A couple of points are worth reflecting on. Since that government transparency data was first introduced, there have been continuing queries, comments and, sometimes, complaints about the quality, timeliness and format of that data. There is a point at which it is reasonable to say that the problem has been going on for so long that simply hoping that it will be fixed and everything will therefore be resolved is maybe not the right step to take.

More fundamentally, there are occasions when double transparency, or double regulation, as one might wish to call it, is the right thing to do. It is beneficial to have not only the government transparency data—in, one hopes, an improved and enhanced format—but a requirement on lobbyists. That double procedure acts as a double protection. Indeed, we are quite used to the idea of doing something twice to be absolutely sure that we have it right, such as with double-entry bookkeeping. Nobody who does double-entry bookkeeping thinks, “This is an awful administrative burden. What a waste having to do everything twice”. Double-entry bookkeeping has become so widespread because the very act of doing things twice is a cross check to make sure that you are getting it right. In this case, that sunlight is so important that having transparency requirements on both ends of the process is not a duplication or unnecessary; it is an essential part of having a robust system in which we can trust.

I suspect that the Minister will tell us that the Ethics and Integrity Commission’s report on lobbying is coming shortly and that, in many ways, it makes sense to roll this issue into a wider government response to that. As the noble Viscount, Lord Stansgate, the noble Lords, Lord Lansley, Lord Norton and Lord Empey, the noble Baroness, Lady Helic, and others have raised in this debate, there are certainly other important aspects to this topic that need addressing. But whatever route we choose to take, whether it is through the Bill immediately in front of us now, a wider government response in due course or perhaps even through both routes, it is important that there is change. This is about enhancing and protecting our democracy, and, frankly, our own reputations. The more controversy, doubt, conspiracy theories and scandals there are around lobbying, the more that damages all of us in this House and in politics in general. One might think that that is an important act of self-interest, but it is also an important act of public good to improve and enhance our systems.

We should do more than what the Bill offers, but that is not a reason not to do the bit that the Bill in front of us gives us the opportunity to do. So often we hear action being promised “when legislative time allows”. Well, we have some legislative time and a piece of legislation in front of us. I hope that the Government and this House will, in due course, support the Bill.

Jo Cox Civility Commission

Lord Pack Excerpts

Thursday 18th June 2026 Lords Chamber

[Lord Pack (LD)]

My Lords, as many of your Lordships know so well, Jo Cox had only 13 months as a Member of Parliament before the tragic, horrific end to her parliamentary career. It is a huge tribute to her legacy, epitomised by today’s debate, that her impact has been far greater than, frankly, that of many people who have served for rather longer. It is a huge tribute to her.

My own path in politics never crossed with hers—although, like her, I spent some years in politics in Yorkshire—but I know that other members of the Liberal Democrat Benches speak very fondly of their memories of working on a cross-party basis with her. Her legacy is an important one because her work, beliefs and commitments are, 10 years on, still so relevant, both to strangers to her like me and to those who have the privilege of happy memories of working with her and of the friendship they experienced. They are of course happy memories tinged with the sadness of knowing what has since been missing in their lives.

An important part of her legacy is of course carried forward by the Jo Cox Foundation, and I pay tribute to its scope, its ambition and its necessary persistence. There is a positive side—a happy upside, as so neatly epitomised by the noble Lord, Lord Bates—to the challenges that the foundation tries to help us see through, but there are also some grimmer ones.

To focus on just one aspect of those, I think we have heard both in today’s debate and in our recent debate a few days ago, focusing on abuse and intimidation in local government specifically, just what a serious challenge that is. It is quite shocking that the LGA survey of councillors involved in the May elections this year found that 70%—nearly three in four—had faced at least some form of abuse or intimidation. We quite rightly worry about the safety and security of parliamentarians, but councillors often have far fewer security provisions and far less support available to them. Those threats and that danger can feel just as real, damaging and corrosive to our democracy as it does to parliamentarians.

In a way, we also saw the importance of the Jo Cox Foundation’s work on civility in our politics with the news at the beginning of this week of the conviction of two people for arson offences relating to the Prime Minister. An important part of that story, which no doubt we will return to in one of the debates next week, is the Russian links of those people. But foreign powers can incite violence in our politics only if people within this country are also willing and able to be enticed into violence themselves.

We are reminded also of one of the challenges that the Jo Cox Foundation rightly faces up to. Frankly, every time we look at our phones or turn to see what is new on social media, we have to battle against the temptation that those algorithms deliberately create to try to pull us into extreme emotions and to secure our time and our engagement, but that often also means inciting and encouraging our anger and even our dislike of others. Although there are many positives of social media, which we should not forget, so often it pulls us towards division, anger, even hatred and, in the worst cases, violence.

We have heard in the speeches today a broad understanding and shared commitment to face up to these challenges. However, while it is welcome that the Government have been listening on many of the issues that have been raised, I think it is fair to say that there is a general concern that more needs to be done—and quickly. I will give two simple examples. I mentioned the importance of the safety of local councillors and those involved in local government. We heard in a debate a few days ago about the very mixed reputation of Operation Ford: the police activities to protect councillors. In some cases, rightly, it has been very highly praised, but often people feel it is frustratingly short of what is needed to properly protect them.

We have also seen the importance of a continued commitment to action, and I hope an acceleration of action, in the continuing controversy over the ability to create non-consensual nudes using the Grok tool. That is a problem that affects many people in many different ways, but people who are prominent in public life, such as those who put themselves forward to stand in elections, are particularly vulnerable. We have seen a sequence of claims by Grok about how it is dealing with those issues, so far always followed by more journalistic investigations showing that the issue has not ended.

So, as we remember Jo Cox and others such as Sir David Amess, and, in my own party, Andrew Pennington, who lost his life protecting Nigel Jones, then a Member of the other House and later a Member of this House, their memories should prompt us to do more, to move more quickly and to honour their legacy.

Local Councillors: Recruitment, Retention and Well-being

Lord Pack Excerpts

Thursday 4th June 2026 Grand Committee

[Lord Pack (LD)]

My Lords, I join others in thanking the noble Lord, Lord Forbes, for bringing this important topic to our attention and putting it on the agenda today. We have heard many powerful and moving contributions from all parts of the Room, which reflects how this is a genuine cross-party issue that should concern us all.

The Local Government Association survey of councillors, although not UK-wide, provides a helpful benchmark. It is shocking that just under 70% of councillors who took part in the last set of elections reported receiving abuse or intimidation. As we have heard from several speakers, not only is it a shocking figure in totality but it tends to affect particular portions of our society, which hugely hinders what should be a common desire for us all to have democratically elected politicians who represent all corners of society. Shockingly, according to the LGA survey, more than one in five councillors have had to report one or more issues to the police. To bring that number to life: that would be the equivalent of 174 Peers among us in the House of Lords having to report something to the police. That is a shocking number.

It is fair to say that, so far, we have not always seen a brilliant set of responses to these problems. Operation Ford has a rather mixed reputation among those who have sadly had recourse to it. Indeed, in the LGA survey, under half of councillors who have reported an issue to the police say that their response has helped either greatly or even just moderately. But there is also a need for action from the Government, including on the legislative front. We have already heard today that there is a wide mix of solutions available out there to pick from. That includes, for example, from the Speaker’s Conference; although it focuses predominantly on MPs, it obviously has wider applicability. There is also the Government’s own previous consultation on a new standards framework for English local government, for example. The LGA itself has made recommendations, and we have heard other proposals such as those put forward by the Jo Cox Foundation.

I worry that this issue will once again be caught up in that perpetual pirouette of prevarication that we sometimes have in Whitehall. We have promises of action, consultations, recommendations and promises of legislation, but then an absence from a King’s Speech, a ministerial reshuffle, an election and maybe even a change of Prime Minister. Round and round we go in that cycle, while the misery for councillors continues and the action fails to happen. I know the Minister has a strong commitment on these issues, and I hope we will hear from her a clear timetable for the action the Government will take so that we do not simply go round and round yet again.

Donations to Political Parties

Lord Pack Excerpts

Monday 1st June 2026 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)]

The allocation of Short money is beyond my ministerial brief, but all parties must think when they are in government about the proposals around Short money.

[Lord Pack (LD)]

My Lords, under the Government’s current plans, Donald Trump could split ownership of a UK company between himself and his family members, keeping each individual share below the threshold that would trigger the significant control test in the Representation of the People Bill that is coming our way. That would then enable the company to legally donate to UK politicians or political parties, and indeed any foreign dictator or billionaire with family members could do exactly the same. Does the Minister agree that that is a dangerous and unwelcome loophole that needs to be closed?

[Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)]

I do not want to comment on such donations, particularly from the President of the United States’s family. However, we are taking immediate steps to implement Philip Rycroft’s recommendation for a cap on donations made by overseas electors. We will implement that through the Representation of the People Bill which is currently before Parliament—it is at Report stage in the Commons at the moment. We are committed to upholding and strengthening our democracy by protecting against this kind of foreign interference, improving political transparency and adding tougher checks for donations. However, it is the responsibility of receiving parties as well to carry out the necessary checks involved. I hope that all responsible parties will take their part in doing so.