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.

English Devolution and Community Empowerment Bill

Lord Pack Excerpts

Report stage
Monday 13th April 2026 Lords Chamber

Moved by

[Lord Pack]

217: Clause 61, page 64, line 4, leave out “supplementary” and insert “alternative”
Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment seeks to change the voting system for five types of local government election to the alternative vote. Currently, Clause 61 and Schedule 28 changes the voting system from first past the post to the supplementary vote. This amendment is connected to others to Schedule 28 in the name of Lord Pack.

[Lord Pack (LD)]

My Lords, the Bill proposes to replace first past the post for some of our elections with the supplementary vote, which is a step forward, but it is not a great step forward, which is why I propose Amendment 217, along with the consequential Amendments 226 to 241, to replace the supplementary vote with the alternative vote. Having the right system in place for mayors matters all the more with the Government’s vision for more mayors with more powers. That makes this the right moment further to improve their democratic accountability.

For single-member vacancies, such as for mayors, and indeed for police and crime commissioners, both first past the post and the supplementary vote rely in part on voters being able confidently to predict who will finish in the top two in a contest and therefore being able, if they wish, to cast a tactical vote, in effect, under first past the post, or with the supplementary vote being able to cast a second preference that has a chance of actually counting.

The problem is that in the multiparty world we are in, one populated as well by many independent candidates, neither of those systems is well suited for our politics. The reality with the supplementary vote is that often people cast a first preference for someone who does not make it into the top two and a second preference for someone who also does not make it into the top two and therefore end up impotent. It is as if the voter had only first past the post to use.

That is not a rare or theoretical problem. It is a widespread one that we have seen repeatedly with the previous use of the supplementary vote in England. I referred at an earlier stage of the Bill’s passage to research by the Make Votes Matter coalition carried out a couple of years ago covering 217 elections conducted under the supplementary vote in the UK. It found that more than half—54%—of people’s second preferences that were due to come into play after the first round had to be discarded because they were not for a candidate who made it into the top two. That research note is for elections using the SV since 2000. For many of those years, we had fewer large and medium-sized parties jostling for contention than we do now. Even in those more favourable circumstances in the past for the supplementary vote—those more favourable circumstances for people successfully to second-guess who would be in the top two—more than half of all second preferences, correctly filled out on the ballot paper and that should have been used, none the less got discarded because they were for candidates who did not make it into the top two. That is quite simply a flaw with the supplementary vote.

It also runs counter to what the Minister said in February in Committee, that

“the Government believe that mayors should have a broad base of support among their electors”.—[Official Report, 11/2/26; col. GC 173.]

Alas, discarding more than half of secondary preferences in the way that I talked about does not sit at all well with that aim of a broad base of support among electors. So often, for so many voters, supplementary vote ends up being the same as first past the post.

It is not only in local government elections for mayors in England that voters suffer from the limitations of first past the post; hence my other amendment in this group calling for the use of the single transferable vote. As well as its use in Northern Ireland, STV has been used successfully for nearly 20 years for local government elections in Scotland. As I suspect we may hear from some noble Lords opposing STV, I point out that it is used in Scotland with broad support across different parties, including those parties that oppose its introduction for local elections in England. I hope that, mindful of the widespread acceptance across the political spectrum of STV in Scotland for local elections and of its successful use over such a long period of time, perhaps noble Lords will consider that if it is good enough for Scotland, if it works in Scotland, why not have it in England as well?

I return to mayors. We are in a political world of more candidates, more parties and more confusion over who is going to end up in the top two, and that is why the alternative vote, not the supplementary vote, is the right voting system. I beg to move.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)]

My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Pack, for this group of amendments. The Government recognise that the voting system used to elect our representatives sits at the heart of our democracy and is of fundamental importance. I welcome the noble Lord’s interest in this topic and I respect his great knowledge and expertise.

We acknowledge that different voting systems can be better suited to different types of polls and elections, especially for single executive positions such as mayors and police and crime commissioners. It is precisely for this reason that we are planning to reintroduce the supplementary vote system for these polls. This system has a proven history of successfully meeting the needs of the electorate and is well understood. The noble Viscount, Lord Trenchard, and the noble Lord, Lord Jamieson, mentioned the referendum that was held in 2011 with regard to parliamentary elections. I am sure we will go on debating electoral reform for some time to come—I do not think it is going to go away—but it is true to say that that 67.9% of voters rejected the proposal back in 2011.

On the question from the noble Lord, Lord Pack, about our devolved Administrations, the voting system used for elections to devolved bodies in Scotland and Wales is the responsibility of those devolved Governments in Scotland and Wales. For historical reasons the single transferable vote has been used for local elections in Northern Ireland and elections to the Northern Ireland Assembly. It is appropriate for different voting systems to be used for different polls, but we believe that the supplementary vote is appropriate for selecting single-person executive positions such as mayors.

I noted the point made by the noble Viscount, Lord Trenchard, about the elections for police and crime commissioners. He rightly says that those positions will go. I have not had a definitive answer, but I assume that we are putting in the provision for PCC elections in case a by-election needs to be held between now and when the positions would normally come up for election, at which time those posts will go. We therefore do not support plans to introduce an alternative vote system for these particular elections, as we believe the supplementary vote is much more appropriate. I ask the noble Lord, Lord Pack, to withdraw his amendment.

[Lord Pack (LD)]

I thank noble Lords for this short but succinct and apposite debate. As several have said, this is a long-running topic of discussion that I am sure we will return to on occasions in the future. I will not rehearse all the arguments, but given that reference was made to whether the supplementary vote or the alternative vote might be too confusing for people, I simply point out that the single transferable vote, which is a more complicated ballot paper than either a supplementary or an alternative vote, is used successfully without a problem by voters in Scotland and Northern Ireland. I certainly would not want to suggest in any way that if people in Scotland and Northern Ireland can manage it, somehow voters in England would not be up to the task.

We have rehearsed the main arguments. The noble Baroness, Lady Pidgeon, in particular, had some apposite comments about the practical experience we have of how problematic the supplementary vote can be when it is used in London. Given the importance of the democratic point, I would like to test the opinion of the House on this matter.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Scott of Bybrook (Con)]

My Lords, this group covers three substantive issues: supplementary voting for the election of mayors, election delays and flexible voting pilots.

On supplementary voting, the Conservative Party has long supported first past the post, which allows voters to vote out top politicians who do not deliver, both locally and nationally. We introduced it for the mayoral elections; that was a manifesto commitment in our 2017 manifesto, and we recommitted to first past the post in our 2019 manifesto and our 2024 manifesto. We are committed to maintaining that important link with the local voter, and we stand by our changes to mayoral voting, which had manifesto backing. In contrast, Labour’s proposals on supplementary voting for mayoral elections are not backed by manifesto commitment. Therefore, we do not support this reintroduction of supplementary voting, and we intend to test the opinion of the House at the conclusion of this debate.

The amendments on flexible voting challenge the Government on the parliamentary procedure that will follow if Ministers seek to roll out flexible voting. We are clear that flexible voting must not be rolled out without proper parliamentary scrutiny. I hope the Minister will be able to reassure us on that point in her response.

The important issue of local election delays has been a topic of deep controversy over the last year, and it has caused enormous problems within local government particularly. I am very pleased that, in the face of campaigning by those on this side of the House, the Prime Minister chose to U-turn on plans to deny millions of people a vote this May. It is right that those elections are now going ahead, but we must not get into a place where this can ever happen again. My Amendment 220 would prevent the Secretary of State from delaying any local government elections by more than one year, if the delay resulted from local government reorganisation. That is the right approach, and I thank the Minister for her engagement on this. I am pleased that the Government have listened to our case and have tabled their own Amendment 218A, which delivers the same legislative outcomes as our Conservative amendment. This is an important achievement, and we support the Government’s Amendment 218A.

Before I conclude, I should briefly mention Amendment 219, tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Pack, which we have considered carefully. I think the noble Lords on the Liberal Democrat Benches have much the same concerns as we do about local election delays. But we do not agree that Amendment 219 is a workable proposal. We believe that the principle behind government Amendment 218A is the right one, and we will support that amendment to prevent future denials of local democracy. I look forward to hearing the Minister’s reply.

[Lord Pack (LD)]

We have discussed the issue of the Government’s power to cancel elections several times, and as has already been mentioned, it is only fair to acknowledge that the Government have responded, with their plans being put forward in this group. However, for reasons I shall set out, I do not believe they go far enough, which is why I wish to speak to my Amendments 219 and 222 in this group. Given where everyone’s views currently appear to stand, I shall concentrate on Amendment 219 and simply note that Amendment 222 perhaps offers an alternative route to address some of the points raised previously by noble Lords, if that would find favour.

The reason for my amendments, and why I would suggest they are preferable to the Government’s new plans, is that there is an important point of principle here. It is that Governments should fit their plans around people’s democratic rights, rather than mess around with people’s democratic rights in order to fit them around the Government’s plans. Democracy, in that sense, should come first.

Although the Government’s amendment in this group would absolutely be a step forward from the status quo, it still would, alas, leave many steps not taken. The full protection of primary legislation should be required to axe a scheduled polling day or, as Amendment 222 offers, only in very tightly constrained circumstances should it be done by secondary legislation. Parliament can legislate, at pace if needed, due to a crisis that requires elections to be put off, but primary legislation means full scrutiny. It means the ability to make amendments, the ability to probe neglected consequences properly, and the knowledge that the Government, to get their measure through, have to be supported not only in the Commons but in this House.

We have seen in other countries how quickly people can lose what were thought to be very basic democratic norms. Our democracy should have full legislative protection for our elections, because there is a fundamental weakness in relying on secondary legislation, as do both the Government’s amendment and the amendments proposed by noble Lords in the Conservative Party.

With such secondary legislation we run into the difficulty that on a point of principle, which we can leave to debate another time, whichever of Labour or the Conservatives is in opposition in this House, those parties are committed not to support fatal Motions on secondary legislation. Any Government therefore know that however controversial their proposal on a piece of secondary legislation is, this House will almost never oppose it. That is a fundamental problem: if the idea of the safeguard is a piece of secondary legislation and that safeguard is also one that the two largest groups in this House are essentially committed never to using, it is not much of a safeguard at all.

--- Later in debate ---

Moved by

[Lord Pack]

219: After Clause 61, insert the following new Clause—
“Restriction on powers to change years of local elections(1) In the Local Government Act 2000, for section 87 (power to change years in which elections held) substitute—“87 Restriction on changing years of ordinary elections(1) The years in which ordinary elections of any local authority councillors or mayors are held may be changed only by an Act of Parliament.(2) No provision may be made under this Act enabling the Secretary of State or any other person to change the years in which ordinary elections of councillors are to be held by order, regulations or other delegated legislation.”(2) In section 88 (separate power to make incidental provisions) omit “or 87” in both places it occurs.(3) In the Police Reform and Social Responsibility Act 2011, in section 50 (ordinary elections), after subsection (5) insert—“(5A) An order under this section must not include provision to cancel, postpone or otherwise change the year in which an ordinary election of Police and Crime Commissioners would otherwise be held.”(4) In the Local Government and Public Involvement in Health Act 2007—(a) in section 7 (implementation of proposals by order), after subsection (3) insert—“(3A) Except where an order provides for the dissolution of a local authority, an order under this section must not include provision to cancel, postpone or otherwise change the year in which an ordinary election of councillors for a local authority or mayors would otherwise be held.”;(b) in section 10 (implementation of recommendations by order), after subsection (4) insert—“(4A) Except where an order provides for the dissolution of a local authority, an order under this section must not include provision to cancel, postpone or otherwise change the year in which an ordinary election of councillors for a local authority would otherwise be held.”.(5) Any existing power in any other enactment which permits the Secretary of State by order or regulations to change the year in which a local government election is held shall cease to have effect in relation to that power.(6) Any Act whose effect shall include or solely be the changing of the years in which ordinary elections of councillors, mayors, or Police and Crime Commissioners are to be held, shall not be presented to His Majesty and become an Act of Parliament on the Royal Assent being signified, unless and until the Secretary of State has—(a) made a statement to both Houses of Parliament certifying that due regard has been given to the impact of the proposed change on the administration and costs of any other elections or referendums scheduled to be held on the same day, (b) made such relevant financial provision as is necessary to ensure that parish councils, town councils, or other smaller authorities do not incur additional financial liabilities resulting from the loss of cost-sharing arrangements with the cancelled or postponed election, and(c) laid before Parliament a written statement setting out the arrangements for ensuring that the democratic mandate of any authority not subject to the change is not undermined by the administrative separation of the polls.”Member's explanatory statement
This amendment ensures that the years in which ordinary elections for local councillors, mayors, and Police and Crime Commissioners are held can only be changed by an Act of Parliament.

[Lord Pack (LD)]

The Minister described this amendment as one that would significantly restrict the powers of Ministers, which I agree with. The question is obviously whether that restriction is a good idea or not. I therefore wish to test the opinion of the House on the matter.

English Devolution and Community Empowerment Bill

Lord Pack Excerpts

Committee stage
Thursday 5th March 2026 Grand Committee

Moved by

[Lord Pack]

241A: After Clause 73, insert the following new Clause—
“Local Authority Social Media Strategies(1) A local authority must prepare and publish a social media strategy.(2) The strategy must set out—(a) how the local authority intends to use individual social media platforms,(b) governance and oversight arrangements for social media use, and(c) arrangements for review of the strategy.(3) The strategy must include a risk assessment addressing—(a) risks relating to misinformation and disinformation,(b) risks to public trust and confidence, and(c) risks relating to data protection, information security, and the use of automated or algorithmic tools.”Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment would require local authorities to publish a social media strategy, including a risk assessment, setting out how the authority and its elected officials intend to use individual social media platforms.

[Lord Pack (LD)]

My Lords, I have one amendment on its own in splendid isolation in this group. It is, as I hope noble Lords will agree, on an important topic: the use of social media in local government. This is an important topic for several reasons. One is that social media is so central to how local government and mayors may or may not choose to communicate with residents. It is also a crucial part of how elected public officials, whether they are councillors or mayors or, indeed, at the national level, experience politics. Often, that is an unhappy experience in terms of harassment and threats, but it can also be a very positive experience in terms of being able to engage more effectively with members of the public.

Of course, social media is important in many respects for its wider impact on society. That is why it comes up so often in debates and Questions on other topics in our House. In that respect, local authorities and local government in general have an important leadership role in setting some of the practical realities of how the social media landscape plays out. Sometimes, we are all collectively a bit too passive in assuming that the social media landscape is set by a combination of tech bros in California and Ofcom getting to grips with the Online Safety Act, but there is a practical degree of leadership at all levels of government that can encourage and help bring out the best of social media while downplaying the worst of social media.

There is an important role at local government level, in particular, because local government is the original source of information on so many topics that people love discussing, debating and sharing information about, whether it is which days you should put your bins out or which days schools are being closed due to snow in the winter or often controversial issues regarding, say, planning applications. Local government can make decisions on how and where to share information on all those things. Even if, in a sense, people think that they are not making those decisions but are simply following by default the social media channels that they have always used or that other parts of government use, that in itself is a decision.

The intention behind my amendment is absolutely to respect the discretion and flexibility that there should be—different places will wish to make different decisions, as appropriate—but also to show that there are two benefits to giving an explicit strategy a bit of a nudge. One is making sure that people are thinking through these issues sensibly and appropriately, and the other is enabling democratic accountability for the decisions that are being taken. Many of us probably have a wide range of views on how appropriate or not it is for people at any level of government to use Elon Musk’s social media channels, but, crucially, for the democratic accountability element to play out effectively, it is important to know what decisions are being made, how they are being made and what the rationale for them is. Different voters in different places may come to different decisions about which approach they prefer, but having a social media strategy that is explicitly published will make that democratic process much more effective.

Of course, I appreciate that if the Minister were to kindly accept my amendment, all the issues that it mentions, such as disinformation and public trust, would not suddenly be solved by it. On the other hand, they are difficult issues that we need to try to tackle, using all the different levers available to us. In that sense, I hope that the amendment would be a small contribution to that overall challenge, and therefore I beg to move.

[Baroness Scott of Bybrook (Con)]

My Lords, we absolutely understand the intention behind this amendment. Social media clearly brings its challenges, particularly around misinformation, public confidence and data security—all serious matters. However, we do not agree that this is an appropriate statutory duty to place on local authorities.

Councils are already under immense operational and financial pressure. Their focus must be on delivering front-line services: social care, housing, waste collection, planning and public health. Requiring every authority to draft, publish and continually review a bespoke social media strategy, complete with formal risk assessments, would impose additional administrative burdens at a time when capacity is already stretched.

Local authorities should of course act responsibly and lawfully online, as they already must, but mandating a specific statutory strategy in primary legislation is neither necessary nor proportionate. For those reasons, we cannot support the amendment.

[Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)]

My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Pack, for Amendment 241A, which would require local authorities to prepare and publish a social media strategy. When he talked about the values of social media, it reminded me that my local authority has recently introduced food waste recycling. The bin arrived on my doorstep, and I did not know what the system was—I am not the leader of the council any more, strangely, so I did not know it was going to do it. I did not think to open the bin. Inside was a lovely set of bags that you put your food waste in and a little bag you put on your worktop. I managed to get all that from the website before I actually opened the bin and found all the relevant information. As we know, not all social media is as helpful as that.

Although I have no doubt that the noble Lord’s amendment is well intentioned, we believe it is unnecessary, given the existing legislative requirements that all local authorities must have regard to when using social media. All local authorities are already required by legislation to consider the Code of Recommended Practice on Local Authority Publicity in coming to any decision on publicity, which is defined as

“any communication, in whatever form, addressed to the public at large or to a section of the public”.

That definition clearly includes any communications posted on social media. Given that the proposed amendment would, in effect, replicate aspects of the publicity code, to which every local authority must already have regard, I urge the noble Lord to withdraw his amendment.

[Lord Pack (LD)]

I thank both noble Baronesses for their comments on my amendment. Although I do not agree fully with them all, I welcome the recognition of the importance of social media for local government and the importance of getting it right. Reflecting the views that I have heard in this debate, I beg leave to withdraw my amendment.

Amendment 241A withdrawn.

--- Later in debate ---

The Government have accepted one amendment for post-legislative this week. I trust that they will now make it two. I beg to move.

[Lord Pack (LD)]

My Lords, I will speak to two amendments in this group: Amendments 256 and 264. The noble Lord, Lord Norton, has added his name to them, for which I thank him.

Both of these amendments attempt to tackle, though in slightly different ways, the problem of law/not law to which the noble Lord just referred. It is about that accumulation of sludge on the statute book of legislation that has been passed by Parliament but never commenced. That is a problem for two reasons. One is that, in a way, it undermines Parliament’s role because, when legislation is passed by Parliament, it is meant to become law. It is not meant to be simply a menu for future Ministers to pick and mix from as they wish, with commencement orders whenever they fancy. If Parliament has made the decision that something should be law, we should be able to have confidence that it will become law.

There is also a more practical problem: the huge complexity of the statute book, which flows from having this mix of legislation that has been passed and commenced, passed but only partially commenced and passed but not commenced. This is a problem because it builds up incrementally. Indeed, that is partly why the problem exists. At every individual level and every individual stage where we add a little more sludge to the system, it is easy to say, “Oh, it doesn’t really matter this time. It’s not really that important”—but it accumulates.

I will give a little example of the scale. The House of Lords Library very kindly pulled together a list for me of all of the Acts relevant to local government in England that have been passed since 1960 but have not yet been fully commenced. Bear in mind that some of these Acts were passed by Parliament before several Members of the House of Lords had even been born, yet 44 such Acts have never yet been fully commenced.

In these two amendments, I try to take two different angles on the problem. Amendment 256 is a probing amendment picking out four examples of legislation that passed a significant time ago but has not yet been commenced. If parts of that legislation have been hanging around for so long and never been commenced, perhaps we should do a little tidying-up and take the opportunity of this Bill to clear out some of those leftovers from the statute book.

The other amendment, Amendment 264, seeks to tackle this problem from a slightly different angle. It is in the nature of closing the stable door after the horses have bolted, because the statute book already has that complexity, but, as we keep on—to extend the analogy, perhaps to breaking point—adding new horses to the stable with a continuous flow of legislation, would it not be better to at least stop making things worse by ensuring that we have confidence that a piece of legislation will be fully implemented, at some point? Five years in the future, it provides a generous backstop to say that, whatever Parliament decides to pass overall, we will be sure that it comes into force at a particular date in the future.

I very much hope that the Minister will reflect on the fact that there are some areas of law where the Government absolutely understand and value having a neat and clear statute book. We have a regular rolling programme for consolidation of the rules of procedure for various parts of the legal system, which is hugely beneficial, but we should be a little more ambitious and not simply restrict the benefits of neat and tidy parts of the statute book to those where it has always been done; we should perhaps be a little imaginative in starting to extend some of those benefits to a greater part of the statute book. I very much hope that the Minister will, in due course, show some desire to expand the level of neatness and clarity in the statute book.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)]

My Lords, this is not the first time I have found myself getting in the way of the last part of a Bill, usually in talking about territorial extent. The last train that would get me to Saltaire tonight leaves King’s Cross just after 7 pm, so I will try my best to be brief.

This is about terminology but also about honesty. My amendments would provide some tighter definitions of “local”, “community” and “neighbourhood”. Having seen the amendment that the noble Lord, Lord Jamieson, tabled on “parish”, perhaps I should have also included one on that. I note that his definition of a parish council includes anything that may have the same population as Greenland. The intended ideal size for a “local authority”, which this takes us to, is about the same as the population of Luxembourg. That is not really local government and it certainly is not local democracy.

I grew up believing that all politics is local, and that citizen engagement is a fundamental part of what politics should be about. This would take politics away from the local community and neighbourhood representative model, with references to community groups that are not representative but are entirely self-formed from civil society. I would not only regret that but think it a deep step back away from the principle of democratic self-government.

I know from my early experience with the Labour Party in Manchester that there are many within Labour who regard the relationship between the party and local people as one in which Labour delivers services and the local people are supposed to be grateful for them. The Liberal approach to democracy is one in which we work with people, and we expect and encourage citizens to be engaged in local and community politics.

This is a Bill that abuses the terms “community”, “neighbourhood”, “parish” and “local”. It sets up sub-regional strategic authorities and reduces the number of local elections and councillors. If I understood the answers to the Question yesterday, it is intended that, following this legislation, the next thing will be to reduce the number of local councils and borough councils in the Greater London Authority so that we have local authorities in London that are roughly the size of Luxembourg.

I regret this; as I have sat through Committee on this Bill I have found the whole Bill deeply distasteful and weakening of our democracy—but there we are. However, I wish that the Government would at least be a little tighter in their use of these important terms than they have been, and those are the intentions of my amendments.

Local Government Reorganisation

Lord Pack Excerpts

Wednesday 25th February 2026 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Scott of Bybrook (Con)]

My Lords, the Government have sown confusion and imposed unnecessary costs upon the taxpayer by cancelling local elections, only to reinstate them weeks later and then seek to distance themselves from the consequences. What was presented as a firm and settled judgment has unravelled in short order, leaving uncertainty in its wake. That matters, because it is not an isolated U-turn or rethink or change of position; it joins a growing catalogue of reversals, each compounding doubt and carrying a financial price.

Stability in public administration is the foundation upon which local authorities plan, candidates prepare and citizens place their trust. Against that background, it is important to recall how we arrived here. The original decision to cancel these elections was taken by the Secretary of State. He defended it repeatedly in the other place, and the Minister defended it consistently in your Lordships’ House. In the press, the Secretary of State went so far as to describe the elections as “pointless”. Yet what was so confidentially asserted has now been undone.

Two issues now arise. The first is constitutional. Does the Minister accept that there should be strict limits upon the power to delay or disapply elections outside the most exceptional circumstances, such as war or public emergency? If she does, then, in the context of the English Devolution and Community Empowerment Bill, will she urge her colleagues to reflect upon the sentiment of the amendments tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Pack, and those in my name, which would limit the power of the Secretary of State to cancel elections by secondary legislation and constrain the power to alter the timings of local polls? It is notable that members of the governing party voted down those safeguards in the Commons.

The second issue is practical and goes to the heart of delivery. Local government is already navigating a demanding programme of reorganisation. Councils are restructuring governance, staffing, finance and service delivery. To remove and then abruptly restore elections in the midst of that process has inevitably diverted senior officers and members from their primary duty, which is the delivery of services to their residents. In other words, reorganisation requires focus, discipline and clarity. Instead, councils have been drawn into administrative uncertainty, legal contingency planning and accelerated preparations at short notice. That is not without consequences. It absorbs scarce managerial capacity and risks delay to the very reforms that the Government profess to champion. If community empowerment is truly the objective, one might expect the Government to strengthen local capacity rather than burden it with unavoidable disruption.

It is precisely because there are constitutional and practical consequences that your Lordships’ House is entitled to transparency on the costs of all this. Can the Minister therefore inform the House of the full costs of this regrettable sequence of events? What have been the expended legal fees on wasted preparation and the emergency arrangements that are now required to conduct elections at short notice? What support is being provided to local authorities required to shoulder these additional burdens? There is talk of £63 million, but is this on top of the already agreed election costs? Has an assessment been made of the impact upon council capacity and service delivery, and if so, will it be published?

The same need for clarity applies to the Government’s approach to election pilots. What is their present status? How many councils that initially indicated they possessed the capacity to participate later informed the department that they did not any longer have that capacity?

Taken together, these questions point to a wider uncertainty. Where does this leave the Government’s much-heralded program of reorganisation? Confidence in reform depends upon steadiness of hand and clarity of purpose. If Ministers will not answer fully and restore transparency, then we feel that serious reflection is required at the highest level. I would suggest that that is not at Secretary of State level, as he has been the person responsible for this unnecessary mess.

[Lord Pack (LD)]

My Lords, here we are again with a topic we have discussed and debated in different forms several times. I will do my best not to simply repeat the points made previously, particularly as it seems like each time we return to this topic, it is messier and more expensive. Although the outcome in the end is welcome—that all elections will be going ahead in May, as should originally have been the case—I think we can all agree that the route by which we have got here is a highly undesirable one. Therefore, having read the Statement that we are considering this evening very carefully, and having read Hansard for the debate on Monday in the House of Commons about the Statement, I have three particular questions for the Minister.

First, in that debate on Monday, the Secretary of State was asked whether, in the light of the latest legal advice and the Government’s current understanding of the legal situation, the Government believed that the cancellation of elections last May was legal. The Secretary of State was asked that direct question and chose not to answer it. We can all speculate why, but I hope that the Minister will be able to clear that matter up by giving us a direct answer on that.

Secondly, having looked at the reasons the Secretary of State gave in the Statement for cancelling elections, I think that they do not sit easily with what he wrote in the article published in the Times newspaper ahead of the consultation closing on potential cancellations. The Statement that we are considering this evening says that the cancellation of elections,

“should only ever happen in exceptional circumstances”.

That is a sentiment with which I suspect we all agree. But in the article in the Times newspaper, the Secretary of State said:

“They want pointless elections, Labour wants to fix potholes”.


The existence of potholes in need of repair is absolutely not an exceptional circumstance. It is a frustrating daily reality. It is really hard to see how one can reconcile the Secretary of State’s comments about wanting to fix potholes with the claim that these are exceptional circumstances.

Moreover, the Statement we are considering goes on at some length about how the Government were listening and consulting. Again, however, looking back at the article in the Times newspaper, published before the closure of the consultation over elections for this May, we see that it kicks off right from the very first sentence with a very clear steer that the Secretary of State thought that cancelling elections was a good idea. It goes on to make that point repeatedly in the succeeding sentences and paragraphs. So, given that that article, published before the close of the consultation, could be seen both to have prejudged the outcome of the consultation and to have given different reasons for cancelling elections than those considered in the consultation—all of which potentially would result in some legal issues about the validity of the decision—I wonder whether the Minister could again clarify matters by letting us know if the Secretary of State’s comments, both in that Times newspaper article and elsewhere, were a factor in the change in legal advice being given to the Government about the legality of the cancellation of elections.

Thirdly, turning to perhaps a more positive aspect, I absolutely welcome the comment in the Statement that the Government are willing to think again—particularly in the context of the English Devolution and Community Empowerment Bill. I am sorry: the phrase is that the Government are “reflecting carefully”, which I hope means “thinking again” as well, about the amendments that have been tabled, such as by myself and by the noble Baroness, Lady Scott, about the powers and the circumstances in which elections might be cancelled in the future. I hope, therefore, that the Minister will be able to tell us whether those reflections will be carried out involving a degree of cross-party discussion. Will they be carried out in time so that, if the outcome of those reflections by the Government is to decide that changes to the law are appropriate, we can do that on Report of that Bill?

Donations to Political Parties

Lord Pack Excerpts

Thursday 12th February 2026 Grand Committee

[Lord Pack (LD)]

My Lords, likewise, I should acknowledge the exceptionally impressive timing of this debate, coming just after the Government have published the Representation of the People Bill. It is fair to say, from all we know of the Bill so far—I have not had time to read it yet by any means in full—there is a welcome direction of travel on many issues in terms of trying to improve the transparency around donations to political parties. I fear, however, that it does not go far enough. Obviously, some of those issues are to do with foreign money and potential foreign government interference. Hopefully, the Rycroft review will, in due course, set out ways in which we can go further on that.

I therefore want to concentrate on a slightly different issue in my brief comments. They draw on the research that I published with Chris Butler last year on donations that are made directly to candidates and rightly declared on the candidates’ election expense forms when they submit them, which is all above board, legal and how the law is intended to operate. However, those donations then, in effect, disappear from view because donations made directly to candidates at the moment do not then appear on the Electoral Commission’s register of donations. So, if you are, for example, an inquisitive journalist or somebody doing the due diligence process and you look at the obvious public records, the donations do not appear there at all.

This is not a trivial amount of money. Chris Butler and I estimated that, for the 2019 general election, £3.4 million of donations came into our political system, potentially influencing people, but did not then appear in the Electoral Commission’s records. Moreover, although those election expense forms are kept locally by the relevant returning officers, they are not published and are destroyed after a period. Although the Electoral Commission gathers such forms in, it does not publish them. Indeed, as Chris and I discovered, the Electoral Commission is not terribly keen on releasing copies of that information. When it did release some information to us, much of it was redacted.

With that redacted information, we did our best to compare, for those elected as MPs, whether the donations then appeared on the MPs’ register of interests. We found that around one in 10 of the donations made did not appear on the register. One should caveat that—there may be innocent explanations—but it adds to the general picture that there is a problem, which I hope the Government will be keen to address, about the volume of money that flows in as direct donations to candidates that is not properly caught by our current transparency regimes.

English Devolution and Community Empowerment Bill

Lord Pack Excerpts

Committee stage
Wednesday 11th February 2026 Grand Committee

I look forward to hearing from noble Lords across the Committee in this debate on these amendments and others covering alternative voting systems, the scrutiny of election cancelations, and candidates providing electors with a means of contacting them—which I will address when winding up. I beg to move.

[Lord Pack (LD)]

My Lords, I will speak particularly to Amendments 211 and 212 in this group, which are in my name and that of the noble Baroness, Lady Pinnock.

On the return to this vexed question of election postponements and cancellations, as we have covered that several times already on various previous occasions—I am sure we will again in future—I will take a slightly different tack this time and focus partly on the future. I also hope, perhaps overoptimistically, that the Minister feels that these amendments are actually helpful.

Thinking about the future first, there are very clear, sad and worrying lessons from countries all around the world about how quickly democracies can become fragmented and undermined. The responsible reaction we all should have to that is to be determined to embed democratic norms as deeply and firmly as we can. That does not guarantee their future protection but it will certainly make life more likely to be successful, whether for our future selves or our successors, if we have to defend democracy. I hope we all agree on the clear principle of embedding the idea that democracy should not just be an easy thing to postpone or cancel.

However, at the moment, unfortunately, it is just a little bit too easy for elections to be postponed or cancelled. The two amendments in my name set out a very clear route, as indeed do other amendments in this group, by which we could more firmly protect our democracy against future strains.

As the noble Baroness, Lady Scott, rightly pointed out, there are several different approaches that one could potentially take to this. I certainly acknowledge the merit of the approach taken in some of the other amendments regarding both ensuring that the 2007 and 2011 Acts referred to in them are properly catered for and, indeed, the interesting idea of the one-year limit that is present in one of those amendments.

My concern, though, with those alternative approaches —I will certainly listen carefully and with interest to noble Lords who contribute to the rest of this debate—is that those alternative approaches rest, in the end, on the willingness of Parliament to vote down secondary legislation. In the end, that is the prime safeguard in them. It is obviously a matter for another day or occasion to debate the merits of the deeply held, principled position that I know many in both the Labour and Conservative groups here take—I do not share it but I appreciate it—that the main opposition party in the House of Lords should not vote for a fatal amendment to a statutory instrument.

The problem is, whatever one thinks are the rights or wrongs of that principle, that that essentially means that any safeguard that is based on the idea that the Government have to put a statutory instrument or secondary legislation in some form to Parliament is of very little use. In the end, when push comes to shove, whatever the principal opposition party is in the Lords, it will say, “As a matter of principle, we aren’t going to vote it down”. It is a safeguard that, when needed, will not keep us very safe.

I said that I was going to be optimistic and try to persuade the Minister that these amendments are a helpful measure. I say that because I am absolutely sure that, in good faith, the Government never set out to say that some councillors who are elected for a four-year term of office should stay in office—as it will turn out under their plans—for seven years. I am sure that was not the original intention, but it is unfortunately the position that we have stumbled into through a sequence of events. That is a very significant and, outside of wartime, unprecedented extension to the term of office of councillors. We have ended up in this unprecedented and frankly unsatisfactory position because some of those councillors who have had their four-year term extended to seven years are in power, running councils, and they are being given three extra years in power without the public getting a say on that.

As I said, I appreciate that that is the result of a sequence of circumstances, and in that sense it seems that the Government have stumbled into a series of events. Whether through the mechanisms set out by the noble Baroness, Lady Scott, or through mine, the advantage of making it a little harder for the Government to cancel elections in the future is that it would protect Governments from stumbling into a similar sequence of events again. So I hope we will hear some movement from the Minister in due course on this issue.

But of course, like any good Liberal Democrat, I cannot resist the opportunity to talk a little about the merits of different voting systems, so I will refer briefly to Amendment 213, although the ticking clock protects noble Lords from a William Gladstone-type speech about the relative merits of different voting systems, tempting though that may be. Although it is obviously no surprise, I am sure, for the Minister to hear me say that I certainly prefer the supplementary vote to first past the post, it is a real shame that the Government do not intend at the moment to go a step further and introduce the alternative vote. The big weakness of the supplementary vote is that you have to correctly second-guess the two parties that will be in the final round so that you can cast your second preference vote in a way that will be counted.

I will briefly make reference to the research by the Make Votes Matter coalition that was carried out a couple of years ago and which encompassed 217 different elections conducted by the supplementary vote in the UK. It found that only 46% of the second preferences that people expressed actually ended up being counted in the final run-off round. Over half of all second preferences correctly filled in on the ballot paper none the less got discarded because they were for candidates who did not make it into the second round. That is quite a flaw in the supplementary vote. It is a system essentially designed for a world in which it is pretty clear who the two main parties, or the two main candidates, in an election will be. However good or bad it may be, we are certainly not in a situation where that is the norm in our politics any more, so I very much hope the Minister will consider the merits of the alternative vote.

On Amendment 214, I simply observe that, in Scotland, the single transferable vote is used for council elections and is pretty popular with not only many members of the Labour Party but indeed many members of the Conservative Party there. If it works well in Scotland, as it does, perhaps we should be able to have it in England as well.

[Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)]

My Lords, I will not talk about different voting systems; I cannot think of anything more boring—I am so sorry. Actually, lots of things are more boring. I could not agree less with the noble Baroness, Lady Scott, about the value of first past the post. It is a thoroughly discredited system and its time is over. What we see again and again is that we have a completely unrepresentative Government, as we do at the moment: they have a huge majority on a small proportion of the vote, and the Conservatives should be thinking more about how they can get back into power—obviously, I do not particularly want that.

Under first past the post, councillors elected often bear little resemblance to how people actually vote. Large numbers of residents can turn out, cast their ballots in good faith and still see their views go completely unrepresented. That leaves too many people feeling that local government is something done to them rather them with them, and proportional representation offers a way out of that. My noble friend Lady Bennett of Manor Castle’s Amendment 215, and Amendment 214 in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Pinnock, would allow a shift towards a voting system that would reflect the diversity of political opinion in our communities and reward candidates who can build broad support, rather than those who simply scrape through on a minority of the vote. It would open the door to councils that would look more like the places they serve, politically and socially, and that really matters, especially at a time when councils are becoming larger, more remote and more powerful.

As the noble Lord said earlier, in Scotland local government elections have used the single transferable vote for nearly two decades. In Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland, STV is well understood and widely trusted. In Wales, councils are now able to choose it for themselves. Of course, we have proportional representation in London for the London Assembly.

I have been elected under PR and under first past the post. Quite honestly, it did not feel very different, but a completely different view could be spoken and presented much more forcefully when we had more people elected under proportional representation. Voters in those countries manage perfectly well with a system that allows them to rank candidates in order of preference. The result is representation built on consent and co-operation rather than tribalism. This will be much more important as we move towards much larger councils and combined authorities. If power is to be devolved upwards, representation must be strengthened downwards.

--- Later in debate ---

To conclude, I am extremely grateful to the National Association of Local Councils, which is very supportive of Amendment 218 which seeks to ensure that local authorities can hold council meetings in an online or hybrid format under the circumstances I have set out. It believes the Bill should be amended to make provision for remote meetings and to make reforms to standards regimes to make this possible. With those few words, I beg to move.

[Lord Pack (LD)]

My Lords, I will speak to Amendments 219 and 220. As the noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh, has indicated, they attempt to achieve something very similar to Amendment 218 but go a bit more broadly. All three of the amendments in this group get at the idea that it is reasonable—in some carefully defined and carefully protected circumstances—for councillors to be able to participate in council business even though they are not able to be physically present.

One of the reasons for putting forward these two amendments is, frankly, a bit of embarrassment. Both Houses of Parliament, in their own way, allow some degree of remote or proxy participation. Although every noble Lord is undoubtedly very special, are noble Lords and Members of the other place really so special that, while it is okay for us to be able to do that, oh my goodness, we must not let councillors do it? Frankly, it is a little embarrassing that, although we understand that these powers need to be carefully protected and defined, we say that this is okay for ourselves, yet, so far, we do not allow councillors the same thing.

This is also a matter of pragmatism. Through the experience of the House of Lords, through the experience of the other place, through the experience of councils in lockdown and through the experience of councils in the UK but outside of England, we have a lot of accumulated knowledge and experience of how measures such as those set out in the amendments in this group work. The answer is that they have worked well. They have worked successfully. They are good ways of dealing with, for example, some of the challenges of geography and weather that the noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh, mentioned earlier. They are good ways of dealing with some of the challenges around increasing participation in politics and the diversity of our elected representatives.

These are not just my views. The Government helpfully carried out a thorough consultation last year, asking for views on remote attendance and proxy voting in local authorities. Just as I did in the case of my earlier amendment on cattle grids, I will quote approvingly from the Government’s words—with more success, I hope, than I had on that amendment.

In the consultation, question 2 asked:

“Do you agree with the broad principle of granting local authorities powers to allow remote attendance at formal meetings?”


A resounding 86% said “yes” in response to that. Similarly, question 8 in that consultation asked:

“Do you think legislative change to allow councillors to attend local authority meetings remotely should or should not be considered for the following reasons?”


Reason number one was:

“Councils would be more resilient in the event of local or national emergencies”;


91% agreed with that. This was another option given:

“It would likely increase the diversity of people willing and able to stand for election in their local area”;


79% of people agreed with that.

The government consultation rightly concluded that, in the Government’s own words:

“The government is of the view that in-person authority meetings remain vital for local democracy”—


I agree—

“but that hybrid and remote attendance, and proxy voting, will enable local authorities in England to develop more modern, accessible and flexible working practices”.

The Government went on to say:

“We have carefully considered arguments for and against remote attendance and proxy voting, and we plan to legislate to support permanent provision in relation to both policies, when parliamentary time allows”.


Having raised this at Second Reading and listened carefully to what the Minister said in response, the puzzle for me is that we have in front of us a piece of legislation that would enable exactly those conclusions from the Government’s consultation to be implemented. The Government say that they need parliamentary time to do this; well, the parliamentary time is immediately in front of us.

The Government like talking about how they are taking action on many issues at pace. Here is the opportunity to act at a swift pace on the results of that consultation from last year. I very much hope that, when we hear the Minister’s response, even if we do not get my most optimistic outcome—a straightforward, “We agree to these amendments”—we will at least get to unpick this mystery a little. Why, when the consultation and the Government’s own conclusions were so clearly in favour, and other arguments so clearly stack up in favour, are the Government not taking the opportunity of the Bill in front of us to proceed at pace and implement what they themselves have said they wish to do?

[Lord Fuller (Con)]

My Lords, like many others, I had a leading position as a councillor during Covid. The Minister and I corresponded on many calls. Remote working worked well during Covid, but there were some famous failures. Some councillors fell asleep live on YouTube—not in my council, I hasten to add. Others went to the toilet, got undressed or got out of the shower. Children bumbled in. There was that famous meeting where a woman had no authority but managed to cut the other chap out; I cannot remember her name, but we all know the one. So, yes, it can work, and there are safeguards.

I completely disagree with proxy voting, so I have no truck with Amendment 219. However, I am broadly sympathetic with Amendments 218 and 220, which are trying to ask how we can participate remotely, although I find it difficult to support them as they are currently constructed.

This is complicated. There are different types of meeting, and each has different consequences. There is the full council meeting, in which everyone gets together. It is important that everyone gets together to cast their vote as a council rather than as a set of individuals sitting at home—in their underpants, let us say. There are executive meetings and cabinet meetings. They are really important, and people want to see them; there are rights of attendance, and people will want to lobby. There are scrutiny meetings, but that is not an executive function. Then there are policy-formation committees, which are not for decision-making but are part of scrutiny. So we have the distinction between what are and are not decision-making committees. Then there are quasi-judicial meetings, such as those on planning or licensing; in-person attendance is really important for those. None of this fine-grained texture is in the amendments but, if they are to progress, it should be.

Local government is becoming more complicated. There is certainly a need to travel more, particularly in the larger authorities such as North Yorkshire. The answer to that is not to have something quite as big as North Yorkshire, but we are where we are. There are going to be more combined meetings under these combined county authorities. There are also more trading companies involved in local authorities now. They are at arm’s length from the council—they may be owned by the council but they are not of the council—and we have to take them into consideration, too. There are significantly more partnerships, some of which are joint committees of more than one council. We would have to work out, if two councils came together and one had the freedom to do online meetings and the other did not, how that would mesh in joint committees, of which we are seeing a lot more. We have development corporations as well. There is a lot of public money there, so will they be meeting in private or in public?

We have to sort out some of the ground rules. It is not quite as simple as the noble Lord, Lord Pack, and my noble friend Lady McIntosh said. I am interested in taking this forward, but it will need a lot more work before Report before any of it could really be considered a realistic proposal, rather than just a good idea for probing.