Absent Voting (Elections in Scotland and Wales) Bill

Lord Rennard Excerpts

Friday 5th September 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Rennard (LD)]

My Lords, the expertise of many Members of your Lordships’ House in electoral law matters has once again been demonstrated in this debate. From these Benches, we supported the provisions in the Elections Act 2022 to make it easy for people wishing to vote by post or proxy to apply to do so online. Similarly, we now support this Bill to allow the Scottish and Welsh Parliaments to extend the provision of online applications for absent voting to all elections in those countries.

Modernising the conduct of elections encourages participation. It can also cut costs, with the money saved invested elsewhere in our democratic processes. Fundamentally, we need as few barriers as possible to voting, subject of course to measures to maintain the security of the ballot process. I remain concerned that there are more problems with absent voting, and the abuse of the processes involved in it, than with voting at polling stations.

I supported the measures in the 2022 Act to try to deal with postal vote fraud, but the new rules introduced then to prevent parties or candidates harvesting postal votes still seem ineffective and unenforceable. If we make voting by post easier, we must try to do more to make sure that postal votes are completed in proper conditions of secrecy. Can the Minister tell us whether there may be further provision in forthcoming legislation about the security of postal voting in particular?

I have a more fundamental question about our overall approach to electoral legislation. This very sensible measure has come to us by way of a Private Member’s Bill. As the noble Lords, Lord Hayward and Lord Bourne, and other noble Lords have suggested, this highlights the need to reform election legislation not in a piecemeal and unsatisfactory way but fundamentally, so that when changes are made—such as those in the 2022 Act—they are not so open to charges of partisan interference in election rules.

For some years, many of us have been hoping for a Government who will accept the Law Commission’s proposal to consolidate all our electoral legislation. The noble Lord, Lord Mott, quoted the Law Commission, and I refer to what it said in 2020:

“Electoral law in the UK is spread across 17 statutes and some 30 sets of regulations. It has become increasingly complex and fragmented; it is difficult to access, apply, and update. Much of the law is rooted in 19th Century language and practice, and doesn’t reflect modern electoral administration”.


Can the Minister please say whether the Government agree with that? Will he stand by his words, his vote and those of all his Labour colleagues in the last Parliament to end the provision for a Secretary of State to direct a strategy and policy statement for the Electoral Commission, thereby undermining its independence?

This Bill is a small step in improving our electoral arrangements. Many things need to be put in place to improve them. As the noble Baroness, Lady Smith of Llanfaes, said, we need above all to ensure that our systems are modernised so that everybody legally entitled to vote is enabled to do so by being on the electoral register.