Representation of the People Bill

Lord Rennard Excerpts

Committee stage
Monday 2nd November 2026 Lords Chamber

[Lord Young of Acton (Con)]

My Lords, I shall speak to Amendment 20 in my name and that of the noble Baroness, Lady Fox of Buckley. I declare my interest as the director of the Free Speech Union.

I draw your Lordships’ attention to a disconnect between this Bill and the Online Safety Act. At present, some content on social media platforms is age-gated, because of a child safety duty in the Online Safety Act that kicked in, in July 2025. That means that, to access content that the social media platforms deem to be suitable for adults only, the user has to prove that they are an adult, aged 18 or over.

However, quite a lot of political content has been age-gated as a consequence of this child safety duty coming into force. I could give numerous examples, but I know we are short for time, so I will give just one: a speech by Katie Lam in the House of Commons about the grooming gangs was age-gated by all the large social media platforms, which thought that it was unsuitable content for anyone under the age of 18. However, if 16 and 17 year-olds cannot access speeches being made in the House of Commons because of the age-gating in which social media platforms engage, how can they be expected to make informed decisions at the ballot box?

I am sure that noble Lords and Baronesses who have rightly emphasised the necessity of improving civic education if we are to lower the voting age to 16—I am thinking of the noble Baroness, Lady Lister, and the noble Lord, Lord Murphy—will agree with me that, if we are to improve civic education for teenagers, it is important that they can access political content, including speeches given in the House of Commons.

My noble friend Lord Bailey of Paddington rightly pointed out that, for most teenage children, social media platforms are the single largest source of news. That was corroborated by some research carried out by Ofcom; it showed that social media platforms such as TikTok are the primary source of news for 12 to 15 year-olds. So this is a potential problem. The Online Safety Act requires large social media platforms to age-gate some political content, so that it cannot be accessed unless the user can prove that they are aged 18 or over. At the same time, the Government are proposing to lower the voting age to 16, expecting 16 and 17 year-olds to make informed decisions without being able to access political content on their primary source of news.

Fortunately, there is a solution at hand. Sections 17, 18 and 19 of the Online Safety Act are keep-up duties. They require social media platforms to keep up content of democratic importance, news publisher content and journalistic content. However, it may not surprise your Lordships to learn that, while all the take-down duties in the Online Safety Act have been activated, not all the keep-up duties have, including Sections 17, 18 and 19, and that that they are not due to be activated until mid-2027.

There is nothing in those sections that means that they apply only to adults, so it is perfectly possible that, once those duties are activated, social media platforms will recognise that they have a duty to keep up content of democratic importance, news publisher content and journalistic content, to make it accessible to children as well as adults. That could be underwritten by the regulations I believe the Government intend to make at the beginning of next year, restricting access to social media for under-16s as well as 16 and 17 year-olds. The regulations could stipulate that those restrictions should not apply to content of democratic importance, news publisher content and journalistic content. That would be a way of ensuring that 16 and 17 year-olds, and younger teenagers who are beginning to think about how they will vote when they reach the age of 16, can access vital content such as speeches made in the House of Commons.

If the Government think that it would be a step too far to stipulate in those regulations that the restrictions should not apply to teenagers in general, they should at the very least stipulate that they should not apply to 16 and 17 year-olds, given that 16 and 17 year-olds are going to have the vote. My amendment simply asks the Government to carry out a review within 12 months of the Bill being passed to ensure that content that children will need to be able to access on social media to make informed decisions at the ballot box is not restricted, in particular for 16 and 17 year-olds.

[Lord Rennard (LD)]

My Lords, it is more than 50 years since we legislated to extend the franchise to allow 18 year-olds to vote in general elections. A great deal has changed in society since 1970 when those 18 year-olds cast their first votes, and it is right that we look again properly at the issue of the franchise.

The debates since 1970, including this afternoon, focus largely on the issue of at what age it is appropriate to do whatever people want to do. But the argument from the noble Lord, Lord Udny-Lister, that few people who are 16 or 17 in Scotland and Wales are registered to vote is not an indication that they should not be able to vote; it is an indication simply of how difficult it can be to be on the electoral register when you are a young person. That issue is addressed elsewhere in the Bill, but was sadly neglected over the last four Parliaments.

I accept that there are things we should not let people do as soon as they are 16. For example, smoking is self-harming, alcohol carries great dangers, gambling can be deeply addictive and purchasing fireworks, knives, crossbows and airguns should not be permitted to anyone under 18. But going down to a polling station or filling in a postal vote should not be seen as a harmful activity, any more than it is for older generations.

A 16 year-old in this country can consent to medical treatment, leave school for another form of education or training and consent to sex. With parental consent, that young person can join the Armed Forces, apply for a passport and get married or enter a civil partnership. Yet, under present laws, someone whose 18th birthday falls just before a general election may not get to cast a vote in one until they are 21 or 22. If politics is not for them when they are young, it may never be for them.

In 2003, in a debate on a Bill that would have reduced the franchise from 18, I argued that maturity and political understanding do not suddenly materialise on your 18th birthday. My view remains that it is wrong to suggest that everyone over 18 generally possesses sufficiently political wisdom to make choices, while no one aged 16 or 17 can properly decide whether to vote or who to vote for. My own experience with political research often involved me interviewing the interviewers who sought to discuss political issues with voters. The people they interviewed, who were entitled to vote because they were 18, frequently knew so little about the issues facing a democracy that the interviewers even said to me that they sometimes doubted the wisdom of the universal franchise.

Wisdom, political experience and judgment do not always come with being older. Younger people, in my experience, are sometimes ahead of older generations in considering long-term challenges such as climate change, alongside immediate priorities such as education, transport and housing. Amendments today seek to maintain the voting age at 18, or to reduce the number of young people who will be added to the voting registers. The suggestion is even made—I think it is preposterous—of having a national referendum before extending the franchise. Another referendum, and on this issue? We can only imagine what Brenda from Bristol would have to say about that.

Retaining the vote at 18 or pausing at an arbitrary halfway point of 17 ignores vital lessons from when the franchise has been extended in Scotland and Wales. Studies across both nations demonstrate that 16 and 17 year-olds living at home and attending school are embedded in a supportive social structure that actively fosters democratic engagement: a structure that 18 to 20 year-olds currently entitled to vote who are living independently often lack. In Scotland and Wales, and in other countries such as Austria, which led the way by lowering the voting age to 16 across all electoral levels in 2007, there was no meltdown of democracy. In fact, in local elections in Vienna, turnout among 16 and 17 year-olds reached 64%, compared with only 56% among 18 to 20 year-olds.

We on these Benches accept that the issue of enfranchisement cannot stand alone. We should look to research from Jersey, which lowered the voting age in 2008. It was demonstrated there that extending the franchise in isolation, without structured democratic education, failed to deliver sustained engagement, leaving young voters facing persistent confusion over candidates’ policy platforms and how democracy works. So, in a later group of amendments, we will argue that extending the franchise and strengthening citizenship education must be treated as twin pillars of a single coherent strategy, aimed at improving political engagement and the health of our democracy.

[Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, I have added my name to a couple of amendments, including Amendment 2 in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Coffey, because I think it is valid to ask, “Why 16, not 17?” We could as easily ask, “Why 16, not 15?” This is overall an important group of amendments, not necessarily because anyone here is interested in overturning a manifesto pledge or getting stuck in a row about the maturity or otherwise of teenagers, but in order to probe how far the Government have considered the impact of these changes, what they mean for the adult franchise and the problem of inconsistency in relation to age when it comes to the way we view the age of majority.

My fear is that we are in danger of getting in a muddle about what adulthood means. The age of majority, according to law, is 18. Successive Governments have created fairly hard lines about what under-18s cannot do, as we have heard, including buying alcohol, nicotine products or vapes or gambling: all the sins, the harmful things. Under 18 year-olds are also deemed incapable of exerting full contractual capacity when it comes to loans or mortgages or doing jury service. I think that jury service is good and I hope that, by the time they grow up, there will still be juries left for them to be recruited to—but I put that to one side.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Fuller (Con)]

My Lords, it is a pleasure to lead this debate; I have the first two amendments in this group. Turning first to my Amendment 8, I think that registering to vote a year before the possibility of voting would give election officials sufficient time to draw up the register at the annual canvass. It is not as if many will be able to vote on their 16th birthday. By arithmetic, that excitement will be restricted to just 1,917 youngsters, who can then celebrate by going down to the scrapyard on a moped to sell some metal—two of the rites of passage that are permitted at that age, alongside piercing and opening a bank account without telling your mum. I do not agree with votes at 16. I will not repeat the reasoning here, but, if that is the proposal on the table, then registration at 15 seems to be quite sufficient. After all, we have an annual canvass for a reason.

If there is a theme to the Bill as it relates to young voters, it is that the Government have failed to integrate these attainers aged 14 and above into the existing registration system. The propensity for these attainers to move around is much greater than for the older population: they churn schools, colleges, jobs and apprenticeships, while some leave home for the first time. My Amendment 8 does not seek to fetter democracy or deny anybody access to the vote; it is aimed simply at reducing the administrative burden of collating the register, and it works along with the existing pattern of electoral registration and administration in this country.

That leads me to my Amendment 9, which looks at the mechanics of how a person under 16 can unambiguously be identified and authenticated by the electoral registration officer before they come on to the register as attainers. These youngsters may not have a passport, and they certainly will not have a credit card. Inevitably, they will not pay an electric or council tax bill, or any tax for that matter, to identify themselves—as you or I might. In the world as it is today, you register to vote by providing your national insurance number. Whether you use the centralised online form on GOV.UK or download a paper copy or form issued by the local council, you need to provide your national insurance number; if you do not, they want to know why. That is because there is a secure automatic authentication system that uniquely matches a person to a national insurance number across the HMRC, the DWP and other databases. It protects the register’s integrity and, in theory, helps identify duplicate entries.

Even in Scotland you need to give your national insurance number—although, helpfully, if you do not have one, the ERO invites applicants to provide a utility bill. Call me old-fashioned, but I do not know how many 14 year-olds pay the electricity bill, which is normally paid by their parents, but we will put that to one side.

If you cannot supply an NI number, it triggers a complex and intrusive manual validation system. Local officers are working hard enough as it is without more handwork burdens being thrust upon them. Today, I spoke to one electoral registration officer, who is a returning officer. As it is today, when somebody cannot provide a national insurance number, two hours over several weeks per person—which may lead to an attestation in court—is needed to finally authenticate them and validate their application to come on the register. Put simply, the 14 or 15 year-olds who do not have this NI will not be easily identifiable through the usual channels because these youngsters do not have the normal sets of identifiers.

Google, summarising the ONS census statistics, tells me that there are 1.4 million 14 and 15 year-olds in the UK who will be admitted to attain on their 16th birthday. They do not have NI numbers, so these youngsters are in a bind. How will they prove their identity? The electoral registration officer will not be any the wiser after; there is no standard administrative method. These young people will not have a driver’s licence—only certain 16 year-olds will have a moped—and they may not have a passport or gas bill, so how do they prove their identity without reinventing the entire wheel of administrative process that goes on in getting them on to the register?

Consider the child from a broken home. Perhaps he lives with mum on Acacia Avenue during the week and with his dad in a city apartment at the weekend. I am trying to prevent the introduction of duplicates into the system. It is possible that the mum and dad live in different electoral areas. The parents would think it was their duty to register their child and are not necessarily forced to tell the other. We have the prospect of automatic registration, perhaps by reference to the school roll. The child might want to register himself—after all, if he is trusted to choose a Government, he ought to be capable of filling in the form.

In this example, there are two EROs, two addresses and possibly two different names, because some children will assume double-barrelled names. Perhaps some of them are relatives of my noble friend Lady O’Neill—is that with or without an apostrophe? Multiple registrations of youngsters is not a possibility but a certainty, with all these people looking after the interests of the little boy, falling over themselves to duplicate him on the register—and the ERO will not have a clue about how to weed out the duplicates. I ask the Minister: who will be responsible for cases of double registration and, still worse, double voting by the child who did not realise that others were usurping him? Without my amendment to change the rules to issue national insurance numbers at 14, this is a ready excuse for ballot stuffing and family voting.

The impact assessment covers none of this, and it should. Although streamlining voter registration using other government services might be possible for those over 18, it is fraught with difficulty with those under 16. Why did the assessment not calculate, as I have done, that just registering 14 and 15 year-olds will take 2,000 extra local government staff for this provision alone?

We have an identifier already: the national insurance number. My amendment proposes a review so that the Government consider reducing the age of issuance of NI numbers to 14 under Regulation 9(3) of the Social Security (Crediting and Treatment of Contributions, and National Insurance Numbers) Regulations 2001—SI No. 769 of that year. This is an integral part of the voter system. No IT systems need to be changed and no new interfaces need to be created. It is the same system that the ERO can use to dedupe the surplus records. Critically, it will maintain the integrity of the register. I call for a review because it is the integral part that will reduce duplicates and ensure confidence in the register.

As I will explain on group 9, issuing national insurance numbers will significantly simplify the muddle that Ofcom has got into in trying to identify youngsters for social media. Its proposals include four different methods that put regulators and parents in an impossible position. Let us sort it out. Let us issue national insurance numbers at 14 and if it helps the children themselves think more closely and carefully about the world of work then that cannot do any harm either. I have said enough. I beg to move.

[Lord Rennard (LD)]

My Lords, in looking at this group of amendments, we all have a duty to try to discern which of them might be considered to be motivated by partisan considerations. My view is that Amendment 8 in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Fuller, is simply about reducing the number of people legally entitled to vote who are registered and therefore able to vote. I cannot see how it can be anything other than partisan to reduce the number of people legally entitled to vote who are able to do so.

Amendment 48 in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady O’Neill of Bexley, again seems to be a deliberate barrier to registering people who are legally entitled to vote but would not be able to do so because they would not be registered. Is that not a partisan consideration? Other amendments seek to block, delay or make the registration process weaker and less effective. I therefore consider those amendments partisan. The amendments in my name—

[Lord Fuller (Con)]

I cannot see how any of my proposals would be discriminatory in any way, shape or form because they provide that everybody would be given—not have to apply for but be given—a national insurance number, not at 16 but at 14, which is the age at which the Government propose these attainers would come on to the register. There is nothing discriminatory; it is actually enabling because it would get the state organised and individuals waiting to get that number so that they can get on to the register. I am sorry, but the noble Lord has misdirected himself as to the effect of my proposals.

[Lord Rennard (LD)]

The noble Lord’s proposal is actually what I proposed in previous Parliaments, and his Government resisted tooth and nail any suggestion about registering people at the point that they got their national insurance numbers. My understanding of the noble Lord’s Amendment 8 is that, rather than beginning the registering process with 14 and 15 year-olds, you would start only at 15. Surely that would mean fewer people being registered, but if I have misunderstood, I apologise.

I am concerned with the approach in general and how I think Amendments 49, 50 and 52 are all about improving the health of our democracy, because democratic elections cannot fully take place without people being registered to vote. Many groups of people who are legally entitled to vote are often not registered to vote under our current arrangements.

When individual electoral registration was introduced, many of us warned that, without extra measures, millions of young people, students and people who move home frequently would fall off the electoral rolls. Perhaps that was the intention of the proposal among some people. I believe that it was. I know that it was a great preoccupation of the now noble Lord, Lord Cameron, when he used to meet his deputy to discuss constitutional issues. He was determined to drive this process through. Had it been implemented as he intended, registration levels would have fallen from the level of the mid-1980s to about 60%, according to the Electoral Commission.

The Electoral Commission briefing for this debate shows that as many as 8 million people who are legally entitled to vote are not correctly registered and therefore would be unlikely to be able to take part in the democratic process. The commission says that it strongly supports the principles of what is commonly known as automatic voter registration and is described in this Bill as “registration without an application”. The problem that it seeks to address involves young people especially. The commission’s previous research indicated that, although 95% of those aged over 65 are registered to vote, only about 65% of under-25s are included on the voter lists. There are similar problems with people who rent privately, or who come from diverse backgrounds, missing from the registers.

My biggest concerns about the processes in the Bill are how the plans for registering without application will take too long and the Government are proceeding too cautiously. It will be too late to have many more people who are legally entitled to vote registered for the next election and too late for the next review of parliamentary consistency boundaries, which will draw on data from 1 December 2028—hence my support for Amendment 67, in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Lister, my noble friend Lord Pack and others.

The first and most obvious way in which we can address the underrepresentation of young people is by registering them when they are notified of their national insurance numbers. The House of Lords Select Committee that reviewed the impact of individual electoral registration unanimously recommended that this be done, and I am delighted that the principle had the support of the noble Lord, Lord Hayward, whose expertise is very widely regarded in this House.

When debating the idea during consideration of the Elections Bill on 23 March 2022, the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman of Ullock, then speaking from the Opposition Front Bench, said that

“people are already written to ahead of their 16th birthday with their national insurance number. If we can do that, why can we not at the same time have an automatic registration to vote? We have the means to do it, so why do we not just get on with it?”—[Official Report, 23/3/22; col. 1058.]

That is the question that I ask today.

A little later I won a partial victory on the issue when the noble Lord, Lord True, eventually accepted from the Government Benches that a reference to registering to vote could be made with a notification of national insurance numbers. But it was a very unpressing reference, and the process should not now require specific application if the qualifications for registration are satisfied. That is the aim of my Amendment 50.

A second crucial point at which we can get many more young people registered is when many of them enter higher or further education. From the Labour Front Bench, the noble Baroness, Lady Royall of Blaisdon, championed the cause of registering students, with her usual great skill and determination, during the passage of the Higher Education and Research Act 2017. The noble Baroness demonstrated how easy and simple it was to have data-sharing agreements between higher education and further education providers and local registration offices. This would enable students to be enfranchised and help to make their legal entitlement to vote a reality. We are trying again to have that principle adopted by Amendment 52.

Finally, I will speak to my Amendment 61. The issues of electoral registration and constituency boundaries are inextricably linked, although the tight drafting of the Bill means that we are not properly allowed to consider that link. I draw the attention of the Government and others to this connection. There should be consideration of how the measures in the Bill will change the data from which the electoral registers are drawn. The data will change as a result of measures in the Bill, and it will affect the process of revising the constituency boundaries, which will begin in two years. The electoral registration data forms the building blocks from which the Boundary Commissions must create constituencies; they are obliged under the rules to create constituencies with a very narrow and inflexible margin of difference in the size of the electorates for each of those constituencies. A slight change to a single constituency’s boundaries is likely to cause widespread disruption to many other constituencies, breaking them up into pieces.

The failure in the last series of Parliaments to address issues of the missing millions from electoral registers has distorted the map of constituencies. Millions of young people, private sector tenants and people from diverse communities were left out from the registers. We are now trying to address that. Whether it happened inadvertently or deliberately, the effect of the last boundary review was that many more constituencies were created that would be likely to vote Conservative, and fewer were created that would be less likely to vote Conservative. Registering many more of these groups will address that unfairness. The Government must now consider whether we need to allow the next boundary review to take more time so that it is able to work with the most accurate and complete electoral registers. Every year, according to the Government’s impact assessment, registration levels will rise by around 1.7%, so I hope there will be time for the changes in the Bill to feed through to the next boundary review.

[Lord Jackson of Peterborough (Con)]

My Lords, I am delighted to speak to my Amendment 51. I find myself almost wholly in agreement with Amendment 61 from the noble Lord, Lord Rennard, although I am bound to ask rhetorically: if the last boundary change was engineered to gerrymander a stonking Conservative victory, how did that go? But seriously, I think there is a meeting of minds between him and my noble friend Lord Fuller on national insurance numbers and the registration of younger people. I think there might be a consensus on that. My noble friend made a powerful and compelling argument for that age group.

To go back to Amendment 61, Clauses 17 to 19 give rise to long-term changes in electorate sizes. The current obligations of the boundary commissioners do not really take into account what sizeable changes will happen as a result of automatic voter registration or registration without application. The noble Lord is right to pinpoint that issue. That goes to the heart of my Amendment 51, which is to ensure that we proceed in an incremental way if we are to have automatic voter registration and not put a huge obligation on electoral registration officers. Clause 17 is quite wide ranging anyway in giving proactive powers to electoral registration officers to register people as they see fit.

The reason I am seeking to remove Commonwealth and Irish citizens is not because they do not value their right to vote or to have the franchise but because we should focus on the endemic problem that has been identified for many years under all parties and Governments: poor registration of younger people. That happened under the coalition Government, and it has happened under the Labour Government and under Conservative Administrations. That seems to me the kernel of the issue that we need to look at here.

I am quite straightforward in saying that, as other countries do with their own citizens, I do not think we should be ashamed to prioritise British citizens in this clause. If we have limited resources, we should do so. I can debate the situation with the Republic of Ireland and its voters, but it seems an odd situation that you would not wish to prioritise your own citizens, who have constitutional, social and economic links that are stronger than some others—indeed, the citizens of a foreign country, albeit a very long-standing neighbour and friend of the United Kingdom, the Republic of Ireland. That is what my amendment seeks to do.

Under current electoral law, qualifying Commonwealth citizens and citizens of the Republic of Ireland can vote in parliamentary elections. Qualifying means meeting normal age, residence and registration requirements, and they will have permission to enter or remain in the United Kingdom. Specifically for your Lordships’ House, this amendment would not change who is legally entitled to vote. However, it would restrict who is automatically registered without an application to those with the strongest constitutional links to the UK. This would reduce the risk of eligibility verification errors, which would automatically register individuals who are not legally eligible to vote. It might be the case, for instance, that those on technically non-qualifying visiting visas may very well be swept up in the system of automatic voter registration. Perhaps the Minister might reassure the Committee on what specific efforts the Government are making to ensure that the correct people are registered under automatic voter registration. Additionally, the introduction of automatic verification is a novel and untested feature of the Bill. This amendment seeks to ensure that it is introduced cautiously to prevent accidental scope creep and ensure that its first implementation is thorough and effective in registering only those with the genuine legal right to vote in UK parliamentary elections.

For those reasons—time is of the essence—I am delighted to propose Amendment 51. I also support the amendments in the name of my noble friends.

Representation of the People Bill

Lord Rennard Excerpts

2nd reading
Monday 14th September 2026 Lords Chamber

[Lord Rennard (LD)]

My Lords, the current controversy over massive donations from crypto billionaires to the limited company known as Reform is a disaster that has been waiting to happen and a danger to democracy. In 2000 the then Labour Government sought to end the party-spending arms race that had been giving an unfair financial advantage to the Conservative Party. They introduced a spending cap of £20 million for political parties in the 12 months before a general election, but there was no cap on the size of donations and no cap on spending for all the years in between general elections. The cap of £20 million was higher than it needed to be and it was a mistake to allow the Secretary of State to increase it without any form of parliamentary approval.

The Conservatives increased this limit from £20 million to £36 million without consultation just before the last general election. This allowed them to receive £20 million in donations from a single source—Frank Hester. During the passage of the legislation in 2000, I moved amendments providing for a maximum cap of £50,000 on the size of donations from any source to political parties. That would be around £110,000 in today’s money. I also warned then that the legislation would backfire, just as it has done, by introducing the concept of national spending which could be targeted at individual constituencies. This destroyed the concept of a level playing field in constituency campaigning that had applied since Gladstone’s Government introduced the Corrupt and Illegal Practices Prevention Act 1883. We have gone back 150 years. This Bill must be amended to put that right.

It is difficult to make rules apply retrospectively even if actions are taken to subvert the purpose of the legislation, but we can look at the total limits of what can be spent by parties and prevent the targeting of national spending at specific seats. This weekend’s £72 million of donations to Reform could legally be spent in 72 target constituencies over two years, providing for £1 million of national spending in each of them. MPs should take careful note of that; I am not sure that they are aware. In relation to donation caps, they are supporting the proposal for a cap of £100,000 on donations from overseas electors, but the logic of such a cap is that it should also be applied to UK-based electors.

I support allowing young people to vote at the first election after their 16th birthday. That is not surprising, because by the time I was 16 I was the secretary of the Liverpool Wavertree Constituency Liberal Association. I have never suggested that the first thing a 16 year-old will wish to do after opening their birthday cards is to rush down to a polling station and cast a vote, but I know from many political discussions with young people that many sixth-formers are well informed, very interested and as qualified to have a say in the future of their country as many older people. However, we need to do much more to register young people. Processes of automatic voter registration can cut costs and are clearly necessary to include more of the 6 million to 8 million people missing or incorrectly registered.

The Bill brings forward by three days the deadline to apply for a postal vote. Many people do not apply for one until they know the date of the election, so the timetable for the conduct of a general election must also be extended by three days. We also need to do more to assist overseas voters. At present, the time it takes if they vote by post effectively disenfranchises most of them, including members of our Armed Forces serving overseas. We cannot say that their rights as UK citizens are respected when we do not will the means for them to vote.

Voter Registration, Election Turnout and Compulsory Voting

Lord Rennard Excerpts

Thursday 3rd September 2026 Lords Chamber

Asked by

[Lord Rennard]

To ask His Majesty’s Government what assessment they have made of (1) the means whereby Australia has achieved far greater voter registration and general election turnout levels than the UK, and (2) compulsory voting and automatic voter registration schemes in the UK.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government (Baroness Taylor of Stevenage) (Lab)]

My Lords, we have examined the electoral system in Australia, where they have introduced more automated forms of voter registration. Their experience highlights just how much time, iteration and rigorous testing are required to build processes and data sources of sufficient quality. Over the coming years, we are working to create a new automated voter registration system, thereby removing a key barrier to eligible citizens participating in our democracy. It is likely that Australia’s long-established policy of compulsory voting, automated forms of registration and public engagement in democratic participation may have contributed to the higher levels of turnout at its elections. Different democracies make different choices about how they encourage electoral participation.

[Lord Rennard (LD)]

My Lords, the turnout level in Australia’s most recent general election was 91%, compared to only 60% in the UK, and Australia has achieved voter registration levels of 98%, compared to just 86% in the UK. The Government’s impact assessment suggests that the moves towards automatic voter registration will increase voter registration rates by less than 0.8% in two years—perhaps in time for the next election. Do the Government accept that low turnouts and there being perhaps 8 million people missing from our electoral registers severely weaken the health of our democracy? What more will they do to address these issues?

[Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)]

I stress to the noble Lord that I said it has taken a long time for Australia to get where it has. It started off with compulsory voting in 1924. The 1922 election saw a less than 60% turnout. That has risen, as he said, to 91% in the 2025 election, but that is a result of a number of steps it has taken, including the registration steps that we are looking at now. It is an iterative process and we need to move ahead with it carefully. We make different choices in different countries about the way we move this forward. At the moment, the Government believe that we have to focus on taking down barriers to participation. That is why we are taking steps in the Representation of the People Bill, which we will be debating shortly, to make voting easier and more accessible before we go forward with any further steps.

Donations to Political Parties

Lord Rennard Excerpts

Monday 1st June 2026 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)]

That is exactly what the Representation of the People Bill will attempt to do; it will make sure that we are clear about how donations to political parties should work. We will debate this in due course and, I am sure, at great length in this House. It is important that the public can have confidence in how this system is working.

[Lord Rennard (LD)]

My Lords, immediately prior to the last general election, the then government party decided to increase the maximum expenditure by political parties standing in every seat in Great Britain by 80%, increasing the amount of money that could be spent from around £20 million to £36 million. It did not do it any good. Should we not now reverse that increase, which invites massive donations from sources that political parties find hard to check the origins of?

[Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)]

We are introducing tougher rules on political donations to protect UK elections. The limits have changed because circumstances change. That is an important part of the system. We have to strike the right balance between safeguarding against foreign interference and making sure that legitimate donors can continue to fund election campaigns.

Local Elections: Cancellation

Lord Rennard Excerpts

Wednesday 21st January 2026 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)]

As I said, it was up to councils to determine how they responded. The vast majority of places that were due to have elections will have them. Where councils have responded that they feel that it will cause them some difficulty as part of the reorganisation process, the Secretary of State will give due consideration to that.

[Lord Rennard (LD)]

My Lords, there has been all-party consensus on the postponement of elections in the past—for example, in World War II, for foot and mouth disease, and for Covid—but there was no such all-party agreement in this case, and no such extenuating circumstances can be justified. But, if there were, would it not be right for Parliament to have a say on whether elections can be postponed?

[Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)]

There is clear precedent for postponing local elections where local government reorganisations are in progress. It can prevent costly and distracting elections for short-term posts that may soon be abolished. For example, between 2019 and 2022, the previous Government postponed elections in Buckinghamshire, Cumbria, North Yorkshire, Northamptonshire, Somerset, and Weymouth and Portland. This responsibility has been delegated by Parliament to the Secretary of State.

Election Law

Lord Rennard Excerpts

Tuesday 18th November 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)]

I think I have made the Government’s position on the 2026 elections very clear from the Dispatch Box. It is our intention that all elections during 2026 will go ahead.

[Lord Rennard (LD)]

My Lords, the Representation of the People Acts sought to create a level playing field for constituency campaigning, but they no longer do so as a result of the legislation of 2000, which brought in national party limits. These limits were suddenly increased by 80% just before the last general election. Will the forthcoming legislation address the problem that a party contesting every constituency could spend £35 million in 70 target seats—half a million pounds per constituency—thereby driving a coach of horses through the principles of the Representation of the People Acts?

[Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)]

I am sure that the noble Lord’s party, along with all other political parties, will be invited to comment on the elections Bill when it is in draft, and I am sure they will do so.

Absent Voting (Elections in Scotland and Wales) Bill

Lord Rennard Excerpts

3rd reading
Friday 24th October 2025 Lords Chamber

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government (Baroness Taylor of Stevenage) (Lab)]

My Lords, I thank the noble Lord for his comments. I thank all noble Lords for their contributions to and support for the Bill, and particularly my noble friend Lord Murphy of Torfaen for his stewardship of the Bill through this House.

Our democracy remains at the heart of our Government’s purpose and mission. On the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Jamieson, the Government will bring forward a number of changes in the forthcoming elections Bill, which will come before this House in due course; we will have the opportunity to discuss these matters further at that point.

I thank my noble friend Lord Murphy for his excellent contribution to our democratic process.

[Lord Rennard (LD)]

Before the Minister sits down, I note that I agree with some of the comments of the noble Lord, Lord Jamieson, if not all of them. He makes some good points about the different gaps in and problems within our election laws. In our Second Reading and Committee debates, many of us across the House spoke about the need to consolidate properly all election laws.

We recognise that the noble Lord, Lord Murphy, has done extremely well in bringing this Bill forward— I shall call it a small, tidying-up measure. It is still a very important principle that people in Scotland and Wales can apply online to vote as absent voters; that should probably have been done in 2022, without needing a Private Member’s Bill. We frequently have debates in which the expertise in this House highlights the need, as the law commissions keep emphasising, for proper consolidation of election laws, bringing together the legislation of 2000 and the old legislation of the Representation of the People Act. Can the Minister say a bit more about the Government’s intention regarding consolidating election law in general?

[Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)]

I thank the noble Lord, Lord Rennard; he is right to flag up that more work is to be done on elections. That is why, in response to the noble Lord, Lord Jamieson, I referred to the forthcoming elections Bill. I am sure that noble Lords in this House, where there is indeed a great deal of expertise in election matters, will want to contribute to that Bill as it comes forward.

I hope we will be able to incorporate many of the matters we have discussed over the years that have been missed out of the elections process or need further tightening because of current circumstances— I believe that the noble Lord, Lord Jamieson, was referring to that too. We have seen a significant change in the way things operate, so we need to make sure that election law keeps up with that. That is our aim as we bring forward the elections Bill, and I look forward to the contributions of all Members of the House when we do so.

Absent Voting (Elections in Scotland and Wales) Bill

Lord Rennard Excerpts

2nd reading
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.

Voting at 16

Lord Rennard Excerpts

Thursday 24th July 2025 Lords Chamber

Asked by

[Lord Rennard]

To ask His Majesty’s Government when they expect to lower the voting age to 16, and whether they will take steps to raise the proportion of young people registered to vote to the same level as for those aged over 25.

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

My Lords, the Government will introduce legislation as soon as time allows during this Parliament to give 16 and 17 year-olds the right to vote in all elections. We recognise that too many young people are not currently registered to vote. We are committed to improving voter registration and supporting young people to register. We believe that, by building a strong foundation for democratic participation among young people, we can establish habits that will continue as they grow older.

[Lord Rennard (LD)]

My Lords, the proposed change is welcome, and unless we change the voting age soon, young people may continue having to wait until they are 20 or 21 to cast their first vote in a general election. But would it not make sense to have the same age for voting in all elections across the UK, starting in 2027? In any event, will the Government now implement the unanimous cross-party recommendation of the House of Lords Select Committee and automatically include 16 and 17 year-olds on the electoral registers at the same time as they are given their national insurance numbers? That would put them in readiness to be able to vote whatever the age was.

[Lord Khan of Burnley (Lab)]

My Lords, let me first say that the Government were elected on a clear mandate, which included lowering the voting age to 16 for all elections in the UK. This is a major change in the electoral franchise and we need to get it right. Changes of this magnitude to the electoral law require careful planning and should not be rushed. On the question about national insurance, we are looking at different options to ensure that young people can be easily and accurately registered to vote, including enabling people to register when they interact with other government services. The noble Lord keeps pushing, and I give him the good news that we are looking at that.

Housebuilders: Information Sharing

Lord Rennard Excerpts

Tuesday 15th July 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)]

I have much sympathy with what the noble Lord says. He has great expertise in this area, and I recognise that. Our focus is on creating a more balanced and competitive market overall by addressing the systemic barriers that prevent SMEs and others delivering more homes. We are taking action to support SMEs across the three main challenges that we know they face: access to finance, access to land, and an uncertain and complex planning system. We have announced two immediate packages of measures to support buildout and SMEs via £100 million in SME accelerator loans and measures to support faster decisions on smaller sites, which I hope will help.

[Lord Rennard (LD)]

My Lords, the one-off payment of £100 million towards affordable housing is only about 3% of the operating profit of the five biggest housebuilders this year. Is this a relatively small penalty for them to pay for anti-competitive practices over many years?

[Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)]

As I already commented, this is the biggest settlement ever achieved by the CMA. Of course, we can always do with more money for housing. We have to consider what is appropriate in these circumstances. I am sure the CMA has done that. This will undoubtedly make a significant contribution to delivering the affordable housing we all want to see. I am sure that the CMA will continue to watch the market very carefully to see that the changes that are introduced as a result of its report make the difference that we know we need.