Local Authorities (Changes to Years of Ordinary Elections) (England) Order 2025

Lord Rennard Excerpts

Monday 24th March 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Bach (Lab)]

My Lords, I support this Government’s plans for devolution. For years and years, the local government map has needed to be changed. That is a fact, but no Government have attempted to do it for many years.

Changing local government is not an easy task and requires political parties, and of course local authorities and the Government themselves, to look further than just at their short-term political advantage, so that England can enjoy a modern and effective local government system that has real power and influence, while taking some of the power away from the centre. This takes time and I commend the Government’s approach. The matter before the House today is of importance, but I really do not think that it is an attack on the principles of democracy. Those who say it is are mistaken.

I will make one further point before I sit down. The Government have proposals that had to be put in by 21 March—last week. They want and need time to consider them, and to come up with views and proposals themselves. I think that will be by the end of the year. It is one of those proposals that I want to talk about.

I want the Government to consider, when they make their proposals, something that, if acted on, will put right what I consider to be a serious mistake, or accident, that occurred many decades ago in the 1970s in England. Some noble Lords will remember the dividing up of English cities into metropolitan and non-metropolitan areas. Very sensibly, many cities had their boundaries increased so that they could accord with reality. They could have the space and the geographical diversity to offer their residents all that a city should, including space for new housing, green spaces and facilities of all kinds.

Examples of metropolitan cities which were properly extended include Leeds, Bradford and Sheffield. However, the non-metropolitan cities were not so lucky; their boundaries remained precisely the same. In many cases, these are boundaries that are now over 100 years old. This has led to city boundaries sometimes being totally artificial, with nowhere to build up housing. Any reasonable person using their common sense can see how ridiculous some of the boundaries are for cities at present. I should add that I have been a police and crime commissioner for an area that had unitary authorities, a county council and district councils. I have also been a local councillor in both a city and a district.

Leicester is a classic example of a non-metropolitan city at that time that suffered, as others did, from the ridiculous decisions taken in the 1970s. Its present boundaries are genuinely ridiculous. It is one of the most tightly constrained cities in the whole United Kingdom. Its boundaries have remained largely unchanged for 100 years. It has no chance of delivering, for example, the extra housing that is vitally needed. The population density is enormous compared with the cities I referred to that were lucky enough to have their boundaries extended. The figures speak for themselves. In Sheffield the population per square kilometre is 1,200 people. In Leicester, the population per square kilometre is 5,000 people. That is totally wrong.

I make these points in this debate because the Government will have to make their decision on issues such as this when it comes to the right time to make those decisions. I want to give the Government a chance to make the right decision as far as cities and other parts of local government are concerned. That is why I think the Government deserve our support tonight.

[Lord Rennard (LD)]

My Lords, there are times when it is entirely appropriate to postpone elections. Such times include during a wartime emergency; we postponed general elections throughout the Second World War. We also postponed local elections following the outbreak of the Covid pandemic in 2020. But there are at present no such extreme circumstances and, hence, I believe, no democratic justification for the postponement of the right of people to choose their local representatives according to the timetable previously agreed by both Houses of Parliament.

I mention both Houses of Parliament in this context because this House is in a unique position in relation to the postponement of elections. While all other legislation can be subject to the Parliament Acts, no government majority in the House of Commons can force the postponement of a general election without the specific consent of the House of Lords. That constitutional protection is to prevent the abuse of power by a party with a majority in the other place changing the rules of democratic engagement.

Local Government: Electoral Quotas

Lord Rennard Excerpts

Tuesday 11th February 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)]

My noble friend is absolutely correct. There has to be a focus on numbers to ensure that they are roughly equitable, but there are also other important considerations. Reflecting local communities and their interests is part of the boundary commission’s work, as is responding to local views. Whenever we have reviews of electoral boundaries, those local views should be properly taken into account. I will of course try to ensure that this continues.

[Lord Rennard (LD)]

My Lords, is it not a bigger problem that many local councils are unrepresentative of their electorates? They can even become one-party states, because of the first past the post system entrenching the same party in power for decades. Is it not time that England followed Scotland, Northern Ireland and Wales in holding council elections with proportional representation so that council composition properly reflects the votes cast?

[Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)]

I have heard this view from the Liberal Democrats for many years in local government. The first past the post system means that the electorate decide who is in charge of our local councils. That is up to them. It is a straightforward system which is widely appreciated by the people who engage with it. That is not to say that we cannot do more to encourage involvement in local elections. We will continue to do so.

Political Parties: Donations from Abroad

Lord Rennard Excerpts

Wednesday 22nd January 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Khan of Burnley]

The noble Baroness makes an interesting point. My direct answer would be that we continue to work with the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology and the Defending Democracy Taskforce to mitigate the risk that disinformation and misinformation and AI-driven election interference pose to the UK’s democratic processes. On social media, there are already robust donations and third-party campaigner spending rules in place. The Government remain alert to any technological or other relevant changes in the electoral campaign landscape.

[Lord Rennard (LD)]

My Lords, for the last 25 years, political parties in this country have been legally obliged to declare the source and scale of all their donations above a very modest level. Why should the same rules not apply to political pressure groups trying to influence the political process?

[Lord Khan of Burnley (Lab)]

My Lords, there are already robust spending and donations rules in place for third-party campaigners, which pressure groups would fall under. These are individuals or organisations that campaign in elections while not standing as political parties or candidates. Further rules exist in relation to transparency around those seeking to influence UK policy. The lobbying Act 2014 ensures there is transparency around meetings between Ministers and ministerial groups. The regulation of all-party parliamentary groups is a matter for Parliament.

Political Parties: Funding

Lord Rennard Excerpts

Wednesday 15th January 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)]

My Lords, the law is already clear that accepting or facilitating foreign campaign donations is illegal. Only those with a legitimate interest in UK electoral events can donate to candidates or political parties. Donations from individuals not on the electoral register are not permitted and strict rules are in place to make sure that foreign money is prohibited from entering through proxy donors, providing a safeguard against impermissible donations by the back door. We are looking at ways to make this even stronger. It is an offence to attempt to evade those rules on donations.

[Lord Rennard (LD)]

My Lords, does the Minister accept that there can be problems with very large donations to political parties, whether they may originate from abroad or be clearly from within the UK, and that the only way to prevent undue influence on political parties is to ban company donations and have a sensible cap on the size of all other donations? Does she then agree that political parties would still be able to campaign effectively if existing public funding was redistributed—for example, from the £100 million spent by the Government in the last two general elections on distributing candidates’ election addresses—and given to the parties to spend as they saw fit?

[Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)]

I take it that that was a question about a cap on donations. That is not a current priority for the Government, but strengthening the rules around donations really is. Political parties play a vital role in our democracy, and it is important that they are able to fundraise effectively and communicate with the electorate as a very important part of our process. By law, it is the responsibility of political parties to take all reasonable steps to verify their donors and whether they are permissible. We will take necessary steps to ensure that those requirements are tightened and stuck to.

Political Donations: Cap

Lord Rennard Excerpts

Thursday 5th December 2024 Lords Chamber

Asked by

[Lord Rennard]

To ask His Majesty’s Government what plans they have to cap donations to political parties.

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

My Lords, the Government have committed to reforming political finance rules. We are considering changes that will help protect our system from foreign interference, such as tighter controls on donations. For example, the Electoral Commission has pointed to a need to consider the rules on company donations. Details of these proposals will be brought forward in due course.

[Lord Rennard (LD)]

My Lords, people are absolutely astonished when they discover that there is absolutely no limit whatsoever to how much money can be given by one individual to a political party. This week, Transparency International has produced analysis showing how dark money from dodgy sources can infect British politics, and Unlock Democracy has produced an excellent Democratic Integrity white paper. Will the Minister undertake to ensure that his department properly considers these reports? Is it not high time that the Government accepted the recommendation of the Committee on Standards in Public Life that there should be a £10,000 maximum cap on the sum any individual can give to a party?

[Lord Khan of Burnley (Lab)]

My Lords, let me first address the noble Lord’s question about reports, in particular that of Transparency International. The Government are committed to safeguarding the integrity of our democratic processes and, as I am making clear today, we will be taking steps to strengthen protections against foreign interference in our elections. We are seeking and remain open to evidence from stakeholders, particularly on threats to our democracy. Our primary concern is reducing the threat of foreign interference.

Political parties play a vital role in our democracy, and it is important that they be able to fundraise effectively and communicate with the electorate. My department is currently developing proposals to give effect to these commitments. We are engaging with key stakeholders such as the Electoral Commission and the Committee on Standards, and we will update the House in due course.

Voter Identification (Amendment of List of Specified Documents) Regulations 2024

Lord Rennard Excerpts

Thursday 28th November 2024 Grand Committee

[Lord Hayward (Con)]

My Lords, I follow my noble friend in welcoming the proposals that the Minister outlined in his opening comments. I have two or three points to raise. The first is that, when this SI was discussed in the Commons, the Minister identified that research was being undertaken by IFF Research on voter ID. Could this Minister clarify the terms identified for this work and why it is necessary, given that the Electoral Commission has in fact already undertaken its report, to which the Minister referred? It does not seem necessary to have two organisations doing the same thing.

In passing, I add my welcome to the Minister’s comments on Zimbabwe. As a former resident of that country, I am conscious that there are some 200,000 people of Zimbabwean nationality in this country; it would be helpful to that community.

I am concerned by a phraseology that the Minister used—that there might be further changes to ID that are not done as a group. If we are to make further changes to requirements for the opportunity to use certain forms of ID at polling stations, they must be introduced en bloc. We do not want a series of changes, one after another, and to have to sit in this Committee to consider them individually. It makes much more sense, whether they are because of the Electoral Commission’s work, IFF Research’s work or a combination, to bring them together as a single block. That reduces the workload on the Minister for a start, let alone for anybody else.

Although this is not quite within the field of the SI, it follows on from my noble friend Lord Mott’s question on the local elections taking place next May. Is the Minister in any position to indicate whether, in fact, those elections will be as those currently scheduled or are there likely to be any changes?

[Lord Rennard (LD)]

My Lords, accepting the use of the veteran card as ID for voting is a welcome improvement, but to a very poor, expensive and quite unnecessary scheme. When the previous Government introduced the requirements for photo ID at polling stations their impact assessment said that it could cost £180 million over a decade, so I hope that the new Government have other spending priorities and recognise that scrapping or changing this scheme will not endanger the fundamental security of the ballot process.

As many Members on the Government’s side said in the debate in the House of Commons, this can be only the first of many steps in helping to make sure that everyone legally entitled to vote is able to. Issues with voter ID may not affect large numbers of voters, but many elections are determined by small margins. Etched in my own memory is being the election agent for a parliamentary by-election in which just 100 votes, or 0.1% of the vote share, separated my candidate from the successful Conservative candidate—now the noble Lord, Lord McLoughlin. In the recent general election, seven seats were determined by margins between 15 and 98 votes. Many council elections are also determined by very small margins—sometimes there are even ties—so changes in the election rules really matter.

We are advised by the Electoral Commission that, on 4 July, slightly less than 0.1% of people were turned away from polling stations, never to return, because of the photo ID requirements, but that could have been the margin of victory in several seats. With the lowest turnout in a general election for 23 years, it is probably more significant that 4% of the non-voters said that their decision not to vote was related to the voter ID requirement. That is perhaps 800,000 people or 2% of the electorate.

There is no need today to repeat arguments about the motivation for introducing the photo ID rules and the complete lack of evidence ever presented to justify them. However, Jacob Rees-Mogg, the Leader of the House of Commons at the time, made it clear what the intention was. Moving forward, the Electoral Commission has suggested that we would need a much wider review of what may be acceptable if we have any form of voter ID at polling stations—more than we are considering today. It suggests, for example, that the Jobcentre Plus travel discount card and the 18-plus student Oyster photocard should be acceptable in addition to the veteran card.

Let us look back to the commission’s consistent advice of some years ago and to the last Conservative Government’s report, conducted for them by the former chair of the Conservative Party, the noble Lord, Lord Pickles. There was no suggestion from either of a photo being required on any form of ID at polling stations. In debates during the passage of the Elections Act 2022, Ministers suggested that the process for obtaining a ballot paper should be akin to that for obtaining a parcel at a post office, but they could never explain to me why the Post Office’s ID requirements —including a bank card or a credit card—could not be acceptable at a polling station.

In the review of these regulations that the Government are now undertaking, will the Minister undertake to look at the costs of the photo ID scheme, admitted by the previous Government to be more than £100 million during those debates? Ideally, he would consider scrapping it while taking steps to ensure that voters know that their vote cannot be stolen. Even Ministers in the previous Government did not seem to know that, if you go to a polling station and someone appears to have already used your name and address to get a ballot paper, you can have a replacement issued. The fact is that hardly ever happens. In the 2019 general election, it happened in just 0.00004% of cases—an average of two cases per constituency. This was mostly down to clerical error and crossing off the wrong name rather than fraud, thereby showing that the expensive scheme is quite unnecessary.

Will the Minister undertake to review in particular the costs and the value of voter authority certificates, which can be issued on request by local authorities as a form of ID? The take-up of these certificates was minimal in the general election, with many people, particularly young people, remaining unaware of them, but the costs and time involved for election officials must have been considerable.

If the Government conclude that there must still be a form of voter ID at polling stations, can the Minister confirm that the review will look at alternatives to the current scheme using the official polling card issued to every voter by electoral registration officers? When I moved an amendment to the then Elections Bill in 2022 proposing just this, I was pleased to have the support of every Labour Peer present for the vote, with none of them voting against. The noble Baroness, Lady Hayman of Ullock, who led for the Opposition at the time, said

“we believe, as the noble Lord, Lord Rennard, said in introducing his amendment, that the Government have simply got it wrong on requiring voter ID to be presented at polling stations”.—[Official Report, 27/4/22; col. 337.]

She and her colleagues then voted for my amendment, calling for the official polling card to be acceptable as ID—as did the noble Baroness, Lady Smith of Basildon, and the noble Lords, Lord Kennedy of Southwark and Lord Khan of Burnley. I am pleased to see the latter as the Minister today; I look forward to his response as to whether he and his colleagues, now in government, remain supportive of this cost-saving and effective measure if any form of ID requirement is to be maintained.

Voter Registration and Participation

Lord Rennard Excerpts

Thursday 14th November 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Khan of Burnley (Lab)]

I thank the noble Baroness for making the point about the addition of the Armed Forces veteran card to the list of accepted documents for voter ID. On her very direct question, yes—it is in our manifesto.

[Lord Rennard (LD)]

My Lords, only 65% of 18 to 25 year-olds are registered to vote, compared with more than 95% of the over-65s. Will the Government now act urgently on the unanimous cross-party recommendation of this House’s Select Committee on electoral administration in 2013, and begin the process of automatically registering young people to vote when they are issued with their national insurance numbers and the DWP has checked on their nationality?

[Lord Khan of Burnley (Lab)]

My Lords, the noble Lord makes an interesting point and I have had the great pleasure of working with him on various SIs and, in particular, on the Elections Act 2022. The Government will explore all options to ensure that we increase voter participation. We believe that, by building a strong foundation of democratic participation among young people, we will establish voting habits that continue as they grow older. It is about delivering long-lasting, positive consequences for our democracy and building an informed and engaged electorate for the future. In the meantime, we are working on these issues and will bring proposals to the House.

King’s Speech

Lord Rennard Excerpts

Tuesday 23rd July 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Rennard (LD)]

My Lords, a key test of this Government in five years’ time will be whether we are a more civilised country, a more tolerant society and a healthier democracy, with greater public confidence and engagement in it and less divisive rhetoric. In the previous Parliament, we saw many measures introduced by a Conservative Government who were constantly seeking to change in their favour the rules by which elections are conducted to try and assist their return to office—to which I might say, “A fat lot of good it did them”.

The Conservatives introduced the most restrictive form of photo ID without any evidence that it was necessary, despite overwhelming evidence that it was not and with a scheme that went far beyond what either the Electoral Commission or the election review conducted by the noble Lord, Lord Pickles, had suggested. We need to scrap or replace the photo ID rules. If ID is deemed necessary, the official polling card should suffice. Using it would save £180 million over the next decade.

The photo ID did not save the Government but there were many close results where these very restrictive ID rules may have made a difference. They include the Basildon and Billericay constituency, where the former chairman of the Conservative Party, Richard Holden, scraped in by just 20 votes, having been parachuted into a seat that was supposed to have had a 20,000-plus majority.

A post-election survey by More in Common suggested that 400,000 voters were turned away at polling stations never to return, because they did not have the requisite ID. For each one of them, there were probably several people on the registers who did not go in the first place, because of the new rules. This must have been a factor in the lowest turnout for 20 years.

An even bigger scandal is that, according to the Electoral Commission, as many as 8 million people were incorrectly not included on the voting registers. Almost all of them would have been unable to vote, even though they were legally entitled to do so. Most people think that the process of voter registration is automatic. It is not, but it should be, so I welcome the announcement that we will move to automatic voter registration.

To help make changes fairly, we need to restore and strengthen the independence of the Electoral Commission. The strategy and policy statement foisted on it by the last Government should be withdrawn, never to be replaced.

As for the voting system, it is a scandal that, in so many constituencies, people did not really have a choice of MP, as the real choice lay with a party machine that can foist MPs upon them. Only 30% of those who voted on 4 July got the MP that they voted for, and many of the 30% were voting tactically against another party.

While I welcome the Ministers to the Front Bench opposite, I ask them to consider that the single biggest mistake of the Blair Government in 1997 was to think that they would never lose another election. This meant that those around Tony Blair saw no need to move to a fairer voting system providing real choices for voters. After two full terms in office, they considered that winning again in 2005 with 35% of the vote was good enough, but it was not and they lost. This Government start with having received just 34% of the vote.

The failure of those Labour Governments from 1997 to make progress on voting reform led directly to what was frequently referred to in the campaign, by the then Labour Opposition, as a “decade of chaos.” With the now noble Lord, Lord Cameron, the soon to be Baroness May, Boris Johnson, Liz Truss and Rishi Sunak, it could not possibly be said that we had the stable government that was supposed to be the main justification for the first past the post system. We need to do everything we can to make sure that every vote counts.

Representation of the People (England and Wales and Northern Ireland) (Amendment) Regulations 2024

Lord Rennard Excerpts

Monday 13th May 2024 Grand Committee

[Viscount Stansgate (Lab)]

My Lords, I take advantage of the fact that I have been relieved of the chairing of this Committee by my noble friend Lady Fookes to make one point. It follows the remarks of the noble Lord, Lord Hayward, with which I wholly agree.

Last Thursday, I went to the Electoral Commission and had a discussion with the chief executive, with other colleagues. We were talking about various aspects of the preparations that they are making for the next general election. However, it will come as no surprise to anyone, and I rise only to make it clear to the Committee, that arising from that discussion was that there is bipartisan support for the point that I am making and which the noble Lord made. There is a crying need for the consolidation of electoral law. I very much hope that in a modest way, the Hansard record of this Grand Committee can be used as further proof of that, and that a future Government will find the legislative time to do this. It will be widely supported when it comes.

[Lord Rennard (LD)]

My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Hayward, has once again demonstrated the essential truth of one of his major campaign pledges during the 1993 Christchurch by-election—that he would be very good at scrutinising secondary legislation. It is always a pleasure to work with him on such matters.

I am tempted to ask the Minister how often the Government have had to bring forward measures such as this, as a tidying-up and housekeeping exercise, since the Elections Act of 2022 became law. I will resist. However, the current measure is one of numerous examples of the Government appearing not quite to understand what they were doing in seeking to implement a Brexit deal which lacked details when it was agreed.

In considering what is before us today, the Shadow Minister in the House of Commons, Florence Eshalomi, explained that understanding this measure required understanding five or six different Acts and regulations spanning over 40 years of legislation. To correct the noble Lord, Lord Hayward, it was in answer to a Question of mine in this place some time ago that it was revealed that at that stage there had been 16 statutory instruments involved in implementing the Elections Act 2022, running to 803 pages, all of which have been added to since then by one, two or three further statutory instruments. This is simply the latest of them. The scale of the statutory instruments required by the Elections Act has presented a significant problem, not just for Ministers but particularly for those responsible for the conduct of our elections. I believe that the burden may have become intolerable and the risk of mistakes in the conduct of our elections has been increased significantly by this complexity.



First, can the Minister update us on government thinking about what we are all asking for—the proper consolidation of all our election laws, as recommended by the Law Commission, which has done much work on this subject?

Secondly, does the Minister accept that the Government’s explanation of the difference in voting rights between EU citizens from Ireland, Cyprus and Malta and those from the 19 EU countries with which we do not have voting and candidacy treaties is an anomaly that requires a fundamental review of the franchises for all our UK elections? In particular, does she accept that the principle of residency would be a good basis for the local election franchise, as those who pay for and receive services from local government should be able to vote for the people in charge of those local authorities? The principle of no taxation without representation is a good one. The Government seem obsessed with removing people from the electoral rolls, making it unnecessarily hard to register and then harder to vote if you are among the categories of people without acceptable photo ID from the very tightly drawn list.

Thirdly, what steps will the Government take to ensure that the different levels of voting rights applying to different EU citizens will be explained to them all?

Finally, what progress is being made with the 19 EU member states with which we do not have treaties concerning voting and candidacy rights to agree such treaties, bringing EU citizens in those countries into line with those from Spain, Portugal, Luxembourg, Poland and Denmark?

That said, the measure has our support as it provides some clarification and corrects mistakes that were inadvertently made.

[Lord Khan of Burnley (Lab)]

My Lords, the fact that we are here yet again emphasises the enormity and complexity of the Elections Act and electoral statute. I echo the comments by the noble Lord, Lord Hayward, supported by my noble friend Lord Stansgate, about consolidation of all electoral legislation. As the noble Lord, Lord Wallace, indicated in a meeting with the chief executive of the Electoral Commission, there are 1,100 pages of SIs as a result of the Elections Act. We should never have to come to that situation again.

It is critical that our electoral law is as legible and transparent as possible, not only for the health of democracy but, as I have repeated to the Minister previously, for the workload of our understaffed electoral teams, which are tasked with keeping the integrity of our elections intact. Mistakes in legislation in this area make that challenge even harder. They could create confusion and concern among dual nationals who are entitled to vote, by not only collecting unnecessary information from those looking to register but increasing the workload of electoral officers, who already have to tidy up databases and deal with queries from so many different members of the public who are confused as to why this question is being asked in the first instance. Unfortunately, rather than helping our electoral administrators, the Government have introduced an Elections Act that significantly increases the load on them.

This is the second correction the department has had to make following the Elections Act. Given that the consequences of these mistakes could potentially change the franchise, what steps is the department taking to proactively review that the legislation is working as intended so that no other potential consequences are being missed? I would be grateful if the Minister could outline what support is being provided to electoral officers to carry out the amendment to the franchise for EU nationals. What steps are the Government taking to ensure that there are no mistakes in the system? What is the Minister’s response to the report on voter registration from the Levelling Up, Housing and Communities Committee, which highlighted a creaking system without any efficiency and with the huge challenges presented by the Elections Act? I would welcome her thoughts on that.

I recognise the point made by the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett of Manor Castle, that this is a complicated area of law; we appreciate that. In summary, we support this draft statutory instrument, but I would welcome reassurance from the Minister on the points I raised and those eloquently raised by noble Lords across the Committee. I look forward to her response.

[Baroness Scott of Bybrook (Con)]

I thank noble Lords for their contributions today. I will go through a few of the issues that were brought up.

First, the noble Lord, Lord Hayward, is absolutely right: the instruments in this amending SI had no effect on the elections held on 2 May. The changes to the franchise for EU citizens came into force on 7 May; that date was chosen specifically so that there would be no impact on the May local elections.

We have heard quite a lot about consolidation, as we did when the Elections Bill, which is now an Act, was going through. I think that will be for subsequent Governments to look at. This is complex; there are huge numbers of pieces of legislation impacting on top of each other within the elections arena. As the noble Viscount, Lord Stansgate, and the noble Lords, Lord Rennard and Lord Khan of Burnley, brought up, that is something which will have to be done by subsequent Governments.

The noble Baroness, Lady Bennett, brought up the numbers affected. I do not know those numbers, but I will have a look and write to her. On the oversight occurring in the first place, as I said, I apologise—but it is recognised that, even with stringent checks in quite complex pieces of legislation such as this, there is always a chance of unintentional errors. Regrettably, sometimes they are overlooked and, unfortunately, this is one such case, but the main thing is that we are dealing with it now.

On the issues around differences in voting rights for residency, this instrument is focused on amending a definition in existing regulations. Those regulations have already been passed in Parliament—as I say, they came into force on 7 May—and there are no further plans to revise any of them. I remember well the debates held on the changes being introduced by those regulations, and this is not the time to go over them again. It is certainly not the time at this early stage, when the regulations have only just gone into law, to put forward further revisions.

The Electoral Commission will keep an eye on all these issues as they are put into place, as will the department. Of course, if there are any issues or problems, we will keep an eye on that. That was a point raised by the noble Lord, Lord Khan of Burnley. It is important that we keep a close eye on any changes, particularly to electoral legislation, as it is complex. If anybody who wants to register to vote goes on to the Electoral Commission’s website, all the details are on there—and people do that. Also, our wonderful election officers in our local authorities are usually the first contact that people have. Even if they are complex voters, all the information will be given to them by our local authorities as well, which is important.

I think that is everything I had to answer. I know that the House believes that ensuring the smooth running of our democratic processes is of paramount importance. This amendment is therefore important, and I thank noble Lords for supporting the instrument to get this right. I commend it the Committee.

[Lord Rennard (LD)]

My Lords, the Minister has referred to the Electoral Commission’s website and to the excellent work done by local authorities in registering people to vote. How does she explain the fact that, according to the Electoral Commission, we have 8 million people who are either not registered, but should be, or are incorrectly registered?

[Baroness Scott of Bybrook (Con)]

I do not know about “incorrectly registered”. I will take that back and look at the numbers but we have to accept that, in any democracy, some people just do not want to vote. I do not know whether noble Lords have been knocking on doors but I have; there are certainly people in this country who do not want to vote, for whatever reason. That impacts on us all as politicians and party members. We should encourage people to want to vote but, unfortunately, some people do not want to do so. We are not a country that forces people to vote.

Councillors: Publication of Addresses

Lord Rennard Excerpts

Wednesday 8th May 2024 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Scott of Bybrook (Con)]

My noble friend is right that the safety of our elective representatives is essential to the security of this country. Protecting our democratic values and our processes for democracy is one of the most important duties that government has. Any councillors with concerns about the publication of their home addresses on published versions of the register of interests can and should use the “sensitive interests” provision at Section 32 of the Localism Act 2011. Minister Hoare has recently reiterated this to those responsible in local authorities in his recent letter.

[Lord Rennard (LD)]

My Lords, according to the Local Government Association’s recent survey, 70% of local councillors reported experiencing abuse or intimidation. Aggressive behaviour which goes well beyond courteous debate deters people from public service, weakens democracy and is damaging to the families of those who seek to serve others. Will the Minister write to all local authorities urging them to take up the Local Government Association’s Debate Not Hate campaign? Will she seek to widen the scope of the defending democracy programme run by the National Protective Security Authority explicitly to include the safety, security and well-being of locally elected politicians, rather than focusing solely on national politicians and foreign interference?

[Baroness Scott of Bybrook (Con)]

I will certainly take that back to the department. Anything more that we can do to protect democracy, particularly in local elections, we will do—I will make sure that I do that myself. On 28 February, the Prime Minister announced that he was putting an additional £31 million over the next year into strengthening security not just for MPs but for all locally elected representatives. He has been working with the police on this issue as well. It is important to know that we are doing something to protect all our elected representatives, but we can always do more.