Representation of the People Bill

Debate between Lord Rennard and Lord Young of Acton

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.