Representation of the People Bill

Lord Wallace of Saltaire Excerpts

Committee stage
Wednesday 4th November 2026 Lords Chamber

[Lord Fuller (Con)]

My Lords, I have Amendments 18 and 19 in this short group. Both are related to the way in which looked-after children are encouraged to register to vote and the information that has been provided to them to inform that choice, and they would ensure that party politics can play no part in that decision if there is automatic registration, so that one political outcome was not unduly influenced over the other. Both my amendments relate to the entirety of the United Kingdom, with Amendment 18 referring to Great Britain and Amendment 19 the mirroring provision for Northern Ireland. It is the local state in Great Britain—the councils and their agents—that has responsibility as corporate parents for looked-after children, the “relevant young people” referred to in these amendments. In some cases, that corporate parenting responsibility lasts all the way up to the age of 24.

There are some things that should be apolitical, but it is an inescapable truth that councils are political organisations. While this amendment does not suggest that councils behave politically in every decision they take, given the importance of this Bill to the underpinning of democracy in the United Kingdom, the amendments take a belt-and-braces approach to being explicit that, in encouraging young people to come on to the register, that choice cannot, or should not, be tainted or otherwise influenced by party-political considerations. We must remove the temptation for anyone to improperly influence the register by tilting the balance so that only some cohorts are registered but not others.

Nothing in this group is meant to imply that councils are seeking to act improperly. We have to recognise that councils now engage with certain external organisations, such as private care homes, privately run caring establishments or even charitable bodies, to deliver their caring and corporate parenting responsibilities. They may be within the council’s own territory or in another part of the country. Together, my amendments would ensure that the duty of neutrality would be extended to not only the local authorities or health boards but those in that wider care ecosystem that benefits children and is paid for by local government wherever they are. Those organisations, councils or care homes, are in an extraordinarily influential position in the care of relevant young people. They provide food and accommodation, are responsible for health and welfare and all the other issues of day-to-day life.

By definition, without the guiding hand of their natural parents, these children are more socially vulnerable and susceptible to undue influence. These amendments therefore provide an additional level of certainty and assurance to ensure that such vulnerabilities are not taken advantage of politically by the council, through its policies, or more subtly by the political predispositions of individual care workers, wardens or other members of the professional staff on the front line, as well as by that ecosystem of contractors and charities. It is as simple as that. I beg to move.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)]

My Lords, in speaking to my Amendment 18, I will also touch on issues raised in the similar amendments, Amendment 43 tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Lister, and Amendment 44 tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett of Manor Castle.

We are very much concerned that the reduction of the age limit to 16 has to be accompanied by a real effort at proper civic education. As a Liberal, I would say there should be a much greater effort at civic education anyway. The extent to which our young are not taught about British values and the rights and obligations of British citizenship is profoundly worrying and needs to be overcome.

Others will speak about some of the surveys that have been done on the thinness of civic education in schools. I went around three schools in the spring, one in Yorkshire and two in London, just to see from a very unrepresentative sample what they were doing, and was shocked, even in the public school I attended—one of Britain’s best public schools—at how little time was spent on this. I was given the lesson plan by the head of PSHE at one school for all the things she had to teach in one hour a week each year, including sexual behaviour, financial education, disease, and heaven knows what else, and of course, with political education fitting into that. All the teachers I spoke to said, “This is simply not possible to achieve; we need to have more time”. That is part of the message we want the Minister to give us some answers on: that the current curriculum review recognises this and that it will be expanded.

For Liberals and for people who believe in liberal democracy, the teaching of citizenship is a fundamental part of teaching people how to take their part in a democratic society. I am well aware that there have been many, particularly in the Conservative ranks, who are doubtful about the possibilities of teaching people political education, particularly in state schools. As a historian, I have read a number of debates from the early 19th century in which Conservative Peers doubted that education as such should be provided to the working class, because it would give them ideas above their station. Education is, of course, subversive. It teaches people how to question the conventional wisdom and how to think for themselves. That is part of what we should be doing.

In the United States, we have seen recently an even more fundamental attack on liberal education in the Trump Administration’s attack on American universities as unavoidably left-wing and liberal institutions, because they are concerned about evidence, doubt, argument and a number of things that the Trump Administration appear not to like. I hope none of us here share such a view.

As we see in some amendments in this group and later, there has been some concern about the possibility of neutrality. I declare an interest as someone who spent much of my career teaching politics and international politics in various universities. Of course, we all come with our biases, but we try to teach people how to think for themselves. At the London School of Economics, I had a number of Hong Kong and Singaporean students. The hardest job I had with them was to persuade them that they were supposed to disagree with their teacher. I see the noble Baroness, Lady Royall, nodding in agreement.

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I am all for civics education. I am an enthusiast for it. However, you cannot just say the words and hope to you get what you think you are going to get. I think here—

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)]

My Lords, I am doing my best to follow the logic of the noble Baroness’s argument. Is she saying that civic education is fine but that no social justice should be taught?

[Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)]

I am suggesting that a particular reading of social justice is one-sided and political. We need to show some caution. Civics education per se is one thing. This is an argument that civics education should be used to prepare young people to vote in elections, which is a different thing. We must show some caution. I am going to come back to this, noble Lords will be delighted to know, in a later group.

I finish with one example that might illustrate my point. I was on a panel for a debate on education after the last election. A head teacher on the panel shared with the audience, with horror, that a citizenship studies mock election in his school had seen some pupils stand as Reform candidates. Even worse, they won—overwhelmingly. He used this as an example of the dangerous radicalisation of youth and the need to tackle extremism and that the school was now working on ensuring that pupils who exhibited such traits would be introduced to ideas that would counter them.

I make no party-political point here, but this raises the kinds of issues that I am concerned about. How dare the head teacher see a political party in this country as the wrong political party. I was shocked and argued back, as noble Lords can imagine. With voting for 16 year-olds on the horizon, we must ensure that such political prejudices do not become undue influences on political decision-making by 16 year-olds who are being told that they are being treated as adults in making up their own minds. If we depend on schools to shape their minds around the political issues that they will have to choose around, then we are in trouble.

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[Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)]

These issues have to be tackled when and as they arise. The point I was making is that making general points relating to that is not helpful.

I will now address the amendments. I understand and share the intention of the noble Lord, Lord Fuller, for young people to receive impartial information, as expressed in Amendments 18 and 19. I assure him that Clauses 15 and 16 are deliberately narrow in scope. They require local authorities in Great Britain, and health and social care trusts in Northern Ireland, where the system is different, to raise awareness of the registration arrangements that apply to relevant young people and to help those young people register. This is about factual and practical electoral registration information and making sure that young people who are or have been in the care system understand how they can register, and, where necessary, helping them to do so. I therefore assure the noble Lord that we fully recognise the importance of political impartiality, but I do not consider that an additional statutory requirement of this kind is needed.

I turn to Amendment 23 from the noble Lords, Lord Wallace and Lord Rennard, and the noble Baroness, Lady Prashar. I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Wallace, on bringing such sartorial elegance to the Chamber this afternoon. It brings some panache to our debate at the end of the week.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)]

I apologise; it is rather eccentric. The Parliament Choir is performing this evening, and the dress rehearsal starts at 4 pm—I have said that I will be late.

I add that there is strong scientific evidence that collective singing in schools improves social cohesion and concentration. I am not sure that the last Government accepted that scientific evidence—they did not act on it. But if we are talking about scientific evidence in schools, singing matters as well.

Representation of the People Bill

Lord Wallace of Saltaire Excerpts

Committee stage
Monday 2nd November 2026 Lords Chamber

[Lord McCrea of Magherafelt and Cookstown (DUP)]

My Lords, I listened carefully to what the noble Lord, Lord Murphy, said. He seemed to suggest that one of the burdens of this legislation was to increase the engagement and participation of people in the democratic process, and certainly that is important. But surely one of the basic, central principles in a democracy is the restoring of trust within the population. The noble Lord mentioned how, over the years, things have changed. I was elected to the other place for Mid Ulster for 14 and a half years. The participation rate of the electorate who came out to vote over those years, in all those elections, was between 70% and 83%. There was no lack of interest or engagement as far as the population was concerned, certainly in those elections.

I know things may have changed. For Northern Ireland, we have had a change. The central principle in a democracy is surely that everyone’s vote is equal. I heard a lot of talk about England, Scotland and Wales. The noble Lord, Lord Murphy, mentioned Northern Ireland in the context of different methods of election. For example, for the Assembly and the councils we have proportional representation. Every person’s vote in that electoral system was certainly equal. Across the United Kingdom, there were varied manners of electing people, yet when it came to Westminster, everyone’s vote was the same. In all those years—my participation in the other House was 25 years in total—everyone’s vote was certainly equal.

That changed in 2021. We now find that, when England, Scotland and Wales go to elect a Member of Parliament, they vote for a person who will legislate on the matters relating to their constituents. But, when it comes to Northern Ireland, that has changed. They can only legislate for some issues in their constituency. They can participate in all the other votes in the other House, for England, Scotland and Wales, but, when it comes to Northern Ireland, there is a plethora of laws that are now forced on the people of Northern Ireland that the United Kingdom Parliament cannot vote upon. Therefore, those who elected a person in Northern Ireland are going to endure legislation and laws forced on them that their elected representatives have never voted on. That is completely different from any other Member of Parliament. Therefore, the vote of a person in Northern Ireland is not the same.

The noble Baroness, Lady Bennett, mentioned the equality issue; surely, there is an equality issue here. Therefore, I hope that, when she comes to the concluding wind-up, the Minister will tell us how the Government intend to explain to a 16 or 17 year-old in Northern Ireland, if they give them the vote, that their vote will mean less than the vote of someone else in the rest of the United Kingdom. Without that answer, we can change the age, but there is still a major problem. Therefore, when it comes to restoring trust in democracy, we should surely have Members of Parliament elected to be able to vote on the issues which their constituents are supposed to accept as the law of the land.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)]

My Lords, we on these Benches strongly support the idea of votes at 16, for two broad reasons. First, we want this to be a citizen democracy: not one in which passive subjects wait for the Government to deliver things to them and are supposed to be thankful, but one in which people feel they share in government, local and national, and have a voice. We believe that bringing the voting age down to 16 will help to engage people in their democracy before they leave home.

We have heard a lot—as we did during today’s second Oral Question—about the need for a national conversation. In the strategic defence review last year, we heard about the need for a whole-society response to the threats we now face by engaging local communities, volunteers and the like. That requires people to feel that they are part of our political community and, therefore, that they share the need to decide what goes on with government.

The second reason is because we—as well as France, Germany and others—increasingly have a problem of demographic balance in our politics. Some 30 years ago, when I was in charge of writing the manifesto for my party for the 1997 election, I spoke to people writing the Labour and Conservative manifestos. Among the things I was told was that we were really writing for people over the age of 45. Those under 45 did not vote so often and did not care so much about the details, so our package needed to be oriented towards benefits for the older generation. That is a problem. It is a huge problem in France, for example, where old people resist any increase in the age of retirement. I spent some time last spring visiting secondary schools to see how 16 and 17 year-olds would respond to votes at 16. I have been very impressed by how serious the 16 and 17 year-olds I met were about politics, how much more they want to know and how keen they are to be engaged. It will take a shift in the way we approach education and provide information but it is worth doing.

We have been discussing extension of the franchise for 200 years, as the noble Lord, Lord Hannan, rightly pointed out. I am sure he will agree that there have been only two occasions on which the Conservatives have not opposed any extension of the franchise. The first, as he mentioned, was Disraeli in 1867, when he decided to take a gamble and discover what he called the angels in marble. The second was in 2022, following the Elections Act, when the Conservatives pushed through an expansion of the right to vote for overseas voters for their lifetimes. The noble Lord, Lord Udny-Lister, may note that that increased the number of voters by somewhere between 2 million and 4 million; we are not entirely clear on how many overseas citizens are entitled to vote. That was done without a referendum, without consultation with the other parties, and without thinking through what it meant for changing the way in which you delivered your vote and get postal votes out. Cynics even thought that it was more to do with making it easier for wealthy expats to give money than to increase the franchise—but never mind, it was done, and without a referendum.

There has been talk about capacity and focus. The young people I spoke to—I have no doubt the noble Baroness, Lady Fox, will say the same—are often very concerned about education and training, for obvious reasons, as well as climate change and sustainability, which tend not to concern our generation quite so much. If we are talking about capacity and interest in relation to the young, we might perhaps also think about the old. When I first went into politics, the local Conservative agent had an extremely good relationship with the matrons of the local care homes. I discovered that he would go round, talk to the matron and butter her up, and she would help the inmates to fill in their postal votes. It had nothing much to do with privacy but it was the way one did things at a local level. That was a long time ago, and I am sure that no Conservative agent would think of doing such a thing nowadays, but if we are to start measuring capacity then it is not just the under-18s whom we have to worry about.

On fiddling the franchise, I add that the 2022 Act changed the way in which we elect mayors, which meant that when the Mayor of the West of England was elected he got 26% of the vote—a good democratic thing. Fiddling with the franchise has been done on a regular basis by both major parties, so let us not pretend that we are doing that here as well.

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[Baroness O’Neill of Bexley (Con)]

I thank all noble Lords who have tabled amendments in this group concerning lowering the voting age to 16 years. I also thank everyone who has contributed to the debate, and I apologise in advance for anyone I am not going to name-check. I am particularly grateful to my noble friend Lord Hayward for clarifying the terminology used by the noble Lord, Lord Wallace of Saltaire. I certainly do not think anyone on these Benches would refer to elderly people—

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)]

My apologies; I absolutely misspoke. Having spent some time with my mother and my godmother in care homes, I have spent much time visiting residents in them, and I apologise for misspeaking.

[Baroness O’Neill of Bexley (Con)]

I did think that was particularly distasteful.

As I said at Second Reading, this is a constitutionally significant Bill, and therefore deserves thorough scrutiny from your Lordships’ House. It may well be a manifesto commitment and therefore we will not oppose it, but we encourage the Government to seriously consider all the impacts of implementation, as my noble friend Lord Gasgoigne mentioned.

It is in that spirit that I address the amendments of my noble friend Lord Udny-Lister. Amendment 302 would require regulations to lower the voting age to go through the affirmative procedure, and Amendment 33 would require an assessment of 16 and 17 year-olds’ vulnerability to electoral disinformation and foreign interference. My noble friend is absolutely right that such changes need to be properly thought through and prepared before they take effect.

His Amendments 4 and 283 would require a referendum on lowering the voting age to 16. Referendums are of course not a requirement, nor are they legally binding, but they are used to decide major constitutional issues. They have been held three times nationally in the UK: once in 1975 on our membership of the EEC, in 2011 on changing the voting system and, of course, in 2016 on our membership of the EU. Lowering the voting age is significant, so it is reasonable to ask whether a referendum should be held. While we will not oppose a manifesto commitment, as my noble friend Lady Coffey said, it was one line in the Labour manifesto. I hope the Minister will clarify in exactly what circumstances this Government believe that referendums should be held. This is especially relevant after a senior Labour MP in the other place suggested that Brexit should be reversed without a referendum. Labour Ministers have refused to rule out rejoining the EU without a referendum, which was the will of the people. It begs the question: if this Government care so much about the democratic representation of the people, why would they ignore the way they voted in 2016?

Amendments 1 and 3, also in the name of my noble friend Lord Udny-Lister, would retain the voting age at 18 for elections to the House of Commons, on the grounds that this is in line with the age at which you can stand for election yourself, as well as for signing a recall petition under the Recall of MPs Act 2015. He raises an important point about consistency. If this Government genuinely believe that this policy is right, why not apply the same logic elsewhere? Indeed, this is why Amendments 22, 279 and 285 in my name and that of my noble friend Lord Jamieson would prevent Part 1 of the Act coming into force until the Secretary of State had undertaken a review of the consistency of age laws.

For example, the Family Law Reform Act 1969 sets the age of majority at 18. Full citizens’ rights and responsibilities are given at 18. Sixteen and 17 year-olds need parental consent before they can join the Army. They cannot drink, buy vapes, knives or fireworks or do many other things, as outlined by my noble friends Lord Fuller and Lord Hannan. As to the evidence that the noble Baroness, Lady Royall of Blaisdon, requested from my noble friend Lord Leigh of Hurley, it came from the respected journal Developmental Psychology, published in an article by Professors Gardner and Steinberg. It showed that resistance to peer-pressure influence increases significantly from 14 to 18.

Representation of the People Bill

Lord Wallace of Saltaire Excerpts

2nd reading
Monday 14th September 2026 Lords Chamber

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)]

My Lords, in the light of the mega donations we have heard about to Reform in the past week, I start by emphasising the difference between liberal democracy and popular democracy—or illiberal democracy, as Viktor Orbán and others call it. Liberal or constitutional democracy recognises that democratic processes are open to abuse and require rules and regulations to ensure that all citizens, regardless of background or income, are able to play a positive part. Transparency in campaigning and finance is vital to maintain public trust. Safeguards against foreign interference, the buying of votes or dominance of the media by the wealthy are justified to ensure acceptance of the outcome and to prevent corruption.

Popular democracy dismisses all this. Populist leaders claim that they understand what the people really want and that regulations are there only to protect the establishment. If they spend money from doubtful sources in huge amounts, that is justified by the need to counter the weight of the mainstream media and the power of the established elite. If others question their arguments, they dismiss reasoned argument as fake news.

None of us should take our democracy for granted. In the 2024 election, less than 60% of our citizens turned out, and some 6 million to 8 million citizens were missing from the electoral register. Public disillusion with Westminster politics and with democracy itself is dangerously high in this country. Liberal Democrats argue that everything we put in this Bill must be geared to rebuilding public trust in our democratic institutions and encouraging every citizen to play an active part. Paragraph 84 of the Bill’s Explanatory Notes declares:

“The Government wants as many people as possible to engage in the United Kingdom’s democracy”.


Liberal Democrats share that objective and aim to amend the Bill to go further in pursuing it.

Thankfully, Hungary’s experiment with illiberal democracy, with the massive corruption that went with it, has now been defeated, but we are watching democracy in the USA being undermined by gerrymandering, challenges to voting lists and attacks on the impartiality of election administrators, as well as by enormous flows of money. I hope that most of us in this House share a deep concern about current developments in the US and a commitment to sustain our liberal democracy against the threats it now faces.

In a previous debate, the noble Lord, Lord Hannan, argued that the right to spend money in political campaigning was a part of free speech, repeating the argument the US Supreme Court made in overthrowing congressional limits on campaign funding. The noble Lord, Lord Frost, who will be speaking in this debate, dismissed the Rycroft report as “absurd”, which is to say, “fake news”. Money in politics is vital to political campaigning, but large donations—millions of pounds or dollars—distort and corrupt the democratic process. Commentary on this year’s US congressional elections frequently starts by telling us which candidate has raised the most money, as a key factor in whether they win or lose. We will support extending spending limits of campaigns and imposing clear conditions and limits on donations to prevent our democracy sinking into a similar funding race.

I find it striking that populists who campaign to defend British sovereignty get so much of their money from sunny places abroad: Gibraltar for the Brexit campaign, and Thailand, Hong Kong, Montenegro and beyond for the Reform Party. It is gross hypocrisy to claim to represent the sovereign voice of the British people when they depend on shady money from sunny places.

Some of the changes in this Bill aim to reverse the damage inflicted in the highly partisan 2022 Elections Act. The noble Baroness, Lady O’Neill of Bexley, has repeated the argument that there was an established convention dating from 1948 that changes in election regulations must be subject to consensus among the parties involved. I was the Liberal Democrat leader in 2022, and I remember no consultation from the Conservatives whatsoever. If there were such an established convention—I asked to see any evidence of this but was told they could find none—the Conservatives decisively broke it during the passage of that Act. I hope we all now behave better than that.

The Conservative Party must own and admit the damage done to our country’s democratic institutions and to public trust under Boris Johnson as Prime Minister. It must own and admit its own shortcomings in allowing Russian money and influence to penetrate deeply into the party. I have just read an article by Dominic Grieve, then chair of the Intelligence and Security Committee, on Boris Johnson’s determination to limit the investigation of major donations to the Brexit campaign, as well as to delay publication of the ISC’s Russia report until after the 2019 election and to redact much of the damaging detail. Some of those involved in promoting the Conservative Friends of Russia and cultivating Russian donors now sit in this House.

Rycroft distinguished between money that flowed directly to political parties and efforts to shape “the wider influencing environment”, including

“attempts to create division and distrust among the wider public”.

Direct donations may seem easy to regulate, but I recommend chapter six of George Cottrell’s recent book, How to Launder Money, which lists a variety of ways to donate to a politician or party without being caught: from high speaking fees and book deals to paying travel expenses and funding associated foundations and think tanks. As a fundraiser for the leave campaign and now for Reform, he is an expert in this. Oddly, he does not include paying extraordinarily high fees for TV work in the way that the loss-making GB News subsidises Nigel Farage.

The wider influencing environment is a grey area in political regulation: non-party campaigners are hard to define; political movements that are not parties are not covered; and social media has become a powerful form of influence. Money from abroad is hard to trace. It is not only Russia and China that seek to influence UK campaigning; the Hungarian Government, under Viktor Orbán, reportedly provided almost all the funding for the Roger Scruton Legacy Foundation to support James Orr’s promotion of Christian nationalism. The Times last week reported that Daniel Pipes’ Middle East Forum, a strongly anti-Muslim American organisation, was funding both Tommy Robinson’s movement and Daniel Thomas’s Patriotic Platform that organised the demonstrations in Dover and Portsmouth.

The significant surge of American money into British politics, now also from the Trump Administration itself, threatens to upset the balance of our domestic debate. The Bill may not be able to close all these loopholes, but we must try.

This unregulated flow of money to the fringes of party politics is not entirely new. I recall many years ago a former treasurer of the Conservative Party telling me that when potential donors wanted to remain anonymous, he would suggest they donate to a friendly think tank instead. But it has become a more contentious issue as social media and private polling have opened up more space for unobserved funding to tip the balance of the political debate.

The Rycroft Report’s recommendation on think tanks is clear, and we strongly support it:

“The Government, working with the Charity Commission as appropriate, should ensure it has the capability to monitor the think tank landscape … to make transparent the engagement of foreign-funded think tanks in the policy process”.


I look forward to the speech from the noble Lord, Lord Young of Acton, on this.

Others on these Benches will examine the proposals on regulation of social media, on intimidation and abuse of candidates, on moves towards automatic voter registration and other aspects of the Bill. They will also address the deficiencies of our antiquated voting system, now that we have five to six parties competing in national and local elections. Noble Lords may not be aware of the magnificent Liberal Democrat victory in a recent Cornish by-election, in which the victor won just under 19% of the vote.

Liberal Democrats welcome the extension of voting to 16 year-olds, as a contribution to building participation and trust in our democratic institutions within the younger generation. But it will need to be supported by an expansion of civic education in our schools, well beyond the very limited space provided within our current curriculum. I have talked to a number of secondary schools, and I am shocked by how little they are taught about democracy or our political institutions. We will look to the Minister and others for assurances that changes are now under way.

Effective regulation, I hope we all agree, is a vital part of constitutional democracy. We on these Benches will bring forward amendments to adjust Britain’s structure of regulation to the growing domestic and foreign challenges we face.

[Lord in Waiting/Government Whip (Lord Katz) (Lab)]

My Lords, before we move on, I wanted to highlight the five-minute advisory time limit for Back-Bench contributions. I ask all noble Lords to stick closely to that guidance, as it will enable the House to rise at around 10 pm.

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[Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)]

Do not forget Lloyd George.

[Lord Leigh of Hurley (Con)]

In fine tradition.

Before I carry on talking about donations, I must address the remarks by the noble Baroness, Lady Hodge. It is disappointing that she did not have the courtesy to discuss with me in advance what she planned to say. If she had done so, I would have pointed out to her that both Mr Amersi and his partner have been on the electoral roll since 2017. She selectively quotes from emails that he must have given her, and it is disappointing that she chooses to rely on Mr Amersi, who has been extensively discussed in the other place. I categorically state that neither I nor any member of the Conservative Party canvassed funds from Mr Amersi in respect of the 2024 election. I look forward to those remarks being withdrawn in due course. Perhaps the noble Baroness would like to disclose fully to the House that my family helped finance her elections in Barking to defeat the BNP.

As it happens, most donations to parties are from individuals, but some companies do donate, and the rules proposed are simply not manageable by a regular volunteer treasurer of a local association. The pages and pages of risk assessment requirements—I do not know whether noble Lords have read them yet—are just not practical and are a classic example of red tape imposed on people wanting to help society by those who simply do not have the same experience. In particular, the real-time aggregation rules in respect of pre-donation checking will be impossible to put into effect. Too little thought has gone into this in the rush to produce 250 pages of legislation. These proposals have clearly been made by someone who has never actually been involved in local or national political fundraising and has not had the courtesy to talk to those who have.

Then there is the profit test for corporate donations; however well intentioned, it is a nonsense. It fails to understand that companies can be in a loss in accounting terms for very many years but can still be cash generative. If a company loses money for years and subsequently makes a one-off profit, it would seem not to be caught. So, what is the purpose of this? I remind the Minister that Ecotricity is one of Labour’s biggest donors. In 2023-24, the group made a loss of £5.6 million. In the same year, it gave £2.8 million to the Labour Party. One would hope the party does the decent thing and returns the money.

There are much better ways to achieve the objectives of the Bill, and we will be spending considerable time exploring them in later stages. Why are foreign-owned companies being denied the right to sponsor conferences and the like in the UK? They employ huge numbers of people in the UK and should not be denied the same rights as British companies to openly advertise and market.

I have not had time to remark on the plan to give children the vote. Yes, they are children, by any and every definition. Weirdly, if the party they vote for is successful, they are not allowed to go out celebrating in the pub with the rest of us, and Labour Ministers have refused to lower the drinking age to 16 on the grounds of “protecting children”. I thank the Minister for her letter to me seeking to answer my concerns that teachers will have undue influence on children, with whom they interact daily, at the time of elections. I note her points, but I do not see how this is going to be monitored. What guarantees are in place that no abuse will happen?

Foreign Interference in UK Politics

Lord Wallace of Saltaire Excerpts

Thursday 9th July 2026 Lords Chamber

[Lord Lemos (Lab)]

I am indeed a product of Dulwich College, which only goes to show that it is not the school’s fault. I am sorry to say that I am older than Nigel Farage, and I am tempted to make jokes about bins and recycling—but I will not, because the Chief Whip will tell me off. On the substantive point, we understand that there is a lot going on. These are not matters for me; they are matters for the Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards and the Electoral Commission. We hear what the noble Lord says about the need not to keep double-dipping on this, so we will watch the situation carefully, but I should not comment on individual cases, as I know he understands.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)]

My Lords, I welcome the Government’s acceptance of the recommendations of the Rycroft report. The Statement says:

“We will also strengthen our response to the wider influencing environment”.


Recommendation 16 specifically talks about think tanks. The other night, in a committee room upstairs, I listened to a number of experts on foreign interference talking about foreign Governments funnelling money through think tanks in Britain to influence our political debates, including not only the Russian Government but the last Hungarian Government. I therefore urge the Government to consider including those forms of indirect political influence to shape the political debate—the noble Baroness, Lady Hayter, may add that PR firms are also engaged in this—as part of what we need to control, and to insist on transparency, at the very least, in where the money is coming from. I suggest that we should have a Defending Democracy Taskforce that reports to Parliament about what it is defending and what the threats are, so as to inform and alert us all to where we are.

I was the leader on our Benches for the 2022 Bill. I have been trying to recall the consultations that the then Conservative Government had with other parties. I must have forgotten that they took place. I was unaware that there was any form of constitutional convention. I will welcome the paper from the Conservative Benches about the constitutional convention: when it was shaped and how the Conservative Government previously used it in consultation with other papers. Perhaps, at that point, we may be able to discuss this new constitutional convention further.

[Lord Lemos (Lab)]

I do not have anything to add on the noble Lord’s final point, other than that it sounds a bit like the Schleswig-Holstein question to me.

On the question about think tanks and so on, I have already said how the principle behind the Bill is that we are seeking to prevent foreign interference in our democracy. As we go through the process with the Bill in Committee and on Report, we will discuss the issues that the noble Lord raises. At the moment we are focused on political parties, as I have said, but we recognise the wider landscape he draws, and we will cleave to the principle I have set out.

Donations to Political Parties

Lord Wallace of Saltaire Excerpts

Monday 1st June 2026 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)]

My understanding is that there was extensive consultation with political parties during the course of the drawing up of the Bill. The Bill is being debated in Parliament now, and representations can still be made in Parliament. It will be debated in this House in due course.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)]

My Lords, how are the Government going to get at the increasingly shadowy area of what the Minister has just called political life, where donations are not specifically to political parties but are being used to support particular causes? It is widely reported, for example, that Elon Musk is using Twitter to promote the Restore candidate in the forthcoming by-election and to support Restore altogether. Is that a political donation? At the Unite the Kingdom rally, Tommy Robinson specifically thanked two US donors who had helped to fund the rally. That is not, within the current terms, a political donation, but it is clearly financial interference in British political life. How are we going to get at that?

[Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)]

As the noble Lord indicated, this is a complex area, but we must endeavour to make sure that, as we pass the legislation, we close loopholes that allow donations that are not subject to the usual checks and balances—they must be subject to those checks and balances. We intend to commence existing provisions in primary legislation that will require donors to declare any benefits or sources of funding connected to their donation and render them liable to criminal prosecution for false declarations. We need to go that far to make sure that we avoid the kind of circumstances that the noble Lord raised.

Local Government Pension Fund

Lord Wallace of Saltaire Excerpts

Monday 18th May 2026 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)]

On the last point, I listened very carefully to the noble Baroness’s contributions on the pensions Bill. If she came to meet me, I would treat it as a teach-in on pensions, so I have no problems with having a meeting. The Government are finalising the investment strategy statement guidance in the light of comments received on the draft circulated for comment, as she said, in December 2025. We are carefully considering all feedback received before publishing the final guidance. We absolutely do not want this to be contradictory. We want to make sure that the guidance is crystal-clear because our position remains unchanged: it is not appropriate for local authorities to adopt investment policies that go beyond, or differ from, UK government sanctions or foreign policy positions. We want to make that clear and we will endeavour to do so in the guidance.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)]

My Lords, this is about local government pension funds and we are discussing guidance; the Minister has just talked about an instruction. Does she recognise that the autonomy of local government ought to be an important principle that we all hold to and that we need to be very careful about how much we limit it? In this respect, including in foreign policy, we are limiting local government autonomy more than happens in most comparable democracies, including the United States.

[Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)]

The Fit for the Future reforms do not seek to undermine the fiduciary duty of local pension funds in any way. The responsibility to set investment strategies—the key driver of investment returns—remains with the funds, making sure that they retain local accountability. New LGPS regulations will continue to require administering authorities to include preferences on environmental, social and governance factors in their investment strategies.

English Devolution and Community Empowerment Bill

Lord Wallace of Saltaire Excerpts

Consideration of Commons amendments and / or reasons
Thursday 23rd April 2026 Lords Chamber

[Lord Scriven (LD)]

My Lords, I am also a vice-president of the Local Government Association. At this very late stage, this is the first time I have spoken on this Bill. This is like a map of Sheffield—Manor Castle, Tinsley and Hunters Bar, and I am a former leader of Sheffield City Council—and the reason why we are speaking on this issue is not just because we saw what happened in Sheffield. We understand the power of giving local people the ability to hold others to account, not just at election time but in how they are governed, the administration and the powers devolved through all 84 councillors. This not only changes behaviour but helps to make the correct decision for a particular community.

I notice that a noble Lord opposite is shaking their head but, for Sheffield, it was the right decision. People turned out at the ballot box and decided that this was what they wanted, and—surprise, surprise—it has not created chaos. People in our city know who to go to about their bins or roads; they know who the chair of the committee is. They know that when they go to their local councillor, they have some power to influence the committee system, unlike the cabinet model where it is down to 10 people. My noble friend Lord Shipley has moved this Motion because if another Sheffield happens, once this Bill has gone through, there is no way the system can be changed. The community is left with an administrative system that they are completely locked out of other than at the ballot box in four years. Under the strong leader model, when I was leader of Sheffield I could have decided to hold all except reserve powers. I could have decided to have a cabinet of three people deciding what happened strategically.

The reason for this amendment—and why the Government must go away and rethink—is that we need to ask the Minister to answer this question. If another Sheffield arose in a year’s time after this Bill was passed, how would the local community change that system to make sure that local councillors had powers to ensure they were not held to ransom by three people within the strong leader model? If that question cannot be answered, it is really important to understand that communities are going to be left with systems that do not necessarily meet their requirements. It is really important. The reason why three people from Sheffield have spoken is because we understand what happens when it goes wrong, and we have faith in local people to use their knowledge and their votes to put that system right.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)]

My Lords, I will raise a couple of broader points about where we are. A strong leadership system operates well when you have only two parties represented on a council. We are about to have local elections in which the number of councils elected with only two parties represented, and one party holding a clear majority, will probably be smaller than it has been for a very long time. Where we have multi-party politics, the need for co-operation and engagement among all those on council is of a different order than under the strong leadership model. If the Government do not recognise that, they are utterly failing to future-proof this Bill.

On Motion F1, the noble Lord, Lord Robertson, is going around the country talking about the Government’s failure to recognise the very radical implications of the strategic defence review. He talks about the need for mobilisation of the population at local level to deal with the new hybrid, civil and other threats facing this country. If we want to mobilise local volunteers and local services, we will have to engage our local population. If we have only distant councils representing half a million people, the population in Bradford will not be mobilised and will remain as disillusioned and unengaged as before, and the SDR will fail.

[Lord Lucas (Con)]

My Lords, I very much agree with what the noble Lord, Lord Wallace, has just said, and I will add a couple of points. One is that in a committee system, every single member of the council has a role to play, has a function and is a part of the system. It is a really good way of encouraging good people to stand as councillors. In a cabinet system, nine-tenths of the council has nothing to do and you just get total disinterest in wanting to sign up for that, particularly if you are likely to be in opposition. We need good people in councils—we might even apply the same to Parliament. Having a system where only a few people have a real role to play is a big disincentive to seriously talented people joining an assembly of any variety.

Secondly, on Motion F1, as has been said I am a resident of Eastbourne, and we will have nothing that represents Eastbourne except a committee of a unitary authority, which may well have a completely different political make-up from the councillors elected in Eastbourne. There will be no way of expressing our voice as a community; we will just be waiting to be trampled on by other people’s ambitions. That is not the right way to run a local community. Yes, we need to improve on what we have at the moment—having one big town council with a runaway precept with no limits on it is not much fun either—so we need to think through what we should do at the parish level. But to have nothing—no initiative or sense that this is important—is a big hole in the Government’s thinking.

Business Improvement District Ballots: Digital Voting

Lord Wallace of Saltaire Excerpts

Monday 20th April 2026 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)]

We have heard that the postal voting system does not always work as effectively as it should for BID ballots and we want to make sure that BID ballots are as efficient and as accessible as possible, which is why we have committed to consulting on those improvements to BID voting procedures. We will consult on the introduction of digital voting for BID ballots as part of this, including how it will work in practical terms. Of course, we need to make absolutely sure that it can be done safely as well. Subject to the outcome of the consultation, we will then decide how the proposal should be implemented.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)]

My Lords, a quick look at international comparisons for introducing digital voting suggests that experiments in other advanced democratic countries have shown that it is okay at the local level, where the likelihood of cyber attack is low, but at the national level it is open to too many risks to try it out. Is that also the Government’s view?

[Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)]

We absolutely understand the interest in online voting but, when it comes to electing representatives, the integrity and security of the process must come first. At present, serious concerns are shared internationally about the risks of online voting, including cyber threats, fraud and the challenge of ensuring a fully secure and anonymous ballot. That is why we currently have no plans to introduce online voting for statutory elections in the UK, but we are focused on strengthening the current systems for absent voting, such as postal and proxy voting, so that they remain secure, reliable and accessible for everyone.

English Devolution and Community Empowerment Bill

Lord Wallace of Saltaire Excerpts

Report stage
Monday 13th April 2026 Lords Chamber

[Lord Fuller (Con)]

My Lords, I rise to speak to my Amendments 216 and 318 in this group, which relate to parish and town councils. Amendment 216 makes provision for unparished electors in the unsatisfactory neighbourhood governance arrangements contemplated by Clause 60 to petition to incorporate into properly constituted and sovereign precept-raising parish councils. Separately, my Amendment 318 applies to the largest town councils, most of which have been wholly or in part district billing authorities before, but which henceforth will be unconstrained in their ability to raise council tax.

I turn first to Amendment 216. In Committee the penny dropped for the first time that those parts of England that were former county boroughs—20% of the land mass, so much greater by population—such as Kings Lynn, Ipswich or Great Yarmouth, or new towns like Stevenage, which is home to the Minister, would be for the most part unparished, and thus second-class citizens in the new arrangements. That is recognised by Amendment 214, in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Scott of Bybrook, and the noble Lords, Lord Jamieson and Lord Shipley, which I endorse entirely. I have no problem with it. But I think we need to go further and move beyond the simple promotion of parish councils to the right for unparished areas to become parishes if the measures in Clause 60 are found to be unsatisfactory.

The Government tell us that community or neighbourhood governance will be provided by councillors from the parent unitary authority in unparished areas. Those of us who have been around for a while have heard that duck quack before. We know that these structures are just talking shops, with no resources, capacity or status. This is what we discovered in Committee. People literally from out of town will try to sweep up the crumbs left over, once social care has feasted on the precept, to find what money is left to sweep the pavements, cut the grass, breathe life into the theatre and heat the swimming baths. But with social care consuming two-thirds of the precept, what resources will those toothless talking shops have? These are the things that the larger parishes do, with the consent of their parishioners to raise a precept.

I make no apologies for talking about Norfolk. There are 900 parishes there, and some 10,000 nationally. But when Labour gets its way, 20% of England will be disfranchised and have no parish at all—no money or say, for the most part, in how England is run. That includes the whole of Ipswich, for example, or Oxford. The so-called strategic authorities and the mayor are not going to be interested in the carnival floats, the local antique street market, the food festival or those local culture groups that town and parish councils spawn. The civic life of town mayors will evaporate altogether, with their soft convening and ribbon-cutting powers. No, they will go the way of the local pub, the park café and the high streets, in the vandalisation of high-street Britain.

Do not talk to us about Pride in Place when they disband that whole panoply of civic life, with the sheriff and the burgesses, that illuminates our nation’s story. No, under the dismal and undemocratic Clause 60, the unitary and its councillors will hold all the cards—the budget, the representation and the staff—to hold everyone else over a barrel, because there is no parish council. Of course, they will have no incentive to cede powers either, and all the incentive, on the other hand, to hoard powers and pet projects.

My amendment offers hope to these places: to reject the way in which the Bill creates sock-puppet sinecures for out-of-town councillors from miles away. Where an appointed community council is established, those residents can petition to incorporate—creating the empowerment that the Bill purports to foster and encourage—to create a town or parish council with proper elections, a proper budget and a precept that local people can vote on and endorse, so as not to rely on cast-offs after the social care monster, LGR costs, the recast debts and pension fund liabilities have eaten the rest. I want to help people make their part of England better: more local, more responsive and more accountable. My amendments give hope for democracy for these places, including the cathedral cities, coastal communities and new towns—places such as Stevenage and, for the other part, Gorleston, from where I take my territorial designation, within the historic county borough of Great Yarmouth.

I will listen closely to the rest of the debate and may signal my intention to divide the House on this. The requirement and the ability for local people to force incorporation of their neighbourhood arrangements is important.

Moving on to council tax for our largest town councils, I will be brief. Many of the former principal authorities and districts may become parishes under the new arrangements—or perhaps not, if my Amendment 216 is carried. By charging council tax where they have been districts, they have been able to benefit from formula grant, redistributed business rates and whatever the local government finance system has delivered. But there is a real risk that the parishes will be suckered into taking many of the expensive cast-offs from the home authority in a deliberate cost-shunt. Parks, playgrounds, theatres, moorings, cemeteries and all manner of public buildings will be flipped on to these parishes. They will need to find space in their precept to pay for them, but they will be on their own because they will have no central support and will be living hand to mouth.

My noble friend Lady Scott hates me using this example, but the facts speak for themselves. Council tax under Salisbury City Council is up 44% in just four years and its band D is £383. In my own district, South Norfolk, where I am a councillor, we collect the bins, clean the streets, house the homeless and have built a new generation of housing for just 180 quid—less than half of the parish. The problem with the Bill is that it lumps tiny little Howe, a hamlet of 50 souls in my own ward, in with the village of Hempnall, where next week we will welcome a new vicar, the Reverend Austin Uzoigwe—gosh, I should have practised this—and which has perhaps 1,000 people, together with Horsham, a district of 146,000. In law, all places of 50 to 150,000 will be equivalent. That is crazy, because there is no equivalence between Howe and Horsham, but the people of Horsham need to be spared what has been visited on the residents of Salisbury.

My amendment would create a new sub-class of third-tier authority where there is a population of 50,000 or where the precept exceeds £1 million, so that they fall under the same budgetary constraints as the larger principal authorities. I do not want your Lordships to think that this is anti-town or anti-parish. In fact, it is quite the reverse. The wholesale reconditioning of local government is already going to cost a bomb and create those perverse incentives to pass off the expensive stuff to the parishes. My amendments would strengthen parishes’ hand in the negotiations, as part of LGR, so that they will be able to push back and say no. If they think they cannot afford these gift horses, having looked them in the mouth, they would not have to take them on.

I am seeking to strengthen local democracy and accountability by putting the largest parishes on a proper financial footing, so that they can do the work they do at a price residents can afford. This is not a dig at parishes; they do a lot of valuable work at the level closest to the people. With this amendment, I have their back, as it would stop those councils with the broadest shoulders imposing liabilities and cast-offs on those with the most limited means.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)]

My Lords, I looked last night at Labour’s 2024 manifesto and would like to quote, extremely briefly, a few phrases from it. It said:

“Labour is committed to strengthening our democracy”.


It attacked the Conservatives for failing to encourage

“full participation in our democracy”

and said that Labour was committed to encouraging such participation in our democracy and to increasing

“the engagement of young people in our vibrant democracy”.

If we do not have local councils and local elections, we have no way of increasing participation, of gaining a real sense of active citizenship or of encouraging the sort of people many of us are now going around to talk to in schools, who will have the vote for the first time. This is why local councils, throughout the country, are extremely important in maintaining and strengthening the sense that every citizen in this country can take some part in public life.

English Devolution and Community Empowerment Bill

Lord Wallace of Saltaire Excerpts

Report stage
Thursday 26th March 2026 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)]

My Lords, I thank the noble Lords, Lord Bichard, Lord Wallace of Saltaire and Lord Ravensdale, for amendments on collaboration. I will start with the government amendments in this group, which are minor and technical in nature. Their purpose is to align relevant definitions across the Bill. Taken together, they update wording in Clauses 21, 22 and 51. In doing so, they make the wording consistent with that used in paragraph 4 of Schedule 25 in the definition of “eligible function”.

The effect is to clarify that mayors may convene local partners, collaborate with neighbouring mayors or request an additional function in relation to any aspect of any area of competence. This reflects the Government’s clear policy intention to provide mayors with the flexibility that they need to use these powers effectively in addressing local priorities. For example, the health, well-being and public service reform area of competence should be read as covering its individual component parts of health and well-being and public service reform, rather than as a single inseparable policy heading. These amendments therefore promote consistency across the Bill, avoiding ambiguity or an unnecessarily narrow interpretation of how these powers relate to the areas of competence.

I hope that, with this explanation, the House will support these amendments. I will listen to the noble Lords introducing their amendments before I respond to them.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)]

My Lords, I rise to talk to Amendment 181, which is grouped with this. Britain has an unwritten constitution, which gives us flexibility but also lacks constraint on changing Prime Ministers or Governments beyond trust in their behaving like good chaps. As we have discovered in recent years, not all Prime Ministers do behave like good chaps or chapesses. The Minister herself earlier today referred to the question of whether a future Government might “on a whim” change the way they operate in crucial ways. The purpose of this amendment is to entrench the role of the mayoral council in the future governance of England and to make sure that a future Government cannot simply muck things up on a whim.

--- Later in debate ---

The amendment proposed by the noble Lord is ambitious and full of positive intent, but, to be delivered effectively, as I think he identified, important groundwork will need to be undertaken to address public sector reform challenges. It is essential to engage the right stakeholders. I therefore invite the noble Lord to join a round table chaired by my right honourable friend the Secretary of State to discuss the Government’s plan for local public service reform. I would welcome the opportunity to discuss these matters further with both the noble Lord and the wider local government sector. With these points in mind, I hope noble Lords will feel able not to press their amendments.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)]

Before the noble Baroness sits down, can she clarify one point? We are heading towards a model of English governance in which there will be roughly 35 elected mayors. Do the Government envisage that the Council of the Nations and Regions will then have the Scottish Government, the Welsh Government, the Northern Irish Government and, on the same basis, 35 English mayors?

[Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)]

Those bodies are new bodies, and they will be evolving and changing as we evolve and change the model. They are not decision-making bodies. That is the main reason for saying we do not want to put them in statute, particularly in view of the fact that they will change fairly rapidly as we increase the mayoral model across the country.

--- Later in debate ---

Tabled by

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

181: After Clause 56, insert the following new Clause—
“Mayoral Council for England(1) Elected mayors for combined and strategic authorities shall constitute a Mayoral Council for England. (2) The Council shall meet with the Secretary of State at least four times a year.(3) The functions of the Council are—(a) to work with central government to create a framework for the further devolution of power within England,(b) to work with central government to agree the fair funding of local and strategic authorities, and(c) to choose representatives of the Mayoral Council to participate in the Council of Nations and Regions.”

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)]

This time on a Thursday afternoon, just before the Recess, is not the ideal time to call a Division, much as many of us on these Benches would have liked to do so. We do not resile from the view that this Bill is constitutionally deficient and democratically damaging, but the Labour Party, so long as it remains in government, will have to take responsibility for the consequences of the reorganisation of the governance of England as it develops. The Minister has made it clear that she wants it to develop flexibly, and perhaps, so long as we have a single-party government, it may continue to do so.

Amendment 181 not moved.