Representation of the People Bill

Lord Watson of Invergowrie Excerpts

2nd reading
Monday 14th September 2026 Lords Chamber

[Lord Watson of Invergowrie (Lab)]

My Lords, I congratulate my noble friend Lord Macintosh on his maiden speech, even though I was unable to be here for it, for which I hope he has forgiven me. As he has not walked out before my speech starts, there is a chance that he might have. I am delighted to contribute to this debate, as part of the process whereby an important manifesto commitment is transferred into legislation. What makes this Bill so important is that it strengthens and future-proofs our democracy at a time when, as in too many countries today, democracy itself is under threat.

I have called on many occasions for the voting age in England to be brought into line with Scotland, where votes at 16 were introduced in 2015. Five years later, Wales made the same change. So there is inescapable logic in extending that to cover the entire UK and applying it to elections at all levels. Votes at 16 is an important democratic development, expanding the electorate and bringing new voices and perspectives into the political process—the comments just now by the noble Lord, Lord Fuller, notwithstanding. But the full benefits of lowering the voting age will not be felt if that right is introduced in a vacuum.

That is why the All-Party Group for Schools, Learning and Assessment, of which I am a member, undertook an inquiry into how the building blocks can be put in place to ensure that young people are prepared for being democratically empowered. The inquiry was concerned with education that supports young people in preparing to vote, but it went beyond that to examine how schools and colleges can foster the democratic skills and knowledge that underpin using the vote and support young people to participate in broader democratic society as critical, engaged and active citizens.

The report was published in July and, as my noble friend Lady Lister said, it stressed the importance of citizenship education in providing the building blocks for young people to understand and develop an appreciation of democratic engagement. Among its recommendations was a call for the Government to ensure that upcoming changes in response to the curriculum and assessment review create a “core curriculum entitlement” to citizenship and that teachers are given the support to enable them to navigate this new aspect of citizenship education with confidence.

If implemented effectively, there is a particular strength in young people registering to vote while still in an educational setting, with schools and colleges able to support them through that process. The Association of Colleges says in its briefing for this debate that colleges are keen to explore the scope for integrating college and school enrolment with voter registration, as has already occurred at several universities. Clause 3 stipulates the entitlement to be registered at 14, signalling an opportunity for schools to embed registration for 14 and 15 year-olds and thus enhance initial citizenship and political literacy education.

I want to highlight the very welcome toughening of rules on political donations and campaign financing in Part 4 of the Bill. The initial provisions were strengthened in another place by the Government adding recommendations by the Rycroft review into countering foreign influence. The restriction being placed on the amount which can be given to a political party during a calendar year by an individual who is a non-UK resident has been set at £100,000, which is appropriate and one that I think the average voter will see as reasonable—unlike the outrageous amounts paid to a political party last week, the timing of which was simply to evade this legislation. As my noble friend Lord Sikka said: these are not donations, they are investments.

That said, I cannot agree with those who called for retrospective legislation to deal with those payments. First, retrospective law is, I believe, fundamentally undemocratic. Secondly, such a move would play into the hands of those who claim this Bill is specifically aimed at one party in particular. It is not, of course, but that argument could quite easily be used against Labour unless the Government tread carefully.

There is also an issue with domestic political campaign donations. At Third Reading in another place, Minister Eshalomi made a commitment on domestic political finance reform, saying that a new cross-government task and finish team will be working at pace to find a solution to the issue of mega donors in UK politics. I ask my noble friend the Minister to expand on the remit of this task and finish team and tell us whether the Government will commit to the introduction of a donation cap and reduce the national campaign spending limit before the next general election.

Time does not allow me to cover the questions of electoral reform, the Electoral Commission and hostility towards candidates. All of those will need to await Committee, to which I look forward.

Donations to Political Parties

Lord Watson of Invergowrie Excerpts

Thursday 12th February 2026 Grand Committee

[Lord Watson of Invergowrie (Lab)]

My Lords, I appreciate the panache and brio with which the noble Lord, Lord Hannan, delivers his speeches, but I have to say that I disagree with him on state funding. I will develop that in the time available to me. JS Mill and Thomas Jefferson lived some time ago, long before the days of what we would understand to be democracy.

I commend my noble friend Lord Sikka for getting this debate. He went on at some length about countries higher on the scale than the UK in terms of corruption measures. He mentioned various countries, but not Germany. I think Germany is the best example of support for political parties. In Germany’s system there is state funding, with three legs to its stool. The first is democratic legitimacy, because the money follows the votes that political parties gain. The second is transparency, with donations having to be declared fully—anything above €50,000 immediately and anything above €10,000 in the parties’ annual reports. That is important. There is also a prevention of undue influence, which I think we see in this country in terms of political donations.

The Conservative Party is funded by business. The Labour Party is funded to some extent by business but mainly by trade unions: I declare an interest as a member of Unite. That does not give us a level playing field. I am sure the noble Lord, Lord Pack, will feel that the Liberal Democrats do not get a fair crack of the whip. If votes lead to the financial donations that the state makes to political parties, as in the German system, following an election, the people understand what they are paying and why they are paying it. The direct connection is important. Generally, I think voters would rather see a fair system and a level playing field, where things are open and transparent, and it is clear that any political party that gains sufficient votes gets support to go into future elections. I do not think that is a bad idea.

Incidentally, in Germany the state also matches donations that political parties get from membership fees and individual small donations, up to a capped limit. That is a good example that we could follow and I hope my noble friend will be able to say something about what the Government’s intentions are in the Bill that has just been published. I commend the German model. France, Italy, Spain and Canada also have a form of state funding. It works for them and it could work for us as well.

Gypsy and Traveller Communities: Accommodation

Lord Watson of Invergowrie Excerpts

Wednesday 6th November 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Watson of Invergowrie (Lab)]

My Lords, I welcome the initial comments of my noble friend in response to the noble Baroness, Lady Bakewell. However, there are far too many cases of local plans having been approved without the accommodation needs of Gypsy and Traveller communities having been met. The noble Baroness mentioned 1994. It has in fact been the policy of successive Governments since 1994 that local plans should not be approved without that provision. Will my noble friend use her position in this Government to ensure that steps are taken to enforce that requirement before local plans are approved?

[Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)]

I thank my noble friend for that important point. Of course, it is the responsibility of local authorities to assess the need for Gypsy and Traveller sites in their area, as set out in Section 124 of the Housing and Planning Act 2016. They must plan to meet that need, and it should come under the remit of the inspectorate when it is looking at local plans to ensure that that provision is made properly and in accordance with the cultural needs of Gypsies and Travellers. We will look at that closely once the new National Planning Policy Framework is in place.

International Women’s Day

Lord Watson of Invergowrie Excerpts

Friday 10th March 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Watson of Invergowrie (Lab)]

My Lords, I commend the noble Baroness, Lady Lampard, on her maiden speech. She will make many more fine speeches in your Lordships’ House, and I assure her that none will feel as stressful to her as today’s.

Can the 35th of 36 Back-Bench speakers find anything new to say after so many powerful contributions? Well, here goes. In preparation for the debate, I went to the United Nations, which adopted International Women’s Day in 1977, although it dates back 115 years. Since then, the status and rights of women have certainly progressed. However, as UN Secretary-General António Guterres said in his International Women’s Day message,

“we also recognize the enormous obstacles”

women

“face—from structural injustices, marginalization, and violence, to cascading crises that affect them first and worst, to the denial of their personal autonomy and rights over their bodies and lives.”

As the Minister said when opening the debate, this year the UN is using International Women’s Day to focus attention on the need for technology and innovation to advance gender equality. Technology can lift the lives of women and girls around the world in many ways, such as through greater access to education, healthcare and financial services, but there is a real need to confront the ability to close the connectivity gap. Today, 3 billion people are still unconnected to the internet, the majority of whom are women and girls in developing countries. The barriers that keep women and girls in those countries offline must be broken down; barriers such as the stereotypes, as we have heard in other contributions today, that discourage girls from studying science and maths—an issue highlighted very effectively and powerfully by my noble friend Lord Stansgate. Other barriers are the low levels of education and training in digital skills, and a lack of access to digital devices, data and job opportunities.

The developed world has also erected barriers. Today, women make up less than one-third of the workforce across science, technology, engineering and maths. In cutting-edge fields such as artificial intelligence, just one in five professionals is a woman. There is an urgent need to increase women’s participation and leadership in those areas, and that must start with broader recruitment pipelines and using quotas where they are deemed necessary.

I am not known for talking up the independent sector of education, but I commend the positive action taken this week by the Girls’ Schools Association, which has announced that it will adopt what it terms a gender-equitable approach to its investment management. It will in future invest only in companies with female leaders or a strong female presence on boards, and I say fair play to them for that initiative.

I also commend the British Chambers of Commerce. As my noble friend Lady Twycross mentioned earlier, it marked International Women’s Day by undertaking a survey involving more than 4,000 of its members to measure the impact that childcare, caring responsibilities and the menopause have on women’s career prospects. It found that two-thirds of women believe they have missed out on career progression as a result of childcare responsibilities, while almost half the women surveyed feel that they will miss out on career opportunities as a result of the menopause. The BCC is now launching a three-year gender equity campaign to tackle these issues with the estimable aim of, in its words, ensuring

“not only … the wellbeing of our women and workplaces”

but guaranteeing a stronger and more equitable economy. Such initiatives are necessary because the pace at which the pay gap in the UK is closing is glacial.

My noble friend Lady Chakrabarti has just mentioned the Equal Pay Act. I have had an active interest in that issue for a considerable time. Indeed, my university thesis in 1974 was on the implementation of the Equal Pay Act. Although that Act got on to the statute book under Labour in 1970, there was a five-year lead-in period for employers to make the changes necessary to accommodate the changes required by the legislation. That was always an optimistic aim, of course, but I doubt anybody then would have predicted that, 50 years later, more than a quarter of the gender pay gap would remain to be filled.

In 1974, women earned 36% less than median male hourly earnings; the latest available figure, issued by the Office for National Statistics in April last year, is, as other noble Lords have mentioned, 8.3%. That represents the comparison between full-time workers and excludes overtime earnings. Of course, more men than women work overtime and more women than men work part-time, so the 8.3% figure gives a distorted view of the gap in actual take-home pay between men and women. Taking all employees into account, the gender pay gap in 2022 was 14.9%. That surely reveals the scale of the task that remains to bring to an end the discrimination faced by women in the workplace.

Joining a trade union would be a useful first step, but this matters to women not just in financial terms but psychologically too. A survey by the Fawcett Society in 2019 found that two-thirds of women said pay discrimination had a detrimental impact on how they feel about their job or their employer. This included feeling less motivated and even wanting to leave their job.

However, all is not lost; help is at hand, because soon there will be a Labour Government. Our paper, A New Deal for Working People, will introduce a raft of measures to transform women’s working lives. These will include banning zero-hour contracts and fire and rehire; 57% of those on zero-hour contracts are women and they are common in sectors that women dominate. They also include ensuring all working women are afforded the same basic rights; implementing flexible working as a right from day one; and introducing paid carer’s leave. The Labour Government will also commit to taking menopause seriously at work and across society. Under Labour, large employers will be required to submit a menopause action plan, detailing how they are supporting their employees who experience symptoms of menopause at work, alongside their gender pay reporting each year.

Earlier, I quoted the UN Secretary-General’s International Women’s Day message. It included these words:

“Gender-based discrimination harms everyone—women, girls, men, and boys. International Women’s Day is a call to action.”


We must all ensure that we answer that call.

Social Mobility Commission

Lord Watson of Invergowrie Excerpts

Thursday 12th January 2023 Lords Chamber

Asked by

[Lord Watson of Invergowrie]

To ask His Majesty’s Government whether they intend to review the skills and experience required for the role of Chair of the Social Mobility Commission, following the resignation of the previous chair.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Levelling Up, Housing & Communities (Baroness Scott of Bybrook) (Con)]

My Lords, leadership of the Social Mobility Commission requires a strong understanding of, and a demonstrated commitment to, the cause of social mobility, particularly in education and business. We sought a chair with excellent leadership and persuasive communication skills. Both Katharine Birbalsingh and the interim chair, Alun Francis, displayed these skills in abundance through their initial recruitment and their work at the commission in delivering a fresh approach to deep-rooted challenges. We have no plans to review the job specification for this role.

[Lord Watson of Invergowrie (Lab)]

My Lords, the Minister is working overtime today. To ensure she is on the appropriate rate, I suggest she has a word with my new noble friend Lady O’Grady of Upper Holloway, whom I am very pleased to see in her place. I thank the Minister for her reply, but the resignation of Katharine Birbalsingh came after just 14 months and after a number of statements were made which demonstrated that she was ill equipped for the role. She was appointed in addition to her day job as a head teacher. The issues of social justice that need to be addressed are so pressing that I do not believe it is realistic to expect the person tasked with leading that work to do so in their spare time. Will the Government recognise those pressing issues and the increasing level of child poverty—which, incidentally, used to be in the title of the Social Mobility Commission—by refocusing, by renaming the body the social justice commission and by making its chair a full-time role?

[Baroness Scott of Bybrook (Con)]

My Lords, the Government have no plans to do that. Katharine made very clear why she left in her article in Schools Week. The Minister for Women and Equalities has been very clear about how grateful she is to Katharine for her time as chair and also to Alun Francis, her deputy, who has now taken over as interim chairman. The commission has done excellent work under Katharine’s chairmanship and Alun’s deputy chairmanship, and that work will go on, so we have no plans to change anything at the moment.