Voting at 16

Baroness Smith of Llanfaes Excerpts

Thursday 24th July 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Khan of Burnley (Lab)]

My Lords, let me say first that I always welcome encouragement from the noble Lord, and I will take that back. To address his question directly, we intend to actively explore and test new and more automated methods of registration, including better use of data to identify people who are eligible and integration with other government services to make it easier for people to register. Online registration for voting has been a resounding success, particularly for postal voting. I will take that back and I hope that I can come back to the noble Lord with some meaningful outcomes as a result of our strategy.

[Baroness Smith of Llanfaes (PC)]

My Lords, in light of the Government’s want for more young people to be registered to vote, will they consider a national “Register to Vote Day” for schools, when young people are encouraged to register to vote online in their registration classes?

[Lord Khan of Burnley (Lab)]

My Lords, the noble Baroness makes a very strong point. I will take it away, because ultimately we want to get more people registered and able to take part in our democracy. We anticipate that there are between 7 million and 8 million eligible individuals who are currently unregistered or incorrectly registered to vote. We want to make sure that our policies identify and engage underregistered groups, and we will take all measures to ensure that that people can participate comfortably and positively.