Representation of the People Bill

John McDonnell Excerpts

Report stage & 3rd reading
Wednesday 2nd September 2026 Commons Chamber

[Anneliese Dodds (Oxford East) (Lab/Co-op)]

As so many have said in this debate, our democracy must not be for sale, so it is disturbing that the campaign spending arms race is becoming out of control. As has been mentioned, in 2023 the previous cap on campaign spending of £19 million was increased massively to £34 million. None of our constituents was asked whether they wanted that, and the Electoral Commission said at the time that it had not seen evidence to justify the increase.

We all know what can happen when campaign spending spirals out of control. A number of Members have referred to the situation in the US, where opaque crypto interests spent $189 million just between January and the end of June this year. That is with four months to go before the mid-term elections. We have also seen huge donations from crypto interests in our own country, but they were given in pounds.

New clause 70 would set a limit on campaign spending of £24.4 million. That is what the previous limit of £19 million would be now, allowing for inflation, minus 15%, per the recommendation of the Committee on Standards in Public Life. I understand that the Government are keen to avoid additional legislation at this stage, given the time pressure for ensuring that votes at 16 are delivered. I also acknowledge the letter from the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government and the First Secretary of State, which was published last night, urging the Electoral Commission to examine the matter. That letter makes it explicit that

“spending limits on parties and candidates are too high, and ought to be reduced”.

It asks the commission to provide recommendations to the Government by July 2027 at the latest.

I am pleased that the Government have heard the call from Members right across the House from the many different parties represented here who have supported my new clause. I am really grateful to the Members who supported it. As the Government have made that request to the Electoral Commission clear, I will not push for a vote on my new clause, but I really want to see progress. The Electoral Commission now has to work speedily on a lowered limit for campaign spend, to stop this arms race. That message has come clearly from this House, and the commission needs to act on it now.

In my remaining remarks, I want to urge the Government to move at pace on the further risks to UK democracy to which so many speakers have referred, many of which are covered by the amendments tabled by my hon. Friends the Members for Nuneaton (Jodie Gosling) and for Milton Keynes Central (Emily Darlington). As others have said, we must ensure greater transparency on targeted online political advertising, including that facilitated through artificial intelligence, and on additional measures on third-party campaigning and political funding.

The stakes really could not be higher, as so many have said. The UK Extremism and Democratic Resilience Centre has recently shown that online platforms and AI-generated content are playing a powerful role in amplifying not just divisive narratives, but extremist narratives and conspiracy theories. This has led to a disturbing increase in the size of the still small, but now much more consequential, minority that accepts political violence. Over one in 10 people in our country now say that they could accept political violence. There has also been an increase in those who reject at least some democratic norms, with almost a third of people saying that we should ignore democratic institutions and rules if they get in the way of change. In the centre’s words,

“hostile states and domestic extremists are deliberately accelerating these fractures to further destabilise Britain”.

The Bill and the Government’s amendments will help, but they do not yet meet the full scale of this challenge. The Government have to engage in the kind of protection and promotion of democracy that they successfully urge many other nations to do when under the threat of foreign interference. Extremist narratives have to be contested and online platforms regulated and reformed, so while welcoming the Bill overall, I will continue to push for change so that we can really ensure that we have what is the right of every citizen in our country: free and fair elections.

[John McDonnell (Hayes and Harlington) (Lab)]

Listening to the debate, I think part of the problem is that the Bill is being brought forward in an enormous transitional period. Some of its original objectives might be being met within the legislation that we are proposing, but the debate has moved on since then. We also have to admit that the debate has moved on within the Labour party because the change of leadership. So in some instances, we might not be talking to this Bill; we might be debating what we want to see in the next Bill, which needs to be brought forward with some urgency, particularly because the general tenor of the debate is a recognition that we are in a dangerous political moment in our country and that we must address the threats that are creating that moment.

I can understand the Government not being willing to accept several of today’s amendments, and there might not be time enough when the Bill goes to the other place to ensure that those amendments are shaped in such a way that they can be legislated for quickly. However, I would urge a rethink about the next Bill, which should certainly be brought forward before the end of the year to take into account this whole range of measures, particularly those that have been excluded from the debate overall because of the title of the Bill, which is, to be frank, a bit shaming for the House’s political debate.

I have tabled two very straightforward new clauses. I thought they were in the tenor of the original Bill, and I was surprised when they were not included. In fact, the current Lord Chancellor moved similar amendments in 2022. They relate to the Bill’s aims to bring England and Northern Ireland into line with the reforms taking place in Scotland around the age limit of 16. Also, I thought that we were going to ensure that the franchise was the same.

As people know, Scotland and Wales lowered the voting age, but they also extended the franchise to all residents. At the moment, because we base voting on citizenship, 4.4 million residents cannot vote in a general election in our country, and 1.2 million in England and Northern Ireland cannot vote in any election. That means that 16,300 people in my constituency have no vote whatsoever—people who live here and work here. Most pay their taxes, and fund our public services, but they are locked out of the democratic system.

My new clauses argue that, as in Scotland and Wales, voting should be based on residence rather than citizenship. Some may argue that there should be some investment of time, and other countries designate a timescale for residency. In New Zealand, for example, 12 months’ residency allows someone to vote. New clause 36 deals with local elections, and would permit those who have permission to enter or stay in the UK to vote in elections.

New clause 35 would extend that to general elections for those with settled status—that is an accepted term in many of our pieces of legislation—and indefinite leave to remain. It is an amendment that we have supported in the past. It would mean a simpler system of registration, and it would increase voter participation. Above all else, it would bring about a greater sense of social cohesion: people who live in our society yet have no say in our society would be brought into the political system.

We have had the debate about different languages and all the rest—to be honest, I wish we had never got rid of the Latin mass, but that is another thing, and might offend the other side on that issue—but all my new clauses try to do is recognise the reality of our society. The reality is that our society is a diverse community. This legislation could recognise that diversity, and ensure that everyone has a stake in our society and a democratic right to vote.

[Peter Lamb]

May I express my delight at my hon. Friend the Member for Vauxhall and Camberwell Green (Florence Eshalomi) making it on to the Front Bench? She is going to do a fantastic job.

I am grateful for the opportunity to speak in this debate. I had 14 years in local government, and I was very involved in electoral administration in my area. So much of what we are talking about today involves the Elections Act. I was appointed to chair the Local Government Association working group that went through it, which was a cross-party group. By the end, we came up with a consensus viewpoint: based on the evidence and expert testimony we received, very little of that Act was thought to make much sense. I will not insult Conservative Members by saying that it was a nakedly political attempt to rig the electoral system to their benefit, but if they were going make a nakedly political attempt to rig the electoral system to their benefit, it would have looked exactly like the Elections Act.

The basis on which they argued the case at the time was personation. It is vanishingly rare that people actually turn up and try and pretend to be anyone else at a polling station. I will deal with that in just a second, but I must respond to the remarks of the shadow Secretary of State, the hon. Member for Weald of Kent (Katie Lam), at the start of this debate. We knew that the Opposition would say something to try to explain why widening the franchise or making it easier for people to register to vote was a bad idea, but I was not expecting that. It was a good thing we had free hearing tests in Parliament just before recess, but I did not need one: the dog whistle across the Chamber was so loud that it was apparent to all of us.

When Reform eventually turned up to say something, it was the exact same talking points. Conservative Members will not rebuild their party by aping the Reform party. Parties have had this issue time and again; what they are doing might play well within their own ranks, but it will not rebuild their party with the country. Although I have never voted for the Conservative party, I know that there are many moderate Conservatives who must feel a great deal of shame at what is happening to their party, which is driving towards the right and away from common-sense positions.

Personation is vanishingly rare in our system. The reality is that someone would need to know that a seat was on an absolute knife edge to make it work at all. They could not do it as a single person going around all the polling stations—they would need hundreds of people to go around with them. It could not be rigged in a way that would not leak out; they would run into someone in the process. They would need decades of marked registers, which are available to purchase only for six months after an election. Someone would need so many people and to run such a well organised campaign, and even then, they could just get unlucky in the process. I can confidently say that personation has never changed the result of any national election, and it is very unlikely that it has affected a local seat.

What has caused a real problem—personation is not a real-world problem—is foreign interference in our political system. We know there are people who we may soon be at war with who are trying to intervene directly in our elections. We know that questionable money is a problem. Frankly, Russia was pretty happy to give the Conservatives money at one point. We know that tens of thousands of people have been turned away from polling stations since the introduction of voter ID. We know that millions of people are not registered. One in seven eligible voters is not registered in our system, and individual voter registration helped to make that the case. Disenfranchisement in our system is an absolute travesty, and this Bill gives control back to the British public by re-enfranchising them.