Representation of the People Bill (First sitting)

Debate between Lloyd Hatton and Lewis Cocking

Committee stage
Wednesday 18th March 2026 Public Bill Committees

[Lewis Cocking]

Q May I briefly follow that up? Is it your opinion, then, that if we are going to have automatic voter registration, everyone should be automatically registered for the same general election?

Vijay Rangarajan: Yes; there should be some uniformity of registration across the UK and for other elections, or else a voter will be automatically registered for one election and have to manually register for another, which is a recipe for confusion and some nugatory work on their part. We would therefore like to see this in place soon. That does not mean that every voter will be on the register; they have the perfect right to refuse to be on it, and there are systems in place for that.

In some countries, officers will write to a voter, mostly to check the address is correct and to ensure accuracy. If a voter says, “I don’t want to be registered,” or, “I have good reasons”—say, domestic violence reasons—“for not wanting to be on the open register,” they can make that clear. So there are a number of checks built into this; it is not quite as simple as everyone automatically being on the register. This would remove a major barrier to eligible voters being able to exercise their democratic rights.

[Lloyd Hatton (South Dorset) (Lab)]

Q Good morning. The Bill rightly tries to tighten up our defences against the impact of overseas interference in our democratic process. That includes the measure in the Bill to limit company donations based on the company’s annual revenue.

I have a slight concern that that might leave the door ajar to the likes of Elon Musk making a donation to a British political party legitimately via a UK subsidiary company, for example. In the light of that, the Committee on Standards in Public Life suggested that the limit on donations from companies should be tied to their profit rather than their revenue. Which of the two would be a more effective way to stop the international financing of our political parties and democratic process?

Vijay Rangarajan: As I said, I think that profit drawn from the last couple of years of public accounts would be a better metric. It would very much help, because it would show that the company had generated enough taxable profit in the UK to be able to make a political donation. It would also give parties themselves more certainty that the money they are accepting is clearly permissible and above board. Again, it is quite easy to explain to people why that is the case.

As I said, some of the administration of this will need significant time to train party treasurers and all the associations in how to implement it, but we think that using profit as a metric would help.