Representation of the People Bill

Lord Bailey of Paddington Excerpts

2nd reading
Monday 14th September 2026 Lords Chamber

[Lord Bailey of Paddington (Con)]

My Lords, the Bill asks us to strengthen public confidence in democracy and tighten the rules governing political donations, particularly money coming from overseas. Those are worthy objectives, but if that is the principle—that large donations may not purchase political influence—why does the Government’s scrutiny appear to stop at the water?

In the run-up to the 2024 general election, trade unions contributed approximately £5.6 million to the Labour Party. Separately, the Labour Party’s own records show that £4.9 million was received in affiliation income in 2024. Labour itself lists 11 affiliated unions. This financial relationship is not one-way. The latest Cabinet Office returns record nearly £90 million in public sector facility time costs during 2024-25. That is the cost of public employees receiving paid time to undertake trade union activities. It is not a direct government grant to the unions, as much of the work may well be legitimate and constructive. Nevertheless, it represents a substantial taxpayer-funded resource and belongs in the transparency debate.

We therefore have a curious circle: the trade unions help finance the Labour Party, the Labour Party forms the Government, the Government negotiate public sector pay and employment rights with those unions, and public bodies fund the facility time supporting those unions’ activities. What safeguards govern this relationship? What access do affiliated unions have to Ministers and officials? Are their meetings, representations and policy demands disclosed? Why should individual overseas donors face a £100,000 limit, while a domestic institutional donor can contribute millions and occupy a formal place within the governing party structure? Unions represent millions of workers and should be heard, but a Bill that claims to defend democratic integrity must apply one consistent principle: money must not buy privileged access, whoever provides the money.

On the vote for under-18s, 16 year-olds are at a point in their life that is very busy. They have family and school expectations, and they are trying to form a life and a personality. So, we need to think very carefully about putting the vote on top of that. NHS figures show that almost a quarter of 17 year-olds and 18 year-olds are dealing with some kind of mental distress.

Of course, being allowed to vote does not cause you mental distress. I would not try to suggest that; it would be irresponsible. But putting our children in a politically charged schooling system could. It will add to that pressure. For a very long time, teachers have been reluctant to teach civic and political goings-on for fear of being accused of indoctrinating young people. If that happens now, when every single political party has a stake in the outcome of that conversation, you will turn that professional anxiety into a full-on electoral scandal. There will be lots of complaining from all sides of this House about what goes on in schools.

We also have to bear in mind that those young people would now be in an educational system that would be asking their teachers to answer questions about politics. It would put pressure on them to not say the wrong thing, and there would be peer pressure to make sure they are in the right group. It could pull teachers into conversations that they do not really want to have, because there would be no way of answering without coming down on somebody’s side politically.

So we should not rush to change the rules to vote at 16, telling ourselves that we know that young people can have a political view. Of course they can: I have been a youth and community worker for over 35 years and I have worked with many young people who definitely have the wherewithal to have a political view. That is not the question. The question here is: is it right to pass on a solemn civic duty to children at a time when they are desperately trying to form who they will be going forward? I think it is the wrong thing to do.

The evidence internationally is very weak to suggest that it boosts participation anyway. Before we leap to that, we should probably have a check. If this is going to happen, the Government need to make sure that whoever provides this education has strong and visible safeguards and that there is a consensus about the civic education we give to those young people, or we will just make sure that any organisation involved in that conversation will now be exposed to the full force of our politics. I do not know whether your Lordships have met anybody in politics, but they can be rather insistent about the fact that they are right.

Representation of the People Bill

Lord Bailey of Paddington Excerpts

Committee stage
Monday 2nd November 2026 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, it is a great pleasure to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Lister, and to speak to my Clause 2 stand part notice, which goes further than the noble Baroness’s amendment but is headed in the same direction.

It is no secret that Green Party policy is that all those held in detention in prisons should be given the vote unless that is excluded by reason of electoral fraud or similar—or if a judge has decided that they should not be able to exercise their vote. However, that is not what we are addressing here. We are talking about a small, important and particularly vulnerable group of young people. Like the noble Baroness, Lady Lister, I have been informed in what I am about to say by the penal reform charity Unlock. This addresses how Clause 2 risks further alienating and marginalising an already excluded group of young people from politics and society in a way that is not just morally wrong but likely to be counterproductive.

I have seen a letter from the Minister in the other place saying that the Government’s view is that those convicted of a crime and serving a sentence in custody should be unable to vote. As the noble Baroness, Lady Lister, said, this is creating a real mess in secure children’s homes. More than this, my argument is that we are talking about children whom we want to include, and we want them to see themselves as part of society, as having a stake in society.

We are not talking about an issue that is going to have any significant impact on the outcome of elections. Up to March 2025, 610 children in England and Wales were covered by this clause. There are equalities issues here, because minoritised communities are significantly overrepresented among those children, as are care-experienced children. Hundreds of young people are being told that one more way that they cannot participate in society while their peers can is in respect of voting.

This will affect the way they feel about their society—whether they feel valued or listened to, rather than being abandoned and judged. I note that what I have just said is based on the testimony of lived experience from people who have been through youth detention. I am very strongly of the view that we need a world where everyone makes politics about what they do, not have done to them, and these are young people who have had lots of politics done to them. These are young people who have been victims of political decisions, such as austerity, where others have put them in a situation where, in many cases, they have fallen through the cracks in our society.

Having spoken to my clause 2 stand part notice, I will restrain myself from engaging at length with the other amendments in this group, but I will just very briefly note that it is interesting that, in the Representation of the People Act 1969, the extension of votes to 18—the first in the world—was generally uncontroversial and had broad cross-party support. Interestingly, it was thought at the time that it might actually slightly advantage the Conservative Party; how the world has changed.

None the less, I want to pick up a point made by the noble Baroness, Lady Coffey, who said that 16 and 17 year-olds are more likely to vote than 18 and 19 year-olds, and that is the evidence that we have from other places. But we also have evidence that people who vote in their first election are more likely to keep voting, so we are actually engaging people at a point when they are more ready to be engaged, and that is something that will bear impacts decades into the future.

I also want to point to the Scottish Youth Parliament, which has been a leader in calling for equality of votes at 16 and 17, which, of course, they have enjoyed in Scotland for some time. I have to share a little story from the 2014 referendum. I remember hearing a BBC Radio 4 presenter on the streets of Edinburgh saying, “I am standing with 16 and 17 year-olds, and they are really informed and engaged”. The surprised tone in his voice said a lot more about the reporter than it said about the 16 and 17 year-olds.

Finally, I am afraid I do not really follow the arguments of the noble Lord, Lord Udny-Lister, regarding Amendment 33, which proposes an

“Assessment of susceptibility of 16 and 17 years old to election-related disinformation and foreign interference”.

The noble Lord said he did not actually think that 16 and 17 year-olds were more vulnerable, so I do not really understand the argument for that amendment. But beyond that, I have absolutely no doubt that, if one did such a study, we would find there are an awful lot of people around the average age of your Lordships’ House who are terribly vulnerable and definitely need some education to reduce their susceptibility.

[Lord Bailey of Paddington (Con)]

My Lords, I support Amendment 1. Just to pick up on the last statement that was made, the reason that young people are more susceptible to malicious actors is that they spend significantly more time online. It is a much bigger source of their news, and they pay far more attention to it than people who are older who normally have a broader reading palette and tend to read more from official sources, such as newspapers and the like. Having been a youth worker for over 35 years, I know that the young people I work with exclusively read about the world online. If you want to hide something from them, I suggest you put it in the Times, because they will never find it.

I support Amendment 1 because I do not think we should be using the ballot box as an engagement scheme for young people. This policy relies largely on an education piece, and it looks like the Government have put the cart before the horse. Surely, you should do the education piece before you give the added power—the new choice that young people would have.

This is not about whether I believe young people can have an opinion. I have been a youth worker for well over 35 years, and I have been at the wrong end of young people’s opinions and at the right end. I certainly know they can have that opinion but look what we are doing—the Government’s risk assessment is almost non-existent. They are about to turn school, the place that is safest for minors, into a political battleground. School is the safest place, particularly if you come from a poor community and particularly if your family is suffering. You go to school to be safe. Peer pressure in school is a very real thing. If you are going to expose our 16 and 17 year-olds to political peer pressure, you had better see what the effects of that are before, not after, you do that.