King’s Speech

Lord Carter of Haslemere Excerpts

Monday 18th May 2026 Lords Chamber

[Lord Carter of Haslemere (CB)]

My Lords, I will focus on the Representation of the People Bill, which seeks to protect our democracy. What is more important than that? I declare an interest, since I have been liaising with and advising the charity Spotlight on Corruption.

There is much to commend in the Representation of the People Bill, but the question is whether it goes far enough in certain respects, particularly given the febrile political landscape we now see, with more political parties seeking opportunities for power or a share of it. The temptation, therefore, by unscrupulous actors to give a fiscal advantage to a particular party by bending or circumventing the electoral rules on political donations and spending has never been greater. The Government are taking various measures to clamp down on abuse but, once the Bill reaches this House, I will be testing whether these measures should be strengthened in certain respects—for example, as regards foreign money finding its way into ostensibly permissible donations from donors in the UK, the amount of money that can be donated by each donor, and the limits on political parties’ spending.

There is, however, a quite separate urgency arising from the proposal to give the vote to 16 year-olds from 2028, which is whether young people have the necessary knowledge that they themselves have stated they want—and need—about our constitution, Parliament, the rule of law, the differences between the political parties and so on, to help them decide how to use their vote. Yes, some of this is mentioned in guidance on what citizenship education should cover in the national curriculum at key stages 3 and 4, and the Government have responded to Becky Francis’s review of the curriculum by saying that they will extend aspects of this to key stages 1 and 2. This is good but does not go nearly far enough.

We know from the House of Lords Liaison Committee in 2022 that the teaching of citizenship has been badly neglected. This is confirmed by a recent study by London Metropolitan University of 14 and 15 year-olds in 120 schools, which showed that many of them have no real idea of what British political parties stand for, or even what a constituency is. The Liaison Committee said there was a lack of teacher expertise to make citizenship education in our schools meaningful. There should be at least one teacher trained in civic and constitutional education in every primary and secondary school.

I would add that giving 16 year-olds the vote means that the current guidance on the content of citizenship education in the national curriculum must be given a statutory mandate that requires a programme of civic and constitutional education, including education in domestic and international human rights, and the balance to be struck between such rights and individual responsibilities. This was recommended by Sir Peter Gross in his 2022 review of the Human Rights Act, and it has never been so important, given the starkly different views between our parties, for example on our membership of the ECHR. Young people need to be taught the basic facts so that they can make up their own minds and cast their vote accordingly.

In conclusion, the late and greatly missed Lord Harries of Pentregarth introduced a Private Member’s Bill in July 2024 that highlighted the importance of citizenship values, but without ultimate success. I hope we can do better in this new Session. One opportunity might be the Private Member’s Bill on citizenship education that I have been fortunate to secure in the ballot. This would require our young people to be taught on all these issues by trained and impartial teachers, so as to make their vote at 16 more meaningful for them.