Representation of the People Bill

Lord Hayward Excerpts

2nd reading
Monday 14th September 2026 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hayward (Con)]

My Lords, before I turn to the Bill, I thank the Minister for the action that she has taken in relation to another matter. I spoke on the duty of candour in relation to the Hillsborough Bill and I had been pursuing for three years the briefing given to the Minister by officials. At no stage was anybody willing to allow me to discuss it with either the Minister or officials. Within one week of me raising it on the Floor of this House, the Minister has taken the action and I have had a conversation with officials. I would like to put on record my appreciation to the Minister for the action that she has taken. Whether we agree in the end or not is another matter. I also take the opportunity to thank the Minister for her involvement with many Members of this House. In my case, she rang me yesterday for a discussion about aspects of the Bill and I greatly appreciate that.

There are two broad comments I will make about the Bill. One is, I am afraid, that it is far too long. I made the point previously that legislation on electoral law should have been consolidated years ago, and it should be consolidated now. This is a missed opportunity.

That leads me on to my second point about the general debate. I am not talking here about disagreements in relation to policy: ages of voting or whatever it may happen to be. There have been a number of contributions this afternoon where people have said, “We’ll need to change this urgently, next year or the year after”. They have come from all sides of the House. My criticism of this Bill is that it has come at the wrong time, because many aspects of donations or other matters have not been carefully enough considered to encompass the whole range of issues, whether it be donations, subscriptions, access through cryptocurrencies or the like. Those are two broad comments.

I will now touch on two questions of detail. There are elements in the Bill which, to be honest, are utterly unnecessary. They appear to have been drafted because returning officers and councils have come to disagreements, and I will, solely at this point, identify one classic case. I am referring to Clause 32(3)(a), which says

“for ‘an officer’ substitute ‘a senior officer’”.

Now, I ask your Lordships: is that an indication that officials in a council could not agree? You should knock their heads together—it should not be whole clauses in a Bill. There are other more substantial examples that I could give and will give in Committee.

The other aspect to which I think there has been virtually no reference today is the impact assessment. It is a very lengthy document. To be honest, it is a statement of every reason why you should support the Government’s decision. It does not consider alternatives. The noble Lord, Lord Rennard, and I will disagree on many things in relation to registration, but it does not address the alternatives which are available. It just says, “We have decided this, and this is how we are going to do it”.

Associated with that, many of the costings in the impact assessment are barely credible. I will draw attention to just two. One is on page 59. The noble Baroness, Lady Prashar, made reference to the need to educate people and communicate well. The Electoral Commission has put its costs at £39.8 million as a central estimate on an annual basis. The rest of the national costs are supposed to be just over £40 million. Is it credible that if the Electoral Commission reckoned its costs are going to be a figure, the cost to the whole of the rest of the nation is going to be almost exactly the same figure? The reason I have doubts about that example—but I could cite any number of them because I was sad enough to spend the Summer Recess reading the impact assessment—is paragraph 174 on page 61, which says:

“There is also an additional resource implication arising from the collaborative development of this policy, with staff time from other government departments, principally DfE ... There is also a potential impact on education staff. However, these contributions are not considered significant in cost terms and have therefore not been monetised”.


Anybody who believes that they cannot be monetised and should not be monetised is stretching credibility beyond belief.

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[Lord Rooker (Lab)]

My Lords, I spoke for less than a minute on Second Reading and therefore I did not have an opportunity to congratulate my noble friend Lord Macintosh of Eastwood on his very powerful maiden speech. My purpose with this amendment is exactly the same as the one on the public accountability Bill: to strengthen the role of the elected Members of the Commons. I will make a couple of general points and then come to this Bill.

In the Commons, Second Readings are all effectively guillotined. It is called the programme Motion and it affects all Bills. The effect is that the Government always want to boast about the numbers of Bills, which is done at the expense of scrutiny of Bills, so the Bills arrive in your Lordships’ House as a result of inadequate scrutiny. We end up sending more amendments back to the Commons than would otherwise be the case. Then, in the Commons, the Government—it is only one Government in both Houses—blame the extra work for elected Members in the Commons on the upper House abusing its position, leading to calls for reform. Even when we return amendments to the elected Members, they are limited in the time they can use due to the original programme Motion. My view is that elected Members need more time for scrutiny. The Government have to return to Parliament some of the power that they have taken away with the programme Motions designed to fit in more Bills rather than better Bills. Asking for a list from the Government of what they have not allowed to be scrutinised puts the buck back where it belongs.

On this Bill, on 2 September the Commons dealt with Report and Third Reading. They had five hours during which there was debate and Divisions, on which I do not comment. Then the programme Motion from 2 March took over and the Government’s 15 new clauses and six schedules occupying 72 columns of Commons Hansard were approved on the nod—no debate, no speech, no vote. One of those new schedules—in the Commons it was called Schedule 8 and it has now turned up in the Bill as Schedule 12—is 19 pages of the Bill.

We are a revising Chamber. We need to know what we are revising, because in this case you cannot identify from the Bill any of the changes passed on the nod. They are dispersed throughout the Bill and the numbers have changed. They could, for example, be italicised. We would not need a list then. The Bill would show us that these were the bits on the programme Motion passed on the nod. The only way at the moment is via Commons Hansard, which of course is a bit unsatisfactory. We should have an official list from the Government of what the Commons did not have time to scrutinise. That is what it is all about. We cannot identify in the Bill the part that we are not revising but scrutinising for the first time because nobody else has scrutinised it.

We are being taken for Charlies, as it were, because we get the blame later on. I venture to say that there will be a lot of amendments to this Bill. In a few months, when the rows start about what has been sent down there, I want the audit trail complete. In a way, that is why I have raised this amendment.

[Lord Hayward (Con)]

My Lords, I strongly support what the noble Lord, Lord Rooker, has just said. He has identified a problem. It is not new. It has evolved over a period of decades, but it is a real problem that this Chamber is facing now. I strongly support the detail outlined by the noble Lord, Lord Rooker, which we face and which the Commons has not addressed.

[Lord Pack (LD)]

My Lords, conscious of the time, I will very briefly say only that I fully agree with both noble Lords, Lord Rooker and Lord Hayward. Were what is being proposed what we were used to having, we would think, of course, it is completely obvious that we would never abolish the provision of such straightforward information that would help us do our job better, so I very much commend the proposal of the noble Lord, Lord Rooker.

Representation of the People Bill

Lord Hayward Excerpts

Committee stage
Monday 2nd November 2026 Lords Chamber

I must say that the noble Baroness, Lady Fox, produced in passing a wonderful image of the average adult voter conducting independent research on political issues. I am not sure that I have met too many voters while canvassing who have been conducting independent research in detail themselves. Let us not overemphasise how wonderful our electorate is. However, the purpose of the Bill is to encourage the practice and habit of voting as a lifetime exercise for the young, to strengthen the voice of younger generations in our ageing society and to build a more active democracy, and for all those reasons we on these Benches support it.

[Lord Hayward (Con)]

My Lords, before I touch on one or two other things, I just say to my noble friend—I do refer to him as my noble friend—Lord Wallace that I think he meant “residents” rather than “inmates” when he was referring to care homes.

I do not intend to cover ground which has been covered by a large number of other people, but my noble friend Lord Wallace also touched on the question of changing the franchise. The noble Baroness, Lady Bennett, is not in her place at the moment, but my noble friend was absolutely clear about the historical analogies. I was one of the people who fell within that range of the 1969-70 Act in terms of implementation, and there was no question about it: it was not broadly supported by the Conservative Party because it thought it would benefit from it, and I have a very clear recollection because I fell within that age group.

One or two important issues have been touched on, one of which is Northern Ireland. I have every sympathy with noble colleagues from different Benches who have referred to the implications of what is not an equality of power of vote, and that needs to be carefully considered. However, I was also impressed by the comments of the noble Baroness, Lady Lister, about a category of people that is very small but which needs to be looked at incredibly carefully. A very close friend of mine is deeply involved in that community, and we have to remember that 40% of all the adult inmates in prison in this country come from care homes. It is a difficult task to deal with, and we therefore need to address the sorts of issues that the noble Baroness, Lady Lister, raised.

I take the point that the noble Lord, Lord Murphy of Torfaen, made, that this was in the manifesto. However, the trouble with the Bill is that very little else was in the manifesto. I have said to both the current Minister and to the noble Lord, Lord Lemos, that the Bill would be far better if the Government stuck to those parts of the legislation which appeared in the manifesto, rather than spending their time adding amendment after amendment and curtailing debate both in this House and the other House. If the Government came back with a Bill that dealt solely with manifesto matters, this House would have a far more coherent debate, and it would be logical and appropriate if it were considered on all sides on that basis.

I do not favour 16 and 17-year-olds having the vote. I could have cited many other examples of contradictions in our legislation, but they have been made over and over again, with the summary message being that what we are doing in the vast majority of cases is raising the age at which people should act in a certain way, whatever that action may happen to be.

In conclusion, I just make the observation that I am a former chief executive of the British Beer & Pub Association, and I will be quite happy to explain to my colleagues, who seem to think that 17 year-olds are not allowed to drink in pubs, that they are. However, that is for another date.

[Lord Gascoigne (Con)]

My Lords, cheers to that.

The noble Lord, Lord Wallace, said moments ago that we have been debating franchise extensions for 200 years. As one of the last speakers in a two-hour debate, I begin to know what that feels like.

I support a number of amendments in this group, but mainly Amendment 2 in the name of my noble friend Lady Coffey, and the noble Baroness, Lady Fox. Perhaps I come at this from a different point of view, and perhaps I am a lone voice on this side, in that I support the Government in lowering the voting age, and I congratulate them genuinely on doing this. However, like many others, both noble Baronesses have highlighted many inconsistencies, and I think the phrase “It’s a bit of a muddle” seems to be correct.

I wish to refer to an inconsistency that I think has not been mentioned, and which I have raised before in Home Office Questions: criminal sentencing and our differentiating between adult and juvenile at 18. I know that this is incredibly complex, as is always the case in the legalities involved in international agreements, but a recent horrific case—which I questioned the Minister about at the time—highlighted, at least to me, why we should look at whether the balance will now be right. Personally, I think it needs to change.

I say that because, if we ought to lower the voting age—and I think we should—with that right has to come a sense of responsibility; and with that right, I would argue, your role in society changes. We should properly and carefully go through these issues. It is not just a right-wing thing to say that; in fact, it is not a right-wing thing to say that. President John F Kennedy best communicated it when he said:

“Ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country”.


I pay tribute to the noble Lord, Lord Carter of Haslemere, who was in his place earlier, for his Private Member’s Bill, which referred to citizenship lessons for younger people.

I do not want to stray too much into what I think is covered in group six, but I want to refer to an issue that is dealt with in some amendments in this group, and which has been touched on already. My fear is that in lowering the voting age, we are implying that we have simply achieved our aims overnight without debating what it means: how to build national unity and to allow for some political discourse, and what being a citizen in modern Britain means. What are your rights and your responsibilities, and how can you play your part in our country?

The points made by the noble Lord, Lord Young, and the noble Baroness, Lady Fox, on Amendment 20 are valid too. Looking at the issues associated with social media should not be scorned by anyone. I am the proud father of two very young daughters, and, trust me, when I put them to bed every night, there is a growing list of things in my head that they will face as they grow up in Britain, and which fills me with fear. However, we should consider what it means for young people to be engaged and receive this information, and how it happens.

I repeat that I support the Government, and my concern is not with the principle but with the insinuation that we are treating votes at 16 as an end in itself. As a few people have said, the Bill will pass and we will feel able to congratulate ourselves and say, “Job’s a good ’un. Mission accomplished. Let’s move on”, saying nothing about some of the things that many people really want fixed and want the Government to get on and support. If we genuinely want to strengthen democratic participation, lowering the voting age should be accompanied by an understanding of what citizenship is and what playing a part in our free, liberal, democratic society means and entails. There should be greater clarity to help make the system work—a system which engenders active, proud and patriotic citizenship. Otherwise, my fear is that we risk making a constitutional change without addressing the reasons for making it, and, arguably, undermining it.

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[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government (Baroness Taylor of Stevenage) (Lab)]

My Lords, the Representation of the People Bill opens up participation and strengthens the integrity of our democracy, ensuring that all eligible citizens can exercise their right to vote. It introduces one of the biggest changes to the franchise in half a century, with the enfranchisement of 16 and 17 year-olds, and moves us towards more automated voter registration. It reinforces trust by closing down opportunities for those who would seek to undermine our democracy, with stronger political finance rules and better protections against harassment and intimidation.

It has been a great pleasure to listen to the debate this afternoon. It has been the House at its best: 19 or 20 speakers—I am not sure I wrote them all down—debating the first part of the Bill, and we have heard differing views from across the House and some very detailed scrutiny of some of the provisions in the Bill, which I welcome. I would say to the noble Lord, Lord Hayward, that I know the Bill has had some additions during its passage, but it was always the intention that we would take account of the Rycroft review and introduce some of its recommendations as the Bill progressed. Philip Rycroft did an outstanding job on reviewing some of the key issues, particularly around political finance.

[Lord Hayward (Con)]

I thank the Minister for that clarification, but how does she make those observations stack up with the observation made by the noble Lord, Lord Rooker, at the end of Second Reading and the comparison with the amount of time given in Committee for this Bill compared with the Elections Bill in 2022?

[Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)]

My noble friend Lord Rooker is raising the issue of scrutiny on every Bill. It is interesting that he put that process in place but has changed his mind. Scrutiny on all Bills is welcome. This is my sixth piece of legislation. I have welcomed the scrutiny that this House has brought to all those Bills. With this Bill, we knew there would be further additions during its passage. That is the point I was trying to make.

I turn first to Amendments 1 and 3 in the name of the noble Lord, Udny-Lister, and Amendment 2 in the names of the noble Baronesses, Lady Coffey and Lady Fox of Buckley. Our intended extension of the franchise will create consistency across the United Kingdom and ensure that young people have a voice at a local and a national level. But consistency is not the only or the most important reason for extending the vote to 16 and 17 year-olds. As I said at Second Reading—it has been repeated during this debate—the important question is not what else you can or cannot do at 16 but whether 16 is the right age to be able to vote. This Government are clear that the answer to that question is yes. We were elected on a commitment to make precisely this change.

We have heard many examples of things that you cannot do at 16—tongue piercing, gambling, purchasing knives, having tattoos or credit cards—and some points about criminal sentencing, which I hear with interest.

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I support my noble friend’s amendments. I think they are sensible. They do not resile from support for the concept of devolution, but they try to bring some coherence and commonality to our electoral systems in this country. That would be good, because people would then understand what they are voting for and would be more likely to vote and exercise their franchise. It seems common sense and sensible so to do. On that basis, I strongly support the amendment.

[Lord Hayward (Con)]

This is not intended to undermine the coherence of my noble friend’s overall argument, but, as a pedant alert, my noble friend said that the 50 states of the United States operate on the same electoral system. They do not. There are differences between a host of different states, in one form or another.

[Lord Jackson of Peterborough (Con)]

I bow to my noble friend’s greater knowledge. I was referring to national ballots. I understand that for rat-catcher, county sheriff and other roles there will be local differences, but, for the election of, for instance, a governor or members of the House of Representatives and the Senate, they are generally the same.

Representation of the People Bill

Lord Hayward Excerpts

Committee stage
Monday 2nd November 2026 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hayward (Con)]

My Lords, I shall follow on from my noble friend’s comments and pick up the question that the noble Baroness, Lady Royall, referred to earlier about double, if not treble, registration. The noble Baroness said that she hoped that all universities and academic centres will ensure that they have maximum registration of people resident in that town or city as voters. However, those people will have a home residence as well. Therefore, one is inflating the electoral roll in university cities to the disadvantage of those communities in other parts of the country that do not have university cities nearby.

The noble Lord, Lord Rennard, referred to boundary reviews and political advantage. I must admit that I enormously admire his comments about parliamentary boundaries in these circumstances. The places with high levels of student registration that will benefit under automatic registration are the big cities—the Londons, the Manchesters, the Birminghams. As he explained to his Lib Dem colleagues, come the next boundary review, there will be fewer constituencies in Somerset, Wiltshire, Dorset and other similar counties, such as Gloucestershire, a fair number of which, much to my chagrin, currently have rather large numbers of Liberal Democrat MPs.

I make the point quite seriously that, if one is going to include all those people who register for a second residence, one will be expanding the electoral rolls dramatically in London, Manchester and Birmingham to the disadvantage of the shire counties. I do not think that is an appropriate route to go down. There may be solutions where people register at their first home and their second residence is not included for, for example, parliamentary boundary revision, but we cannot have a position whereby large numbers of people are registered to the disadvantage of resident communities in neighbouring shire counties.

I make these comments on the basis that I have heard from a number of people, particularly the Liberal Democrats, that they want free and fair elections. Free elections are that people should be allowed to register to vote themselves—encouraged, yes, but they should have the freedom not to do so. The Bill goes through at inordinate length, saying, “Oh well, we’ll register everybody, and if you don’t want to be on the electoral roll you can deregister”. However, the process involved is pretty tortuous, and large numbers of people genuinely want to hide where they are for a whole series of reasons; I take, for example, abused women as a case in point. They are going to be on the electoral roll, and it will not be a case of, “We will take you off immediately”, because people will not know that they are on until they are notified that they are on.

That takes me to another point, which is that we have to register all these people so that we can improve turnout. Might it not be a good idea if politicians—and I include in that category noble Lords and those in the other Chamber—improved their reputation with the public at large so that those people want to turn out to vote?

Talking of which, the Government have a very good website where you can register to vote. I could walk out of this Chamber now and register immediately. People might wonder why I had nothing better to do, but on Saturday evening I actually went on that site. What astonished me was that 54 people had registered in the preceding few minutes. I challenge noble Lords to go on it on Christmas Day; they will be astonished by how many people register to vote on Christmas Day and Boxing Day. It is not that difficult.

My noble friend Lady Coffey referred just now to the fact that, in an election period, 2.8 million people registered to vote—it was just between 2.8 million and 2.9 million. The problem there was that some 40% of those people were already registered. One thing we have not done today is given enough credit to both the Public Bill Office here in the House of Lords, for the speed with which it has drafted and ordered our amendments, and the day-to-day work of returning officers around the country. I shall return to this subject at a later point, but those officers do a phenomenal job. If you have 2.8 million extra people registering to vote during an election, as I say, that seems to show it is not that difficult to do it—and, by the way, if all those students who are moving off to university are unable to go on to a website, I have a serious doubt about whether some of them should be at university in the first place.

The 40% of people who registered at the last election who were double-registered imposed an enormous burden on the returning officers. I have said over and over again that we should move to a read-only access process. In other words, if Robert Hayward wants to check whether he is on the electoral roll, he just goes on the website with his password and can check that he is there. Instead of that, because Governments of all persuasions have refused to introduce a read-only system, we impose a burden on returning officers which is unacceptable at the time of an election, when they are trying to administer all sorts of other things.

It is not difficult. We have been told by government and officials over and over again that it is an expensive and difficult process. Is it? Local authorities—

[Lord Fuller (Con)]

My noble friend has correctly highlighted how the process actually works if you go on the Government’s website, and so many of the district councils or other local councils which are registration authorities have their own skin in that same machine. When you type in your name, date of birth and national insurance number, the system goes automatically to HMRC and the DWP to validate you before you have even pressed the button; they will validate you almost immediately. I think the point my noble friend is making, which is absolutely correct, is that having this unique identifier—the national insurance number or some other method that might be defined by regulations—gives an absolutely unambiguous way of determining whether you have a duplication.

[Lord Hayward (Con)]

I thank my noble friend for his intervention, which was slightly longer than I had hoped for, since I want to keep to my time. As I say, there is a system; we were told it is impossible, but what have the Northern Irish done? They introduced a read-only system and have done that themselves. It operates effectively in Northern Ireland without any problem.

These massive changes are, I believe, unnecessary—although, yes, they were advertised—and without great benefit. I will quote now from the impact assessment, to which I may return on another occasion. On page 113 it says that

“we assume that the completeness of registers will increase by 3 percentage points (from 85.9% to 88.9%) by the end of the 10-year … period”.

Are we going through all these changes for that?

In conclusion, I must pick up the noble Lord, Lord Rennard, on his comments about my support for automatic registration. I believed that I had made it absolutely clear that I support it for attainers, whatever age they may happen to be, because I want to introduce them to the democratic system. Thereafter, I do not support automatic registration for that very small gain.

[Lord Pack (LD)]

My Lords, we have heard two interesting contrasting themes in this group. Some of us are very keen on automatic voter registration and want to see it introduced sooner and better. Others are nervous about the potential implications of automatic voter registration. I think it is worth starting with a recap of the reasons why something like automatic voter registration is required, particularly as the noble Lord, Lord Hayward, eloquently put the case against.

In part, it is because making good use of data is, when done well, an effective way of improving services and reducing administrative burdens. It is worth contrasting how a registration process would start under AVR with the current system. Several noble Lords have expressed concerns about how a database might result in registrations flowing from that data. However, under the current system anyone can request and be sent a paper form that they can fill in, without having to provide a national insurance number. That, under our existing system, is enough to start the process rolling for registration. If we are relying on the right, good-quality datasets, that is a much more secure starting point than anyone being able to request a paper form that anyone could fill in. It is also worth bearing in mind that the current system was very well described by one of the international experts in elections we are lucky to have in this country: Professor Toby James. He called it a

“Victorian system in need of repair”.

I think this Bill’s efforts to repair it are very welcome.

A good example of that is the surge in registration applications we typically have in the run-up to a general election. The Electoral Commission’s latest research estimated that between 7 million and 8 million people are either missing from the electoral register or registered at the wrong address. There is a substantial problem that needs addressing. We have heard that in the run-up to a general election there is a surge in applications; for example, last time, there was a surge of nearly 3 million. As was rightly pointed out, many of those were duplicate applications. When you strip those out from the numbers and compare that with the 7 million or 8 million missing and wrong addresses on the register, even the general election surge is not getting us that far towards fixing the problem.

Action is needed. Of course, we should not therefore think that any action is wise. But I hope, therefore, we will hear positive noises from the Government, particularly on Amendments 49, 50 and 52 from my noble friends Lord Rennard, Lord Wallace and Lady Thornhill, and the noble Baronesses, Lady Royall and Lady Bennett, all of which in different ways would improve the supply of data into the system.

My Amendment 58 would provide ward-level data, which I think is important, particularly with local government reorganisation increasing the size of many councils. Council-level data will not tell us how well or how badly registration systems are working in future; we need that data at ward level. We need it to understand how the system is working. We need it for researchers and experts to figure out whether the promises are being delivered. We need it for the campaigners, of all parties and none, who are trying to improve involvement and engagement with democracy, to be able to see where their efforts are most needed. We need it for media, and indeed for us politicians, to be able to understand how systems are working.

I turn to some of the other amendments in this group. On Amendment 8 from the noble Lord, Lord Fuller, I must admit I am not convinced by the case that the noble Lord made. Under the current system, with a voting age of 18, we register attainers with some aged 16 and most aged 17. The current system is that some people who are two years below the age for voting get registered as attainers. That is because of the use of the 1 December cut-off date and the following one-year window, which means that some people may be more than one year away and need to be in the records.

If we are changing 18 to 16, it seems absolutely sensible that 17 and 16 should, in turn, also get reduced by two years to 15 and 14. Therefore, with respect, the amendment from the noble Lord, Lord Fuller, would achieve the opposite of what he argued for. We have an existing system that is well established, that people are used to using and that works; by reducing the years across the board, we are essentially transferring the existing system over to the new voting age, rather than creating a new system that would not work with the 1 December window and following 12-month period.

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[Lord Hayward (Con)]

The Minister just referred to pilots. I ask this question out of genuine ignorance; I am not trying to make a point. Can he provide us with details about the level of accuracy that the Northern Ireland register now has, given that its process of read-only access has been in operation for some two years?

[Lord Wilson of Sedgefield (Lab)]

That is not a figure that I have to hand, to be fair. We will look into that and get back to the noble Lord.

I am pleased to reassure noble Lords that our plan is for secondary legislation on the direct registration pilots to be introduced quickly after the Bill comes into force. Under the Bill, there is a statutory requirement for the Electoral Commission to evaluate the effectiveness of the pilots after they have finished.

With that, I thank noble Lords for the spirit and intention of their amendments; I hope that this information reassures them.

Representation of the People Bill

Lord Hayward Excerpts

Committee stage
Wednesday 4th November 2026 Lords Chamber

[Lord Jackson of Peterborough (Con)]

Does my noble friend at least concede that this is not a prescriptive amendment but rather a probing amendment? Clause 4 allows electoral returning officers to disregard the obligation in emergencies or specific circumstances. It is not a draconian amendment forcing every ERO to do the same.

[Lord Hayward (Con)]

My Lords, I broadly support my noble friend Lord Fuller’s comments. Although I understand my noble friend Lord Jackson’s intervention, the key factor that one has to look at here, to which my noble friend Lord Fuller referred in passing, is the sheer number of parties that now operate on a regular basis in multi-member wards. I am looking at the noble Lord, Lord Pack. As a fellow pedant, I would be quite happy if he wishes to correct me, but if one looks back to the 2022 elections, I think there were only three wards in the whole of England that delivered three councillors from three different parties or independent parties. In 2026, there were three wards in Bradford alone that delivered three members from three different parties, let alone the rest of the country. I see the noble Lord nodding, so I feel reassured that I have been pedantic and accurate enough. That makes my point, which is that the probability for recounts has risen dramatically in the current political circumstances. Whether that continues is another matter, but we really should allow the EROs and local councils the capacity to decide, and decide sensibly, how they conduct the counts, so that there are not errors. At the moment, it is remarkable that there are relatively few errors in local government elections, even where there are recounts that have taken place many hours after the count has started, let alone when election day has begun, which is of course many hours before that.

Having said that in disagreement with my noble friend Lord Jackson on his amendment, it is important that I pick up on one or two other matters that he raised with which I agree. In our adjourned debate, he said that the objective of his amendment was to “to restore voters’ confidence” in the electoral process. That is key in everything that we do daily. In the complexity in which we now operate in this country, it is staggering that there are not more errors—I refer here to the Electoral Commission’s report on the elections in May which identified very few genuine errors—but it is still important that everything we do in this Bill should be aimed at ensuring or restoring, depending on which is necessary, public confidence in the electoral process. We should consider both public confidence and the candidates’ confidence.

My noble friend referred to amendments relating to influencing voters through religious messaging, to which the noble Baroness, Lady Thornhill, who is not in her place, gave strong support. I note that my noble friend Lord Pickles is in his place. He did a thorough report on a whole range of electoral issues, and this was addressed in the 2022 legislation. The noble Lord, Lord Walney, is in his place, and he has an amendment. Unfortunately, he was not here previously—these things happen—but I hope I am going down the path that he would have gone down, which the noble Baroness, Lady Thornhill, went down, in saying that there are clearly issues that need to be addressed and kept under consideration, and therefore they have to be reviewed on a regular basis to ensure that we are operating sensibly.

My apologies for the slight interruption, but I am going to have to rest on a crutch for the rest of my contribution.

I draw attention to the other comments that the noble Baroness, Lady Thornhill, made in relation to intimidation and crowds outside polling stations, which do nothing for confidence in the electoral process. I shall be returning to this issue later with my amendment on polling, issuing accreditation to tellers and the like, and the process of policing outside polling stations, but I just identify my support for what the noble Baroness, Lady Thornhill, referred to. I do not know how many Members of this place are aware that in the most recent parliamentary by-election, Holborn and St Pancras, there were so many crowds outside one polling station that the presiding officer asked for those people to be moved. In the end, the agent of the Green Party had to come down and tell the people to move because they were—in effect, being realistic—intimidating voters outside the polling station. This is a matter to which I shall return later, but I hope I have covered adequately at this stage the different issues that are raised by the amendments that we are considering in this group.

[Lord Jackson of Peterborough (Con)]

I beg the indulgence of the Committee to conclude my remarks on Amendment 129, which I had to curtail because of time on Monday. I want to refer to what my noble friend Lord Hayward said. I was very grateful for the comments of the noble Baroness, Lady Thornhill, about her lived experience in Watford in support of my amendment on undue influence.

Following the Pickles report—I am delighted that my noble friend is in his place—steps were taken in the Elections Act 2022 to strengthen the provision by “adding undue spiritual pressure”. The Electoral Commission’s review noted that

“unacceptable activity which many people consider electoral fraud—including pressure and intimidation both in the home and outside polling stations”,

which my noble friend Lord Hayward referred to,

“—may not be reported by victims”.

This is a valuable provision in law. It is important that it is regularly reviewed by Ministers to ensure that it is upheld properly and is up to date with the challenges of the UK’s changing demographic and religious landscape. Without regular reviews and monitoring, such provisions risk stagnating or becoming subtly and consistently subverted. The law means nothing if it is not enforced. The Pickles review and recent legislative changes reflect the importance of the provision for the UK’s electoral integrity. It is vital that it is not diminished.

I look forward to hearing the Minister’s response, and I especially look forward to hearing the contribution of the noble Lord, Lord Walney, who I know was not present on Monday, which was commented on from the Liberal Democrat Benches. I am sure he will explain that there was a perfectly good reason. His Amendment 136 and my Amendment 129 are very similar. I thank the Committee for its indulgence.

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[Lord Frost (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, I put my name to Amendment 124 in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Jackson. I want to explain why and bring one element into this debate that we have not had so far, which is the voters and how they perceive the electoral process in local elections. It is quite a recent development that counts have drifted into the next day—really only since the late 2000s in local elections. We seemed to manage the situation perfectly well before that. Certainly, elections have got more complicated since then, as many noble Lords have noted. Nevertheless, we seemed to do it, and it is not an inherently implausible suggestion that we might be able to do it again.

In UK elections there is a sense of drama, and that sense of drama is important: the idea that something significant is changing as a result of the ballot. The drama of democracy is quite important. That is more true at general elections, but it is something we should not lose in local elections, which have, in many ways, just as big an effect on people’s lives as general elections.

On Monday, the noble Baroness, Lady Thornhill, said:

“The main beneficiaries of immediate counts are not the voters”


but

“the campaigners, candidates and commentators”.—[Official Report, 2/11/26; col. 1452.]

That struck me as an interesting comment, because I am not sure I entirely agree with it. Speaking as somebody who has seen elections on TV and listened on the radio far more than I have actually participated in them, one of the things that has struck me with our longer counting process is that it allows much more opportunity for political parties, the party leadership and party-aligned commentators to spin the results. Long before we know what the actual results of a whole period of local elections are, we have media comment on them. We have party spokesmen telling us how to interpret the results long before we know what the actual results are.

One or two councils take on exaggerated significance because they come relatively early in the sequence and shape the narrative, and that suits political parties. I am not making a party-political point; I think it is true of all parties. It blurs what is important. It allows scope for commentary and spin, and the actual results of the process take longer to come out. By the time we know the results, what is more important is the nature of the commentary. So, there is an issue here. I am happy to give way.

[Lord Hayward (Con)]

My noble friend has not addressed the issue of the extra matters on which we now give local voters the opportunity to vote. He referred to 2000, but in the previous Conservative Government and before that, we introduced things such as environmental neighbourhood referenda, mayoral elections and police and crime commissioner elections. I am not going to delay the House by listing them all, but that is one of the reasons why, as was identified, you finish up with people being asked to vote on three, four or five different decisions on one day.

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[Lord Hayward (Con)]

I thank the Minister for her very generous comments at the start of her contribution. On the amendment from the noble Lord, Lord Pack, and the noble Baroness, Lady Thornhill, I omitted to observe that, when reviews of pilots take place, cost should be considered. If one is taking trials over a period of days, there are all sorts of attendant costs in addition to the question of whether the system worked.

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Moved by

[Lord Hayward]

13: Clause 7, page 10, line 23, leave out subsection (4)
Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment, and others in the name of Lord Hayward, seek to allow for a debate on the complexity of electoral law as affected by this Bill.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Hayward (Con)]

My Lords, I hope that I can please the Government Whip by indicating that, although I tabled a few amendments in relation to one particular aspect of this group, I could have tabled dozens of amendments on this subject. The subject was possibly best described by someone whom one might describe as a half-Irish lyricist who was brought up in inner south London. Four years ago, when he spoke to this Chamber, he said:

“I hope that, when we get a new Prime Minister, they will look at the whole issue of our electoral law”.—[Official Report, 15/7/22; col. 1709.]

That half-Irish lyricist from just south of the river is, of course, the noble Lord, Lord Kennedy, who made an observation on the Ballot Secrecy Bill. I gave him notice that I intended to quote from his speech on that occasion.

As noble Lords can see, the one amendment I have tabled to Clause 7, Amendment 13, runs to a whole page. We have to look at a string of legislation, much of which was introduced by my Government and previous Governments. It has been a clear fact for years that our electoral law is a complete mess and is in desperate need of consolidation into one Act. Page after page of this Bill just refers to one piece of legislation or another. I could understand it if it was dealing, as the noble Lord, Lord Deben, referred to on Monday, with devolved powers and therefore devolved legislation, but in far too many instances that is not the case. We have what I would best describe as a complete cacophony of electoral law.

If we think this is a mess, just imagine the sets of circumstances under which the returning officers have to operate. Whereas we can spread out our discussions on electoral law over a number of days, the returning officers are operating, particularly when they do not have notice of an election—for example, a general election—under extreme pressure. It really is astonishing that we have so few cases of an error being made in one form or another. Just think of what we will be coming on to talk about, whether it is postal votes, entitlement to vote from abroad, or registration of votes. Whatever it may happen to be, the poor returning officers are looking at this on an hour-by-hour, day-by-day basis. It is truly astonishing that we do not get petitions asking that matters do not go to the elections court and challenging the result in one form or another. I have paid credit to returning officers previously, but I will do so again on this occasion. As I say, there are many amendments that I could have put down here, but I chose not to.

On the other broad category of amendments, this is where we have a serious problem. I ask the Minister clearly to identify when she replies why on earth we need all these amendments saying that, instead of a registration officer we have a senior registration officer, or that we have to ensure that councils call in every possible officer to administer the elections. I will come back to that point in a minute.

We are talking here about devolution. One of the great mantras of this Government is that we must devolve power. The Prime Minister went to Lanarkshire the other week to tell the Scots that they are not devolving powers enough. The Minister herself, earlier this week, said:

“As we extend the devolution programme, this Government have made it very clear that we think that it should be people with skin in the game in their local area who take the key decisions about those areas. It is perfectly right that each of the Governments around the UK are free to do what they feel is right”.—[Official Report, 2/11/26; col. 1407.]


If we are devolving powers to local councils, how is it that clause after clause tells local councils what role and status the registration officer should hold within a local council? Birmingham City Council’s chief executive is paid £300,000 a year. Surely, he knows better than the Minister and officials in Whitehall who should be deputed to handle what aspect of elections. It is true throughout the land that we have highly paid chief executive officers, one after another; yet Whitehall seems to think it knows best how an election should be administered. I could understand it if a whole series of elections had gone wrong—but I refer again to the Electoral Commission’s report on general elections. There is not one reference to a general election going wrong; in local elections, there are one or two very minor exceptions. I genuinely believe that this is Whitehall dictating utterly unnecessarily to local councils who should handle what.

The bit of the Bill that astonishes me most is the clause stating that a council should require all its officers, whatever they may happen to be—this is implicit in the phrasing of the Bill—to be called on to administer elections. Are we going to insert in an education Bill that every employee of a council should be called on to help with education; or that every employee should be called on to help with environmental matters or hygiene matters, or whatever it may happen to be? There is no justification for this, given that we do not have a failed electoral system; we have an extremely challenging one, but we do not have a failed one. I see no reason whatever why there is a series of clauses in the Bill suggesting that Whitehall knows best.

In conclusion, I referred to the Prime Minister going to Lanarkshire to deliver his message on devolution. He should go to Marsham Street and deliver the same message in relation to this Bill. I beg to move.

[Lord Shamash (Lab)]

My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow my noble friend Lord Hayward. I woke up this morning thinking that I would love to quote Martin Luther King—that I had a dream. I will give a tiny bit of history. The Representation of the People Act 1983 is the core legislation that everything has sprung from. It was 18 years from 1983 to the creation in 2001 of the Electoral Commission, in which I, and maybe others here, was involved. It is now 43 years since the 1983 Act came into being, and there have been repeated amendments and additions: the Electoral Administration Act, the Elections Act, and so on. We are getting to the point where, to move election law, you need a pick-up truck. It is completely crackers that we are in this situation.

The most important thing, as mentioned by my noble friend Lord Hayward, is consolidation. I have discussed the possibility of that with others, including my noble friend the Minister, and it is a major undertaking. But there is a new kid on the block, and that is AI. We must get to a situation where we can do this, because it is impossible to operate. I should have declared my interest as a former election lawyer to the Labour Party for many years. Having to deal with this legislation is very difficult, and you can miss things out very easily. My plea to the Minister is to take this idea away to the officials, so that my dream can actually come true and we can have a bit of consolidation in this Act.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Hayward (Con)]

I thank the Minister for her comments in general, and I want to continue the conversation. I seek clarification on her last comments about the particular clause. Are her comments fully supported by both the Electoral Commission and the AEA on behalf of returning officers?

[Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)]

My understanding is that that the EC and the Association of Electoral Administrators were consulted on provisions in the Bill, but I will go back and check and answer the noble Lord in writing.

[Lord Hayward (Con)]

I have heard some interesting comments from the Minister and, as I indicated just now, I appreciate her offer to have further conversations in relation to the specific matters. I think we all knew that, on the question of consolidation, sadly, we are going to have to live with Encyclopaedia Britannica, whether it is on AI or any other system, for the future. It is grotesquely challenging for everybody who is involved. However, on that basis, I beg leave to withdraw my amendment.

Amendment 13 withdrawn.

Representation of the People Bill

Lord Hayward Excerpts

Committee stage
Wednesday 4th November 2026 Lords Chamber

[Lord Frost (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, I will briefly speak to Amendments 41 and 42 in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Lister. These amendments arguably ought to have been in the previous group, because they raise very similar questions. For reasons of time, I will not run equal and opposite arguments to the ones I just ran in the other group, but I want to make two points.

First, the effect of Amendments 41 and 42 would be once again to extend the franchise beyond citizens, but in a different way. Once you do that, you lose a firm grounding for the principle you are trying to apply. In this case, it would extend the franchise to anyone with EU settled status or anybody with indefinite leave to enter or remain, which is something that can be changed quite quickly. As we have seen this week, it is relatively easy to change ILR conditions. If these amendments ever came into force, you could have two citizens identical in every respect except that one was a care worker and one was not. Under the proposals announced this week, one would get the right to vote five years earlier than the other. I use that example to show how fluid the electorate can become if they are not soundly grounded on the objective fact of citizenship.

The other point that I want to make that is relevant here is one that my noble friend Lord Jackson made in the previous group. He alluded to the fact that residents do not necessarily have the same interests as citizens; they are not completely substitutable—citizenship means something. In local elections, that may be less so, but with national-level issues, it seems reasonable to think that residents will have different interests on certain important questions—on trade policy, trade links, visas and travel, for instance, or even on defence policy, and which country we choose to be allied with. Those are questions that citizenship and a commitment to a country affect. Of course, constitutional issues are the last one; the sense of legitimacy about a vote on the constitutional future of the country, or an aspect of it, really depends on whether you are legally committed to that country or merely living here. If we extend that situation and make it even more disconnected from citizenship than it already is, we risk undermining the legitimacy of some really quite important votes, because people can see that residents from the EU or elsewhere do not necessarily have the same interests and views as citizens. For those reasons, to come back to the point that I made earlier, citizenship is the only safe basis, and any attempt to extend it for any less satisfactory criterion is inevitably going to work out less well.

[Lord Hayward (Con)]

My Lords, I shall comment briefly on one or two aspects of the debate. I first make the observation that I have a group of clause stand part debates later on, and it was my error that probably caused the officials serious concern when briefing the Minister as to why I wanted to have stand part debates on Clauses 18, 19 and 20 but had not included Clause 17. I shall leave that aside.

I have two other observations. One is in relation to the comments and amendment from the noble Baroness, Lady Pinnock. I have strong sympathy with her on the size of local government wards and the burdens imposed on some councillors in some parts of the country and not imposed on others. There appears to be no logic behind the position that we have from the size of one council or another. I could understand it if one was talking about large geographical areas—that is a perfectly good reason for saying that a councillor has difficulty in serving an area. The noble Baroness, Lady Pinnock, referred to Kirklees; there are other metropolitan authorities where the number of voters per councillor is substantially less than in places such as Kirklees and Birmingham—the noble Baroness cited London. There is no logic to that whatever.

I shall not go on to the question of parliamentary boundaries, because I referred to it during a debate earlier. I merely make two other observations. One is that Clause 17, in new Section 12A(1)(c), refers to

“the person appears to the officer to be of voting age”.

I am not sure that I am happy with that phraseology. Equally, my noble friend Lord Jackson referred in passing to Christchurch, and I am not happy about that reference either, although the noble Lord, Lord Rennard, because of his experience in winning the by-election that crushed my candidacy, would probably get more pleasure out of the reference than I did.

[Lord Pack (LD)]

My Lords, I was about to say that I would pick up where the noble Lord, Lord Hayward, finished, but I shall skip over Christchurch and come to the points that my noble friend Lady Pinnock made about her amendment. There is one important knock-on factor that has not yet been raised in this debate. The age profile of the population varies significantly across the country and hence varies between parliamentary constituencies and councils, but it also varies significantly within many councils. There are in many councils areas of, on average, much older population and, on average, much younger population. Therefore, it is very plausible that the extension of the franchise to 16 and 17 year-olds will have a very unequal effect on different council wards around the country as to the electorate in those wards. Hence there is a knock-on effect on councillor workload, the ability of voters to get a good service from their councillor and that fundamental democratic principle of trying to give everybody an equal vote. There is also a knock-on in terms of, for example, the work of the ongoing local government boundary reviews, which needs to be tied into giving 16 and 17 year-olds the vote. I hope that we will be able to hear from the Minister what thought has been given to how that process will be properly integrated with the potential knock-ons from this Bill.

In turning to some of the other amendments in this group, I simply observe that Amendment 32 from the noble Lord, Lord Blunkett, would be an excellent amendment to a Bill that introduced democratic elections to this place, and I hope that we have a chance to debate such a Bill in the near future.

On Amendment 45 from the noble Lord, Lord Fuller, I simply observe that there are some datasets in which EU citizens and Commonwealth citizens absolutely are present, which may turn out to be usable depending on how the automatic voter registration pilots continue to play out. I would not quite describe that group of people as completely unmoored from the data that is available.

I perhaps slightly pre-empt Amendment 55 from the noble Baroness, Lady O’Neill, and the noble Lord, Lord Jamieson, because I think there is a useful point to highlight here. I can understand why that amendment seeks in particular to prioritise providing information in writing. It certainly was the case in the past that being written to was a gold-standard form of communication that, rightly, was often prioritised: if something was legally important, it had to be in writing. It is, however, reasonable to say that we have moved on quite a long way from that, and for two reasons. The first is, sadly, the decline in the reliability of postal delivery services, whether it is Royal Mail or alternative delivery mechanisms. Saying that you are sending a letter to somebody does not have the same guarantee that it used to. Secondly, conversely, people receive information in a wide variety of other ways now. I take the example of HMRC. Every time I log in to its website, to do my tax return or to check things, HMRC is keen to encourage me to switch to having legally required notices about any tax return I might have to do sent to me electronically in future. Many people choose that. I happen to find it more convenient to have those notices sent to me the old-fashioned way so that I can scribble on them and so on, so I have not opted in yet, although I am sure that the incessant notifications will wear me down at some point. That illustrates why it is important to have a range of options available for providing information. Embedding in legislation that it must be in writing is not necessarily the best course. It is a regular feature of secondary legislation at the moment. It is something for which I think the Government should be given credit that we regularly see SIs come to this place that require legal notification to be given in some way and the Government put in quite modern wording that provides flexibility to use modern forms of communication, where appropriate.

Finally, on the right to vote, the split of amendments between this group and the previous group illustrates the point that I made earlier that there is an issue that may be worth looking at, but it should be looked at in the round, as a whole. There is a risk that, if we always single out particular groups of people who we are worried might get registered when they should not be, or who we think maybe should not have the vote, it can give the impression of being unduly fearful of, or uncomfortable with, those groups if we are not at the same time looking at the full, rounded picture. That is much the better way to proceed.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Hayward (Con)]

Could the Minister further consider her comments on the point I raised? The Minister referred quite rightly to legislation that is now in effect that is some 40 or 50 years old. In those days, the vast majority of people did not have a passport, a driving licence with a picture on it or virtually any other form of proof of identity. Therefore “appearing to be” was a judgment that one made in those days. We have introduced voter ID and all the associated requirements with it. Given that this legislation intends to modernise and bring up to date our election law, could I please ask that the Minister give that further consideration?

[Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)]

I thank the noble Lord for those comments. I am always happy to give things further consideration. Under new Section 12B, the registration officer has to be certain that a person appears to be of voting age and entitled to be registered before they send the notice. Voter ID is another reassurance once they get to the polling station. I will reflect on his comments.

--- Later in debate ---

Moved by

[Lord Hayward]

40: After Clause 16, insert the following new Clause—
“Review of cost of duties to raise awareness and provide assistanceWithin 12 months of the day on which this Act is passed, the Secretary of State must publish a report on the costs to local authorities of the duties in sections 15 and 16 (duties to raise awareness and provide assistance).”Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment seeks to probe the estimates in the impact assessment of the Bill of the national costs of its provisions.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Hayward (Con)]

My Lords, this amendment is essentially about the operation of the impact assessment and the way in which it looks at costs in general. I have chosen one particular example, but I will come back with more detail about one or two other elements of the impact assessment overall.

Before I do so, I make a broad observation that I am interested in the inclusion of Clauses 15 and 16, which put in an obligation to educate in relation to 16 and 17 year-olds. When we pass legislation in relation to obligations imposed on teachers, doctors or large numbers of other groups, there are no similar clauses in legislation. I do not know whether it is going to be a new development that each time we pass a Bill, we finish up introducing a clause that says there must be an education of farmers, seagoers or whatever it may happen to be. I call into question whether these two clauses should actually be in the Bill.

My other observation is in relation to impact assessments in general. They started several decades ago. The original intention of impact assessments, as I understand it—I have looked back—was to look at the burdens imposed on particular groups. That was all they were intended to do. I say that as somebody who was for a period the chief executive of the British Beer & Pub Association and had to deal with the changes associated with the Licensing Act. Impact assessments nowadays seem not only a question of an assessment of costs and burdens but—and I say this in particular in relation to this impact assessment—a justification of every decision that has been taken. It is quite striking: you read paragraphs that explain why the Government have taken a decision in relation to whatever it may happen to be. That certainly was never the aim of the impact assessment.

Coming on to my major concern, I pray in aid the impact assessment that went with the Football Governance Bill. Only a few weeks ago, it was identified as being out by over 100%, in 12 months. I have gone through this impact assessment and find myself in exactly the same quandary. I do not understand how many of the figures have been arrived at. I therefore ask the Minister: did the same people who drew up the impact assessment for the that Bill draw up this impact assessment, or others who have operated to the same broad rules? There are explanations of the principles that they have followed—I have read every single line of the impact assessment—but if they are following the same rules that resulted in another impact assessment being out by over 100% in 12 months, the Treasury will have quite a surprise when it discovers the actual costs of this Bill.

The chart with the assessment of costs that I want to refer to is on page 62. It relates to the costs associated with the introduction of votes for 16 and 17 year-olds. We heard from my noble friend Lord Fuller on Monday about the information that he had received on the costs for local authorities in registering new voters. The other side of the costs, which we have heard about persistently today, is the obligation to educate. The noble Baronesses, Lady Royall and Lady Lister, the noble Lords, Lord Pack, Lord Rennard and Lord Wallace, and any number of other noble Lords have said that there needs to be much greater levels of education for this group—and there does. It is about ensuring that they are not just registered but fully aware, as has been identified on any number of occasions, of the issues on which they are ultimately being asked to vote.

I will quote one or two parts of the impact assessment. In relation to staffing costs, paragraph 122 of page 55 says:

“Extra staff may be needed to deal with the additional demand in some LAs”.


Which local authorities are not going to have the extra demand? I am talking here about both registration and education. Paragraph 160 on page 61 says:

“Wider staffing costs associated with the Votes at 16 policy have been excluded, in line with the treatment of MHCLG departmental staffing costs in this impact assessment”.


Paragraph 174 identifies a particular issue and then says:

“Therefore, this cost is not monetised”.


I do not have the IT capacity to go through the whole document and find out how many times it says that a cost is “not monetised”, but I do not have to look much further than paragraph 174; I just have to go to paragraph 178, where the phrase is used again:

“these contributions are not considered significant in cost terms and have therefore not been monetised”.

What are these costs in paragraph 174 that have not being monetised? It says:

“There is an additional resource implication arising from the collaborative development of this policy, with staff time from other government departments, principally DfE”—


which comes as no surprise, given the debates we have had—

contributing meaningfully to its design … There is also a potential impact on education staff”.

That means education staff in every single local authority across the country. Therefore, how on earth does one come back to “may” have implications for some local authorities?

There are many other examples that I could quote, but, in conclusion, I come to paragraph 166 on page 59 of the impact assessment. The Electoral Commission was asked to submit its assessment of its costs, and there is no question that it has very substantial costs. In the central scenario, these are given as £39.8 million. You might think that the Electoral Commission has certain work, but think of all these local authorities, government departments and registration officers. If the Electoral Commission has £39.8 million of extra costs, what have all the other government departments and local authorities got? The figure is given as a mere £48 million. It is almost the same as it is for the Electoral Commission. I was going to use a word that I would normally hear more on a rugby pitch than in the Chamber, but all I will say is that this impact assessment, in so many ways, is not credible. I beg to move.

[Lord Fuller (Con)]

My Lords, I have not spent as much time as my noble friend Lord Hayward going line by line through the impact assessment, but I have spent some time with text search trying to find the paragraphs that relate to the issues that have concerned me most as we have debated the Bill thus far. They are the attainers and the 16 to 18 year-olds. Because so much of it says “non-monetised”, I have made my own inquiries of one the more senior electoral registration officers in the country, who also happens to be a police area returning office, or PARO.

We have heard in the debate hitherto how many assumptions are made about what the powers may be by extending the franchise and also from auto-enrolment. There is going to be so much more hand work and so many more duplicate entries created automatically. There will be a need to de-duplicate the duplicates that have been created, for the best of reasons: that is just where the legislation is. There are so many moving parts.

I did not realise that the noble Lord was going to mention the figure of £48 million, but I want to dwell on the provisions for registering the attainers alone: those aged between 14 and 16 who the Bill proposes will come on to the register but who do not have a national insurance card or a gas bill, because their parents do that bit. They do not have a driving licence and may not have a passport. In effect they do not really exist to the state.

--- Later in debate ---

If I take £45,000 a year for the salary, on-costs—because national insurance is so much more expensive nowadays—training, computer licensing and all those other things, the registration of 14 to 15 year-olds alone will cost £90 million. That is twice the total impact assessment for all the other things put together. Then, we have automatic registration and all the assumptions. How is the electoral registration officer going to make these value judgments if there are people who are not really documented? So there is a big wedge of money there. There is so much still unknown, to be determined by secondary legislation.

[Lord Hayward (Con)]

I did not make reference to the question of automatic registration, but since my noble friend has encouraged me to do so, on page 101, improving registration is given as costing £5.2 million.

[Lord Fuller (Con)]

I think that would be characterised as the downpayment, but there we are.

So much is to be done by secondary legislation. I am not going to trespass too greatly on a future group, but when it comes to identification and bank cards, there are all sorts of unintended consequences. There are going to have to be huge changes in bank card systems if they are to be fit for purpose.

The noble Baroness, Lady Pinnock, who is not in her place, posited earlier that automatic registration and the duplicates may lead to more frequent boundary reviews. One thing is absolutely for sure: given the way the legislation is today, we are going to need duplicate and parallel IT systems, which will have to be reconciled, and that is going to be expensive. My focus has been on the 1.4 million attainers, but there are a further 1.4 million 16 to 18 year-olds, many of whom will also not have the documentary evidence.

I know that democracy has a cost. We live in a free society, and that costs money. But what we have not worked out are the costs in this impact assessment. The figure the noble Lord has referred to is just a downpayment; it is a drop in the ocean. Chances are, it is probably four times greater than that, and we should be told.

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[Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)]

My Lords, the provisions referred to by the noble Lord, Lord Hayward, are important to ensure that we encourage as many eligible young people as possible to participate in our democracy.

I will come on to the monitoring and evaluation in a moment, but will respond first to the noble Lord’s points about the impact assessment. All impact assessments produced by the Government are produced by departments in line with His Majesty’s Treasury’s investment guidance in the Green Book. We follow the rules set out in it. However, there have been a number of detailed questions raised about this impact assessment, so what would be most helpful at this stage of our debate is for me to write to noble Lords in response.

On local authority costs, as the noble Baroness will know only too well, and has probably lobbied on, as I have, where there are new burdens on local government then government has to respond by providing funding for those new burdens.

On the monitoring and evaluation of the Bill, our approach will comply with our published evaluation strategy, which is what we were referring to in the impact assessment. We will publish evaluation findings in a timely manner, consistent with our policy for the publication of research and government social research guidelines. That evaluation will include an assessment of the impacts of the reforms on electors, local authorities and others responsible for delivering elections; a process evaluation that will seek to examine how the reforms are implemented; and, as I referred to earlier, an economic evaluation to assess whether the benefits of the policies outweigh their costs.

These are difficult areas to address. Anyone who has tried to do it will know that net present social value is quite a difficult concept to evaluate in financial terms or to monetise, which is where some of the difficulty occurs. The appraisal of policies in the impact assessment relies heavily on qualitative evidence and non-monetised impacts, which do not get reflected in net present social value calculations. It is important that we get a clear picture and continue to look at the economic evaluation, which we will do.

The areas highlighted by the noble Lord will be covered by this monitoring work. I commit to write to Members on the specific financial questions they have raised this afternoon.

[Lord Hayward (Con)]

My Lords, I thank the Minister for her open response. One thing she referred to earlier that time did not allow me to comment on in my opening remarks was the fund; it is not referred to in the impact assessment, but she referred to it earlier. On that basis, I seek leave to withdraw my amendment.

Amendment 40 withdrawn.