Representation of the People Bill

Lord Jackson of Peterborough Excerpts

Committee stage
Monday 2nd November 2026 Lords Chamber

[Lord Jackson of Peterborough (Con)]

My Lords, I am pleased to have the opportunity to support the amendments in the name of my noble friend Lord Udny-Lister. I have a significant concern about the Government’s proposal, notwithstanding that it was in the manifesto—a manifesto, incidentally, supported by about 20% of the electorate, with the lowest turnout since 2001 and Labour polling at 33.7%, so one line in one manifesto needs to be taken within a broader context.

My concern is that a really robust case has not been made with real-world evidence. We are looking back to the halcyon days of the past. If young people—16 and 17 year-olds—were so concerned about being part of the franchise, then their close approximation, 18 to 24 year-olds, would have voted in significant numbers at the 2024 election. In fact, the turnout in that age group dropped from 47% to just 37%, so it was not actually a great vote-getter.

If you listened to the noble Lord, Lord Murphy of Torfaen, for whom I have a great deal of respect, you would believe that Wales was a hotbed of psephological excitement and exuberance. But in fact that is not the case: this May, barely 51% voted for the national Parliament of the proud Principality of Wales, and as little as 42% voted in 2011. So there has not been a significant change in the number of people taking part in the ballot.

The comments of my noble friend Lord Bailey of Paddington were interesting. In 1950, 84% of people turned out to vote. But it was a different world then. People were encouraged, principally by their families and their social background—it was often a battle between capital and labour—as well as by public meetings, newspapers and the radio, although obviously not television. My noble friend made the vital point that young people are sometimes deeply influenced by a monoculture of social media. We can have many debates about that, but it would be wrong and completely irresponsible to ignore the context in which 15, 16 and 17 year-olds are making important decisions about how they vote.

In the past, the number one determinant for how a woman would vote was how her father voted. I am not saying I support that, but that was a societal psephological fact in those days. We are in a different world now, one where people do not read national newspapers or watch terrestrial television news programmes. They are very much interested in what other similarly aged people are saying on social media, and that will be a factor.

The main point is consistency, as my noble friend Lady Coffey brought up. Lowering the age while other adult thresholds stay at 18 is incoherent; it does not make sense. My noble friend Lord Leigh of Hurley made some very important points, and I would be interested in the Minister’s comments about how what is good for the constituency Labour parties and the Labour NEC should be good for the franchise for young people as well. My noble friend Lord Udny-Lister made an important point. It seems incongruous and odd that you can vote in an election but not for someone who is the same age as you. That seems very strange. If you are given the franchise—the responsibility of choosing someone to represent you in Parliament—surely you should be able to vote for someone who is your age.

As for international comparisons, we have already heard that, in mature liberal democracies such as the US, Canada, Australia and New Zealand, they all set the voting age at 18. This reflects a widely accepted understanding of what adulthood is.

There is weak evidence on benefits. I have already talked about turnout, which has traditionally been very low, for many years, among 18 to 24 year-olds. That is a function of a wider democratic malaise about the faith and trust that young people have in politics and government. I fear that, in the absence of a coherent argument from the Government for why they are bringing this forward—other than out of psephological and electoral self-interest, in that they believe that thousands of young people will turn out and vote Labour—I cannot understand the evidential basis for this policy.

Public opinion does not support it either. The House of Commons Library notes that polling suggests that the public are unsupportive of lowering the voting age to 16. It is not just old or very old people—given where I am speaking, I will not define “old” or “very old” here in your Lordships’ Chamber—but all manner of people from 18 onwards who are, at the very best, lukewarm and in some cases hostile to these proposals.

We have talked about undue influence and interference, and my noble friend talked about foreign interference via the internet. I do not think it is wrong to focus on the issue of maturity. I know that there is not accepted definitive science about the development of the human brain among young people. Obviously, colloquially and anecdotally, one is told that people are fully formed—physically, mentally, emotionally and socially—at the age of 25, but I understand and concede that that will happen to different young people at different ages. I joined a political party at the age of 16, which made me rather an old weirdo, frankly—the noble Lord, Lord Rennard, would probably say that nothing much has changed. The fact is that I was atypical. Most people are not politically engaged and they get their information on political policies second hand, through hearsay and through close family and friendship groups.

I make one final point about Scotland and Wales, which are, of course, an integral and important part of our country. The fact that they have decided to go their own way, in increasing the franchise to 16 year-olds, does not mean that England should back into that. This is the sovereign Parliament of our unitary state—our one country—the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. It is for us in this Parliament to make the decision. I do not believe that our Front Bench will oppose the principle of this, but it is beholden on the Government, and disappointing that they have not done so, to bring forward a much more comprehensive, convincing and coherent argument for these proposals.

[Lord Fuller (Con)]

My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Rennard, posed a question: do we want another referendum? Of course we do not, because, in 2011, there was a referendum where we asked the people whether they wanted to fiddle the franchise and mess around with the voting system, and the people said no by a very large majority. All noble Lords need to recognise that that is not the way we want to go.

I certainly agreed with the noble Lord, Lord Young of Acton, when he proposed his amendment about social media—something I will return to later, in group 9. I will not go under the bonnet now, save to say that I think he omitted, in thinking about 16 year-olds, to consider the attainers who will need to prepare to vote on their 16th birthday but may not be 16 yet.

I associate myself with the comments of the noble Baroness, Lady Hoey, and my noble friend Lord Jackson, who has just spoken, about the muddle that we are in within our United Kingdom relating to the vote and to the franchise. The Bill ought to be the opportunity to bring an end to the hotchpotch of different arrangements in different parts of our United Kingdom. At Second Reading I spoke about the different systems. Clearly, there is first past the post, where the person who gets the most votes wins—easily explainable in the pub, although obviously there are no 16 year-olds there. There is the alternative vote, which now is just used for the Scottish Crofting Commission elections. There is the supplementary vote, with open and closed lists. The noble Lord, Lord Foulkes, who is not in his place, entertained us at Second Reading when he explained to us how he got elected to Holyrood without standing in that election. Then there are thirds and all-outs. The franchise is also different: in Scotland, any resident, of whatever nationality, can vote, but you must be English, from the Commonwealth or from the EU for local elections here. And of course Peers cannot vote at all.

I was taken by the comments of the noble Baroness, Lady Hoey, who said that such arrangements risk the peace in our nation that flows from the Belfast agreement and the Windsor Framework. I am concerned that this is a slippery slope. The Prime Minister has already declared that he wants to review still further the voting system to consider proportional representation. We all need to be careful what we wish for, because PR will lead to more sectarianism, more minority voting and more campaigning in Urdu, where single-issue activists seek to hold the rest of us over a barrel, reducing trust in democracy and elections, and the institutions they serve.

I will consider Amendment 279, in the name of my noble friends on the Front Bench and the noble Lord, Lord Brady. Some months ago, I attended a Learn with the Lords session at the education service in Victoria Tower Gardens. I was surprised to be paired—I do not know why—with a load of gobby kids, each of them egging each other on, promoting and lionising the Tate brothers and, in my presence, voicing all sorts of unacceptable, misogynistic opinions about immigrants and women. It turned out that it was not Learn with the Lords but “learn from the kids”. I was really concerned.

This plays to the point of Amendment 279 and that which the noble Lord, Lord Hayward, has mentioned about where the boundary between childhood and adulthood is. I do not propose to go through another laundry list of the things you can do aged 16, although you can sell scrap metal to a dealer and you can get there on a moped—that would not be a big deal—or, in Scotland, get married without parental permission. I say to my noble friend Lady Coffey, who is in her place, that you may not be able to get a tattoo but you can certainly get a piercing. These are trivial examples, but it goes to the muddle we are in. When you are 18, you can fight on the front line, get a credit card, take out a loan, buy a pint and sit on a jury, as other noble Lords have said. You can make a will, buy land and property, hold a tenancy and rent an adult video—not that anyone rents videos of any sort nowadays. It illustrates the point that we must have the review contemplated by Amendment 279, to be fair not just to the adults in the room but—

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[Lord Murphy of Torfaen (Lab)]

My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Frost, will not be surprised to learn that I do not agree with him on these issues. I understand the difference between franchise and the whole business of elections and the institutions to which we elect people, but we have to be extremely careful that we do not undermine a devolution settlement that was set up not just by Act of Parliament but by referenda in Northern Ireland and Scotland, and, in Wales, by two referenda. To do that would be seriously damaging to the devolution settlement.

In Northern Ireland’s case, I had the privilege of chairing the Good Friday agreement talks that dealt with elections. There was an agreement among all the parties in Northern Ireland involved in those talks, and the two Governments of course, to ensure that the final Good Friday agreement would command consensus right across the board. If we start interfering with that, we are in deep trouble. The 1998 settlement was agreed in Ireland by a referendum in the north and south. I am not saying that we cannot change it, but those changes need to be made with the devolved Assembly itself.

In terms of Scotland and Wales, one of my predecessors as Welsh Secretary once said that devolution is a process. I did not agree with him at the time, but he was probably right. It is a process, and over the last 30 years that process has meant that the relationship between the United Kingdom Government and Parliament and the devolved Governments and Parliament has developed to a very sophisticated degree. If you interfere with that, you can seriously interfere with the devolution settlement. Although in some ways there is some merit in thinking that the franchise should perhaps be universal, the only way you could agree that is by having consensus with the devolved Administrations, and they would have to agree with it.

I am not a great lover of proportional representation; I have always been a first past the post person. I really believe in a link between the elected Member and his or her constituents. I do not particularly agree with the settlement we have in Wales with the 96 Members on a closed-list system—I am not sure that anybody really understands it all that much—but I agree with the right of the Senedd to be able to establish that system. Therefore, we ought to be very careful indeed about how we deal with these amendments.

[Lord Jackson of Peterborough (Con)]

My Lords, I am pleased to support my noble friend Lord Frost. I put my name to his Amendments 30 and 31, and the two consequential amendments.

I listened very carefully to the noble Lord, Lord Murphy of Torfaen. I thought I was the only person who was not keen on the d’Hondt system of voting. He put his finger on a very important point—that system does not allow the voters to hold a particular person or even party accountable. We have seen from recent evidence in the Welsh Senedd that someone can change their political affiliation and refuse to give way, even though they have de facto been elected as a party member rather than as an individual, as a candidate in a set constituency.

I support the amendments because their practical effect will be to create administrative consistency across the franchise rules of all elections, referenda and polls in the UK. In an era of fractiousness and bitter division in politics, which is growing stronger, having multiple election systems—which reduces the ability of the average voter, who is not engaged, to engage in the political system and to see that their vote has a consequence and that the person they voted for is likely to be elected—only adds to an undermining of the sense of common purpose and social solidarity and continues to make different parts of our country more fractious and divided.

It is perfectly possible to support these amendments and, broadly speaking, to agree with the concept of devolution. A country such as Scotland had a separate legal system and education system and a proud history, not least in building the British Empire many years ago. It is different from England, and I respectfully say to the noble Lord, Lord Murphy, that the people of England never had a vote on whether they wanted to set up the Welsh Assembly, as it then was, or the Scottish Parliament. Therefore, their ability to make key decisions was undermined—albeit he would probably say that the Blair Government had a mandate and were re-elected after the establishment of those two devolved Administrations.

My noble friend made some important points, which I will not belabour. A single nation state should have a common framework for democratic membership. The United States is many times bigger than the United Kingdom and has many more people, yet it has the same voting system. We will see whether it works tomorrow in delivering the votes that people want in the mid-term elections.

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[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.

[Lord Wigley (PC)]

My Lords, I apologise that I was not able to attend Second Reading, but my noble friend Lady Smith of Llanfaes contributed on behalf of Plaid Cymru, and I hope she will continue doing so as effectively.

I oppose the thrust of this group of amendments—which is hardly a surprise to anybody. I do not believe that we are a single nation state. We are not. We are a multi-nation state. While I acknowledge that there is a valid argument that an election to any chamber of government should be on a uniform, consistent franchise basis throughout the area covered by that chamber, there surely can be no valid reason for Westminster to tell Wales or Scotland that we cannot, in our devolved Parliaments, allow our young people to vote at 16 because it does not happen to suit Westminster. Devolution exists to allow us to do things differently in the nations of Wales and Scotland. Indeed, if Westminster acts to take the vote from young people in Wales and Scotland, I cannot imagine a stronger lever to drive those two countries towards independence. I invite the Committee to think very carefully before doing so.

Our experience in this regard in Wales in last May’s election was wholly positive. The degree of interest amongst young people was impressive. I saw it for myself in canvassing during the election, in talking to young people in my home community and to friends of my grandchildren in other parts of Wales, and while acting as a booth agent for Plaid Cymru on voting day in my home village. The turnout in May’s election in Wales was the highest in any devolved election in Wales. Yes, it was a bit over 50%, and we are going to ask why it was not higher in previous elections, but it was a step in the right direction in getting young people involved. It involved not only young people but, very often, their parents, who got to understand what was going on and perhaps participated, whereas in the past they had not done so. There also exists in Wales the Welsh Youth Parliament, a highly respected body which helps the development of young people’s political thinking on an all-Wales level.

Further, the PR system in Wales ensured multi-party voices in our Senedd, which must be a good thing for democracy. I point out that, if we had suffered a simple first past the post system in our present Senedd, and voting patterns were the same as they were in May, the 96 seats would today have given Plaid 66 and Remain 30. I suggest that, in Wales, we have a sensible system that respects multi-party democracy.

The logic of these amendments is based on the assumption that we live in a nation state. We do not. That is why we have developed into the system that we have today, and we should respect the principles on which devolution was founded.

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[Lord Pack (LD)]

It is an interesting point but, as the noble Lord said, there are several assumptions leading up to its inclusion, all of which I would share.

We have also heard the argument that the ability of Scotland and Wales to make their own choices might result in pressure on us here in Westminster. In a way, that is quite an advantage. After all, if Scotland or Wales decide to do something and it works, that is a good bit of pressure that we should welcome. Of course, if it fails, it achieves the exact opposite. Seeing how variation plays out is not a bad thing to be scared of.

Indeed, there is much more variation than perhaps the noble Lord, Lord Jackson, is aware of. He made reference to the United States. I point out that the voting system for Congress varies between states, and two of them use preferential voting. I very much hope that all sides of this Committee will pay more attention and maybe learn from the States in that respect.

[Lord Jackson of Peterborough (Con)]

The noble Lord pre-empts my response to my noble friend. For clarity, I checked, and he is quite right. I stand partially corrected, in that the states of Maine and Alaska have ranked choice elections, one for governor and senator and the other, I think, just for senator. I am touched that he is interested in those issues. My general point is that the vast bulk of elections are based on the same kind of electoral system across the United States.

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[Lord Rennard (LD)]

The noble Lord’s proposal is actually what I proposed in previous Parliaments, and his Government resisted tooth and nail any suggestion about registering people at the point that they got their national insurance numbers. My understanding of the noble Lord’s Amendment 8 is that, rather than beginning the registering process with 14 and 15 year-olds, you would start only at 15. Surely that would mean fewer people being registered, but if I have misunderstood, I apologise.

I am concerned with the approach in general and how I think Amendments 49, 50 and 52 are all about improving the health of our democracy, because democratic elections cannot fully take place without people being registered to vote. Many groups of people who are legally entitled to vote are often not registered to vote under our current arrangements.

When individual electoral registration was introduced, many of us warned that, without extra measures, millions of young people, students and people who move home frequently would fall off the electoral rolls. Perhaps that was the intention of the proposal among some people. I believe that it was. I know that it was a great preoccupation of the now noble Lord, Lord Cameron, when he used to meet his deputy to discuss constitutional issues. He was determined to drive this process through. Had it been implemented as he intended, registration levels would have fallen from the level of the mid-1980s to about 60%, according to the Electoral Commission.

The Electoral Commission briefing for this debate shows that as many as 8 million people who are legally entitled to vote are not correctly registered and therefore would be unlikely to be able to take part in the democratic process. The commission says that it strongly supports the principles of what is commonly known as automatic voter registration and is described in this Bill as “registration without an application”. The problem that it seeks to address involves young people especially. The commission’s previous research indicated that, although 95% of those aged over 65 are registered to vote, only about 65% of under-25s are included on the voter lists. There are similar problems with people who rent privately, or who come from diverse backgrounds, missing from the registers.

My biggest concerns about the processes in the Bill are how the plans for registering without application will take too long and the Government are proceeding too cautiously. It will be too late to have many more people who are legally entitled to vote registered for the next election and too late for the next review of parliamentary consistency boundaries, which will draw on data from 1 December 2028—hence my support for Amendment 67, in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Lister, my noble friend Lord Pack and others.

The first and most obvious way in which we can address the underrepresentation of young people is by registering them when they are notified of their national insurance numbers. The House of Lords Select Committee that reviewed the impact of individual electoral registration unanimously recommended that this be done, and I am delighted that the principle had the support of the noble Lord, Lord Hayward, whose expertise is very widely regarded in this House.

When debating the idea during consideration of the Elections Bill on 23 March 2022, the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman of Ullock, then speaking from the Opposition Front Bench, said that

“people are already written to ahead of their 16th birthday with their national insurance number. If we can do that, why can we not at the same time have an automatic registration to vote? We have the means to do it, so why do we not just get on with it?”—[Official Report, 23/3/22; col. 1058.]

That is the question that I ask today.

A little later I won a partial victory on the issue when the noble Lord, Lord True, eventually accepted from the Government Benches that a reference to registering to vote could be made with a notification of national insurance numbers. But it was a very unpressing reference, and the process should not now require specific application if the qualifications for registration are satisfied. That is the aim of my Amendment 50.

A second crucial point at which we can get many more young people registered is when many of them enter higher or further education. From the Labour Front Bench, the noble Baroness, Lady Royall of Blaisdon, championed the cause of registering students, with her usual great skill and determination, during the passage of the Higher Education and Research Act 2017. The noble Baroness demonstrated how easy and simple it was to have data-sharing agreements between higher education and further education providers and local registration offices. This would enable students to be enfranchised and help to make their legal entitlement to vote a reality. We are trying again to have that principle adopted by Amendment 52.

Finally, I will speak to my Amendment 61. The issues of electoral registration and constituency boundaries are inextricably linked, although the tight drafting of the Bill means that we are not properly allowed to consider that link. I draw the attention of the Government and others to this connection. There should be consideration of how the measures in the Bill will change the data from which the electoral registers are drawn. The data will change as a result of measures in the Bill, and it will affect the process of revising the constituency boundaries, which will begin in two years. The electoral registration data forms the building blocks from which the Boundary Commissions must create constituencies; they are obliged under the rules to create constituencies with a very narrow and inflexible margin of difference in the size of the electorates for each of those constituencies. A slight change to a single constituency’s boundaries is likely to cause widespread disruption to many other constituencies, breaking them up into pieces.

The failure in the last series of Parliaments to address issues of the missing millions from electoral registers has distorted the map of constituencies. Millions of young people, private sector tenants and people from diverse communities were left out from the registers. We are now trying to address that. Whether it happened inadvertently or deliberately, the effect of the last boundary review was that many more constituencies were created that would be likely to vote Conservative, and fewer were created that would be less likely to vote Conservative. Registering many more of these groups will address that unfairness. The Government must now consider whether we need to allow the next boundary review to take more time so that it is able to work with the most accurate and complete electoral registers. Every year, according to the Government’s impact assessment, registration levels will rise by around 1.7%, so I hope there will be time for the changes in the Bill to feed through to the next boundary review.

[Lord Jackson of Peterborough (Con)]

My Lords, I am delighted to speak to my Amendment 51. I find myself almost wholly in agreement with Amendment 61 from the noble Lord, Lord Rennard, although I am bound to ask rhetorically: if the last boundary change was engineered to gerrymander a stonking Conservative victory, how did that go? But seriously, I think there is a meeting of minds between him and my noble friend Lord Fuller on national insurance numbers and the registration of younger people. I think there might be a consensus on that. My noble friend made a powerful and compelling argument for that age group.

To go back to Amendment 61, Clauses 17 to 19 give rise to long-term changes in electorate sizes. The current obligations of the boundary commissioners do not really take into account what sizeable changes will happen as a result of automatic voter registration or registration without application. The noble Lord is right to pinpoint that issue. That goes to the heart of my Amendment 51, which is to ensure that we proceed in an incremental way if we are to have automatic voter registration and not put a huge obligation on electoral registration officers. Clause 17 is quite wide ranging anyway in giving proactive powers to electoral registration officers to register people as they see fit.

The reason I am seeking to remove Commonwealth and Irish citizens is not because they do not value their right to vote or to have the franchise but because we should focus on the endemic problem that has been identified for many years under all parties and Governments: poor registration of younger people. That happened under the coalition Government, and it has happened under the Labour Government and under Conservative Administrations. That seems to me the kernel of the issue that we need to look at here.

I am quite straightforward in saying that, as other countries do with their own citizens, I do not think we should be ashamed to prioritise British citizens in this clause. If we have limited resources, we should do so. I can debate the situation with the Republic of Ireland and its voters, but it seems an odd situation that you would not wish to prioritise your own citizens, who have constitutional, social and economic links that are stronger than some others—indeed, the citizens of a foreign country, albeit a very long-standing neighbour and friend of the United Kingdom, the Republic of Ireland. That is what my amendment seeks to do.

Under current electoral law, qualifying Commonwealth citizens and citizens of the Republic of Ireland can vote in parliamentary elections. Qualifying means meeting normal age, residence and registration requirements, and they will have permission to enter or remain in the United Kingdom. Specifically for your Lordships’ House, this amendment would not change who is legally entitled to vote. However, it would restrict who is automatically registered without an application to those with the strongest constitutional links to the UK. This would reduce the risk of eligibility verification errors, which would automatically register individuals who are not legally eligible to vote. It might be the case, for instance, that those on technically non-qualifying visiting visas may very well be swept up in the system of automatic voter registration. Perhaps the Minister might reassure the Committee on what specific efforts the Government are making to ensure that the correct people are registered under automatic voter registration. Additionally, the introduction of automatic verification is a novel and untested feature of the Bill. This amendment seeks to ensure that it is introduced cautiously to prevent accidental scope creep and ensure that its first implementation is thorough and effective in registering only those with the genuine legal right to vote in UK parliamentary elections.

For those reasons—time is of the essence—I am delighted to propose Amendment 51. I also support the amendments in the name of my noble friends.

House resumed. Committee to begin again not before 8.09 pm.

Representation of the People Bill

Lord Jackson of Peterborough Excerpts

Committee stage
Monday 2nd November 2026 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Coffey (Con)]

My Lords, I will also speak to Amendment 11, then I also have a more general debate on whether Schedule 1 should stand part.

That last debate was fascinating. I have already heard people ask why unelected Peers are interested about elections when we do not get elected to this place. Of course we care, because we care about democracy. I know that several Peers are also elected as councillors and to other legislatures. Indeed, we are concerned to try to make sure that we get this right.

Building on from the previous debate—I appreciate that the Minister said that he would look through it and then write to me on various matters—a response to a Question I asked basically said that the Government do not hold all these different things, so they cannot effectively know whether people are misregistering or voting in more than one place and the like. To some extent, they should. However, an important thing, as has just been articulated, is to make sure that the electoral register is correct and authentic. That is why I raised my concerns about this schedule, in particular, if people are looking, about paragraphs 4 to 6 on page 129 of the Bill and then paragraph 11 on the following page. Indeed, I will refer more broadly to Amendment 12 and its proposed new paragraph 21(3) on page 5, which we have already debated and are due to agree to.

Where I am going with this is that we need to make sure that the register is as authentic as possible, yet the Government have said that, for safeguarding reasons, lots of canvassing cannot be done if somebody is under the age of 16—they are blocking it out. I understand the broader issues about that, but it is the Government’s desire to introduce voting at the age of 16 in all the elections across the United Kingdom, and it is specially reserved. Therefore, we need to make sure that the people going on that electoral roll are genuine, and that is the whole point of canvass. Canvass is largely focused on households which do not return the registration—that is canvassers’ principal role. I do not mean canvassers as in party-political canvassers but people working on behalf of the electoral registration officer to try to get as complete a register as possible. However, it is also to check and validate people who are in that residence and who have registered to vote.

At the moment, it is not clear to me how soon we will be in a situation where the automatic registration will have happened, based on our current debate, but it feels like it will be possible for young people to register far more quickly—and who knows when the next election will be? Therefore, I do not understand why the Government are ruling out the opportunity for registration officers to make house-to-house inquiries regarding somebody who has put themselves forward to register on the electoral roll simply because they are under the age of 16.

I am conscious that there are plenty of vulnerable people on the electoral roll—people of no fixed abode, anonymous electors, a whole series of people who could be deemed “vulnerable”. I understand the broader point, but electoral registration officers and the people whom they employ should be trusted to deal with such sensitive matters or, if necessary, we could turn this into a regulated activity, which would mean that it became eligible for a DBS check. This comes back to the integrity of the electoral roll. That is why the canvass should be included.

I am not so focused on paragraph 5; I am more concerned with the paragraph 6, which states:

“A requirement under subsection (4) may not be imposed on a person under the age of 16 in relation to registration”.


I am also concerned that paragraph 11 provides that provision

“may not authorise or require a registration officer taking steps in relation to a register of parliamentary electors … to visit a particular address in order to speak to a person under the age of 16”.

I am particularly concerned about the proposed new paragraph 21(3), which would be inserted by government Amendment 12, which does not include the power to make inquiries. The question is: why not? Why is it that something that is as precious as having the opportunity to vote in a general election does not come with an opportunity for that to be validated?

How people get added to the electoral roll concerns me. The whole point of the electoral registration officer is that they must be satisfied—we heard that extensively in the last debate—and now, all of a sudden, we are expected to take somebody’s word for it that X, Y or Z can be added to the electoral roll without any validation whatever if they purport to be of that age. My question to the Government is: why?

[Lord Jackson of Peterborough (Con)]

My Lords, I have three amendments in this group. Amendments 124 and 128 are essentially probing amendments. The other is of much more significance and import in terms of protecting the integrity of our electoral system. I will elucidate on that a little later. I will be as quick as I can.

Amendment 124 concerns the commencement of counting at local elections. A bugbear for a number of us over the years has been an increasing tendency for returning officers to delay the commencement of counting, particularly in local government elections, until the following day. It is understandable when you have a very significant local election. For the Greater London Authority election of a directly elected mayor for a world city of 9 million people, it probably does take longer to put the arrangements in place. However, most recently at the May 2026 local elections, only 46 out of 136 local authorities were scheduled to count and declare results overnight.

We have talked about the size of the country. The UK is a relatively small country. We are not talking about an Australian-style parliamentary seat, which is the equivalent of the length or width of three countries; we are talking about relatively small geographical areas in which to collect ballot boxes from polling places.

Representation of the People Bill

Lord Jackson of Peterborough Excerpts

Committee stage
Wednesday 4th November 2026 Lords Chamber

[Lord Fuller (Con)]

My Lords, I was here on Monday evening at the point of adjournment, and not only am I in my place but I am next to the noble Lord, Lord Rennard, who was in the same place as well. Things move on.

On nearly every amendment to this Bill, and in other parts of the work of your Lordships’ House, I support my noble friend Lord Jackson of Peterborough, but, regrettably, I cannot support his Amendment 124, which would require by law that election counts be started overnight following the polls closing. It is important to explain why.

Running an election is a complicated task for election staff. You have to recruit presiding officers, polling inspectors and count staff, and handle all matter of other ancillary tasks, such as fetching and carrying the ballot papers. I know that this happens at a general election, and it is important that we maintain the requirement for overnight counting in those contests, but we have to recognise that local government works over a much larger geographical canvas. It often encompasses multiple constituencies. There are many more electors in the race. We have multi-member wards. We have funny business when it comes to alternative and supplementary votes for some contests. More people and different and more complicated systems add complexity and time.

Local elections are different to the national elections, where, simply, the person with the most votes wins. Let us not forget that, unlike a parliamentary vote, where there is just one election to count, local elections may have many wards interspersed with town council by-elections, so the number of contests is not just greater; it is an order of magnitude larger.

Attracting presiding officers and count staff, who have historically come from our high street banks—tellers and other high street financial workers—is harder. In the age of tap and pay, we just do not have tellers who are used to handling banknotes any more, so we have ended up with a diminished pool of talent to operate the election. The facts of life are that, oftentimes, we rely on presiding officers, who have done a stretch from 7 am until 10 pm, to turn up again the following day to do the count. If we want to have confidence in our democracy, we cannot have people working for 24 hours non-stop in the most delicate and mentally taxing work, which requires huge concentration not just for validation but for the count, banding, bundling and tallying. Local elections have many more types of parties and candidates and therefore a higher propensity for recounts, where many contests are decided by just a handful of votes or even a coin toss.

As I warm to my theme, this short debate gives us the opportunity to remind the Prime Minister that if he is minded to change the current parliamentary voting system, any changes are likely to prejudice the ability for overnight counts if greater complexity is introduced. The voters rejected electoral change in a referendum in 2011, but he does not seem to be listening. The consequences of change are likely to be that the ability to count overnight is diminished or, at the very least, the announcement of the results and the clarity the electorate deserve will be delayed. I do not believe that has been taken into account in any other forum; here is my opportunity to mention it.

To return to the amendment, this is detailed work. It needs staff who are as bright as a button and on the ball to do these local elections, which are more complicated, take more time and provide more opportunities to go wrong than parliamentary contests, where there are often just two or three main candidates slugging it out and the majorities are weighed in handfuls of thousands, not handfuls of votes. For these reasons, I cannot support my noble friend in his endeavour, attractive though it may be. It is better to take your time and get it right than rush and live with the consequences.

[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.

[Lord Wilson of Sedgefield (Lab)]

My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Walney, was not here during the debate on Monday so he cannot speak.

Representation of the People Bill

Lord Jackson of Peterborough Excerpts

Committee stage
Wednesday 4th November 2026 Lords Chamber

[Lord Mackinlay of Richborough (Con)]

My Lords, I have followed this debate over the last couple of days. I give huge congratulations to my noble friend Lord Frost on bringing this forward; this is an area that has exercised me for some years. I pay tribute to the House of Lords Library for extracting a lot of information on this to try to bring out where reciprocation exists—and I have to say that the reciprocation arrangements within the Commonwealth are very skinny indeed.

The Government have opened up Pandora’s box with this Bill, because at its heart is the franchise, which the Government are attempting to expand to 16 and 17 year-olds. If the Bill before us is trying to change and tidy up things, and widen the franchise, then surely it is the right Bill to consider a wider franchise, which has not been considered since the Act in 1969.

We have to consider this against the backdrop of CHOGM, which is in progress at the moment in Antigua. As a huge supporter of the Commonwealth, I am somewhat saddened that, in the post-Brexit world, we have not made a better arrangement with our friends around the Commonwealth to create a new friendship and trading arrangement on preferential terms. I hope those sorts of issues are being discussed at CHOGM as I speak. But the electoral franchise is surely very odd. We have vast countries, with huge populations—India, Pakistan, Nigeria and Bangladesh, to pick out a few—of probably 1.5 to 1.8 billion people between them. A transfer of such people to this country, as temporary workers, students and all those good areas, is to be welcomed, but surely to come on a student visa for a short time and then be allowed to vote is a very strange situation.

I might consider that to be fair and reasonable if there was a reciprocal arrangement with those countries. As my noble friend Lord Frost has said, perhaps that is quite complicated to achieve. It would require a department of the Home Office to keep an eye on electoral franchises in those countries of the Commonwealth. Perhaps Amendments 25 and 26, proposed by my noble friend, are cleaner. Perhaps this is the time to make that breakaway, which most other countries have considered to be proper and correct, and say one has to be a British citizen.

As we know, British citizenship can be obtained. One of the reasons some people never bother obtaining it, even though they have lived here for a very long time, is the cost and aggravation, but it is achievable and doable. One has to pay the fee and do the Life in the UK Test, and then, lo and behold, one can become a British citizen, with all the rights and duties that come with citizenship. The powerful point behind my noble friend’s suggestions is that feeling of being part of this nation—one cannot just up sticks and return back to the country where one holds citizenship.

The Australian situation is rather odd. I believe it was Australia’s 1984 Act that made quite a separation between the new country and what might be called the old country. At that date, Australia decided that one could vote in Australia only if one was an Australian citizen. As my noble friend alluded to, a British citizen who had lived in Australia prior to 1956 but had never taken citizenship could still vote there.

The anomalies around the world are few and far between. As the Government have opened up the franchise for discussion, it is time that we use this Bill appropriately to consider the franchise of Commonwealth citizens. It is a throwback of yesteryear and, much as I like yesteryear, we are not there any more. We are in the modern world of 2026, and the day is done for the old colonial arrangements that those on the Benches opposite would like to throw off as rapidly as they can. We cannot have this subsisting into the future. I hope we can have cross-party support for this measure, and I look forward to the Minister’s comments as to why it is unacceptable. I would have thought such a provision would more likely come from that side of the Committee than from this, strangely.

I hope that the Government will listen to this. I know my noble friend said that this was merely a probing amendment, but I think it deserves to be more than that. I would like to see this beefed up for Report, when we can perhaps vote on such measures.

[Lord Jackson of Peterborough (Con)]

My Lords, I am pleased to support my noble friend Lord Frost’s amendments, particularly Amendments 28 and 29.

As we meet this afternoon and consider the American elections that took place yesterday, we can look back and think about the sanctity of the franchise and how important that is. We are very fortunate in this country that we do not, for instance, have gerrymandered electoral districts; we have independent Boundary Commissions. We are also fortunate in this country that most people believe that the franchise is clean and safeguarded and that the electoral process is one of integrity, honesty and transparency—and that is because, broadly speaking, it is.

Your Lordships will know that, in the United States, the Jim Crow laws and the residency, literacy and numeracy laws were used to ostracise and discriminate against African Americans and others. Thankfully, they are a thing of the past, but that goes to show how important it is that we protect the sanctity of our electoral process, which my noble friend Lord Hayward rightly mentioned.

The current Commonwealth voting right is outdated, as my noble friend said. It is anomalous and indefensible, and it is time to bring our legislation up to date. As has been said, the vast majority of Commonwealth nations do not have reciprocal voting arrangements with British citizens. There are around 1 million Commonwealth citizens living in the UK, 66% of whom are qualified and registered to vote, as at March this year.

The beauty of these amendments is that they are not harsh and draconian. They do not remove, with ministerial or statutory fiat, the right for Commonwealth citizens to vote. They are incremental, permissive, probing amendments that invite the Government to think about the reciprocity between countries. In so doing, they recognise how important the familial and friendship relationships we have with countries are, as my noble friend alluded to. The other thing is that they are colour-blind. They do not make reference to ethnicity, religion, background or gender. They talk about nations such as New Zealand, Nigeria, Ghana, Australia, Canada, Suriname—I think—Guyana and others that are members of our Commonwealth family.

Although the number of Commonwealth nationals residing in the UK and the percentage of Commonwealth citizens registered to vote in the UK have been estimated, the Government have been unable to produce accurate figures concerning the number of qualifying Commonwealth nationals in the UK. That is a very significant knowledge gap. If you are fighting a general election in good faith, you really need to know who the people are who are going to be able to vote for you. If you do not have a cumulative estimate nationally of how many of those Commonwealth citizens are able to vote, you may very well rather cynically feel that you are appealing to a nobbled jury. You have to be sure of who the electorate are.

Voting tied to citizenship is the global norm for a good reason. Elected representatives adopt significant responsibility to act in their electors’ best interests. If electoral accountability is to function properly, the electorate must be stakeholders in Britain’s long-term future. Unless this is robustly the case, representatives, be they mayors, MPs or councillors, will not be bound to deliver genuinely prudent decision-making. Allowing those who are not British citizens to contribute to electoral outcomes risks undermining the quality of that representation by detracting from candidates’ requirement to appeal to people who fundamentally care about their nation’s future.

This is the thin end of the wedge. If we do not get a handle and focus on that philosophical issue, we could quickly slip into the realms of divisive identity politics. We have already seen the beginning of that in our country, as we have in many parts of the world, and we wish to avoid that happening. At its worst, it may encourage political short-termism or the dilution of the representatives’ accountability away from the interests of British citizens and towards the interests of merely current residents. This is a nuanced yet important distinction. It is a fact that Britain is and has been for some time experiencing a sizeable growth in immigration, including from Commonwealth nations.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Fuller (Con)]

My Lords, I am very taken with the points just made by the noble Baroness, Lady Pinnock, about the distorting effects on existing boundaries from extending the franchise to 16 and 17 year-olds, but I think she could have gone further. The way in which automatic registration, which is also part of this group, takes into account the universities will have a further distorting effect, particularly on urban constituencies, in another insult to the country mass. This Government are always focused on the imbalance in the cities, but this particular case puts the rural areas at a disadvantage because, if a student from out of town is registered at home but is automatically registered at university, that person has two votes, which will disproportionately affect the concentrated urban situations.

I am sure the Minister, when she returns to her place, will dismiss the point made by the noble Baroness, Lady Pinnock, as wholly unnecessary and say this is nothing to be worried about, but I would like to give a lesson from history. The noble Baroness, who is returning to the Chamber, and I participated on some of those Covid calls during the pandemic in 2020, and there was a rush from the city to the countryside. People who lived in London, for example—but other cities are available—chased to north Norfolk in particular.

I see my noble friend Lord Prior on the Bench in front of me; he was a Member of Parliament for North Norfolk in a previous life. These people were not registered with the NHS and were not registered to vote, yet they consumed all the services in North Norfolk. My concern is that automatic registration will not reflect the reality. It is not just distorting the boundaries, important though that is, and the electoral numbers. The degree of automatic registration could distort the access to services that just do not keep up with these registers. So, I support the noble Baroness, Lady Pinnock. She has identified more unintended consequences from the double whammy of extending the franchise and automatic registration.

That leads me on to my Amendment 45 in this group, which is a probing amendment that asks how, with automatic registration, the electoral registration officer will know when a person is eligible to be registered, or just passing through, or has indefinite leave to remain, or is just a tourist. It seeks to say that, if you are not a British or Commonwealth citizen, you have to apply under individual electoral registration and demonstrate your eligibility, as you do at the moment. The duty is on these overseas electors to provide absolute proof of entitlement to vote, rather than pressurise the electoral registration officer to make guesses. The chances are that these people will not have national insurance numbers and will not be present on many UK databases.

How on earth is the ERO to know? How will he know to prevent a duplicate when a wife keeps her maiden name for professional purposes but has already registered for a married name? Just because there is a Mr Smith who pays the council tax, it does not mean that Mrs Smith is eligible if she happens to be a foreign-born spouse. I think the Committee can start to see quite a lot of different practical complications here.

I mentioned Mr and Mrs Smith, but there are some cultures where the husband and the wife have different surnames. I am thinking particularly of President Zelensky in Ukraine, whose wife is Mrs Zelenska. Neither of them is eligible to vote in our elections, but that is an example of the way in which foreign cultures have different mores to ours. Each ERO, if there is to be automatic registration, potentially of foreign subjects, will have to understand all these peculiarities. That is an unreasonable burden on the ERO.

My amendment is a small one, but it seeks to probe the burdens we place on the electoral registration officer to register people who have no legal or digital footprint in this country and who cannot be validated or authenticated. It would make it clear that if you are not a British, an EU or a Commonwealth citizen, and you are entitled to participate in our democracy, you must apply just as you do today. Let these people make their case with the appropriate documentation, so that the registration officer can scrutinise rather than make guesses. If the register is based on guesswork, it undermines the integrity of our democracy and, with it, trust in the democratic process and the institutions that flow from it.

[Lord Jackson of Peterborough (Con)]

My Lords, I do not really understand the amendment from the noble Baroness, Lady Pinnock, because she will know that local government boundaries are essentially informed as a result of physical or natural features and community links. Her amendment would have been more coherent if it had linked the delivery of key public services within an expanded ward which was the result of a greater registration of 16 and 17 year-olds, but I fail to see the point of producing a report saying, “There are going to be more people in this ward vis-à-vis other wards”.

If one is talking about the delivery of public services, that is a fair point to make. But equally, in places such as Christchurch, Worthing and Hove, you would also therefore talk about the delivery of services for older people, where there is a greater preponderance of them. Unless I am being particularly obtuse, I cannot see the point of the obligation she is seeking that the Government produce a report on the number of 16 and 17 year-olds, which numerically we will already know.

[Baroness Pinnock (LD)]

The whole purpose is so that we have a democracy that is based, first, on one person, one vote, but then on having boundaries for our electors that are more or less equal in size. Whenever there is a constituency boundary review, there are always parts of the country—in areas such as the highlands or the Isle of Wight—where reflecting the geography of the place means that it is better to have something outside the tolerance of the criteria that have been set to try to make constituencies of a similar size. That is because each is going to elect one person to Parliament to make decisions on behalf of their citizens. To have some representing 82,000 or 83,000 and some at the other end of the scale currently representing fewer than 70,000 leads to inequalities, which is why we have regular boundary reviews.

Within a local authority area, the number of wards is determined, which leads to the number of electors in each ward. In Kirklees, each ward has 5,000 electors per councillor, whereas 3,000 electors or fewer is the norm in London boroughs. If local authorities were required to have wards of a similar size, there could be more equal representation in those areas. That is my argument. We can do it for constituency boundaries, so why are we not doing it for local authority council wards?