Representation of the People Bill

Lord Teverson Excerpts

2nd reading
Monday 14th September 2026 Lords Chamber

[Lord Teverson (LD)]

My Lords, back in 1970, I was very grateful that I had been born in March, because the 1970 general election was the first time that 18 year-olds could vote in general elections, and I had been born 18 years before, in March. I had the excitement of not having to wait until I was 23, five years later or whatever; I was able to vote three months after I attained the age of 18.

More than that, the London Borough of Redbridge, where I lived at the time, had had a “Welcome to Citizenship” event one evening that I had been to, and I was all revved up to exercise my democratic duty on 18 June 1970 in the constituency of Wanstead and Woodford, where Winston Churchill was once MP. So, I turned up, cast my secret ballot and felt I had done my citizenship duty. The rub was that it was a completely wasted vote, because Wanstead and Woodford was a two-party race and my vote counted for nothing whatever in the constituency or even nationally. That was, if you like, a lesson to me, although I only thought about it afterwards when I was fairly incredulous about the results and realised that reform was needed.

If I think back just two years now, to 2024, of course we had the most unequal election that we have ever had in this country, with a Labour Party in government with 411 Members of Parliament, a majority of 172, on an astounding proportion of one-third of the vote. Not only that, in that election we had 8 million people who had not bothered to register and 40% of the remaining electorate who did not even bother to turn out; we had 12,000 people rejected at the polling stations because they did not turn up with their ID; and even of the 60% who voted, at least one-quarter had to vote tactically rather than for the candidate they actually wanted. That is what is wrong.

I was incredibly impressed by the opening address of the Minister, who emphasised, very early on, the equality of votes: that one vote should not be worth any more than that of a millionaire, or perhaps we should say of any other elector. That is clearly the biggest vacant area of this Bill. I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Fuller, that we should have one way in which we vote in this country, but clearly we disagree, in that we need to make sure that people’s votes count. At the moment, they do not, and the Bill is completely blank in that area.

We need rejuvenation in our democracy and I will make one other small point, which is around the voting age. I absolutely welcome 16 and 17 year-olds voting. As has been said before, it has been shown, particularly in Scotland and also, I believe, in Wales, that people of that age range vote more than the 18 to 20 or 18 to 24 year-olds, and that, once they have voted, they continue to vote far more than the cohort that was not able to vote at that age. To me, that rejuvenates democracy. What I would say to the Minister and to this House is, please make sure that the votes of those 16 and 17 year-old electors who enter the polling station at our next general election, unlike mine back in Wanstead and Woodford in 1970, are not wasted.