Representation of the People Bill

Lord Wilson of Sedgefield Excerpts

Committee stage
Monday 2nd November 2026 Lords Chamber

[Baroness O'Neill of Bexley (Con)]

My Lords, I will speak to Amendments 48 and 63 in my name and that of my noble friend Lord Jamieson, and address the wider concerns raised by amendments in this group. The fundamental question before us is not whether electoral registration should be accessible—of course it should be; it is, as a number of colleagues have referenced tonight, whether the Government’s proposals for automatic registration will maintain the accuracy and integrity of the electoral register.

Individual electoral registration was introduced to ensure that people were properly identified, and responsibility for registration rested with the individual. Some areas have been particularly successful in ensuring a good level of registration. The Government have now proposed to move away from that principle without having demonstrated that automatic registration will provide equivalent safeguards. Therefore, Amendment 48 would require a person’s existence to be verified against three separate datasets before they are automatically registered. My noble friend Lord Fuller earlier referenced my own surname and the variance you can get in different registers. Some databases do not acknowledge apostrophes, and they certainly cannot cope with two capital letters allied with one another. Therefore, for a fairly simple name, as I would think it, you get different variations coming out. It is important to recognise that not all databases are the same.

This is a modest safeguard against what is a substantial change. Government databases contain errors, and this is particularly prevalent in areas with high population turnover, including student accommodation and the private rented sector. This could lead to postal and proxy voter fraud. The noble Baroness, Lady Royall, referenced students at university, and she is absolutely right, but you can go one step further: would it be the university building, the halls of residence or wherever their accommodation is? There are a number of variants that could cause issues.

An inaccurate register is not simply an administrative inconvenience; it creates an unnecessary risk for the integrity of the entire voting process. There is a possibility that certain parts of the electorate could vote twice in the same election by virtue of having two different registered addresses, or indeed even more. In short, this Bill creates unnecessary risks for the integrity of the polling process. Therefore, can the Minister tell us precisely which databases will be used for automatic registration? How will their accuracy be assessed? Why do the Government consider verification through fewer than three independent datasets sufficient?

We believe that the EROs should have access to database information, and I agree with my noble friend Lord Hayward that it is certainly a profession that should be called out, given EROs’ professionalism and the extent of their service. That is worth putting on record. Most importantly, will electoral registration officers retain the discretion to refuse automatic voter registration where necessary—for example, if information is incomplete or contradictory, as I have said?

Amendment 63 would make it clear that the proposed voter registration pilot powers cannot be used to alter the franchise for parliamentary or English local elections. There is an important distinction between determining how an eligible person is registered and determining who is entitled to vote. The latter should be decided through primary legislation and full parliamentary scrutiny, not merely through powers designed to test administrative arrangements. Will the Minister confirm that these pilots will not extend or alter voter eligibility?

If automatic registration is introduced in some areas and not in others, registration figures may cease to be comparable and may then be arbitrarily based on some parts of the population. Does this not seek to prioritise some parts of the population over others and test only their opinion rather than the whole electorate? This could distort the 2029 parliamentary boundary review and the 2028 mayoral elections. Can the Government guarantee that pilot locations and selection criteria will be published and their effects independently evaluated?

I welcome my noble friend Lord Udny-Lister’s amendment, which rightly seeks to address the verification of nationality and immigration status. That is essential. Possession of a national insurance number or inclusion in a government database does not in itself establish your entitlement to vote. The rules governing qualifying Commonwealth and EU citizens are not straightforward, and an automated system must be capable of applying them correctly. Can the Minister explain what steps the Government are taking to ensure that checks will be undertaken against Home Office records before an individual is registered? Who will be accountable when an ineligible person is added? Will it be the Secretary of State?

These questions were echoed by my noble friend Lord Jackson, who proposes that automatic registration should be restricted to British citizens. There are practical concerns. Does the Minister accept this, and will she consider these sensible amendments? Moreover, my noble friend Lord Fuller highlights that, if votes are introduced at 16, younger voters who are registered at 15 will not meet the national insurance criteria. Can the Minister tell us how their identity will be verified where national insurance information is unavailable? My noble friend referenced the manual intervention required and how many hours’ extra work that might need for validation.

The amendments concerning implementation tables, information sharing and independent assessment also deserve careful consideration. The Government’s own impact assessment anticipates only a limited improvement in register completeness over several years, while significant costs associated with the necessary computer system remain uncertain. Can the Minister provide an estimate of the full cost to the local authorities, including software, staff training, data checking and correcting erroneous entries? Who will bear those costs? I appreciate that the Minister may not have all the answers with her today, so I would accept a response in writing.

The objective should not simply be to produce a larger electoral register; a register containing more names with the risk of more errors does not represent progress. Administrative convenience should not take precedence over proper determination of electoral eligibility. Amendments 48 and 63 seek to establish two essential protections: reliable verification before automatic registration and a clear constitutional limit on the use of pilot powers. I hope that the Minister will address these concerns in detail, because public confidence in our elections depends not only on participation but on the integrity of the system through which the participation takes place.

[Lord in Waiting/Government Whip (Lord Wilson of Sedgefield) (Lab)]

My Lords, it has been a really useful debate, with a lot of technical questions. I will do my best to get through them all. I will start with Amendments 8 and 9, which would change the age at which individuals can register to vote to 15 and change the age at which national insurance numbers are issued.

We all agree that no young person should miss the opportunity to participate in an election for the first time because there was insufficient time to be correctly registered to vote. By extending the age of registration to 14, this two-year window of registration ahead of turning 16 allows for enhanced links between the classroom and active engagement in our democracy, beginning with the act of registering to vote. I recognise the noble Lord’s concern that 14 and 15 year-olds will not yet have their national insurance numbers—and I understand the issue of 15 years and nine months—but national insurance numbers are automatically allocated to most young people in the UK before the age of 16. This age is set in line with the age at which young people become liable to pay national insurance contributions and the creation of an adult taxpayer record. I assure the Committee that we will put in place an alternative mechanism using central government data in England to ensure that 14 and 15 year-olds are able to proceed effectively through the registration service. I hope, therefore, that the noble Lord will not press these amendments.

On Amendment 47, I share the determination that only those who are eligible should be registered. I assure the Committee that, as set out in the Bill, EROs must be satisfied that the person is entitled to be registered to vote before they are registered without an application. That includes assurances that they hold eligible nationality and, where relevant, immigration status.

What data will the Government use as part of the measures to improve voter registration? I think the noble Lord, Lord Udny-Lister, mentioned this. As set out in the Government’s policy paper A Blueprint for Modern Digital Government, technology presents us with the opportunity to improve the way in which government delivers for the public. In line with this vision, our ambition is to transform our electoral registration system, enabling EROs to use data available to them to move towards an automated system so that voters can easily register to vote and keep their registration details updated. We are exploring whether government data could also help to identify people who may not be registered, and we are working closely with the Information Commissioner’s Office to ensure that appropriate safeguards will be in place.

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[Baroness Coffey (Con)]

Can the Minister give way on that matter? I ask because the Electoral Commission, in its evaluation of the Welsh Government’s pilot, said that it should be a minimum of two databases. I am interested to hear why the Government have not at least taken notice of what the Electoral Commission has to say.

[Lord Wilson of Sedgefield (Lab)]

We are saying here that we do not want to legislate for a minimum number of datasets that should be used to determine someone’s existence. The level of assurance provided by a dataset will depend on its quality and the information it contains. In some cases, one or two robust datasets may provide sufficient evidence that individuals are entitled to be registered, but others may not. Requiring EROs to consult additional datasets in every case could therefore impose unnecessary administrative burdens without improving confidence in the outcome. I hope that this assurance shows the Committee that the Government are fully committed to maintaining the integrity of the electoral register and that the noble Lords will feel able not to press their amendments.

I welcome the intention behind Amendment 49. The Government are committed to working towards making better use of data across government for registration purposes, but we do not believe that creating a new obligation for the Department for Work and Pensions is necessary or that it would achieve the desired outcome. We intend to utilise the powers in the Bill to make regulations to facilitate the sharing of data between government bodies and to assist EROs in carrying out their functions on the basis of agreed data-sharing arrangements. As part of this, we are exploring the use of DWP data.

MHCLG already has a successful agreement in place with the DWP to check the identity of individuals applying to register to vote, and we are exploring the potential to make greater use of DWP data for registration purposes. However, we know that the DWP’s database, including national insurance data, does not hold all the data required to determine eligibility for registration. Therefore, we could not rely solely on the DWP data. For those reasons, the Government do not think this proposal is the right way forward.

[Lord Jamieson (Con)]

I just have some questions, which are to help purely with my understanding. We are talking about auto-enrolment and auto-registration, which effectively means that we have an electronic system which will review a series of databases and will then throw out that, for example, Fred Smith should be eligible to vote in this area. In order for it to do that, the Government are going to have to programme the system, and the guidelines will be within the system. It cannot be up to the electoral registration officer to have a whole load of data thrown at them which they have to manually trawl through.

The Minister does not necessarily have to answer me today, but it would be quite helpful to have a flowchart showing how the Government envisage the auto-enrolment working, with the data coming in and the information the system throws out that the electoral returning officer will then have to review. The Minister is making comments about the electoral returning officer not being certain, but he or she can only be certain based on the information fed into the database and the information received out of it. I appreciate all the statements the Minister has made, but I find that flow-through a little bit hard to understand. I think it would be very helpful for Members of the House if they had that guidance.

[Lord Wilson of Sedgefield (Lab)]

We are working on the guidance. At the same time, we are going to set off with a whole series of pilots to work out what works and what does not, and how we can improve it. If noble Lords look at other countries, such as Canada, they started the whole process of automatic enrolment in the 1990s and they are improving the system all the time. At the end of the day, if there is a problem, the EROs can make the final decisions if they think the information they are going to base decisions on is not accurate enough.

On Amendment 50, we have explored the possibility of using the occasion of issuing national insurance numbers to teenagers when they are approaching their 16th birthday as an opportunity to register them to vote. However, I understand that nationality is not routinely recorded against all entries in the DWP data. In addition, not all young people are on the DWP database—for example, due to having been in care or their parents not having applied for child benefit. In line with the powers proposed in the Bill, individuals will also need to be of voting age—which for reserved elections is currently 18 and soon to be 16—before they can be added to the register without submitting an application, once the relevant provisions are in effect. For these reasons, while sympathetic to the intention, the Government have serious concerns about the effectiveness of this approach.

Amendment 51 prevents non-British citizens who are eligible to register to vote from being registered without an application or their entry being altered without an application. Amendment 62 also seeks to extend this exclusion to any pilots of registration without application. The Government have no plans to change the eligibility criteria for who can register to vote in reserved elections. We also do not think it would be fair to establish an automated voter registration system in which some eligible citizens cannot be directly registered or their details directly updated.

Amendment 52 would require higher and further education providers in England to share data with electoral registration officers to enable young electors to be registered. This Government are committed to supporting more university and college students being registered to vote. Under the powers in the Bill, we plan to test registration without an application using locally available data in a number of areas around the UK. The Electoral Commission will then review the effectiveness of the new approaches tested.

As part of this, electoral registration officers will be able to enter into data-sharing agreements with higher and further education providers in their local area so as to identify eligible individuals who are unregistered or who have moved. Further detail will be set out in secondary legislation and in guidance. I hope that provides reassurance to noble Lords.

On Clause 17, I note the noble Baroness, Lady Coffey, and the noble Lord, Lord Hayward, intend to oppose Clause 17 standing part of the Bill. Voter registration is core to our democratic system. It is right that changes to voter registration be carefully scrutinised and assessed. Direct registration, alongside other measures, will support the objective of improving the completeness and accuracy of electoral registers. Together with Clause 18—which will create a new duty for EROs to update people’s personal details in the electoral register when they are aware that these have changed—these changes have the potential to reduce the estimated 7 million to 8 million people who are unregistered or inaccurately registered, a figure that has been used more than once today.

Direct registration also has the long-term potential to reduce burdens on EROs, who should need to spend less time following up with individuals who have not responded to invitations to register to vote.

In using data for direct registration, EROs must be assured that the person is eligible to be registered to vote. Those who will be directly registered will be informed and have the right to opt out of the process during a response period. Particular categories of elector, such as anonymous electors, will also be exempt.

I hope noble Lords will be reassured that direct registration will at first be tested in pilots in a number of areas. This will be in different locations and settings, with different characteristics and challenges. We are working with the Electoral Commission to develop the assessment criteria and ensure a wide range of different areas can participate. I appreciate the interest of the noble Baroness and others in voter registration, and I recognise the importance of getting this right. The Bill—and secondary legislation—will lay the foundations for more automated voter registration in safe and responsible ways.

I recognise the intention behind Amendment 58, which seeks to promote transparency around the operation of the electoral registration system. It is in support of that objective that substantial information on voter registration is already made publicly available. Noble Lords may be aware that the public may easily access information on registration applications at the online register to vote performance dashboard. These arrangements already provide a significant degree of transparency regarding applications to register to vote, while recognising that applications are determined by registration officers who are statutorily responsible for maintaining the register for the area for which they are responsible. The amendment would also permit the publication of information at ward level. However, the Secretary of State does not hold registration data at that level of granularity and would therefore not be able to publish the information envisaged by the amendment.

I welcome the enthusiastic support of the noble Baronesses, Lady Lister of Burtersett and Lady Bennett of Manor Castle, for the cause of automated voter registration through their Amendment 59. I reassure noble Lords that the Government are committed to moving to more automated registration, and we are putting the necessary foundations in place through the Bill. I assure the Committee that officials are working closely with counterparts at the Home Office, the Passport Office, DWP and HMRC to explore data sharing in support of more automated registration. However, these are extremely complex new approaches, and we will need to be certain we have the right arrangements in place and that we have tested those very robustly before they are rolled out widely. Setting a firm deadline in primary legislation, before we can be certain that we will be ready, would not, in my view, be the best way to secure the progress that we all wish to see.

On Amendment 61, our plans for voter registration without application are about making registration simpler and easier. These are significant reforms and we need to test them to ensure we get them right. We hope pilots will commence soon after the necessary legislation is in effect. The Electoral Commission will undertake an independent review to inform decisions about wider implementation, so there will be a significant degree of external evaluation of the new approach. The Boundary Commissions for England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland are independent of government. The timings of parliamentary boundary reviews are set by legislation, which the Government have no plans to change. Amendment 61’s commitment to ensuring all eligible voters can participate and are appropriately represented in our democratic process is one I share, but I do not believe a further independent review is needed. 

On Amendment 63, if the concern is that these powers could be used to alter who is entitled to register and vote, I assure the Committee that this is not the case. Clause 20 of the Bill creates a new power for the Secretary of State to make regulations to pilot changes to the voter registration process. Those powers are carefully defined and are limited to what the Bill describes as “voter registration provision”.

The Bill goes on to make clear what falls within that definition at Clause 21. It is made clear that this is limited to provision about registering individuals who are entitled, under existing franchise eligibility criteria, to be registered. It also allows for existing register entries to be amended or removed. Crucially, it does not provide a mechanism to alter the eligibility criteria for registration.

Amendment 67 would require the Secretary of State to publish a plan for implementing Part 2 of the Bill within two months of this part of the Bill coming into force. I agree with and share the goal that we must move as fast as possible. I am sure that the House will welcome the news that more information about the direct registration pilots will be published shortly. This will include further information about how the pilots will work in practice and the prospective timetable.

[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.

[Lord Rennard (LD)]

I am trying to get in my mind why it is that the things around automatic voter registration that the Minister and his colleagues supported in opposition are now considered not to be so practical. I note his point that the DWP data is not sufficient to include somebody on the electoral register. But, under the present arrangements, either online or by paper, you give your name, address and national insurance number—and hey presto, you are registered. I am not sure there is such a barrier now—but if there is, surely the only bit of data required is to confirm that you are a UK citizen. Since the Government must know who is a UK citizen, if you have their name, address and national insurance number and you know they are a UK citizen, you should simply put people on the electoral register.

To help the Minister answer the questions he has been asked about costs, I say that this will be a great cost-saving exercise compared with many forms being printed and sent out in the expensive post, and human beings having to go round door to door doing this. We could cut costs considerably if we sped this up.

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[Lord Wilson of Sedgefield (Lab)]

What we want to do is to get this right and to keep the costs to a minimum. We have said that we are looking extensively at all the databases at the Passport Office, the DVLA, HMRC and the DWP, and we want to get this right. My assessment of this is that it is not straightforward—it can be difficult—but we want to make it as efficient as possible, because it will save money in the long run if we have an automated system that delivers what we want to see: a vibrant democracy.

[Baroness Coffey (Con)]

I would be grateful if the Minister could look at some of the questions that I asked, which I do not think he has had a chance to answer, and write to me.

[Lord Wilson of Sedgefield (Lab)]

I would be more than happy to do that.

[Lord Fuller (Con)]

My Lords, it is late, so I will be brief, especially as the new guidance in the Companion tells me to be so. I was confused by the noble Lord, Lord Rennard; he first stood up to excoriate me and then his Amendment 50 proposed something like the same. Nevertheless, there are no hard feelings, which is why I have moved towards him, because I sense that we are as one on the national insurance issue.

I am concerned by the Minister’s winding, because it has become clear for the first time that so much of the foundations of the democracy that our society depends on is to be left to secondary legislation: “Don’t worry, it’s going to be all right”. I heard no reassurance from the Dispatch Box on how we will deal with the 14 and 15 year-old attainers, although I listened carefully to what he said about everybody else. He is placing impossible burdens on the electoral registration officers.

I suggest that that the Minister needs to spend time not only with those officers but possibly with some of the participants in this debate. It is clear—I am in danger of sounding like the noble Lord, Lord Rooker—that no consideration was given to this in the other place, and this is the House of Lords at its best.

I am really concerned about all the unintended consequences here, whether it be with regard to identification, as my noble friend Lord Jackson said, or on immigration status. I am concerned about the number of duplicates and the different spellings of the name O’Neill, for example—and is that one L or two? What is the role of the Electoral Commission? We will deal with some of these issues. Ultimately, however, we need to be concerned about the integrity of the register.

I hope that the Minister will commit here and now to having follow-up meetings on a cross-party basis with those who have participated in this debate so that we can thrash this out. What we have had up until now is a recipe for disaster on Report unless more clarification is given. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

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[Baroness Thornhill (LD)]

My Lords, I will be brief in speaking to Amendment 125—I will chop out a large paragraph—in my name and that of my noble friend Lord Rennard, and then talk to Amendments 136 and 124, in the names of the noble Lords, Lord Walney and Lord Jackson of Peterborough, respectively.

Amendment 125 is a modest amendment and a sensible proposal. My reason for supporting it was to share with noble Lords my experiences during my time in local government in Watford, where we participated in a number of electoral pilots. We had a very go-ahead ERO, so we piloted voting in supermarkets and weekend voting, alongside other things.

Some of those approaches worked better than others, and not every innovation produced the increase in turnout that we had all hoped for. In fact, one pilot involved voting at the weekend, after the whole country had already cast its ballots. It felt distinctly odd that everyone seemed to be discussing the results before we had even voted. It did not work, but we did it and we learned from it and that is the important point that my noble friend made. That is why pilots matter—they allow us to test assumptions against reality. We should be more eager to try them, rather than finding lots of reasons to stick with the status quo.

On Amendment 124 from the noble Lord, Lord Jackson, I absolutely understand the attraction of overnight counts. Those of us who have stood for election know the adrenaline rush and, indeed, have felt the frustration of going to bed without knowing the result and probably not sleeping. I have certainly felt that myself. For us, the whole count experience is a buzz and an important occasion, which definitely feels diluted the next day. But we should be honest: the main beneficiaries of immediate counts are not the voters, who are all tucked up in bed; they are the campaigners, candidates and commentators. The people who have to make it happen are our election officers, council staff and many casual workers, many of whom have already worked a very long day, especially since the hours have been extended. We have had counts going on well into the night—more so when we have not had enough people, meaning fewer people have had to count more votes, which makes it quite challenging.

There was a period when we had this argument every single year, until we came to an understanding of what worked for us. That is what my argument is leading to. Different councils face different staffing, logistical and financial pressures. Even the geographical location of where they are counting can be an impediment to counting at 3 am. On what we need to do about this, our instincts are to trust EROs and local returning officers, who often discuss this with the party-political agents—as they should—to make the right decision for their own circumstances. That can vary from year to year and election to election.

There can be compromises. We have verified on the night and counted the next day. A good counting agent can tell a lot from the verification, even if it is done face down. In short, our view is that it is not an issue for central diktat.

I have sympathy with Amendments 129 and 136. I am disappointed that the noble Lord, Lord Walney, is not in his place—I am sure there is a good reason—because I would have liked to have heard his views, as he has worked on this. The concerns raised by the noble Lord, Lord Jackson, are not theoretical. I have seen occasions outside polling stations where behaviour has crossed the line from legitimate campaigning to outright intimidation and aggression. I have seen it very often against women. Sometimes it has required police involvement. That is wrong, whoever is responsible. What may appear to some as merely political disagreement can in reality be an attempt to influence voters through pressure and coercion.

As a liberal, what concerns me most of all is any assumption that people should vote in a particular way just because they belong to a particular family, faith, community or ethnic group. Democracy does not work like that. The ballot paper belongs to an individual voter, and the choice belongs to that individual voter. No faith, family, community leader or political party owns that vote. This is not about any one religion or community. Pressure can arise in many different settings. We have seen recent examples of this around the world—organised efforts by religious leaders to influence voting behaviour. The principle is the same wherever it occurs.

The concern underlying these amendments is a legitimate one. Every voter, regardless of background, belief or circumstance, should be able to enter that little polling station and go into that booth with the stubby pencil the Minister referred to and know that the decision they make is theirs alone. That is a principle worth defending.

[Lord Wilson of Sedgefield (Lab)]

This seems a convenient time to pause proceedings for the day. I therefore beg to move that the debate on this amendment be adjourned.

Debate on Amendment 10 adjourned.