Business Improvement District Ballots: Digital Voting

Baroness Winterton of Doncaster Excerpts

Monday 20th April 2026 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)]

I agree with the noble Lord that BIDs bring very significant investment in the areas they operate in. There are now more than 340 BIDs in the UK; cumulatively, they invest more than £169 million each year in local areas. We need to ensure that we are doing our very best to ensure that those BIDs operate in a way that works for the people who are engaged in them. We want to get this consultation and its analysis done as quickly as possible so that, if we consider it possible and safe to introduce digital voting for them, we can get on with that and do it as quickly as we can.

[Baroness Winterton of Doncaster (Lab)]

My Lords, as a member of the OSCE Parliamentary Assembly, I have recently been involved in election monitoring programmes, for example in Moldova, so I am very aware of the threat of cyber attacks that the noble Lord raised. When the Minister looks at the security of digital voting systems, can she draw on the experience of organisations such as the OSCE, so that—even though she says we may not be use them at the moment—we can make sure that our systems are watertight and safe from cyber attacks in the future?

[Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)]

I am grateful to my noble friend, particularly as she reminds me of the days when I was doing election monitoring in Moldova and Georgia, which was a fascinating experience. I very much appreciated then the work of the OSCE, and still do. She is quite right that we have to do all we can to make sure that voting is safe. I believe that the Representation of the People Bill is completing its Commons stages today and will come to our House in due course. Where good practice is developed and promoted by the OSCE and others, we will look at that with great interest.