Representation of the People Bill

Baroness Coffey Excerpts

Committee stage
Monday 2nd November 2026 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, I will be very brief. I have signed three amendments in this group—Amendments 52, 59 and 67—that all address the issue of the “missing millions”. This phrase has been used multiple times in this debate; it is a real scar on our polity and a reflection of inequality in our society and in access to participation in the democratic process.

Very briefly on Amendment 52, I commend the noble Baroness, Lady Royall, for her previous work in this area. It is really time to see this finally nailed on, as this amendment would.

I will focus particularly on the two amendments in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Lister. We suffer a great deal of distrust in our politics that comes from us having seen a great number of successive Governments’ Ministers saying, “Look, I’ve pulled a lever”, but everyone knew that that lever was not attached to anything. Promises were made and not delivered. Just two cases that particularly come to my mind are sustainable urban drainage systems, which were promised in planning but have still not been delivered; and the promise to exclude at least illegal deforestation from the supply chain has, again, still not been delivered.

We need to see the Government not just making promises but setting out a reasonable timeframe for delivery. As the noble Baroness, Lady Lister, said, Wales is showing that this can be done. That was an interesting cross-reference to our earlier debate on the ways in which the devolved nations can be a real model from which England can learn. It can save itself a great deal of work and effort by seeing what works and just copying it.

[Baroness Coffey (Con)]

My Lords, I have tabled a clause stand part notice on Clause 17 to try to understand the pros and cons of automatic voter enrolment. We had 48.2 million electors at the last election. About 3 million people registered in the month before the election happened, which is about 7% or about 4,500 per constituency, on average, but I am sure it differed. Speaking candidly, that included the person who is now the MP for Suffolk Coastal, who defeated me. They managed to declare themselves as resident in that constituency before they were on the electoral roll. So there is a point here about the real authenticity of the people who are registering, which is where I come to the pros and cons.

There is a lot to be said for not having a huge rush of people registering at the last moment, but there is also something about getting it right. I am conscious that the pilots of the automatic process in Wales saw an increase of between 2% and 8%. Admittedly, only a handful of parts of Wales were covered but, basically, 14,500 people were added through the automatic process and there was a lot of manual checking. I do not know the cost of that, and the Electoral Commission said that it would need to be evaluated based on that cost, but it is worth while trying to get a sense of what happens in a regular process around the country where people have second homes. A lot of second home owners get turned down if they apply in the normal way but not based on their principal residences. I will discuss students and children at boarding school in a different set of amendments, so will not get into the detail on this right now.

On the broader scale, in the review after the last election, an estimate of between 7 million and 8 million people had not registered. There is a law in this country that people are supposed to register, and the council can, if it so wishes, pursue them with a fine of £1,000 per person for not registering. I am not suggesting that councils are going to start trying to generate lots of money, although it feels like a lot of money could be generated if that were the case, but rather that we think about how we do this in a sensible way. That is why there is a sense of ambition—it is not overambition—but how accurate will it be?

Other amendments propose the DWP issuing information to electoral registration officers. I think that the amendment that refers to those issued in the last year being sent on is fine. Actually, HRMC is responsible for the national insurance database and is the overall guardian of that; what happens with the DWP is linked to what happens in HMRC. For example, for people who have not claimed child benefit, it does not happen and they end up going through a manual process to get a national insurance number. But the broader point here comes back to accuracy.

That leads on to the question of what is going to happen about who is entitled to vote in that place if we suddenly have a huge expansion of the electorate. Research has shown that it often becomes an issue if people have moved during the year and end up being registered in more than one place. How does that get resolved? When it comes to parliamentary voting, what is supposed to happen is that the only place where you are allowed to be registered is the principal place in which you live. There is very strict guidance from the Government and the Electoral Commission that this is the case for local registration officers. My concern is that what often happens in the rush at the end is that none of that is gone through, so we end up having a lot of people registering in places where, if they had registered in normal time, their registration might have been turned down because it was not their principal place of residence. There is a risk of overinflating the electorate.

What does that mean for the consideration of constituency boundaries—for example, in the Cities of London and Westminster constituency and in Leeds Central and Headingley? Of course, they often match up to university towns and places of transience where people might move. Things might change under the Renters’ Rights Act, but this is something that the Government need to think through.

I would be grateful to hear from the Minister what lessons the Government have learned from the Welsh Government pilots and how they intend to ensure accuracy. I think there is a case here of rushing to an outcome that, instead of improving democracy, could significantly undermine it. So, as I said, I would be grateful to hear what the Government are doing to manage the risks as well as big-up the benefits.

What guarantees will prevent personal information that is supplied to, for example, HMRC, the DWP or the DVLA from being disclosed to the electoral register? Who bears legal responsibility if somebody is incorrectly registered, omitted or, indeed, registered at an address where they are not entitled to vote? Will automatically created registrations at secondary addresses be excluded from constituency election calculations where appropriate? Most importantly of all, what level of erroneous registration would the Government consider acceptable? How will they measure that, and how will they address it?

This is why, on the surface, it might seem very convenient to have automatic voter registration, but when we are talking about integrity and, ultimately, who forms a parliamentary constituency and who forms a Government, a lot more detail needs to be had than what we have in the Bill.

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Amendment 48 would require an electoral registration officer to verify a person’s existence through three separate datasets before they could be registered without an application. I share the noble Baroness’s and the noble Lord’s commitment to ensuring that only those who are eligible are added to the electoral register. However, I do not believe that this amendment is necessary. Under the provisions in the Bill, an ERO must directly register someone only where they are satisfied that the person is entitled to be registered. The Government do not consider it appropriate to specify in legislation a minimum number of datasets that should be used to determine someone’s existence.

[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.

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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.

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Moved by

[Baroness Coffey]

10: Schedule 1, page 129, line 16, leave out paragraphs 4 to 6
Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment, and another in the name of Baroness Coffey, removes exemptions for child voters regarding various duties of election and registration officials.

[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.