House of Lords

Monday 2nd November 2026 Lords Chamber

Monday 2 November 2026

14:30

Prayers—read by the Lord Bishop of Leicester.

Introduction: Baroness Aglionby

Monday 2nd November 2026 Lords Chamber

14:38

Julia Catherine Weir Aglionby, having been created Baroness Aglionby, of Armathwaite in the County of Cumbria, was introduced and made the solemn affirmation, supported by Lord Wallace of Saltaire and Baroness Parminter, and signed an undertaking to abide by the Code of Conduct.

Introduction: Baroness Kitching of Penistone

Monday 2nd November 2026 Lords Chamber

14:44

Hannah Ruth Kitching, having been created Baroness Kitching of Penistone, of Penistone in the County of South Yorkshire, was introduced and made the solemn affirmation, supported by Baroness Pinnock and Lord Mohammed of Tinsley, and signed an undertaking to abide by the Code of Conduct.

Royal Assent

Monday 2nd November 2026 Lords Chamber

14:50

Royal Assent was notified for the following Act:

Sovereign Grant Act.

Retirement of a Member: Lord Shipley

Monday 2nd November 2026 Lords Chamber

Announcement

14:50

[The Lord Speaker (Lord Forsyth of Drumlean)]

My Lords, I should like to notify the House of the retirement, with effect from 31 October, of the noble Lord, Lord Shipley, pursuant to Section 1 of the House of Lords Reform Act 2014. On behalf of the House, I thank the noble Lord for his much-valued service to the House.

Nationally Significant Cultural Institutions: Capital Maintenance Costs

Monday 2nd November 2026 Lords Chamber

Question

14:50

Asked by

[Baroness Fraser of Craigmaddie]

To ask His Majesty’s Government, in the light of the reported repair requirements of the Royal Opera House, what support they intend to provide to nationally significant cultural institutions facing substantial capital maintenance costs.

[Baroness Fraser of Craigmaddie (Con)]

My Lords, I beg leave to ask the Question standing in my name on the Order Paper. In doing so, I draw the House’s attention to my relevant interests, particularly as a board member of Creative Scotland and a former board member and current sub-committee member of the British Library.

[Baroness in Waiting/Government Whip (Baroness Dacres of Lewisham) (Lab)]

This Government are committed to supporting our world-renowned cultural institutions. Fit-for-purpose infrastructure is vital to that success, which is why we are investing £1.5 billion to address the capital needs of cultural organisations across England. Through our creative foundations fund, the Royal Opera House has been awarded £5 million this year for urgent conservation work and structural repair, safeguarding that premier venue and supporting its progress towards net zero.

[Baroness Fraser of Craigmaddie (Con)]

My Lords, the creative foundations fund, while welcome, will not address the stark capital crisis identified by the noble Baroness, Lady Hodge. Where is the longer-term strategic approach, and what can the Minister say in response to the sector, which has called last week’s Budget a missed opportunity, ignoring calls for theatre tax relief to cover the true cost of touring and excluding theatres from business rates reductions? Rather than giving institutions such as the Royal Opera House breathing space, are these short-term measures not more likely to suffocate ballet, opera and theatres?

[Baroness Dacres of Lewisham (Lab)]

This Government are deeply committed to supporting our world-renowned venues of culture and visual arts. It is important to mention that it has been over a decade since this sector has seen such investment in it—£1.5 billion of investment in arts and culture has definitely raised the bar and it is there to help all the different bodies within the sector. It is also important that there is £425 million in the creative foundations fund, which helps to support capital need, which is challenging for a great number of these industries.

[Baroness Elliott of Whitburn Bay (Lab)]

My Lords, I welcome the investment that this Government are making in Britain’s cultural infrastructure, not just at the Royal Opera House but at venues across the country. However, given the Prime Minister’s commitment to devolving powers to regional and local government, can my noble friend comment on whether we can expect further devolution of powers in arts and culture?

[Baroness Dacres of Lewisham (Lab)]

This Government are dedicated and committed to devolution of power, resources and decision-making to the heart of our communities. This is why mayors are empowered through the English Devolution and Community Empowerment Act to have strategic control over regional cultural investments. As I said, that brings the decision-making closer to those able to see, witness and experience our arts and culture, which we are extremely proud of, and we welcome that.

[Baroness Bonham-Carter of Yarnbury (LD)]

My Lords, last week I saw “The Standard of Living”, about that great Liberal and founder of the Arts Council, Maynard Keynes. Forget the maintenance—he actually built a theatre for his wife. We can no longer build but we need to maintain, and we on these Benches believe he knew a thing or two about the need for intervention for economic renewal. The majority of venues on the theatres at risk register are regional, such as Cambridge. Will the Minister make the case to the Treasury for extending the pubs and live music venues business rates relief in England to theatres?

[Baroness Dacres of Lewisham (Lab)]

This Government are dedicated to supporting the arts, including the visual arts and the organisations that the noble Baroness mentioned. We had a Budget focused on giving that breathing space not only to individuals and families but to businesses, and that includes our arts, visual culture and music venues. That is something that our Government will continue to support, not only through the £1.5 billion of funding across this Parliament but through the £425 million from the creative foundations fund.

[The Earl of Clancarty (CB)]

My Lords, does the Minister agree that one of the best ways in which not just the Royal Opera House but other arts and cultural organisations could be supported would be to write off the Covid loans or turn them into non-repayable grants? That is how it was set up for Germany’s institutions, which have long left the Covid era behind them, whereas our organisations still have to pay massive amounts of interest, harmful to our arts, harmful to the organisations concerned and destructive to society, since this is our money which is being moved around in such a detrimental fashion.

[Baroness Dacres of Lewisham (Lab)]

I thank the noble Earl, because he raises an interesting point. I remind the House that this Government were resolute that such recovery funds were loans and should be cleared and repaid. Organisations facing severe financial difficulties can approach the Arts Council to explore adjusting repayment schedules, but this needs to be done under strict guidance and be a measure of last resort.

[Lord Mendoza (Con)]

My Lords, I declare my interest as chairman of Historic England. In 2024, DCMS put out the Purcell report, looking at the deficit of maintenance in our cultural infrastructure. It came up with a figure of some £7 billion. One of our biggest problems is that we need the skilled labour to do this work. At Historic England, we estimate that about 100,000 jobs could be created for young people. We need desperately to get these skills in there, because there are companies out there that cannot take on the jobs even if we could pay for them, and only 14% of companies in the heritage construction sector employ people under the age of 25. Does the Minister agree that it would be wonderful if we could incentivise the construction sector to take on apprentices, to take on young people to teach them the skills that we need in this country to produce economic growth in this incredibly important sector?

[Baroness Dacres of Lewisham (Lab)]

I agree 100% with what the noble Lord said, which is why this Government are putting all their effort into ensuring that we are getting that talent pipeline. We have specialist heritage apprenticeships and national arts education pipelines to ensure just that.

[Lord Hunt of Kings Heath (Lab)]

My Lords, more generally in relation to opera, will my noble friend remind the party opposite that it was under its watch that the Arts Council was pressurised into basically defunding much of English National Opera’s support? It reduced the amount of money for opera touring. If we are looking seriously at devolution, can we ask the Arts Council to re-examine its approach to traditional opera, and to touring opera in particular?

[Baroness Dacres of Lewisham (Lab)]

My noble friend raises an interesting point. The Arts Council is doing a lot of work when it comes to innovative funding. That was one of the main points of the Hodge review. Not only that but we are making sure that we are putting that investment in now, with £1.5 billion through our Arts Everywhere fund, ensuring that everyone, everywhere, regardless of their socioeconomic background, has access to the arts.

[Baroness Bloomfield of Hinton Waldrist (Con)]

My Lords, among our nationally significant cultural institutions are our great cathedrals and churches, yet many are at risk of closing their doors due to the costs of maintenance and repairs, such as Southwell Minster, which unsuccessfully applied to the places of worship renewal fund. What is more, the fund is for England only. Does the Minister recognise the cultural contribution of our places of worship across the UK? If so, will she look to restore the previous listed places of worship grant scheme, which was UK wide?

[Baroness Dacres of Lewisham (Lab)]

As the noble Baroness will know, a lot of this funding is devolved to the nations and regions. Our capital grant scheme offers more targeted support for the faith sector than the VAT rebate scheme that was mentioned. Over £230 million is being invested in such heritage buildings, with £42 million invested into the heritage revival fund. We must make sure that when different organisations, faiths and places of worship apply for grants, it is dealt with in a fair and balanced way, at arm’s length from the Government and by the Arts Council, so that it is devoid of political interference.

Defence Spending and Resilience

Monday 2nd November 2026 Lords Chamber

Question

15:01

Asked by

[Lord John of Southwark]

To ask His Majesty’s Government what progress they have made in their national conversation on defence spending and resilience; and what are the outcomes of that conversation to date.

[The Minister of State, Ministry of Defence (Lord Coaker) (Lab)]

My Lords, the national conversation on defence and resilience is now under way across government, helping build public understanding of the threats we face and a whole-of-society approach to resilience. Outcomes include a national resilience public awareness campaign, deeper engagement with industry and local partners and stronger preparedness across government, business and communities, alongside refreshed national defence planning.

[Lord John of Southwark (Lab)]

My Lords, it is clear from reports of increased sales of tinned food, bottled water, radios and torches that the Government’s message about national preparedness is getting through. However, are the Government confident that the public understand the level and seriousness of threats to our national security which prompted the Defence Secretary’s warnings on 22 October?

[Lord Coaker (Lab)]

I thank my noble friend for his important question. The remarks made by the Defence Secretary and others have started the conversation, which is leading to that increased awareness. Does that mean that everyone is aware of the threats that we face? I think there is still a job of work to do with respect to that.

In particular, I do not think we are going to see Russian paratroopers in Southwark, but, in respect of the threat to Southwark and across the United Kingdom in terms of cyber attack, disruption to trade, misinformation, threats that we all need to understand and be prepared for, there is a lot of work to be done.

[Lord Stirrup (CB)]

My Lords, the national conversation on defence, such an important issue, cannot be just a series of rambling and random chats or sporadically issued propositions. It requires a coherent plan, driven from the top, properly resourced and appropriately targeted to the relevant audiences, the most important of which are Generation Z, who have the most difficulty understanding the need. Where is the plan?

[Lord Coaker (Lab)]

My right honourable friend in the other place, the Security Minister, with the support of the Defence Secretary, has announced the Be Ready campaign, which is a national resilience public awareness campaign. It has been built up with the devolved Administrations and local resilience forums. More than 500 organisations have signed up to help with the distribution of the advice that will be given to people. The national conversation will be a part of that.

The noble and gallant Lord will be pleased to know that social media will play a crucial part, to make sure that we do not just use the media that many of us listen to but the media that Generation Z and others listen to. That will be an important part of the plan.

[Lord Howell of Guildford (Con)]

My Lords, the newspapers are carrying reports of how other nations, and maybe this one as well, are expanding their defence spending without resort to government accounts, by using an expansion of the old PFI model, which obviously would be a great relief for the bond markets and relief from further upward pressure on interest rates, which is otherwise inevitable. Can the Minister tell us how we are getting on in that respect in this country, because we certainly need that kind of remedy?

[Lord Coaker (Lab)]

The noble Lord, with many of his friends on both sides of the Houses, has made important statements about the need to look for other ways of financing defence spending, whether that be through a defence bank, whether that be through national finance initiatives, or whether it be through all sorts of different mechanisms such as those. He will have heard the Chancellor last week say in the Budget Statement, laid out in the Budget book, that he intends to launch a consultation and review on how more of that sort of finance could be attracted, to support the defence spending that this country needs. He is hoping that will report as soon as possible.

[Lord Bruce of Bennachie (LD)]

My Lords, when Paddy Ashdown published his Humanitarian Emergency Response Review, he concluded that the people who were best able to cope with disasters were those who had been through them before and learned from them. In my own area of north-east Scotland, we have got used to sustained power cuts, and one of the worst storms we had did not just cut off power but all communications—digital, telephones, data and everything else—for days. What are the Government doing to co-ordinate the knowledge that we gain, at home and abroad, and ensure that all the relevant bodies in the private and public sector have access to all that and can give their training on the basis of experience?

[Lord Coaker (Lab)]

It is a very important question, and I hope the noble Lord heard some of the answer that I gave to the noble and gallant Lord, which was about working with the devolved Administrations. With Scotland, there has been a lot of consultation with the Scottish Government, but also with local organisations. The British Red Cross, for example, has been involved. Many of the authorities that are responsible for water and those that are responsible for some of the emergency services have been utilised. Alongside that, the noble Lord is right to point out the need to use volunteers and to use those who have the knowledge and experience that he speaks about. As part of that, we are engaging with local communities to build on that, so that they can be part of the conversation as well.

[Lord Harris of Haringey (Lab)]

My Lords, I refer to my interest as chair of the National Preparedness Commission. Until the last couple of weeks, the national conversation has been conducted in whispers, so I am pleased that the volume has been turned up slightly. However, does my noble friend accept that any campaign of this sort has to be sustained and repeated, must be specific to the threats being faced at the time, and also needs to prompt a dialogue in local communities, on local streets and in local faith communities and so on as to how this should be done? Can he also tell us what thought has been given to how schools can be engaged in this, because engaging children means that the next generation will be more resilient and that pester power will take it back to their homes.

[Lord Coaker (Lab)]

I agree with all that. The campaign certainly needs to be sustained and it needs to take place over a significant period of time. We need to involve all the community, and schools in particular. Discussions are under way with local forums, with local education bodies, with schools themselves and with teacher representatives, to try to understand what the best way is of doing that. The Government have been doing many of the things my noble friend has asked for for a considerable period of time. One of the things I am determined to do, as he will know from our conversations, is to try to speed it up a little bit. We will all have our individual examples. Many people here will perhaps know that I like to have my hair cut now and again. When I was having my hair cut, the local barbers engaged in a conversation with me about what they should do in terms of crisis, because they had heard about it on the radio. I thought that was a pretty good start, actually.

[Baroness Goldie (Con)]

My Lords, cadets and our reservists have a crucial role to play in this national conversation on defence and resilience, because they are, after all, the Armed Forces’ local presence throughout the entirety of the United Kingdom. In the light of that, and so that the reserve forces and cadets associations can continue their incredible work without distraction, will the Minister confirm that the Government will drop their policy of reorganisation of the RFCAs?

[Lord Coaker (Lab)]

No, I cannot confirm that. But I can confirm, as the noble Baroness knows and understands, that between Committee and Report I spent a significant amount of time talking to various bodies and Peers about the reorganisation that the Government are proposing and, alongside that, the protection of many of the things that the House raised, such as: regional representation on the national body; the role of lords-lieutenant and others being in the Bill; voting rights for the regional representatives on the new national body; making sure there are significant numbers of them on the national panel; and ensuring that three or so members from England will be on that body, and also from each of the devolved Administrations. I was asked time and again, “Could there be a representative from Scotland? Could there be a representative from Northern Ireland? Could there be a representative from Wales?” To each of those I voted yes. Although I cannot answer in the affirmative to the noble Baroness’s question, she will understand that I spent hours trying to get into in the Bill many of the things that she and others demanded to protect many things that noble Lords regard as important under the current structure.

[Baroness Teather (LD)]

My Lords, what practical steps do the Government intend to take to invest in supporting stronger local community bonds? Individualism and individual prepping will not really support local resilience. As we learned from Covid, those stronger community bonds will enable the most vulnerable people to be reached.

[Lord Coaker (Lab)]

I have been talking to the local resilience forums in England and to the devolved Administrations in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland about the importance of involving local organisations. I also think—it is probably right to mention this now—that the involvement of the cadets, reserves and many other emergency and voluntary organisations in Remembrance Sunday is not only a perfect example of honouring those who have served and fallen in the past and who serve today but reminds us of the important bond that exists between the Armed Forces and the emergency services and local communities. It is crucial to our nation to ensure that that bond operates not just on Remembrance Sunday but throughout the year.

Personal Independence Payment and Universal Credit

Monday 2nd November 2026 Lords Chamber

Question

15:12

Asked by

[Baroness Spielman]

To ask His Majesty’s Government what recent assessment they have made of trends in the level of people claiming Personal Independence Payment and Universal Credit.

[The Minister of State, Department for Work and Pensions (Baroness Sherlock) (Lab)]

My Lords, this Government are concerned about levels of economic inactivity in our society. It is crucial that our social security system supports and incentivises work. This Government will transform the system from one that writes people off to one that gives people the support and opportunities to live their fullest lives. That means supporting those who can work to do so while always protecting those with the most severe needs.

[Baroness Spielman (Con)]

My Lords, if the Minister agrees that work is the best route out of welfare dependency, why did the Budget contain no measures that the OBR judged would have a material effect on employment?

[Baroness Sherlock (Lab)]

My Lords, the Question was about levels of PIP and universal credit, both of which were creations of the previous Conservative Government, under which levels of inactivity went through the roof. The Opposition want to look at what we have done; we have already taken steps to reform the system. We have rebalanced universal credit to reduce the gap between the standard rate and the health-related rate. We have invested in the right to try, given out employment support and launched the biggest crackdown on fraud and error in the social security system. This month, reports will come from the Timms and Milburn reviews and, after that, the Government will show how this system can be created into one that supports work and pushes forward. I urge the noble Baroness to watch this space.

[Lord Young of Cookham (Con)]

My Lords, in last Thursday’s debate on PIP, I gave examples of websites that are helping people to game the system. While applicants are entitled to professional independent advice, at least two websites advise people to tell lies to pursue a fraudulent claim. What is the noble Baroness’s department doing about that?

[Baroness Sherlock (Lab)]

The noble Lord raises an important point. We are watching carefully and monitoring benefits-related content and emerging risks online, and we are working to ensure that people have access to appropriate support. In the coming weeks, we will also introduce a new code of practice that will clamp down on activity by claims management companies that are trying to get people to pay them to apply for benefits that they can get perfectly well for free. That simply is not there. If the noble Lord looks, he will see that our new “Don’t pay to claim” marketing campaign has already gone live. It will be out there between now and Christmas encouraging pensioners and those who support them not to pay anything for benefits that they can get for free. I am glad the noble Lord raised this: we are acting in this space and will keep monitoring it.

[Lord Palmer of Childs Hill (LD)]

My Lords, the Question is about the trends in claims. I have not heard anything from the Minister about how the Government are looking at the trends and what they are doing to deal with those trends. It is just: “We are doing the same as we have done before”. There are trends, and I do not think they are being looked at carefully enough.

[Baroness Sherlock (Lab)]

I apologise: clearly, I have not explained myself clearly enough. Let me try again, because we are absolutely not doing what used to happen. We are doing different things, and they are starting to have an effect. For example, when I say that we have rebalanced universal credit, what the previous Government did was to freeze the rates for universal credit but not for disability benefits. What then happened was that people were either driven into poverty or were diverted into sickness and disability benefits. What we have done is to rebalance universal credit. We have invested in right to try, so that people who are disabled can take a risk on work, knowing that if it does not work, they can still get support. Crucially, we are investing in employment support to help people to get out there and into work. If the noble Lord looks at the trends, the number of people who are economically inactive because of long-term sickness has been going up stratospherically; that rise has finally levelled off. That is the difference that we are beginning to make. We will not do this overnight. Nobody has ever fixed this overnight. Oppositions often pretend too; Governments do not. We are going to make a difference.

[Baroness O’Grady of Upper Holloway (Lab)]

My Lords, does my noble friend the Minister agree that Labour’s commitment to strengthen rights to flexible working will help to lower the barriers to employment that many people with disabilities and mental health problems have experienced? Does she agree that, rather than punishing people with health conditions, one of the best ways to get more money into the Exchequer is by improving dignity at work?

[Baroness Sherlock (Lab)]

My noble friend raises a really important point. We know that many people would like to work but struggle to. We have to do a number of things. We have to invest in them—for example, our Connect to Work programme involves working with people who have disabilities or other barriers to try to find out what work they could do and what they would like to do, match them to a job and, crucially, support the employers to make that possible.

Charlie Mayfield, who did the brilliant Keep Britain Working review for us, produced recommendations for employers. Ten months on from that, we are now developing Britain’s first workplace health system, bringing together better workplaces, support and intelligence. Our job is to make sure that everyone who can work should be working. If they need help to do that, it is the Government’s job to give them that help and make sure that employers can encourage those people into the workplace and enable them to stay there.

[The Lord Speaker (Lord Forsyth of Drumlean)]

My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Shinkwin, is taking part remotely. I invite him to speak.

[Lord Shinkwin (Con) [R]]

My Lords, one of the greatest threats to PIP and, for example, Motability—I declare an interest as a beneficiary—is the growing resentment among the public at the seemingly inexorable extension of eligibility, over which, I should add, Motability has no say. What measures are the Government taking to reduce eligibility and thereby put PIP on a sustainable footing for those who need it most?

[Baroness Sherlock (Lab)]

My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord for his question. I have already said what we are doing, but, just for example, the Milburn review is looking at the position of young people, because almost 1 million—one in eight—of our young people are not in employment, education or training, and a growing number of those are on the grounds of sickness, disability or the inability to work. We also have a growing number of people across the age range who are simply not able to work. We need to make sure that the system supports them and gets them into work. The Milburn review will look at young people. The Timms review, by my right honourable friend Stephen Timms, is reviewing whether PIP is fit for purpose—the interim report suggests that it is not. Both reports will be coming out this month, the Government will respond soon after that and we will be legislating in the new year.

[Lord Scriven (LD)]

My Lords, earlier this year, the Government told me that they do not expect to identify the impact of the evidence-led decision-making trial on people with a learning disability and have no specific available evaluation to do so. Will the Minister commit that the trial will not be expanded until the impact on people with a learning disability has been measured and published?

[Baroness Sherlock (Lab)]

My Lords, I know the noble Lord has raised this before and that it is an issue about which he is deeply concerned. The Government look carefully in their decision-making at the impact of all the reforms on all those who use the service and who have a range of different needs. Whenever that happens, we have to look, for example, at an equality impact assessment, and we look at the impact of changes. We will continue to do that. All evaluation that is to be published will be done at the appropriate time.

[Baroness Watkins of Tavistock (CB)]

My Lords, will the Minister explain how, as we get people back into work, which the majority of people want to do, we will ensure that they do not have to work from home? I fully agree that for many it is a huge advantage, but the latest figures from the well-being survey at Bupa show how lonely young people are and how easy it is to lose employment if you have no social connection with the people you are working with. Can we ensure that the Government carefully consider how employers will be responsible for bringing people into work as well, so that it does not become cheaper to employ people who are disabled at home?

[Baroness Sherlock (Lab)]

The noble Baroness raises an important point. There are some people for whom working from home may be the only practical thing that they can do because of their condition, and I know that with her background she will understand that very well. But I also think she makes an important point. I know that in my very first job I was probably, frankly, utterly useless for the first few months—I was working in an office; yes, I know, insert joke of your choice here, I realise—and a lot of what I learned, I learned from listening to other people. I learned how people talked on the phone. I learned how you operated a system. I learned how you got on with colleagues and how to navigate a difficult environment—which has stood me in great stead, I must say, in recent years. When people are starting out on a career, in most cases it will be helpful for them to have experience. One of the things we are doing is looking at how we can invest in work experience early on, work experience in schools, so when you turn up on day one it is not the first time you have been into a workplace. I think that the noble Baroness makes an important point.

[Lord Watts (Lab)]

My Lords, is it not the case that blunt cuts in benefits do not work and the most effective way of reducing benefits and getting people back to work is to give them the support that they need?

[Baroness Sherlock (Lab)]

My noble friend raises an excellent point. Successive Governments have looked very hard at finding ways to do this. The reason that we asked Alan Milburn to look carefully at young people and the drivers behind inactivity is that we need to understand why people are not in work, not just tell them that they should be and cut money. We need to find a way to make sure that the social security bill is sustainable over time, but we also need to make sure it is doing its job of supporting people to get into work and, crucially, supporting them to stay there and to flourish when they do.

Sporting and Performing Arts Opportunities for Pupils in State Schools

Monday 2nd November 2026 Lords Chamber

Question

15:22

Asked by

[Lord Addington]

To ask His Majesty’s Government what plans they have to ensure that pupils in state schools have access to sporting and performing arts opportunities through partnerships with voluntary and community organisations.

[The Minister of State, Department for Education and Department for Work and Pensions (Baroness Smith of Malvern) (Lab)]

My Lords, we want all pupils to have access to sports and performing arts at school, supporting well-being, belonging, confidence and skills such as teamwork. Voluntary and community organisations are key in broadening access. Our enrichment framework encourages schools to work in partnership with them, and the enrichment expansion programme will support 400 schools in areas of greatest need to make links. PE and school sport partnerships and the National Centre for Arts Education will further support access.

[Lord Addington (LD)]

I thank the Minister for that reply. Will she expand upon this? What are we doing to make sure that schools have the necessary testing ground or experience ground to mean that they can link with these groups outside? If you come to a sport and you do not know the basics, you are much less likely to go to an environment outside to take part in it. The same is true of the arts. What are we doing for a coherent plan to allow you to have the necessary grounding to access these groups?

[Baroness Smith of Malvern (Lab)]

PE remains part of the national curriculum from key stage 1 to key stage 4. There are many sports organisations at local level—clubs, often supported by their national governing bodies—which will provide young people with that start and a welcome. Through the PE and school sport partnerships, we want better to join schools with the local and national sporting organisations that will help young people get the experience the noble Lord outlines.

[Baroness Evans of Bowes Park (Con)]

My Lords, although they are pro bono positions, I declare my interests as a board member of the London Marathon Foundation and the Daily Mile Foundation. At a time when government data shows that fewer than half of children achieve the recommended 60 minutes of daily physical activity, the daily mile helps around 2 million children in England build such activity into the school day. Simple, inclusive and free, it is accessible to all children. The Minister referred to the new PE and school sport partnerships network. As that is established, will she work to ensure that schools are supported to embed everyday physical activity programmes, such as the daily mile, alongside PE and competitive sport, to get every child active, regardless of their background or ability?

[Baroness Smith of Malvern (Lab)]

The noble Baroness makes a really important point about the whole range of ways that we can help children to be active. As she says, we do not yet have sufficient children meeting the Chief Medical Officer’s recommendation of 60 minutes of activity every day. The daily mile is an excellent example of how schools can, quite simply and straightforwardly, increase the activity children are engaged in. It is exactly the type of partnership we want to promote.

[Baroness Caine of Kentish Town (Lab)]

My Lords, the aim of the Young Creatives Commission—I declare an interest as a member—is to promote and rebuild youth access to the arts and creativity, on a par with sport. It will publish its final report in January. Does my noble friend the Minister agree that its recommendations will be helpful, and will she agree to a meeting between the commission, DfE and DCMS to discuss progressing that agenda?

[Baroness Smith of Malvern (Lab)]

Yes, while I have not seen the detail of that work, I am sure that it will be very helpful. I know that the work that DfE and DCMS have been doing together on this will be informed by the meeting the noble Baroness suggests. It is, of course, in order to promote arts education that we established this September the National Centre for Arts Education, but we are keen to hear further ideas about how we ensure that children can access a rich, high-quality arts education and other opportunities.

[The Earl of Clancarty (CB)]

My Lords, there is a community arts project aspect to this, as such projects should act in support of what happens in schools. Does the Minister agree that the local council and council-owned facilities—we had a question earlier on the relationship between local government and the arts—are hugely important at a time when too many council-owned assets, including buildings, are being sold off?

[Baroness Smith of Malvern (Lab)]

The most effective education in both arts and sports will need to use the broadest range of organisations and facilities, as the noble Earl says. We need to make sure we are building as many links as possible into schools, and I know that councils will be considering this when thinking about the use of their assets. Equally, of course, schools facilities should be used by others who can access them for sports and arts. Unless we work effectively together, we will not be using the resource that we have as well as possible to open up those opportunities to the most people, including both schoolchildren and those of us getting a bit older who also benefit from those activities.

[The Lord Bishop of Leicester]

My Lords, the holiday activities and food programme is a shining example of the approach described by the noble Lord, Lord Addington. It offers a proven way of linking up children from disadvantaged backgrounds with a wide range of enriching activities during the school holidays. However, the current eligibility criteria result in more than 500,000 children, mostly from poorer working families, being unable to access the programme. Will the Minister commit to rectifying this by aligning the programme’s eligibility criteria with those that are attached to term-time free school meals?

[Baroness Smith of Malvern (Lab)]

The right reverend Prelate is right that the HAF programme has provided both food and activities for very many children and young people. While we have provided 21 million days to children and young people in England, which have been delivered across 153 local authorities, notwithstanding the £600 million that has been committed to it, we need to look carefully at how we get that to as many children as possible. I cannot commit to changing the entitlement rules but I will take back the points that the right reverend Prelate has made on that programme.

[Baroness Garden of Frognal (LD)]

My Lords—

[Baroness Sater (Con)]

My Lords—

[Captain of the Honourable Corps of Gentlemen-at-Arms and Chief Whip (Lord Kennedy of Southwark) (Lab Co-op)]

We will hear from the Lib Dem Benches next, and then the Conservative Benches.

[Baroness Garden of Frognal (LD)]

My Lords, partnerships with independent schools have often led to sharing of sports facilities, as well as expertise in music, drama and dance. However, the imposition of VAT has been devastating for many small specialist schools which have contributed greatly to opportunities for state school pupils. A number have had to close or curtail their outreach offers. Will the Government review their VAT demands on small specialist independent schools to enable them to survive and continue their valuable work with the state schools?

[Baroness Smith of Malvern (Lab)]

As we have discussed on several occasions in this House, the impact of VAT on schools has not led to a higher number of schools closing than the trajectory over recent years. I agree with the noble Baroness that, where strong partnerships are built between private and state schools, they open up opportunities. While there are some good examples of that, I am still not sure—given that I worked on this the first time I was in the Department for Education—that this is on the scale we would want to see.

[Baroness Sater (Con)]

My Lords, if we want more children to have access to sport and physical activity, we need to make better use of existing facilities. The Opening School Facilities programme helped open nearly 1,900 schools to their local communities but ended in March 2025. Given the demand from organisations which are keen to deliver activities, I ask the Minister to reconsider renewing the highly successful programme.

[Baroness Smith of Malvern (Lab)]

I will come back to the noble Baroness about the specifics of that programme. It is a key part of the Government’s new PE partnership network that we will be able to create those links between local clubs, sporting organisations and schools. I am sure that the partnership will want to look carefully at whatever the most effective way of doing that is.

[Lord Isaac (Lab)]

My Lords, the Government’s decision to scrap the EBacc is very welcome. However, the impact of the EBacc on arts provision in schools will not be reversed overnight. What specific steps are the Government proposing to take to ensure that schools place greater value and emphasis on arts subjects, including performing arts, within the curriculum? If we do not support the performing arts, where will future “Celebrity Traitors” come from?

[Baroness Smith of Malvern (Lab)]

There might be some noble Lords who would quite like that—being in an environment where nobody can trust what anybody else is saying, and people getting booted out. Perhaps that is more down the other end of the Palace.

My noble friend makes a really important point about how we can promote arts education. That is the reason why we have established the National Centre for Arts Education. It will play a pivotal role in delivering the Government’s ambition to revitalise arts in schools, so that every child can access a rich, high-quality arts education. It will do that through providing strategic national leadership with a coalition of national, regional and local partners. It will support excellent teaching in our schools through a new online CPD offer and making sure there is full access to existing high-quality teacher development provision. It will promote arts education to school leaders, teachers, parents and young people, including how to progress in the arts and pursue interests and career aspirations.

Renewables Obligation and Electricity Capacity (Amendment) (British Industrial Competitiveness Scheme Excluded Electricity) Regulations 2026

Monday 2nd November 2026 Lords Chamber

Motion to Approve

15:34

Moved by

[Lord Leong]

That the draft Regulations laid before the House on 7 September be approved.

Relevant document: 13th Report from the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee. Considered in Grand Committee on 28 October.

Motion agreed.

Licensing Act 2003 (Permitted Temporary Activities) (Amendment) Order 2026

Monday 2nd November 2026 Lords Chamber

Motion to Approve

15:35

Moved by

[Lord Collins of Highbury]

That the draft Order laid before the House on 10 September be approved.

Relevant document: 13th Report from the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee. Considered in Grand Committee on 28 October.

Motion agreed.

Cyber Security and Resilience (Network and Information Systems) Bill

3rd reading
Monday 2nd November 2026 Lords Chamber

Third Reading

Northern Ireland, Scottish and Welsh legislative consent granted. Relevant documents: 3rd Report from the Constitution Committee, 7th and 11th Reports from the Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee.

15:35

Moved by

[Baroness Smith of Basildon]

That the Bill be now read a third time.

[The Lord Privy Seal (Baroness Smith of Basildon) (Lab)]

My Lords, I have it in command from His Majesty the King to acquaint the House that his Majesty, having been informed of the purport of the Cyber Security and Resilience (Network and Information Systems) Bill, has consented to place his interests, so far as they are affected by the Bill, at the disposal of Parliament for the purposes of the Bill.

Bill read a third time.

Clause 2: Overview of Act

Amendment 1

Moved by

[Baroness Lloyd of Effra]

1: Clause 2, page 1, line 10, leave out “centres” and insert “centre services”
Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment would improve the drafting by aligning the language in this provision with the language used elsewhere in the Bill.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Business, Innovation, Science and Trade and Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (Baroness Lloyd of Effra) (Lab)]

The amendments in this group seek to tighten the drafting for consistency and clarity, first, by amending Clause 2 to refer to “data centre services” rather than “data centres”; and, secondly, by amending Clauses 24, 36 and 42 to refer to Clause 30(5) when defining “regulated person”.

Amendment 1 agreed.

Clause 24: Key definitions in Part 3

Amendment 2

Moved by

[Baroness Lloyd of Effra]

2: Clause 24, page 53, line 39, at end insert “and (5)”
Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment and my amendments to Clauses 36 and 42 would add clarity by signposting Clause 30(5) which provides for persons to be treated as specified for the purposes of Clause 30(2). Such persons are included in the definition of “regulated person” in Chapters 3 and 4 of Part 3.

Amendment 2 agreed.

Clause 36: Supplementary provision and interpretation

Amendment 3

Moved by

[Baroness Lloyd of Effra]

3: Clause 36, page 65, line 13, at end insert “(and see also section 30(5))”
Member’s explanatory statement
See the explanatory statement to my amendment to Clause 24.

Amendment 3 agreed.

Clause 42: Regulations under section 24 or Chapter 3

Amendment 4

Moved by

[Baroness Lloyd of Effra]

4: Clause 42, page 68, line 26, after “section 30(2)” insert “(and see also section 30(5))”
Member’s explanatory statement
See the explanatory statement to my amendment to Clause 24.

Amendment 4 agreed.

15:37

Motion

Moved by

[Baroness Lloyd of Effra]

That the Bill do now pass.

[Lord Clement-Jones (LD)]

My Lords, as we reach Third Reading and the Bill goes back to the Commons, we need to take account of where the Bill now stands and the choices before us. With the successful passage of Amendment 163 on Report, this House has insisted on a vital regime-wide effectiveness review to address critical gaps in our cyber defences. The decision now rests squarely with the Government whether to engage in parliamentary ping-pong or accept this amendment as a sensible and constructive way forward.

Throughout our scrutiny, we must acknowledge the positive steps that the Government have made, including introducing provisions on high-risk vendors and strengthening incident reporting thresholds. As the Government’s own announcements last month on AI loss of control demonstrate, Ministers are finally waking up to the risks we have highlighted, but threats are moving too fast for half measures or delayed reviews.

I gather that we cannot now indulge in thanking colleagues on these and other Benches and outside organisations. All I can say is that you know who you are and I am grateful. I urge the House to support the “do now pass” Motion.

[Lord Alton of Liverpool (CB)]

My Lords, I will speak in support of what the noble Lord, Lord Clement-Jones, said to the House about the amendment that will now go to another place to be discussed during ping-pong. I simply ask the Minister—who, in the general context of the Bill, has been so helpful in so many respects—to look at the report published today by the Business, Innovation, Science and Trade Committee of another place, under the chairmanship of her right honourable friend Liam Byrne MP. It points particularly to the role of hostile states in this country, notably the People’s Republic of China. It bears very much on the amendment that your Lordships passed only last week, and I hope the Minister will take the trouble to have a look at it before we get into further discussion on the amendment.

[Baroness Neville-Jones (Con)]

My Lords, I thank the Minister for the good sense and clarity that she brought to the issue of the trigger for reportable incidents, which lies at the heart of this security and resilience Bill. We were not able to close the gap between us on the issue of factor lists for some operators, although we narrowed it, I think. I hope that, in the light of her acceptance of the relevance of some of the factors listed in my amendment, she will be able to make this an early issue for secondary legislation. The industry is extremely anxious to be well prepared, and it will be helpful if this issue, which is an important part of being prepared for the regulatory regime, can be dealt with at an early stage.

[Viscount Camrose (Con)]

My Lords, I thank the Minister for bringing forward today’s amendments, to which we had no objection as they are technical amendments. In this new spirit of brief “do now pass” debates, I will not raise any substantive points, except to join others in thanking the Minister for her collaborative, consultative, and very open and thorough approach throughout the passage of the Bill thus far. As and when it comes back to your Lordships’ House, we look forward to continuing the debate in the same spirit. Meanwhile, I thank the Minister and all noble Lords who participated so well in the Bill’s productive passage so far.

[Baroness Lloyd of Effra (Lab)]

My Lords, I did not intend to make a substantive contribution, as the Government Front Bench intends to proceed in line with the Companion guidance, recently reinforced by this House through the first report from the Procedure Committee, that the “do now pass” Motion is usually moved formally. I have noted the points made by the noble Lords, Lord Alton and Lord Clement-Jones, the noble Baroness, Lady Neville-Jones, and the noble Viscount, Lord Camrose, relating to the substance of the Bill, which I am sure we will return to. I am very grateful for the engagement on the Bill, which will increase the UK’s defences against cyber attacks, better protecting the services that the public rely on to go about their normal lives.

15:42

Bill passed and returned to the Commons with amendments.

Representation of the People Bill

Committee stage
Monday 2nd November 2026 Lords Chamber

Committee (1st Day)

Northern Ireland, Scottish and Welsh Legislative Consent sought. Relevant documents: 4th Report from the Constitution Committee, 12th Report from the Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee.

15:43

Clause 1: Extension of right to vote etc

Amendment 1

Moved by

[Lord Udny-Lister]

1: Clause 1, page 1, line 6, leave out subsection (2)
Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment would ensure that the minimum voting age of 18 is retained for all elections to the House of Commons, thus maintaining alignment with the minimum age for standing for election to the House of Commons under section 17 of the Electoral Administration Act 2006.

[Lord Udny-Lister (Con)]

My Lords, in moving Amendment 1, I shall also speak to Amendments 3, 4, 33, 301 and 302, all in my name.

On Amendment 1, I am firmly of the view that you should be able to vote in an election only when you are old enough to meet the age criteria to stand as a candidate for that election. Eighteen remains the legal age of adulthood and is currently the age at which a citizen may put themselves forward to be elected to the House of Commons. That connection is important, and it is in alignment with the age criteria to vote. If the Government are unable to support Amendment 1, I hope Ministers will be able to explain why they are so keen to separate the age of voting and candidacy in this way. This is not an argument regarding maturity, though much could be said on that topic; I am moving this amendment in defence of a long-established electoral principle.

It will come as no surprise to your Lordships that I do not support the franchise being lowered to enable 16 and 17 year-olds to vote. Through Amendment 1, it is my intention that the minimum voting age remains at 18, which would maintain alignment with the minimum age to stand for election in the Commons under Section 17 of the Electoral Administration Act 2006. Through Amendment 1, I seek to preserve the existing and long-standing alignment between the age of voting for and the age of standing as a candidate. The parliamentary franchise is one of the very foundations of our constitution, and in the passage of the Bill thus far I have failed to see any justification from the Government as to why such a long-standing national rule ought to change.

Further still, I put it to your Lordships that the Government have failed to address what the consequences of the Bill are and why those consequences are justified. Data from the Electoral Commission confirms that through this legislation, if left unamended, we would extend the franchise to 1.7 million additional people. Make no mistake: this represents a major constitutional change. The question is not whether young people should get the vote—it is whether the Government have established a principled case for changing the parliamentary franchise and whether the safeguards, preparation and democratic consent are commensurate with this change. As of yet, the burden of explanation that is required by the House to justify the constitutional significance of this change fails to meet what I consider to be the basic test of proportionality. Perhaps that is because the essence of the Bill is sadly more about gerrymandering the franchise than it is about strengthening the electoral system.

I am, however, sympathetic to this House supporting the greater involvement of young people in our democracy. That is a must. But we should not and must not mistake engagement for the single question of enfranchisement. If the Government are committed to strengthening democratic values and engagement among younger people, I hope that today the Minister will be able to commit to bringing forward a fully funded and credible programme of proper and unbiased civic education, whether or not the Bill succeeds. That will mark whether this Government are serious about the engagement of younger people in the process.

We need only look at the data from Scotland and Wales, where 16 and 17 year-olds are already permitted to vote in the devolved parliamentary elections as well as local elections. Electoral Commission figures from 2025 estimate that only 61% of 16 and 17 year-olds in Scotland and a shocking 39% in Wales are actually registered to vote, despite having the opportunity to do so. This demonstrates my earlier point that the widening of the franchise does not solve the problem of engagement and suggests that the Government should turn their focus to civic education prior to any national law change.

I come to Amendment 3. I am asking noble Lords to support retaining the existing age qualification of 18 for the signing of a recall petition under the Recall of MPs Act 2015. When the recall Act was passed, it was widely accepted that the power of recall was a distinct and profound constitutional act. Through this amendment, I seek to acknowledge the severity of the recall process by asking your Lordships to consider the recall franchise on its own merits and not to assume that every adjustment to voting age must automatically be copied. Amendment 3 would thus ensure that the age for signing recall petitions is equal to the established age of adulthood and the minimum age at which people could vote in the last parliamentary election. If the Government are unable to support this amendment, I ask Ministers to explain why changing the voting age should automatically alter the recall electorate and why they are of the view that this particular extension can be made without full and independent justification.

Given that the power of recall has the highly sensitive ability to remove representation, it is for the Government to now justify whether it is their intention to change the eligible population empowered to terminate the mandate of people elected to the current Parliament. If it is their intention to do this, it is problematic for a number of reasons. If this is left unamended, the House will, in effect, be making changes to a constitutionally sensitive accountability mechanism, simply as a side-effect of another clause. I put it to your Lordships that this is not a sensible way to deal with the complexity of constitutional matters. Therefore, I ask noble Lords to back Amendment 3 as a limited safeguard.

I recognise that the Government made a manifesto commitment to lowering the age of voting, but I caution your Lordships’ Committee that on such major constitutional matters we should still utilise the process of taking the question directly to the people through a referendum. If the question of how we elect our Members of Parliament was considered sufficiently fundamental to warrant the 2011 referendum on the alternative vote, I ask the Government to explain why the question of who should be entitled to elect them is considered any less deserving of the consent of the British people.

This is important. As I mentioned earlier, we are talking about increasing the franchise by an additional 1.7 million people. Through Amendment 4, I am asking for the Government to seek the reassurance of the electorate that this is wanted, as I sense that the national mood on this subject matter is very different from the direction that the Government are taking. My amendment is a democratic safeguard that would require a referendum on lowering the voting age to 16 within two years of Royal Assent.

Amendment 4 should be read alongside my Amendment 301, for the former would require a referendum while the latter would prevent regulations commencing voting at the age of 16 unless a majority had voted for it. The process of a referendum would create a serious and needed national conversation around civic responsibility, one that I hope everybody would be keen to welcome. If we are to make such monumental changes that would alter the integrity of the vote, it is only right that the decision to do so should be put to the British people.

Moving on to Amendment 33, I call on noble Lords and the Government to properly acknowledge the troublesome and dangerous times in which we live. Through Amendment 33, I am calling on the relevant Secretary of State to conduct an assessment of the susceptibility of 16 and 17 year-olds to foreign interference and electoral disinformation prior to lowering the franchise. In tabling this amendment, I am not in any way suggesting that young people are any more uniquely gullible to election-related disinformation and foreign interference than older people. I am asserting the point that the Government have a duty to assess whether any new cohort of electors may encounter particular vulnerabilities or exposures, and what the state must do to protect the integrity of the information environment for the safeguarding of our democracy.

The issue here is that our electoral environment has fundamentally changed, and I draw your Lordships’ attention to the recent research by the Electoral Commission after the 2024 election. It highlighted that 61% of respondents reported seeing misleading information about party policies and 52% misleading information about candidates, and 24% said they had seen or heard an election-related deepfake. These figures must concern us. I fear that 16 and 17 year-olds, through their greater use of chatbots, AI platforms and social media sites, would be even more greatly impacted than older peers.

We know that foreign interference in our electoral process is a real and significant threat. Hostile states, particularly Russia, have in recent years shown their willingness to utilise social media and the plethora of digital tools out there to interfere in the democratic processes of other countries. We would be foolish to think that we are immune to this. With the rapid deployment of AI, it is becoming increasingly hard to establish fact from fiction and the truth from disinformation, and we know there are a lot of rogue actors. Therefore, before increasing the franchise, it is the responsibility of the Government to at least understand the current risks and consider the adequacy of the safeguards.

Amendments 301 and 302 are in my name. Though Amendment 301, I seek to ensure that the Government hold a referendum and publish an assessment of susceptibility of 16 and 17 year-olds to election-related disinformation and foreign interference. These commencement conditions are highly important, as they would make the consent of the electorate in relation to Amendment 4, which would require a referendum, a condition rather than a courtesy and would give the overall exercise a defined constitutional purpose.

Further to a referendum result, through Amendment 301, I also seek to require the Government to discharge the duty to assess the susceptibility to election-related disinformation and foreign interference under Amendment 33. I hope noble Lords will agree that through these amendments, taken together, we would require two independent safeguards prior to commencement.

Finally, on Amendment 302, I seek a requirement for the approval of both Houses under the affirmative principle before the voting age is lowered to 16 for any future elections. In speaking to this amendment, I seek to protect Parliament’s role in scrutiny by reserving the final commencement decision for both Houses. It should be for Members to decide and test whether, through Amendments 4, 33 and 301, a referendum has been carried out and the disinformation assessments properly completed. Through Amendment 302, I provide an opportunity for parliamentary scrutiny as I do not believe it should be left for Ministers to be the judge as to whether the prerequisites for extending the franchise have been adequately met.

In speaking to these amendments, I conclude by reminding your Lordships’ Committee that although the Government may be confident in their policy—indeed, they have the numbers to force the Bill through—a parliamentary majority is no substitute for principle and for democratic consent. I tabled these amendments as the Bill is fundamentally flawed. Why should 16 year-olds be permitted to vote yet remain illegible to stand for election? Why should the franchise for recall petitions be altered without the Government laying before this Parliament a distinct and compelling justification of the fairness of this? What measures are Ministers putting in place to assess the risks of the susceptibility of young people to disinformation and foreign interference?

If the Government have confidence that the majority of the people in this country support increasing the franchise by 1.7 million then putting this to a confirmatory vote of the British people would surely uphold the integrity of our future elections. All these questions remain unanswered, and the integrity of our constitution should not be seen as a political experiment to be conducted at the whim of whichever Government happen to hold office.

I hope I have the support of your Lordships in asking, through these amendments, that the Government think again. The franchise is the bedrock of our democracy. It belongs not to the Government of the day but to the British people. It should not be altered without their consent. I beg to move.

[The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Baroness McIntosh of Hudnall) (Lab)]

I advise the Committee that if Amendment 1 is agreed, I cannot call Amendment 2 by reason of pre-emption.

[Lord Murphy of Torfaen (Lab)]

My Lords, the noble Lord made a very interesting speech, most of which I disagreed with. I understand the issues, but to say that there is no mandate, constitutional basis or any political support for this measure is absolute nonsense. It was in the manifesto of the Labour Party. When people voted in Northern Ireland, Wales, Scotland and England, they voted, among other things, to agree to voting at 16, so I see no conceivable argument against it constitutionally because it is a constitutional principle—the bedrock of our constitution—that a manifesto commitment is the same as a referendum.

16:00

When I was elected to the other place in 1987, 75% of the electorate voted for me. When my right honourable friend Nick Thomas-Symonds went to the polls in 2024, 49% of the electorate voted; that is the electorate over the age of 18. It is not simply about age; it is about commitment. Anything we can do as a Parliament or a Government to increase the number of people voting and the number of people interested in politics is to be welcomed.

As the noble Lord said, Wales and Scotland have had these measures for some time and the world has not collapsed, nor have the constitutional heavens come in. In fact, there has been an enormous increase in interest in politics as a result. However, I agree with the noble Lord very much on one point: this has to be accompanied by a really serious improvement in civic education among young people. We do not do it well enough. I spent 17 years of my life teaching youngsters at a small college what used to be called “British constitution”. I hope I did my little bit to improve their knowledge of how they are governed. I hope that, when the Minister eventually winds up, she will let us know that her colleagues in the Department for Education will be looking at ways and means by which civic education can be improved.

It is also important to point out that there are variations in voting in the United Kingdom, and there is nothing wrong with that. For decades, Northern Ireland had a different system of voting for its regional and provincial governments and for its local authorities than for its parliamentary elections. For the last 26 years, the devolved Administrations in Scotland and Wales have decided that they were able to decide the methods by which people could vote and the constitutional arrangements for their own Parliaments. Again, that has worked extremely well. To undermine that, incidentally, is to undermine the devolution principle on with the Senedd in Wales and the Parliament in Scotland have been elected.

There is nothing wrong with this and we should adopt the principle. The Minister would also be wise to contact her colleagues in the Scottish and Welsh Governments to see how this has progressed over the last number of years. I hope sincerely that Members will seriously reject the amendment that the noble Lord has put forward.

[Baroness Coffey (Con)]

My Lords, I have tabled Amendment 2, a probing amendment suggesting that the voting age perhaps be changed to 17 rather than 16. I did this for a number of reasons, to get a proper debate about this.

The noble Lord, Lord Murphy of Torfaen, referred to the Welsh Senedd elections and the fact that it did not do any harm. I am sure it did not, but it is not exactly the same as voting for the national Government. Turnout did not even reach 52% across the whole of Wales in the Senedd elections earlier this year, so we are talking about quite a different scale of representation.

There is one sentence in the Labour manifesto on this:

“We will increase the engagement of young people in our vibrant democracy, by giving 16- and 17-year-olds the right to vote in all elections”.


We have not seen that outcome really happen in other parts of the United Kingdom that have already adopted voting at a younger age. I am not going to have a row, because I appreciate it was in the manifesto, but it is useful to point out that research the Electoral Commission shared with us from across several countries and states that have lowered their voting ages shows that, when enfranchised, 16 and 17 year-olds tend to vote in greater numbers than those enfranchised at 18. According to the Electoral Commission, you are more likely to vote when you are 16 and 17, but then not when you are 18.

There is something interesting going on here; there is a bit of a transition. One of the reasons why, traditionally, I have opposed changing the vote from the age of adulthood is that there is a significant change in what happens in the rest of your life when you turn 18. There are significant differences between what a 16 year-old and a 17 year-old can do. A 17 year-old can drive a car. They can fly a plane and get a private pilot’s licence. They can become a blood donor—you cannot do that when you are 16. They can join the Armed Forces—or rather, to be precise, they can join the Army as an officer at the age of 17 years and nine months; they cannot do that in any of the other Armed Forces. You cannot become a police constable until you are 18.

There are so many things on which we have changed the law, in the past five years or so, to stop people doing things until they turn the age of adulthood. So I am trying to get a sense of why the Government have chosen 16 in particular, recognising that this can be an age when a lot of young people will not even have taken their GCSEs, beyond the one line in the Labour manifesto. When you turn 18, you can do things such as serve on a jury and get a tattoo—I did not know you had to be 18 to get a tattoo until I looked it up. You cannot make a will until you are 18, which is quite surprising; perhaps we can change that in another Bill. You certainly cannot get a credit card or buy alcohol—well, not legally.

Another thing is that young people’s lives are very much on our minds, as we are talking about the statistical NEETs. The ONS reckons that there are 57,000 NEETs between the ages of 16 and 17. Back in 2008, I think the Labour Government made it a criminal offence for those young people; they had to take full responsibility if they were not in education or training or did not have a job. Before the last Friday in June when they were 16, it was their parents’ responsibility to keep them in school. I understand why the Government never chose to enact the enforcement or penalty sections of that Act, but they had done it to criminalise young people—and yet today, they want to do something quite different. They have no real focus on why those 57,000 young people are knowingly breaking the law, and it is their responsibility. By the way, councils are supposed to know what every young person is doing under their broader statutory duty on safeguarding children; they are supposed to know exactly what every child in their area is up to. Why do we not have more focus on giving young people the potential and the future that they desperately need, rather than choosing 16 as the age at which they can start voting?

I have some sympathy with my noble friend Lord Udny-Lister on the referendum; that is an interesting concept. By the way, to match this amendment, I have tabled a later amendment on reducing the age for candidates to 17. I wanted to go a little further in seeing what the Government say about the ages of 16 and 17. The Government say that they can work, pay tax—you can actually do both of those things below 16—and serve in the military. That is correct, but those things need parental consent; they need both parents to consent if the young people are in different houses or their residence is split between two houses. Then there is their contribution to society more broadly, which already happens with young people; we see that in wonderful examples such as the Duke of Edinburgh’s Award and many other schemes, and young people have won Points of Light awards in the past.

What is it about 16? I feel that the Government think there will be an electoral advantage to this—it is as simple as that. They should be careful what they wish for. Polling not that long ago showed that more people were going to vote Reform and Green than for the Labour Party. Do they really think this is the right thing to focus on at 16?

I am concerned about the level of education that would be deployed to achieve this. There is a lot going on, which I will come on to in later amendments to Schedule 1. Nevertheless, it comes back to why they have picked 16, and this is what I am trying to get from the Government. There are plenty of things we have barred them from doing. They cannot get married—they can in Scotland, but not in the rest of the United Kingdom. There are multiple things for which we have lifted the age gap. This really needs a better description than one sentence—three-quarters of which is about things that can be done by children under the age of 16—to make sure that we can continue to have a credible electorate. I am conscious that this will be in other amendments that are coming up. With that, I will carefully consider the contributions of other noble Lords.

[Baroness Hoey (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, I will speak to Amendment 21 in my name. I think it would be useful for noble Lords to remember the vision that lies behind this Bill, which was published in the Government’s paper last July, Restoring Trust in Our Democracy. I just want to quote a couple of little bits from the beginning:

“Our democracy is central to who we are as a country. We can take pride in its evolution and how it has and continues to inspire. As a government, we have a responsibility to protect and strengthen it. The right to participate in our democracy is a defining aspect of our national identity and should not be taken for granted”.


Until recently, democracy moved in one direction, from no democracy to partial democracy to full democracy, but I believe that in the Bill there are elements which will see a major reversal of democracy, and it is happening here in the United Kingdom.

Until 31 December 2020, it did not matter where you lived in the UK. Every adult had the right either to elect representatives, who between them made all the laws to which we were subject, or to stand for election to do it themselves. However, that changed from 1 January 2021, when the United Kingdom was divided into two different classes of citizens. On the one hand there are UK citizens living in England, Wales and Scotland, who continue to enjoy the right either to elect representatives or to stand for election to do so themselves, and on the other hand, there are UK citizens living in Northern Ireland who are subject to a second-class citizenship through which they have the right to elect representatives to make only some of the laws to which they were and are subject, or to stand for election to do so.

Of course, as we all know, in 300 areas of law—not just individual laws—UK citizens living in Northern Ireland have been disenfranchised and are now subjected to a second-class, truncated citizenship. On 21 January 2021, no laws had been imposed on us, but since then we have seen increasing numbers of laws hedging us in, growing and growing, and providing a constantly increasing reminder of our disenfranchisement that will get worse. Your Lordships’ House is well aware that, because of this, every time a law is imposed that requires some form of Westminster implementation, we try to oppose the statutory instrument.

In this context, I have tabled Amendment 21 because the message that the Bill is sending 16 and 17 year-olds across the UK is that it can be celebrated as playing a role in restoring our democracy, when it does no such thing for the whole of the United Kingdom. At the moment, our laws treat 16 and 17 year-olds across the UK in exactly the same way. None of them has the right to elect a fellow citizen or to stand for election. However, if the Bill becomes law, it will create discrimination where none currently exists. It will create for the first time two classes of 16 and 17 year-olds in the UK. On the one hand, there will be 16 and 17 year-olds in England, Wales and Scotland, who will be given the right to participate in elections that contribute to making all the laws to which they are subject. On the other hand, there will be 16 and 17 year-olds in Northern Ireland, who will be given the right to participate in elections that contribute to making only some of the laws to which they are subject.

Noble Lords should understand that that violates the Belfast/Good Friday agreement. The very purpose of that agreement was to persuade terrorists to renounce violence and seek to pursue their political goals through the ballot box. The agreement contains a special protection for democracy that is additional to those applying to the UK as a whole. It commits to protecting the right of the people of Northern Ireland to

“pursue democratically national and political aspirations”

in relation to all the laws to which they were subject. This was upheld from 1998 until the end of 2020, when the Belfast agreement was violated by the protocol and the Windsor Framework. Now there are whole swathes of life, in 300 areas of law, in which the people of Northern Ireland can no longer pursue democratically national and political aspirations.

It is part of the broader change in the constitutional status of Northern Ireland. I know that some noble Lords do not like me saying this, but it has, in effect, made Northern Ireland a colony of the EU in these 300 areas. No one in Northern Ireland can have a say on these laws that are made by a foreign Parliament; we are, in effect, a vassal state of the EU. At a time when everyone is apologising, especially in our schools, for colonialism and slavery, it is quite bizarre that we should be acquiescing in its reintroduction, telling 16 and 17 year-olds that they are going to be different.

16:15

After I spoke at Second Reading and subsequently tabled this amendment, I was very grateful to the Minister, who wrote to me justifying the current arrangement on the basis that:

“It gives democratically elected members of the Northern Ireland Assembly the ability to scrutinise the rules that apply, and for those reasons the Government is committed to it”.

Quite apart from the fact that scrutiny is meaningless if you cannot change the legislation, this claim is also inaccurate, because the Assembly is given the opportunity to look at only some of the legislation that is imposed on Northern Ireland. Even if all of it went to the Assembly, it would not address the fundamental issue that democracy is not about having the right to elect representatives to scrutinise legislation imposed on them by a foreign Government that you cannot change; it is about electing an Executive who bring forward draft legislation that is scrutinised, amended, passed or rejected.

If the Bill becomes law in its current form and an equality impact assessment is conducted, which my amendment is asking for six months after the Bill comes in, the assessment will necessarily demonstrate the terrible consequences of the failure of the Bill to address this huge attack on our democracy in our time. We cannot pretend that the Representation of the People Bill, with its mission of restoring trust in our democracy, can pass when it allows the most significant instigation of the disfranchising of UK citizens and clearly discriminates against 16 and 17 year-olds in Northern Ireland.

There has never been a greater need for restoring trust in our democracy. If the Government truly believe that, they too should support Amendment 21. The logic of my amendment is that I will support Amendment 2, because whether we are going to go up or down with our voting age, I want it to be the same for people throughout the United Kingdom, so I commend my amendment.

[Baroness Lister of Burtersett (Lab)]

My Lords, I will speak to Amendment 6 in my name, which is a probing amendment that seeks to clarify the scope of Clause 2 by excluding secure children’s homes from the definition of “youth detention accommodation” for the purposes of the disfranchisement of 16 and 17 year-olds otherwise newly enfranchised. First, echoing my noble friend Lord Murphy, I emphasise that I very much support our manifesto commitment to votes for 16 and 17 year-olds in the name of recognising their value as citizens, as is the case in Scotland and Wales. I will return in a later group to citizenship education, which is so important.

The issue raised by this amendment was brought to my attention by Mark Alexander, a doctoral researcher at Cambridge, on behalf of the steering group for the Unlock the Vote campaign at the penal charity Unlock. Although I believe that some prisoners should have the vote, that is not what this amendment is about, and I do not intend to spark a more general debate on that. It is about exploring why children serving custodial sentences in secure children’s homes, SCHs, should be denied the new right to vote, when the Government accept that residence in such a home is not of itself a basis for disfranchisement.

I realise that young people in SCHs who are not convicted prisoners will not be disfranchised. The Minister for Democracy has made that clear, both in the Commons and in a letter to Unlock, and the Explanatory Notes recognise that children may also be residents in such homes for welfare purposes, so SCHs will accommodate both children who have the vote under Clause 2 and children who do not. The question raised by Unlock is whether it meets the Bill’s wider objectives that a conviction of a child should disfranchise them when they are accommodated in a welfare-oriented rather than a penal institution.

The Bill is intended to increase young people’s engagement with democracy. The Government have described their objective as enabling young people

“to find their voice and exercise their right to vote”,

thereby, it is hoped, building long-lasting engagement with our democracy. These are objectives that I very much share. However, arguably, they sit uneasily with the exclusion of vulnerable children whom the state is seeking to rehabilitate and reintegrate into our society. Surely such rehabilitative education should include an appreciation of the importance of active citizenship and public duty.

The issue is especially significant because the Government recognise that eligible children in SCHs will require tailored support to exercise their democratic rights. Arrangements are already being developed with the Department for Education to highlight the value of civic engagement and democratic participation in SCHs for some children but not others. There is a risk that a child being told that they cannot participate in democracy alongside their peers in the same home will feel a sense of alienation and disaffection that could undermine their rehabilitative journey. Rather than building their identity as active citizens, it could have the very opposite effect.

I ask my noble friend the Minister, first, why a child serving a sentence in an SCH should be disenfranchised—thereby being treated them differently from other children in the same institution. Secondly, why should the distinctive welfare and rehabilitative character of SCHs not justify treating them differently from those in penal institutions? Thirdly, have the Government assessed the likely impact of this disenfranchisement on the rehabilitation and future democratic engagement of convicted children in SCHs?

Unlock has raised a valid question on whether the justification given by the Government for the disenfranchisement of those children is sufficiently sensitive to the distinctive nature of secure children’s homes. I look forward to my noble friend’s response.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, it is a great pleasure to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Lister, and to speak to my Clause 2 stand part notice, which goes further than the noble Baroness’s amendment but is headed in the same direction.

It is no secret that Green Party policy is that all those held in detention in prisons should be given the vote unless that is excluded by reason of electoral fraud or similar—or if a judge has decided that they should not be able to exercise their vote. However, that is not what we are addressing here. We are talking about a small, important and particularly vulnerable group of young people. Like the noble Baroness, Lady Lister, I have been informed in what I am about to say by the penal reform charity Unlock. This addresses how Clause 2 risks further alienating and marginalising an already excluded group of young people from politics and society in a way that is not just morally wrong but likely to be counterproductive.

I have seen a letter from the Minister in the other place saying that the Government’s view is that those convicted of a crime and serving a sentence in custody should be unable to vote. As the noble Baroness, Lady Lister, said, this is creating a real mess in secure children’s homes. More than this, my argument is that we are talking about children whom we want to include, and we want them to see themselves as part of society, as having a stake in society.

We are not talking about an issue that is going to have any significant impact on the outcome of elections. Up to March 2025, 610 children in England and Wales were covered by this clause. There are equalities issues here, because minoritised communities are significantly overrepresented among those children, as are care-experienced children. Hundreds of young people are being told that one more way that they cannot participate in society while their peers can is in respect of voting.

This will affect the way they feel about their society—whether they feel valued or listened to, rather than being abandoned and judged. I note that what I have just said is based on the testimony of lived experience from people who have been through youth detention. I am very strongly of the view that we need a world where everyone makes politics about what they do, not have done to them, and these are young people who have had lots of politics done to them. These are young people who have been victims of political decisions, such as austerity, where others have put them in a situation where, in many cases, they have fallen through the cracks in our society.

Having spoken to my clause 2 stand part notice, I will restrain myself from engaging at length with the other amendments in this group, but I will just very briefly note that it is interesting that, in the Representation of the People Act 1969, the extension of votes to 18—the first in the world—was generally uncontroversial and had broad cross-party support. Interestingly, it was thought at the time that it might actually slightly advantage the Conservative Party; how the world has changed.

None the less, I want to pick up a point made by the noble Baroness, Lady Coffey, who said that 16 and 17 year-olds are more likely to vote than 18 and 19 year-olds, and that is the evidence that we have from other places. But we also have evidence that people who vote in their first election are more likely to keep voting, so we are actually engaging people at a point when they are more ready to be engaged, and that is something that will bear impacts decades into the future.

I also want to point to the Scottish Youth Parliament, which has been a leader in calling for equality of votes at 16 and 17, which, of course, they have enjoyed in Scotland for some time. I have to share a little story from the 2014 referendum. I remember hearing a BBC Radio 4 presenter on the streets of Edinburgh saying, “I am standing with 16 and 17 year-olds, and they are really informed and engaged”. The surprised tone in his voice said a lot more about the reporter than it said about the 16 and 17 year-olds.

Finally, I am afraid I do not really follow the arguments of the noble Lord, Lord Udny-Lister, regarding Amendment 33, which proposes an

“Assessment of susceptibility of 16 and 17 years old to election-related disinformation and foreign interference”.

The noble Lord said he did not actually think that 16 and 17 year-olds were more vulnerable, so I do not really understand the argument for that amendment. But beyond that, I have absolutely no doubt that, if one did such a study, we would find there are an awful lot of people around the average age of your Lordships’ House who are terribly vulnerable and definitely need some education to reduce their susceptibility.

[Lord Bailey of Paddington (Con)]

My Lords, I support Amendment 1. Just to pick up on the last statement that was made, the reason that young people are more susceptible to malicious actors is that they spend significantly more time online. It is a much bigger source of their news, and they pay far more attention to it than people who are older who normally have a broader reading palette and tend to read more from official sources, such as newspapers and the like. Having been a youth worker for over 35 years, I know that the young people I work with exclusively read about the world online. If you want to hide something from them, I suggest you put it in the Times, because they will never find it.

I support Amendment 1 because I do not think we should be using the ballot box as an engagement scheme for young people. This policy relies largely on an education piece, and it looks like the Government have put the cart before the horse. Surely, you should do the education piece before you give the added power—the new choice that young people would have.

This is not about whether I believe young people can have an opinion. I have been a youth worker for well over 35 years, and I have been at the wrong end of young people’s opinions and at the right end. I certainly know they can have that opinion but look what we are doing—the Government’s risk assessment is almost non-existent. They are about to turn school, the place that is safest for minors, into a political battleground. School is the safest place, particularly if you come from a poor community and particularly if your family is suffering. You go to school to be safe. Peer pressure in school is a very real thing. If you are going to expose our 16 and 17 year-olds to political peer pressure, you had better see what the effects of that are before, not after, you do that.

16:30

NHS data for 2023 shows that nearly a quarter of 17 to 19 year-olds are battling some kind of mental health issue. If we want to look after our young people, we should think carefully before we give them the greatest level of pressure—political pressure. The Government have to think again about the risk assessment they have done and their work on the delivery of non-biased civic information. Teachers almost exclusively resist teaching politics, because they are afraid of being accused of political bias. Can you imagine how much hotter a cauldron that will be when every political party in the country has a stake in the conversation? Teachers will be under unbearable pressure.

I accept that this is in the Government’s manifesto, but I also know that they have not thought it through properly because, if they had, they would have done a risk assessment that looked at the effect on young people, on schools and on whether people actually vote when they are given this power, rather than the fact that it will help them electorally.

[Lord Young of Acton (Con)]

My Lords, I shall speak to Amendment 20 in my name and that of the noble Baroness, Lady Fox of Buckley. I declare my interest as the director of the Free Speech Union.

I draw your Lordships’ attention to a disconnect between this Bill and the Online Safety Act. At present, some content on social media platforms is age-gated, because of a child safety duty in the Online Safety Act that kicked in, in July 2025. That means that, to access content that the social media platforms deem to be suitable for adults only, the user has to prove that they are an adult, aged 18 or over.

However, quite a lot of political content has been age-gated as a consequence of this child safety duty coming into force. I could give numerous examples, but I know we are short for time, so I will give just one: a speech by Katie Lam in the House of Commons about the grooming gangs was age-gated by all the large social media platforms, which thought that it was unsuitable content for anyone under the age of 18. However, if 16 and 17 year-olds cannot access speeches being made in the House of Commons because of the age-gating in which social media platforms engage, how can they be expected to make informed decisions at the ballot box?

I am sure that noble Lords and Baronesses who have rightly emphasised the necessity of improving civic education if we are to lower the voting age to 16—I am thinking of the noble Baroness, Lady Lister, and the noble Lord, Lord Murphy—will agree with me that, if we are to improve civic education for teenagers, it is important that they can access political content, including speeches given in the House of Commons.

My noble friend Lord Bailey of Paddington rightly pointed out that, for most teenage children, social media platforms are the single largest source of news. That was corroborated by some research carried out by Ofcom; it showed that social media platforms such as TikTok are the primary source of news for 12 to 15 year-olds. So this is a potential problem. The Online Safety Act requires large social media platforms to age-gate some political content, so that it cannot be accessed unless the user can prove that they are aged 18 or over. At the same time, the Government are proposing to lower the voting age to 16, expecting 16 and 17 year-olds to make informed decisions without being able to access political content on their primary source of news.

Fortunately, there is a solution at hand. Sections 17, 18 and 19 of the Online Safety Act are keep-up duties. They require social media platforms to keep up content of democratic importance, news publisher content and journalistic content. However, it may not surprise your Lordships to learn that, while all the take-down duties in the Online Safety Act have been activated, not all the keep-up duties have, including Sections 17, 18 and 19, and that that they are not due to be activated until mid-2027.

There is nothing in those sections that means that they apply only to adults, so it is perfectly possible that, once those duties are activated, social media platforms will recognise that they have a duty to keep up content of democratic importance, news publisher content and journalistic content, to make it accessible to children as well as adults. That could be underwritten by the regulations I believe the Government intend to make at the beginning of next year, restricting access to social media for under-16s as well as 16 and 17 year-olds. The regulations could stipulate that those restrictions should not apply to content of democratic importance, news publisher content and journalistic content. That would be a way of ensuring that 16 and 17 year-olds, and younger teenagers who are beginning to think about how they will vote when they reach the age of 16, can access vital content such as speeches made in the House of Commons.

If the Government think that it would be a step too far to stipulate in those regulations that the restrictions should not apply to teenagers in general, they should at the very least stipulate that they should not apply to 16 and 17 year-olds, given that 16 and 17 year-olds are going to have the vote. My amendment simply asks the Government to carry out a review within 12 months of the Bill being passed to ensure that content that children will need to be able to access on social media to make informed decisions at the ballot box is not restricted, in particular for 16 and 17 year-olds.

[Lord Rennard (LD)]

My Lords, it is more than 50 years since we legislated to extend the franchise to allow 18 year-olds to vote in general elections. A great deal has changed in society since 1970 when those 18 year-olds cast their first votes, and it is right that we look again properly at the issue of the franchise.

The debates since 1970, including this afternoon, focus largely on the issue of at what age it is appropriate to do whatever people want to do. But the argument from the noble Lord, Lord Udny-Lister, that few people who are 16 or 17 in Scotland and Wales are registered to vote is not an indication that they should not be able to vote; it is an indication simply of how difficult it can be to be on the electoral register when you are a young person. That issue is addressed elsewhere in the Bill, but was sadly neglected over the last four Parliaments.

I accept that there are things we should not let people do as soon as they are 16. For example, smoking is self-harming, alcohol carries great dangers, gambling can be deeply addictive and purchasing fireworks, knives, crossbows and airguns should not be permitted to anyone under 18. But going down to a polling station or filling in a postal vote should not be seen as a harmful activity, any more than it is for older generations.

A 16 year-old in this country can consent to medical treatment, leave school for another form of education or training and consent to sex. With parental consent, that young person can join the Armed Forces, apply for a passport and get married or enter a civil partnership. Yet, under present laws, someone whose 18th birthday falls just before a general election may not get to cast a vote in one until they are 21 or 22. If politics is not for them when they are young, it may never be for them.

In 2003, in a debate on a Bill that would have reduced the franchise from 18, I argued that maturity and political understanding do not suddenly materialise on your 18th birthday. My view remains that it is wrong to suggest that everyone over 18 generally possesses sufficiently political wisdom to make choices, while no one aged 16 or 17 can properly decide whether to vote or who to vote for. My own experience with political research often involved me interviewing the interviewers who sought to discuss political issues with voters. The people they interviewed, who were entitled to vote because they were 18, frequently knew so little about the issues facing a democracy that the interviewers even said to me that they sometimes doubted the wisdom of the universal franchise.

Wisdom, political experience and judgment do not always come with being older. Younger people, in my experience, are sometimes ahead of older generations in considering long-term challenges such as climate change, alongside immediate priorities such as education, transport and housing. Amendments today seek to maintain the voting age at 18, or to reduce the number of young people who will be added to the voting registers. The suggestion is even made—I think it is preposterous—of having a national referendum before extending the franchise. Another referendum, and on this issue? We can only imagine what Brenda from Bristol would have to say about that.

Retaining the vote at 18 or pausing at an arbitrary halfway point of 17 ignores vital lessons from when the franchise has been extended in Scotland and Wales. Studies across both nations demonstrate that 16 and 17 year-olds living at home and attending school are embedded in a supportive social structure that actively fosters democratic engagement: a structure that 18 to 20 year-olds currently entitled to vote who are living independently often lack. In Scotland and Wales, and in other countries such as Austria, which led the way by lowering the voting age to 16 across all electoral levels in 2007, there was no meltdown of democracy. In fact, in local elections in Vienna, turnout among 16 and 17 year-olds reached 64%, compared with only 56% among 18 to 20 year-olds.

We on these Benches accept that the issue of enfranchisement cannot stand alone. We should look to research from Jersey, which lowered the voting age in 2008. It was demonstrated there that extending the franchise in isolation, without structured democratic education, failed to deliver sustained engagement, leaving young voters facing persistent confusion over candidates’ policy platforms and how democracy works. So, in a later group of amendments, we will argue that extending the franchise and strengthening citizenship education must be treated as twin pillars of a single coherent strategy, aimed at improving political engagement and the health of our democracy.

[Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, I have added my name to a couple of amendments, including Amendment 2 in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Coffey, because I think it is valid to ask, “Why 16, not 17?” We could as easily ask, “Why 16, not 15?” This is overall an important group of amendments, not necessarily because anyone here is interested in overturning a manifesto pledge or getting stuck in a row about the maturity or otherwise of teenagers, but in order to probe how far the Government have considered the impact of these changes, what they mean for the adult franchise and the problem of inconsistency in relation to age when it comes to the way we view the age of majority.

My fear is that we are in danger of getting in a muddle about what adulthood means. The age of majority, according to law, is 18. Successive Governments have created fairly hard lines about what under-18s cannot do, as we have heard, including buying alcohol, nicotine products or vapes or gambling: all the sins, the harmful things. Under 18 year-olds are also deemed incapable of exerting full contractual capacity when it comes to loans or mortgages or doing jury service. I think that jury service is good and I hope that, by the time they grow up, there will still be juries left for them to be recruited to—but I put that to one side.

16:45

On the other hand, it seems that there is confusion about what the exact age is when the state and institutions, indeed the political culture, now view adulthood as beginning. When do we consider adult autonomy to start meaningfully? Formally, it remains at 18 but there are mixed messages. The government-backed Challenge 25, for example, has seen retailers that sell age-restricted products asking for photo ID from anyone who looks under 25, which is increasingly used as some kind of magic age for maturity. Universities increasingly treat 18-plus students as though they are school pupils. Academics are urged to act as though they are in loco parentis, with a duty of responsibility for mental well-being and emotional issues. That sort of infantilisation has led to far too many young adults seeing themselves as dependants, which has fuelled the NEETs problem.

At the other end of the spectrum, we have criminal responsibility as early as age 10. We have an NHS clinical trial that will stop puberty for children as young as 12 using puberty blockers, based on the children’s subjective—not clinical—distress about gender, as though they are able to give consent in any meaningful way. We also have a children’s rights culture that too often treats children as “mini me” adults whose views and outlooks are on a par with their teachers, parents and carers, as though they are self-determining.

If the state is now, via votes for 16 year-olds, negating the concept of the age of majority being at 18 in general—and we need to know if that could be the consequence—then surely there needs to be some consistency. That is why we need this discussion and debate. The key point about the age of majority is that it is the age when the state affords recognition of full legal capacity. It means it is the age when the state affords you the ability to make binding decisions and believes that you can bear the consequences of entering contracts and exercising rights without adult or state override. At the moment, all that is at 18. Treating minors—16 year-olds—as autonomous rights bearers in one domain while shielding them in so many others surely erodes the idea that adulthood is the point at which you have full responsibility for your life and liberty, and for your rights and autonomy. If the 16 year-old voter is half an adult, given some rights and a bit of autonomy, what will that say about the 18 year-old voter? Are they to be infantilised with a bit of autonomy, a few rights and a bit of freedom?

I am worried that votes for 16 year-olds means that a hugely important adult activity, the franchise, is now conferred on those we do not believe, in most instances, are fully autonomous or independent; they are not free, rights-bearing citizens. They are most often under the care and legal responsibility of their parents, carers or teachers. They will not be free to research political parties, as we have already heard, because of the Government’s and Opposition’s ban on social media for under-16s. I have added my name to the amendment in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Young of Acton, on the related issue of the Online Safety Act and age-gating. But the danger here is that those would-be voters are not free to research independently; instead, they will have to rely on official sources, controlled by adults, for news and political content. As the noble Lord, Lord Bailey, indicated, surely this will put teachers in the especially invidious position of being accused, at least, of unduly influencing the young in relation to this, and open to the charge, at least, of corrupting young minds.

In the debates on the banning of social media for those under 16, those same teenagers were discussed in this House as being especially vulnerable and insufficiently mature or resilient to handle algorithmic pressure. I am not sure how, in the build-up to an election, they will therefore cope with the pester power of canvassing. It is perfectly right that they should be persuaded and influenced, as 15 year-olds who are soon to be 16 and about to be able to vote, but we have a law which treats such stranger approaches as inappropriate grooming.

Finally, this is not about whether 16 or 17 year-olds, or indeed 18 year-olds, are smart and intelligent enough to vote. I owe the Committee an apology for not being able to speak at Second Reading: I was speaking about free speech to a group of sixth-formers who were thoughtful, articulate and mature. I know through the schools Debating Matters competition, which I founded, that many of those 16 and 17 year-olds could run rings around people in their 40s and 50s—indeed, around many in this Committee. But adulthood is not a technical accomplishment. The franchise is not determined by intelligence, maturity or debating skills. It is about when we as a society say that you are no longer a child and you are released from childhood into adulthood. That gives us freedom, autonomy and independence. My fear is that votes for 16 year-olds, who are inevitably not free and are dependent, will undermine adult freedoms and independence. The importance of voting as an independent activity is something we should not undermine carelessly, which I fear this does.

[Lord Leigh of Hurley (Con)]

My Lords, it is always a great pleasure to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Fox of Buckley, and her very considered remarks. I welcome the debate on this group, which explores the most unwelcome decision to bring children into the voting net. In particular, I welcome the amendments from the noble Lord, Lord Udny-Lister, specifically Amendment 301.

The wording of the government amendments, which no one has spoken of yet, requiring officers to investigate whether 14 or 15 year-olds live in a household, sends shivers down my spine—as does the concept of allowing this for children, whose rights in so many other areas of life are correctly postponed until they are responsible enough to use them wisely. We had this debate during Brexit, when the idea of 16 year-olds voting was mooted and discussed and then, quite rightly, dismissed. The point was made then— it is obviously true now—that there is substantial scientific evidence that a person’s capacity for reasoning, logical judgment and decision-making continues to develop up to the age of 18, and many would say thereafter. Although it is true that some basic cognitive capacity and logical reasoning can be reached at around 16, there are other areas where they are not.

In particular, studies highlight that resistance to peer pressure develops well beyond the age of 16. This is absolutely key, as my noble friend Lord Bailey of Paddington, who has unparalleled expertise and experience in this area, pointed out. Peer pressure is not just from others of a young person’s age, and it is not meant to imply Peers such as me who go canvassing. It is teachers and other influencers, particularly these days, as most young people have access to influencers whom they regard as incredibly important and relevant to matters that matter to them, such as fashion and sport. Maybe these influencers are skilled in fashion, sport and related areas, but it would be worrying if they persuaded people how to vote based on extremely limited understanding of the policies themselves.

Scientific research has found that someone under 18 might be just as capable as an adult of understanding an argument, processing information and reaching a logical conclusion, and I do not doubt that. But they are most certainly less capable of resisting peer pressure or emotional impulses. Can the Minister advise us whether the Government have undertaken any specific research in this field to be sure of the competencies of 16-year-olds? In particular, can the Minister explain whether such 16 year-olds will now be eligible for jury service? If not, why not—not forgetting, of course, that jury members are selected from the electoral roll? How will that work? Perhaps she can explain why, in July 2025, the Labour national executive committee decided to change the rules so that officers of local Labour parties have to be over 18.

Let us look at some other glaring inconsistencies. Sixteen year-olds need parental consent to join the Army or marry. Young people cannot order a drink in a pub unless they are 18, so if their side does win the election—possibly due to their vote—they cannot join in the celebrations in the pub or, like the Chancellor, exhibit their joy by inverting a pint glass over their heads. Not unreasonably, Labour refused to lower the drinking age to 16. Why? In Labour’s words, to protect children from harm. Labour says that under-18s are not capable of making that decision for themselves. Labour raised the age for buying cigarettes to 18 “to protect children”, according to the Labour Minister. Why? Because Labour decided that children were not to be trusted with this important decision. Likewise, under-18s are dealt with in different courts and cannot watch the same films as 18 year-olds, because the British Board of Film Classification requires a person to be 18 before being classified as an adult.

As we have heard, the same applies to buying fireworks, using sunbeds and even buying knives. Labour legislated that children had to stay in school or comparable education until 18. Why? Because they were not capable of taking the decision to stay or leave themselves—this has nothing to do with protection. Welsh Labour banned under-18s from tongue piercing, arguing that

“young people may be less likely to have the experience or knowledge”

to take that decision.

Labour does not trust children under 18 to have Botox or buy corrosive substances, and it does not trust children to place bets or even enter a gambling shop. The noble Lord, Lord Watson, then deputy leader, said:

“Those who gamble should be adults”.—[Official Report, Commons, 16/7/19; col. 721.]


So he confirms Labour’s view that under-18s are children. When Labour reduced VAT on children’s meals—another Brexit win—HMRC confirmed that under-18s are children.

What will these children use for voter ID in the polling booth? Few will have appropriate ID. For these reasons and many others, some 95% of the world’s democratic countries do not allow voting at 16; people have to wait until they are 18. Maybe it works in Nicaragua, Cuba or Ecuador, but it does not work here. We will be outliers, propelled by a Government rightly accused of attempting gerrymandering and, as I just demonstrated, abandoning all their past precedents and good practice on the altar of electoral greed—which may well backfire if those voters do not turn out to vote for Labour, as is now predicted.

In conclusion, will the Minister please tell us what research the Government have undertaken on my concerns, particularly about peer pressure on children, and whether she shares my concerns on some of the other issues I have raised? If the Government have undertaken that research, perhaps she could share it with us. If not, these amendments, which largely go to postpone the proposals, must make sense. A referendum would allow those who are closer to 16 and 17 year-olds to make this decision.

[Baroness Royall of Blaisdon (Lab)]

My Lords, I will make a couple of points. I wonder whether the noble Lord thinks that older people are not subject to peer pressure. I believe they are.

[Lord Leigh of Hurley (Con)]

Scientific research has shown that younger people are more subject to peer pressure than people over the age of 18.

[Baroness Royall of Blaisdon (Lab)]

What scientific evidence? We can come back to that some other time; I do not wish to waste time this afternoon.

On gerrymandering, I entirely refute that case. Recent polling suggests that young people are not more likely to vote for my party. We are doing this not to secure votes but because we believe that empowering young people is the right thing to do. I have some sympathy with the viewpoint put by the noble Lord, Lord Young of Acton, and I look forward to the response from my noble friend the Minister. I agree with much of what the noble Lord, Lord Rennard, said. Civic education and votes at 16 must go together, but we do not understand the depth of understanding of democracy among some young people. A couple of months ago, I went to a primary school in West Yorkshire where children between years 1 and 6 were elected to the school council. They all had to put forward a manifesto, and they patently understood democracy, voting and what everything meant. On civic education—to which we will return—this is not about influencing young people but about informing them so that they are aware of the rights they will be able to exercise.

17:00

[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—

[Baroness Royall of Blaisdon (Lab)]

My Lords, it is true that one can join the forces at 16, but one does not fight on the front line, as the noble Lord put it, until one is 18.

[Lord Fuller (Con)]

That is exactly the point I was making, and I gave a list of the things you can do at 18. Let us move on.

We need to have this review not just because we must be fair to children and adults but because we need to be clear where the boundary sits. It is not at all clear now; it is drip, drip, drip, which leads to confusion and insecurity.

My final point is that, when we consider votes at 16, we have to prepare people—the attainers—who are either 14 or 15, in a further blurring of the line between childhood and adulthood. As another noble friend said, I do not suppose that the Front Bench will oppose votes at 16, as it is a manifesto commitment, but we need to know what we are getting into before we get there.

17:15

[Lord Hannan of Kingsclere (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, I think the most interesting thing in this debate is the things that were not said. When the noble Baroness, Lady Coffey, and the noble Lord, Lord Jackson of Peterborough, went directly to the point that everyone else had been tiptoeing around and, slightly indelicately but deliberately, said this was a partisan Bill that was psephological in its content and was actually about advantaging one party over another, I watched very carefully the expressions opposite. The Minister did not swoon theatrically; there was no clamour of outrage, with people demanding that either of the noble Lords should withdraw. In fact, with the honourable exception of the noble Baroness, Lady Royall, who at least tried to reject it—she said she refuted it, but I am not sure she did—the reaction everywhere else was some studied looking at screens. The reason was that the noble Lords were not saying anything remarkable.

Lest that noble Lords think I am being partisan about this, this has been the case with every change in the franchise. In our entire long history, I cannot think of one Representation of the People Act that has not been manipulated for partisan advantage by every party at the time. It happened in 1832 and 1867, it happened in the 1884 and 1885 Reform Acts, it happened in 1918, and it happened when the voting age was last changed in 1969 by Harold Wilson. It happened when the Triennial Act was introduced in 1694, when the Septennial Act was introduced in 1716, and when the quinquennial Act was introduced in 1911. On every occasion, people have—perfectly understandably, because politics is politics—tried to game who would benefit.

As King Solomon said,

“there is nothing new under the sun”.

I will of course with great pleasure give way.

[Lord Murphy of Torfaen (Lab)]

The noble Lord might recall that I was a history tutor, and I am going to disagree with him. In Wales, the first time—I think it was the first—that 16 year-olds voted, the Labour Party, which had been in power in Wales for over 100 years, was reduced to nine out of 96 seats.

[Lord Hannan of Kingsclere (Non-Afl)]

I am always very grateful to hear from the noble Lord, Lord Murphy of Torfaen. There is a reminder in what he said that you should be careful what you wish for and that it may just be worth considering what has changed in the opinion polls between when this measure was put in the manifesto and now. Of course, however, we do not need to worry about that sort of thing in our elevated position here.

What makes this one a little bit different from all those others is not the fact of the electoral calculation and manipulation, but the flagrancy. What I mean by that is the list we heard from the noble Lord, Lord Leigh of Hurley. It is not just that parties on all sides have agreed on 18 as the standard age for maturity: the age at which you can make a contract, use a credit card, get a mortgage, serve on a jury and stand as a candidate. It is that, in many cases, the age has been raised from 16 to 18 as the age of consent by the same people who are now saying we should lower the voting age.

One of the first debates I took part in as a newish Member of your Lordships’ House was on raising the age from 16 to 18 to get Botox treatment. It was supported on every side. People said, “Well, this is just closing a loophole. This, after all, is the age we already use to get a tattoo and buy a knife, a bottle of wine, a scratchcard or some fireworks”. Absolutely true. As we heard, the last Labour Government raised the age of consent for a lot of these things, and certainly voted for it when other parties did.

The difference is not that it is happening; it is the sheer brazenness and flagrancy of it. That serves to undermine confidence in the system. It makes people cynical, because it confirms all the negatives that people have about politicians. If we have decided, as a country, that people below the age of 18 are legally children, are we really going to say that they are not responsible enough to buy or knife, scratchcard, firework or pint of beer, but that they should have the right to decide whether anyone else can do those things? Is that a reasonable proposition?

[Lord McCrea of Magherafelt and Cookstown (DUP)]

My Lords, I listened carefully to what the noble Lord, Lord Murphy, said. He seemed to suggest that one of the burdens of this legislation was to increase the engagement and participation of people in the democratic process, and certainly that is important. But surely one of the basic, central principles in a democracy is the restoring of trust within the population. The noble Lord mentioned how, over the years, things have changed. I was elected to the other place for Mid Ulster for 14 and a half years. The participation rate of the electorate who came out to vote over those years, in all those elections, was between 70% and 83%. There was no lack of interest or engagement as far as the population was concerned, certainly in those elections.

I know things may have changed. For Northern Ireland, we have had a change. The central principle in a democracy is surely that everyone’s vote is equal. I heard a lot of talk about England, Scotland and Wales. The noble Lord, Lord Murphy, mentioned Northern Ireland in the context of different methods of election. For example, for the Assembly and the councils we have proportional representation. Every person’s vote in that electoral system was certainly equal. Across the United Kingdom, there were varied manners of electing people, yet when it came to Westminster, everyone’s vote was the same. In all those years—my participation in the other House was 25 years in total—everyone’s vote was certainly equal.

That changed in 2021. We now find that, when England, Scotland and Wales go to elect a Member of Parliament, they vote for a person who will legislate on the matters relating to their constituents. But, when it comes to Northern Ireland, that has changed. They can only legislate for some issues in their constituency. They can participate in all the other votes in the other House, for England, Scotland and Wales, but, when it comes to Northern Ireland, there is a plethora of laws that are now forced on the people of Northern Ireland that the United Kingdom Parliament cannot vote upon. Therefore, those who elected a person in Northern Ireland are going to endure legislation and laws forced on them that their elected representatives have never voted on. That is completely different from any other Member of Parliament. Therefore, the vote of a person in Northern Ireland is not the same.

The noble Baroness, Lady Bennett, mentioned the equality issue; surely, there is an equality issue here. Therefore, I hope that, when she comes to the concluding wind-up, the Minister will tell us how the Government intend to explain to a 16 or 17 year-old in Northern Ireland, if they give them the vote, that their vote will mean less than the vote of someone else in the rest of the United Kingdom. Without that answer, we can change the age, but there is still a major problem. Therefore, when it comes to restoring trust in democracy, we should surely have Members of Parliament elected to be able to vote on the issues which their constituents are supposed to accept as the law of the land.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)]

My Lords, we on these Benches strongly support the idea of votes at 16, for two broad reasons. First, we want this to be a citizen democracy: not one in which passive subjects wait for the Government to deliver things to them and are supposed to be thankful, but one in which people feel they share in government, local and national, and have a voice. We believe that bringing the voting age down to 16 will help to engage people in their democracy before they leave home.

We have heard a lot—as we did during today’s second Oral Question—about the need for a national conversation. In the strategic defence review last year, we heard about the need for a whole-society response to the threats we now face by engaging local communities, volunteers and the like. That requires people to feel that they are part of our political community and, therefore, that they share the need to decide what goes on with government.

The second reason is because we—as well as France, Germany and others—increasingly have a problem of demographic balance in our politics. Some 30 years ago, when I was in charge of writing the manifesto for my party for the 1997 election, I spoke to people writing the Labour and Conservative manifestos. Among the things I was told was that we were really writing for people over the age of 45. Those under 45 did not vote so often and did not care so much about the details, so our package needed to be oriented towards benefits for the older generation. That is a problem. It is a huge problem in France, for example, where old people resist any increase in the age of retirement. I spent some time last spring visiting secondary schools to see how 16 and 17 year-olds would respond to votes at 16. I have been very impressed by how serious the 16 and 17 year-olds I met were about politics, how much more they want to know and how keen they are to be engaged. It will take a shift in the way we approach education and provide information but it is worth doing.

We have been discussing extension of the franchise for 200 years, as the noble Lord, Lord Hannan, rightly pointed out. I am sure he will agree that there have been only two occasions on which the Conservatives have not opposed any extension of the franchise. The first, as he mentioned, was Disraeli in 1867, when he decided to take a gamble and discover what he called the angels in marble. The second was in 2022, following the Elections Act, when the Conservatives pushed through an expansion of the right to vote for overseas voters for their lifetimes. The noble Lord, Lord Udny-Lister, may note that that increased the number of voters by somewhere between 2 million and 4 million; we are not entirely clear on how many overseas citizens are entitled to vote. That was done without a referendum, without consultation with the other parties, and without thinking through what it meant for changing the way in which you delivered your vote and get postal votes out. Cynics even thought that it was more to do with making it easier for wealthy expats to give money than to increase the franchise—but never mind, it was done, and without a referendum.

There has been talk about capacity and focus. The young people I spoke to—I have no doubt the noble Baroness, Lady Fox, will say the same—are often very concerned about education and training, for obvious reasons, as well as climate change and sustainability, which tend not to concern our generation quite so much. If we are talking about capacity and interest in relation to the young, we might perhaps also think about the old. When I first went into politics, the local Conservative agent had an extremely good relationship with the matrons of the local care homes. I discovered that he would go round, talk to the matron and butter her up, and she would help the inmates to fill in their postal votes. It had nothing much to do with privacy but it was the way one did things at a local level. That was a long time ago, and I am sure that no Conservative agent would think of doing such a thing nowadays, but if we are to start measuring capacity then it is not just the under-18s whom we have to worry about.

On fiddling the franchise, I add that the 2022 Act changed the way in which we elect mayors, which meant that when the Mayor of the West of England was elected he got 26% of the vote—a good democratic thing. Fiddling with the franchise has been done on a regular basis by both major parties, so let us not pretend that we are doing that here as well.

17:30

Yes, when we have votes at 16, there will be the need for much greater effort on education, and we do have to address the question of better information. I certainly had that coming back to me when talking to students in schools. Later amendments will deal with that.

I must say that the noble Baroness, Lady Fox, produced in passing a wonderful image of the average adult voter conducting independent research on political issues. I am not sure that I have met too many voters while canvassing who have been conducting independent research in detail themselves. Let us not overemphasise how wonderful our electorate is. However, the purpose of the Bill is to encourage the practice and habit of voting as a lifetime exercise for the young, to strengthen the voice of younger generations in our ageing society and to build a more active democracy, and for all those reasons we on these Benches support it.

[Lord Hayward (Con)]

My Lords, before I touch on one or two other things, I just say to my noble friend—I do refer to him as my noble friend—Lord Wallace that I think he meant “residents” rather than “inmates” when he was referring to care homes.

I do not intend to cover ground which has been covered by a large number of other people, but my noble friend Lord Wallace also touched on the question of changing the franchise. The noble Baroness, Lady Bennett, is not in her place at the moment, but my noble friend was absolutely clear about the historical analogies. I was one of the people who fell within that range of the 1969-70 Act in terms of implementation, and there was no question about it: it was not broadly supported by the Conservative Party because it thought it would benefit from it, and I have a very clear recollection because I fell within that age group.

One or two important issues have been touched on, one of which is Northern Ireland. I have every sympathy with noble colleagues from different Benches who have referred to the implications of what is not an equality of power of vote, and that needs to be carefully considered. However, I was also impressed by the comments of the noble Baroness, Lady Lister, about a category of people that is very small but which needs to be looked at incredibly carefully. A very close friend of mine is deeply involved in that community, and we have to remember that 40% of all the adult inmates in prison in this country come from care homes. It is a difficult task to deal with, and we therefore need to address the sorts of issues that the noble Baroness, Lady Lister, raised.

I take the point that the noble Lord, Lord Murphy of Torfaen, made, that this was in the manifesto. However, the trouble with the Bill is that very little else was in the manifesto. I have said to both the current Minister and to the noble Lord, Lord Lemos, that the Bill would be far better if the Government stuck to those parts of the legislation which appeared in the manifesto, rather than spending their time adding amendment after amendment and curtailing debate both in this House and the other House. If the Government came back with a Bill that dealt solely with manifesto matters, this House would have a far more coherent debate, and it would be logical and appropriate if it were considered on all sides on that basis.

I do not favour 16 and 17-year-olds having the vote. I could have cited many other examples of contradictions in our legislation, but they have been made over and over again, with the summary message being that what we are doing in the vast majority of cases is raising the age at which people should act in a certain way, whatever that action may happen to be.

In conclusion, I just make the observation that I am a former chief executive of the British Beer & Pub Association, and I will be quite happy to explain to my colleagues, who seem to think that 17 year-olds are not allowed to drink in pubs, that they are. However, that is for another date.

[Lord Gascoigne (Con)]

My Lords, cheers to that.

The noble Lord, Lord Wallace, said moments ago that we have been debating franchise extensions for 200 years. As one of the last speakers in a two-hour debate, I begin to know what that feels like.

I support a number of amendments in this group, but mainly Amendment 2 in the name of my noble friend Lady Coffey, and the noble Baroness, Lady Fox. Perhaps I come at this from a different point of view, and perhaps I am a lone voice on this side, in that I support the Government in lowering the voting age, and I congratulate them genuinely on doing this. However, like many others, both noble Baronesses have highlighted many inconsistencies, and I think the phrase “It’s a bit of a muddle” seems to be correct.

I wish to refer to an inconsistency that I think has not been mentioned, and which I have raised before in Home Office Questions: criminal sentencing and our differentiating between adult and juvenile at 18. I know that this is incredibly complex, as is always the case in the legalities involved in international agreements, but a recent horrific case—which I questioned the Minister about at the time—highlighted, at least to me, why we should look at whether the balance will now be right. Personally, I think it needs to change.

I say that because, if we ought to lower the voting age—and I think we should—with that right has to come a sense of responsibility; and with that right, I would argue, your role in society changes. We should properly and carefully go through these issues. It is not just a right-wing thing to say that; in fact, it is not a right-wing thing to say that. President John F Kennedy best communicated it when he said:

“Ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country”.


I pay tribute to the noble Lord, Lord Carter of Haslemere, who was in his place earlier, for his Private Member’s Bill, which referred to citizenship lessons for younger people.

I do not want to stray too much into what I think is covered in group six, but I want to refer to an issue that is dealt with in some amendments in this group, and which has been touched on already. My fear is that in lowering the voting age, we are implying that we have simply achieved our aims overnight without debating what it means: how to build national unity and to allow for some political discourse, and what being a citizen in modern Britain means. What are your rights and your responsibilities, and how can you play your part in our country?

The points made by the noble Lord, Lord Young, and the noble Baroness, Lady Fox, on Amendment 20 are valid too. Looking at the issues associated with social media should not be scorned by anyone. I am the proud father of two very young daughters, and, trust me, when I put them to bed every night, there is a growing list of things in my head that they will face as they grow up in Britain, and which fills me with fear. However, we should consider what it means for young people to be engaged and receive this information, and how it happens.

I repeat that I support the Government, and my concern is not with the principle but with the insinuation that we are treating votes at 16 as an end in itself. As a few people have said, the Bill will pass and we will feel able to congratulate ourselves and say, “Job’s a good ’un. Mission accomplished. Let’s move on”, saying nothing about some of the things that many people really want fixed and want the Government to get on and support. If we genuinely want to strengthen democratic participation, lowering the voting age should be accompanied by an understanding of what citizenship is and what playing a part in our free, liberal, democratic society means and entails. There should be greater clarity to help make the system work—a system which engenders active, proud and patriotic citizenship. Otherwise, my fear is that we risk making a constitutional change without addressing the reasons for making it, and, arguably, undermining it.

[Baroness Coffey (Con)]

My Lords, I thought it might be worth saying, for accuracy, that in the Welsh Senedd elections in 2021, 16 year-olds were allowed to vote, despite what the noble Lord, Lord Murphy, said.

[Baroness O’Neill of Bexley (Con)]

I thank all noble Lords who have tabled amendments in this group concerning lowering the voting age to 16 years. I also thank everyone who has contributed to the debate, and I apologise in advance for anyone I am not going to name-check. I am particularly grateful to my noble friend Lord Hayward for clarifying the terminology used by the noble Lord, Lord Wallace of Saltaire. I certainly do not think anyone on these Benches would refer to elderly people—

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)]

My apologies; I absolutely misspoke. Having spent some time with my mother and my godmother in care homes, I have spent much time visiting residents in them, and I apologise for misspeaking.

[Baroness O’Neill of Bexley (Con)]

I did think that was particularly distasteful.

As I said at Second Reading, this is a constitutionally significant Bill, and therefore deserves thorough scrutiny from your Lordships’ House. It may well be a manifesto commitment and therefore we will not oppose it, but we encourage the Government to seriously consider all the impacts of implementation, as my noble friend Lord Gasgoigne mentioned.

It is in that spirit that I address the amendments of my noble friend Lord Udny-Lister. Amendment 302 would require regulations to lower the voting age to go through the affirmative procedure, and Amendment 33 would require an assessment of 16 and 17 year-olds’ vulnerability to electoral disinformation and foreign interference. My noble friend is absolutely right that such changes need to be properly thought through and prepared before they take effect.

His Amendments 4 and 283 would require a referendum on lowering the voting age to 16. Referendums are of course not a requirement, nor are they legally binding, but they are used to decide major constitutional issues. They have been held three times nationally in the UK: once in 1975 on our membership of the EEC, in 2011 on changing the voting system and, of course, in 2016 on our membership of the EU. Lowering the voting age is significant, so it is reasonable to ask whether a referendum should be held. While we will not oppose a manifesto commitment, as my noble friend Lady Coffey said, it was one line in the Labour manifesto. I hope the Minister will clarify in exactly what circumstances this Government believe that referendums should be held. This is especially relevant after a senior Labour MP in the other place suggested that Brexit should be reversed without a referendum. Labour Ministers have refused to rule out rejoining the EU without a referendum, which was the will of the people. It begs the question: if this Government care so much about the democratic representation of the people, why would they ignore the way they voted in 2016?

Amendments 1 and 3, also in the name of my noble friend Lord Udny-Lister, would retain the voting age at 18 for elections to the House of Commons, on the grounds that this is in line with the age at which you can stand for election yourself, as well as for signing a recall petition under the Recall of MPs Act 2015. He raises an important point about consistency. If this Government genuinely believe that this policy is right, why not apply the same logic elsewhere? Indeed, this is why Amendments 22, 279 and 285 in my name and that of my noble friend Lord Jamieson would prevent Part 1 of the Act coming into force until the Secretary of State had undertaken a review of the consistency of age laws.

For example, the Family Law Reform Act 1969 sets the age of majority at 18. Full citizens’ rights and responsibilities are given at 18. Sixteen and 17 year-olds need parental consent before they can join the Army. They cannot drink, buy vapes, knives or fireworks or do many other things, as outlined by my noble friends Lord Fuller and Lord Hannan. As to the evidence that the noble Baroness, Lady Royall of Blaisdon, requested from my noble friend Lord Leigh of Hurley, it came from the respected journal Developmental Psychology, published in an article by Professors Gardner and Steinberg. It showed that resistance to peer-pressure influence increases significantly from 14 to 18.

17:45

Our amendment would allow the Government to take all these policy areas into account beforehand, ensuring that our laws make sense. At Second Reading, the Minister said that the question was not what else you can or cannot do at 16, but whether 16 is the right age to be able to vote. Have the Government justified 16 as the right age? Of course the two are related, as Amendment 20, in the names of my noble friend Lord Young of Acton and the noble Baroness, Lady Fox of Buckley, points out. If we are changing the voting age, what does that mean for restrictions on access to political content?

Amendment 2, in the name of my noble friend Lady Coffey and the noble Baroness, Lady Fox of Buckley, probes why the Government have chosen to lower the voting age to 16 rather than 17. In fact, Professor David Runciman once proposed lowering the voting age to six. For what reasons do the Government oppose that?

All we are asking for is reassurance that the Government have properly thought through and can provide the rationale for lowering the voting age to 16 specifically, as well as whether we can expect changes to age requirements in other policy areas. as has been referenced by my noble friends Lord Bailey of Paddington, Lord Young of Acton and Lord Leigh of Hurley.

The amendment in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Hoey, raises the situation in Northern Ireland, requiring an equality impact assessment prior to extending the franchise to younger voters in the UK. I am sure we will come back to equality impact assessments at a later stage. There are approximately 48,000 16 to 17 year-olds in Northern Ireland and, again, the Government need to make sure that the changes are thought through.

The amendments in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Lister of Burtersett, and the clause stand part notice in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett of Manor Castle, have raised the need for clarification with regard to youth accommodation and secure children’s homes. What is the scope of Clause 2? I hope the Minister can provide that clarification. I am grateful to noble Lords who have offered their insight so far, and I look forward to the Minister’s response.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government (Baroness Taylor of Stevenage) (Lab)]

My Lords, the Representation of the People Bill opens up participation and strengthens the integrity of our democracy, ensuring that all eligible citizens can exercise their right to vote. It introduces one of the biggest changes to the franchise in half a century, with the enfranchisement of 16 and 17 year-olds, and moves us towards more automated voter registration. It reinforces trust by closing down opportunities for those who would seek to undermine our democracy, with stronger political finance rules and better protections against harassment and intimidation.

It has been a great pleasure to listen to the debate this afternoon. It has been the House at its best: 19 or 20 speakers—I am not sure I wrote them all down—debating the first part of the Bill, and we have heard differing views from across the House and some very detailed scrutiny of some of the provisions in the Bill, which I welcome. I would say to the noble Lord, Lord Hayward, that I know the Bill has had some additions during its passage, but it was always the intention that we would take account of the Rycroft review and introduce some of its recommendations as the Bill progressed. Philip Rycroft did an outstanding job on reviewing some of the key issues, particularly around political finance.

[Lord Hayward (Con)]

I thank the Minister for that clarification, but how does she make those observations stack up with the observation made by the noble Lord, Lord Rooker, at the end of Second Reading and the comparison with the amount of time given in Committee for this Bill compared with the Elections Bill in 2022?

[Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)]

My noble friend Lord Rooker is raising the issue of scrutiny on every Bill. It is interesting that he put that process in place but has changed his mind. Scrutiny on all Bills is welcome. This is my sixth piece of legislation. I have welcomed the scrutiny that this House has brought to all those Bills. With this Bill, we knew there would be further additions during its passage. That is the point I was trying to make.

I turn first to Amendments 1 and 3 in the name of the noble Lord, Udny-Lister, and Amendment 2 in the names of the noble Baronesses, Lady Coffey and Lady Fox of Buckley. Our intended extension of the franchise will create consistency across the United Kingdom and ensure that young people have a voice at a local and a national level. But consistency is not the only or the most important reason for extending the vote to 16 and 17 year-olds. As I said at Second Reading—it has been repeated during this debate—the important question is not what else you can or cannot do at 16 but whether 16 is the right age to be able to vote. This Government are clear that the answer to that question is yes. We were elected on a commitment to make precisely this change.

We have heard many examples of things that you cannot do at 16—tongue piercing, gambling, purchasing knives, having tattoos or credit cards—and some points about criminal sentencing, which I hear with interest.

[Lord Sherbourne of Didsbury (Con)]

Can the Minister answer the question asked by my noble friend Lord Udny-Lister? Why is it right for a 16 year-old to be a voter in an election but not a parliamentary candidate or a Member of Parliament?

[Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)]

I am coming on to that point, if the noble Lord will bear with me. I want to pick up some other points first.

The noble Baroness, Lady Bennett, spoke about votes at 18. We were the first in the world to do that. It would be unthinkable to go back on that. The first election that I voted in, in 1975, was the vote to go into the European Union. I have not changed my mind about that. I have changed it about some other things, but certainly not about that. When we talk about purchasing knives at 18, the noble Lord, Lord Rennard, mentioned things that might intimidate. I was not intimidated by the little stubby bit of pencil that I was given to cast that vote.

We believe that 16 is the right age to be able to exercise your democratic right. Extending the right to vote to 16 and 17 year-olds will allow them to have a say in the Government who shape their future and will set them up, as the noble Lord, Lord Wallace, said, for a lifelong engagement in democracy. I absolutely agree about the points on education and will come on to those in a moment.

I want to address the important points made in the debate on how we ended up at 16. We have looked extensively at how voting works around the world. We have looked at a number of places, including Austria and Malta, which have successfully lowered the voting age to 16. The step has been taken already in Scotland and Wales for devolved elections and more widely in the Isle of Man, Jersey and Guernsey. Evidence from these places shows that those who vote at a younger age are more likely to continue voting as they get older.

By the age of 16, young people have already made important decisions about their own lives—whether to continue with their education, undertake training, pursue an apprenticeship or seek employment or volunteering opportunities. Even by the age of 14, they have decided what subjects they want to continue to study. Why is it the case that they should be considered old enough to make those decisions that affect the rest of their lives but cannot vote? We should not fear expanding the franchise to younger people. In 1969, the UK was the first country in the world to lower the voting age to 18. Extending the right to vote to 16 and 17 year-olds now is the next natural step in the evolution of our democracy. Young people are the future of our country. It is only right that they have a say over it.

I very much supported the points made about a serious programme of education. We will come to that in future groups, but I want to make some points now about education and what steps are being taken to support young people’s education. We want to break down barriers and drive participation. We know that engagement and education are a crucial part of implementing that policy. It is vital that young people understand and value the democratic process and feel that it is relevant to them. We are committed to ensuring that democracy education reinforces the importance and value of participating in our democracy and inspires greater democratic engagement. We want engagement to start at 16 and continue into adulthood by equipping and empowering pupils with the knowledge and understanding that they need. We will continue to work with the Electoral Commission, the devolved Governments and civil society on what additional measures can support schools, colleges and youth groups to roll out practical voter and civic education. It is vital that we also start that process with our youngest students. This is all aligned with the Government’s youth strategy of engagement of young people.

On the points made by the noble Lord, Lord Udny-Lister, about candidates standing in elections, there are very specific reasons why we have taken the decision not to include candidates at 16 and 17. The Government believe that the ages of 16 and 17 are a particularly important time to continue personal development and education. That is why rules in England require that those who choose to leave school at 16 must pursue an apprenticeship or work no more than 20 hours a week while in part-time education or training until the age of 18. The requirements of local government officeholders are a significant commitment. Having different age requirements for local and national office would be unnecessarily complicated. As such, the Government will not be changing the minimum candidacy age for any elected offices. I heard the points about the Labour Party NEC and constituency offices. I am sure that was a recognition of this, but there is definitely a very active engagement of young people in my party, as I am sure there is across all political parties.

The noble Lord, Lord Udny-Lister, has also tabled Amendments 4, 283 and 301, which seek to require a referendum on lowering the voting age to 16, with a majority vote in favour before the change can be implemented. However, as my noble friend Lord Murphy set out with his characteristic clarity, the Government were elected on a clear mandate that included a commitment to extend the right to vote to 16 and 17 year-olds in all UK elections. That is an important point about not having a referendum on this: we already have a mandate to introduce it.

As the noble Lord, Lord Rennard, said, I say to the noble Lord, Lord Leigh, that we do not carry out cognitive tests on any citizens before they exercise their franchise, no matter what their age. This point about cognitive ability is a difficult one for him to make. The Government have been very clear on this matter. We genuinely believe that young people are the future of our country, and it is only right that they have a say in the decisions that shape their lives.

As for partisan advantage, I have heard from the other side both that we are doing this as a gerrymandering exercise and that it will let in votes from smaller parties such as Reform and the Green Party. They cannot have it both ways. We are either gerrymandering or we are opening out the franchise to a wider group of parties. We are doing it because it is the right thing to do to introduce votes at 16 and 17, so a referendum is not necessary. It would be unusual to require a referendum before implementing a clear manifesto commitment on which the Government were elected and for which they have a mandate.

I will say to the noble Baroness, Lady O’Neill, whom I think was talking about some comments that a Labour Member had made about a Brexit referendum, that if every statement in the other place by a Labour Member became government policy, we would have an awful lot more work to do than we have already.

18:00

I appreciate the interest of the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett of Manor Castle, in the right of young people to vote. However, it is right that those convicted of a crime and serving a sentence in custody cannot vote. We believe that extending the franchise should bring the same rights and responsibilities as apply to other electors, and that must include the existing restriction on voting for those convicted of an offence and serving a custodial sentence. The clause ensures that this applies consistently across the different forms of youth detention accommodation. I will also take this opportunity to reassure my noble friend Lady Lister, who has tabled Amendment 6 on this point; I think she recognises that the drafting does not affect young people in secure children’s homes who are not convicted prisoners.

It is very unusual for young people under 18 to receive a custodial sentence, so those that do have usually committed very serious offences. These provisions concern elections for which the UK Government are responsible; devolved elections in Scotland and Wales are subject to different arrangements. The provisions in the Bill simply reflect the well-established position on prisoner voting and ensure that 16 and 17 year-olds are treated the same as all other electors and the Government will not be revisiting this position.

Moving on to the government amendments in this group—

[Baroness Lister of Burtersett (Lab)]

I am grateful to my noble friend for clarifying the position, but I do not think she has really addressed the question of two groups of children living side by side, where one of the children will have the vote and the other will not. If she cannot address that now, perhaps she could write to me and the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett of Manor Castle, afterwards, because there is concern about the impact that will have on the children who cannot vote.

[Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)]

I understand the point my noble friend makes, and I will be very happy to write to her or meet her to discuss that further. On the government amendments—

[Baroness Hoey (Non-Afl)]

I know the Minister has a lot to answer tonight, but will she say anything about Amendment 21, which was mentioned by a number of Peers?

[Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)]

I am not doing the government amendments because they are the last bit; I am doing them because this is where they come in the order of things. I will come on to other amendments.

Following the extension of the franchise to 16 and 17 year-olds, newly eligible young people will need to register to vote. Government Amendment 12 and consequential Amendments 275, 295 and 296, tabled in my name, will enable electoral registration officers to obtain information about 14 and 15 year-olds during the 2027 canvas. Registration officers will be able to use that information to invite those young people to register to vote, either as attainers or as electors, once the new franchise is brought into effect. This will help to get young people on the register and reduce the risk for our hard-pressed EROs of a large spike in registrations immediately before the first poll is conducted under the expanded franchise.

I turn now to Amendment 20, tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Young of Acton, and the noble Baroness, Lady Fox of Buckley. The Government agree that extending the franchise must go hand in hand with ensuring that young people have access to reliable information and the knowledge they need to participate confidently in elections. However, we do not consider that this amendment is necessary. The Government’s proposed social media ban will apply to children under the age of 16, although they will still be able to access the online world for purposes including news and learning. Meanwhile, 16 and 17 year-olds will continue to be able to access social media, although additional default protections will apply to help ensure they can do so safely. The Online Safety Act already includes safeguards for content of democratic importance, recognised news publisher content and journalistic content on the largest user-to-user services. Ofcom is now implementing that regime and there is a strong case for allowing it to run its course before introducing a further statutory review requirement through the Bill.

[Lord Young of Acton (Con)]

My Lords—

[Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)]

Can I just finish this section and then I will give way? However, regulation is only one part of the answer. The Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport is working with the Department for Education to strengthen media literacy in the new school curriculum, from primary up to age 16, from September 2028, including how pupils identify misinformation and disinformation. This is complemented by wider government activity, including the cross-government media literacy action plan, the You Won’t Know Until You Ask campaign and the Kids Online Safety hub, which help families build resilience to misinformation and disinformation and access trusted online safety information.

[Lord Young of Acton (Con)]

I thank the Minister for giving way. That sounded very positive, but can I just clarify whether the Minister was giving the Committee an assurance that, when those protections are in place, children under the age of 16 will be able to access content of democratic importance, news publisher content and journalistic content and that the content will not be restricted by the forthcoming regulations restricting social media access for under 16 year-olds?

[Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)]

Yes, I think that is certainly the case.

The noble Baroness, Lady Hoey, has tabled Amendments 21, 278, 284 and 286. These amendments seek to require an equality impact assessment comparing the effects of the franchise change in Northern Ireland with Great Britain and to delay the commencement of Part 1 of the Bill until a formal report on the Government’s response to that assessment is laid before both Houses. The Government are committed to extending the franchise to 16 and 17 year-olds across the entire United Kingdom on an equal basis. The Bill ensures that people across the United Kingdom are empowered to participate in our democracy. Imposing additional statutory requirements on extending the franchise would create an unnecessary delay to delivering this commitment for young people across the UK.

The noble Baroness mentioned the Windsor Framework in relation to this amendment. The Windsor Framework was overwhelmingly approved by Parliament. It respects Northern Ireland’s place in the union and gives democratically elected Members of the Northern Ireland Assembly the ability to scrutinise—

[Baroness Hoey (Non-Afl)]

My Lords—

[Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)]

Can I just finish? Then, if the noble Baroness still wants to come in, I will happily give way. It gives Members of the Northern Ireland Assembly the ability to scrutinise the rules that apply and the Government are committed to it. The Government are committed to equality across the country and lowering the voting age to 16 applies identically across all reserved elections, without distinction. The assessment comparing electors in Northern Ireland with those in Great Britain is unnecessary and would delay implementation of the measure.

[Baroness Hoey (Non-Afl)]

I thank the Minister for the detail with which she has responded, although obviously I do not agree with her. Can I just correct something that has been said by many noble Lords? The Windsor Framework was never voted on as the Windsor Framework either in the House of Commons or in the House of Lords. The only way that we have had votes has been on statutory instruments. The very first one was some months after 2021, when the protocol was brought in, and then the Windsor Framework. There has been no vote ever in this place or the other place on the Windsor Framework and the principle of it.

[Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)]

I will leave that comment where the noble Baroness left it.

Amendments 22, 279 and 285, in the names of the noble Baroness, Lady O’Neill of Bexley, and the noble Lords, Lord Jamieson and Lord Brady of Altrincham, would require a report explaining why the voting age should differ from the age of majority set out in the Family Law Reform Act 1969, which is 18. A similar amendment to this was tabled in the other place, and I can only reiterate today what my ministerial colleague said in those debates. The Government are working to build and maintain a democracy fit for 2026 and beyond. The central question before us is not whether the voting age aligns with every other age threshold contained in statute. Rather, it is whether 16 and 17 year-olds should have a voice in the democratic decisions that affect their lives and their future. The Government’s view is clear: young people have a direct stake in the future of this country and extending the franchise will enable them to participate in shaping policies and institutions that will have a lasting impact on their lives and can help establish the habits of democratic engagement that will build the foundations for lifelong participation in our democratic system. I hope that reassures noble Lords that the Government have carefully considered this matter, and we remain committed to delivering this important reform.

[Lord Udny-Lister (Con)]

I thank the Minister for her comments, but I plea that she takes on board the education point that a number of people in the Committee have raised. However, I accept that this is a manifesto commitment, and therefore I withdraw the amendment.

Amendment 1 withdrawn.

Amendments 2 and 3 not moved.

Clause 1 agreed.

Amendment 4 not moved.

Clause 2: Disfranchisement of detained 16 and 17 year olds

Amendment 5

Moved by

[Lord Frost]

5: Clause 2, page 2, line 19, leave out “in England”
Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment, and others in the name of Lord Frost, seeks to make the Representation of the People Act 1983 franchise, as amended by this Act, the franchise for all statutory elections, referendums and polls in the United Kingdom, except City of London ward elections. It would abolish the Scotland-only and Wales-only franchise variants and make the franchise a wholly reserved matter.

[Lord Frost (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, I shall move Amendment 5 and speak to Amendments 7, 30 and 31 on the Marshalled List.

In considering the Bill, we are going to be considering some major changes to how we conduct our elections in this country. We will spend a lot of time considering the “what” of these changes and their justifiability, but we are not going to spend much time considering the “who”: who has the right to make, or not make, the changes that are being brought forward? I want to discuss that question and particularly the consequences of the devolution of the electoral franchise for all but national elections, and to suggest, as my amendments suggest, that these arrangements need to be looked at again.

I emphasise the franchise; I am not looking at the electoral system, for there has always been variation on that within the country. I am not looking at the merits of voting at 16, Commonwealth voting or anything like that. We will be coming to some of those issues where we have not discussed them already. This is about the wider consequences of allowing the devolved Governments to change the electoral franchise and the knock-on effects that that has for the wider system and the rest of the country. That is why I thought it right to table these amendments; they are probing amendments designed to get the matter discussed. Their effect would be to make the electoral franchise a reserved matter and the same in every part of the UK. In other words, they would restore the constitutional system on that point as it existed before 2013.

I will speak briefly on how these amendments would work. Amendment 30 would establish two common franchise categories: it would establish the parliamentary franchise, described as for Westminster elections and UK-wide or nationwide referendums or similar; and it would establish the local government franchise, which would apply for almost everything else. The amendment would therefore replace Scotland’s and Wales’s wider nationality qualifications. It would remove Scotland’s short-sentence prisoner exception, and it would make inconsistent legislative provisions ineffective.

Amendment 31 would go on to prevent the devolved institutions from subsequently recreating different franchises once again. It would expressly reserve for Westminster the voting entitlement in Scottish Parliament, Senedd and local elections and referendums, and polls in Scotland and Wales.

Amendments 5 and 7 seek to make the necessary consequential changes concerning detained young offenders. Amendment 5 would remove the England-only restriction on their disqualification from local government voting, and Amendment 7 seeks to delete the Northern Ireland modification that is rendered unnecessary by the earlier change. So that is how they would work.

I will say a word about the history and how we got to this point. As I noted, the devolution of franchise setting is hardly something from the dim and distant past; it is not a long-established and well-accepted part of our constitution. It goes back all of 13 years. That is why I want to examine this history in more detail.

I take Scotland first. The original devolution settlement left the franchise reserved in 1998, and the then Labour Government defended that explicitly. Lord Sewel explicitly said that the Scottish Executive

“cannot mess around with the franchise; that remains reserved”—[Official Report, 23/7/1998; col. 1077.]

That statement was not regarded as controversial, at that point. The genie was let out of the bottle only with the SNP’s determination to give itself the best chance of winning the 2014 independence referendum, and the Government consented to votes at 16 for that referendum under a special arrangement, and then agreed to it permanently in 2015.

After the referendum, the Scotland Act removed the general reservation on all but UK Parliament elections in 2017. Controversially, your Lordships’ Constitution Committee said at the time that devolving constitutional powers, including the franchise,

“risked introducing variation where there should be none”.

It identified possible differences in the enfranchisement of non-British residents and British citizens abroad—not merely the question of the voting age. It also warned that changes in Scotland could, in the end, pressure Westminster into matching them, rather than having a prior, wider, UK-wide debate on how the system should work. Those warnings were correct, but they were ignored. In 2020, the Scottish Government extended the franchise further not just to short-sentence prisoners but to all foreign residents in Scotland for everything other than national parliamentary elections.

18:15

In Wales, things went more quickly but to the same destination. Once again, it was a referendum—this time one that never happened—about devolving tax powers, which first introduced voting at 16 into the system. The general reservation was lifted in 2018. Welsh legislation in 2020 and 2021 extended voting rights for non-nationals in a similar way to Scotland, although the tests are slightly different. In Wales, too, short-sentence prisoners remain excluded.

To complete the set, voting rights have never been devolved in Northern Ireland, so it does not come into this question.

So that is the situation. What problem has been created by this set of piecemeal changes to the franchise? I suggest that the situation is quite unsatisfactory and that three sets of problems have been created. The first is practical issues: the fact is that rights change as you move around the country, on the questions of both age and foreign residents’ rights to vote. I think it is a good principle that voters should be able to understand whether they can vote or not, without mastering the detail of devolution law. Indeed, the Electoral Commission has in the past warned that divergent franchises can confuse voters and campaigners. There is a lot of administrative complexity in keeping different registers for different purposes and different kinds of elections in different parts of the country. This is not insurmountable, but it exists and the Electoral Commission has also highlighted this in the past. So there is a set of practical issues, but there are a couple of bigger ones behind it.

The second issue is one of constitutional logic. This is one country, and in modern democracies voters have the same rights. We may agree or disagree with exactly what those rights should be and how we extend them. As I have said, this is a point not about the substance but about how things are done in devolved Administrations. It is worth highlighting that it cuts both ways. If, for example, Reform UK had won the elections in Wales earlier this year, it might have introduced its policy to end Commonwealth voting in Wales—a policy that I happen to agree with, and we will come on to that—and a huge change to the system, once again in only one part of the country. I contend that this is not a satisfactory situation.

The rights that people have as electors should be the same for everyone, regardless of where in the country they happen to be standing. In a nation state, the terms of basic democracy have to be set at country level and, for most places, that is a foundational rule of the constitutional settlement. Where it is not, it tends to encourage a feeling of difference and separateness, which I think is to be discouraged with the country in its current fractured state. This leads me on to the third problem.

Thirdly, the most pernicious consequence that we have seen is the use of franchise changes in a highly political way, in very charged environments. As I noted, the original extension of votes at 16 in Scotland—since we have allowed ourselves to break the taboo that these changes might be made for other than objective reasons—was a transparently political gesture aimed at giving the SNP the best chance of winning its referendum. The extension to all foreign residents in Scotland and Wales, wherever they come from, is, again, a deliberate attempt to skew the potential support for different parties and ensure that any repeated referendum on any national question would be slanted by large numbers of non-British citizens on the register.

Sometimes there is perhaps an attempt to show a degree of moral superiority—on prisoner voting, for example, there was a deliberate attempt to show a different approach to England. Last year, there was political pressure in Scotland to extend voting to asylum seekers, which came close to getting into the election Act of 2025. These changes need to be discussed rationally and collectively as a country. They are not part of a race to show whether one devolved nation is more progressive or robust on migration than any other.

Those are the problems, and they possibly explain why other European countries have been much more reticent in this regard than we have in the UK. Switzerland, which is an explicitly federal state with very highly devolved powers, even now, is the only one that gives similar rights to its cantons as those that Scotland has. In Germany and Austria, the Länder can vary the voting age within constraints that are set centrally, but they are explicitly prohibited from granting voting rights to foreign residents. We will come on to this question, but granting voting rights to foreign residents at all is extremely rare in Europe. Crucially, in those countries the rights are the same for all territories. There are no asymmetric arrangements as we have in the UK, and that asymmetry produces part of the problem.

All other EU countries set their rules nationally or, in a small number of cases, have the right to make small technical changes within a framework that is set nationally. Apart from Spain, other countries do not have the constant push to secession that makes the devolution of the franchise so highly political. Britain is an outlier on these sorts of questions.

To conclude, this is why we need to look at these issues again. We are not looking at a settled constitutional norm; we are looking at a very recent development. The taboo on reconsidering devolved powers once they are devolved needs to be broken—devolve and forget is not good enough. Indeed, the only area that has ever been devolved to Scotland or Wales and has since been returned is, incredibly, the right to exploration in Antarctica, which was devolved by mistake in the original devolution settlement.

For reasons of normal constitutional logic and international comparability, and to stop politicising something so fundamental as the electoral mandate, we need to look at this again. The national Government have a responsibility to look at the issues and consequences for the wider country. Devolution allows different parts of the UK to govern themselves differently. It does not follow that each must have an independent power to determine the basic qualifications of those who are entitled to elect a legislature. I contend that those qualifications ought to be settled nationally through this Parliament and that we can and should preserve different Governments and policies without dispersing responsibility for the democratic foundations of the state.

[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.

18:30

I have said it before and I will say it again: we are a unitary state. It seems to me odd that, if you live in Monmouthshire, you have a completely different voting system and a way of electing people who matter and make decisions about your life from those five miles across the border in Herefordshire—ditto in Cumbria or Northumberland vis-à-vis Argyll or Dumfriesshire or East Lothian. It seems strange for such a small country. We have the single transferable vote, the additional member system, the regional list, the alternative vote, first past the post and so on, and I have mentioned the d’Hondt system before. Voting rights, as my noble friend said, should not change simply because of someone moving across the United Kingdom between different counties, towns, cities and villages.

As my noble friend said, Britain’s arrangements are anomalous. Only Germany and Austria have the ability to vary the voting age, and they are very strict, as he said, concerning in particular the capacity of foreign voters to cast their ballots in elections. That is important. If one looks at the situation in Wales, we have heard before about the ability of Commonwealth and Irish citizens to vote. Scotland permits legally resident foreign nationals to vote in Scottish Parliament and local elections. In December last year, 198,000 qualifying foreign nationals were registered to vote in Scottish Parliament and local elections. That is not far off 5% of the electorate. That is a significant issue.

No one is casting aspersions on the bona fides of those people—they live in Scotland—but if you are in the business of protecting the integrity of our voting system, and the long-standing link between voting and having a vested interest in your community and nationality, then at your peril you undermine that by allowing people who do not have the same investment, perhaps, constitutionally or historically, in the country in which they are voting. These days, we need to be thinking about the trust people have in the system. There should be consistency between devolved elections, national referenda and parliamentary elections concerning the eligibility of foreign nationals to vote. The devolved Administrations should be brought in line with the national qualifying standard of eligibility to vote.

When we are discussing the self-interest of some parties, as my noble friend said, there is the egregious example of the SNP in 2011, I think, using its devolved competence to affect the franchise for its own narrow electoral self-interest. If anything else, were this amendment to be adopted, it would act as a check on devolved power by limiting the devolved Administrations’ ability to amend their rules further—we heard about asylum seekers earlier—encouraged by the dramatic change under this Bill of lowering the voting age to 16. This would cap the Administrations’ abilities to expand the franchise even further—the slippery slope argument.

I support my noble friend’s amendments. I think they are sensible. They do not resile from support for the concept of devolution, but they try to bring some coherence and commonality to our electoral systems in this country. That would be good, because people would then understand what they are voting for and would be more likely to vote and exercise their franchise. It seems common sense and sensible so to do. On that basis, I strongly support the amendment.

[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.

[Lord Deben (Con)]

My Lords, I am very much opposed to a system other than first past the post, but it seems peculiar that we have a devolved system and then we are to say that people in the devolved Administrations cannot decide how they choose their Government. I find that a very odd argument. The fact of the matter is that Wales has an odd system of election. It is not one that I would campaign for, but the Welsh have decided that it is the one they want. I find it out of all proportion with the world we live in today. We are a country made up of a number of countries. Yes, of course, we are the United Kingdom, but the Welsh—and I speak as someone who had a Welsh-speaking father—are different from much of the rest.

However, where one party tends dominate election after election, there cannot be anything but the suspicion, at least, that that party will use its dominant power—to use the words of the noble Lord, Lord Wallace, in another context—to fiddle the constitution.

Finally, this is important not just for transparency but consistency. The Government, in their Explanatory Notes, refer to the importance of consistency as one of the reasons for this Bill. If we are to be consistent, we should ensure that the franchise is consistent across the country.

[Lord Pack (LD)]

My Lords, this group provides us with a choice between devolution or top-down centralised uniformity. I acknowledge that the noble Lords, Lord Frost and Lord Jackson, are perhaps surprising voices for enforcing centralised uniformity on a range of nations, regardless of the views of those nations, but that is in effect what these amendments would do. However, as the noble Baronesses, Lady Bennett and Lady Smith, pointed out, this is not quite the case, because a special privileged position is given to the City of London. It is a position that may be justified for some of the reasons we heard earlier, but which these amendments would not grant to the people of Wales or Scotland. As a Londoner for nearly all my life, and who is very proud to often argue the corner for London, I think giving the City of London a special place above and beyond Scotland and Wales might be going just a bit too far.

[Lord Harris of Haringey (Lab)]

On the important issue of the City of London, if you give it its name as the City of London Corporation, and you treat it as essentially a trading estate which happens to have 14,000 people living on it, then maybe the electoral arrangements it adopts are indeed a matter for that trading estate rather than for the rest of us.

[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.

[Lord Pack (LD)]

Indeed, but variation is present. There are many other examples of variation. The argument was made that there are some administrative burdens in allowing variation. I would simply observe that with devolution we have the ability to vary things such as speed limits and tax rates. If one is going to take seriously the argument that there are problems with variation, one should be up front and say, “That is an argument against devolution full stop”. It is not possible with powerful logic and consistency to argue that variation for the franchise is somehow a problem while variation for, say, tax rates, is acceptable. That goes to the argument about constitutional logic. The constitutional logic argument works exactly the other way: the very constitutional logic of devolution is that different people end up being able to make different decisions. That is the inescapable logic of devolution.

Finally, on the point about gerrymandering, some slightly more politic phrases were used earlier. I always think it very unwise to attempt to set rules for elections on the basis of partisan self-interest—partly, obviously, for the reason of principle, but also because it so often backfires. Returning to the United States, we may see some Republicans rueing what they thought was very clever drawing of boundaries when the election results come in tomorrow. Of course, all of us will have to be here bright and early on Wednesday morning, so we will not be able to stay up quite as late as we may have wished to watch those results coming in.

Fundamentally, this is a question about devolution: about whether we believe that it is right for different places which have powers devolved to them to make different decisions. I join with those who have argued in this debate that, yes, that variation is right. Therefore, on this occasion, I very much hope we will not be hearing warm words from the Minister in due course, but that she too will defend the rights of different parts of the United Kingdom to make their own decisions under devolved settlements.

[Baroness O'Neill of Bexley (Con)]

My Lords, I thank my noble friend Lord Frost for his probing amendments, including those supported by my noble friend Lord Jackson of Peterborough. This has been a much quicker debate, but worthy no less, and I thank all those who have contributed to it.

These amendments seek to standardise voting eligibility across the UK, with the exception of the City of London ward elections, as has already been said. The SNP in Scotland and Labour in Wales have already given the right to vote in devolved and local elections to all foreign residents. Those decisions were not minor technical differences between the UK’s constituent parts, and they are deserving of debate at national level.

This issue also relates to automatic voter registration. While Wales has conducted four automatic registration pilots, it did not have to verify the nationality of an elector as a result of the changes at a devolved level. I am sure we will debate the security of automatic voter registration in greater detail in due course.

In addition, we are concerned about the consequences for UK political donation rules as a result of the changes made by the two devolved Administrations giving voting rights to every foreign resident. This has given foreign citizens the right to make unlimited donations to politicians and political parties across the UK, opening the door to foreign finance as well as direct electoral influence. For example, a foreign student resident in a Scottish university can legally make political donations to any political entity.

At Second Reading, the Minister, said that this Bill will

“reduce the risk of foreign money entering our politics … The threat to our democracy from foreign influence and hidden sources of political funding is an ever-growing danger—one that we cannot afford to delay tackling”.—[Official Report, 14/9/26; col. 971-72.]

Will the Minister therefore commit to closing this loophole without delay? If not, why is there an inconsistency when it comes to foreign interference?

This debate has touched on fundamental questions. The balance of devolution matters, but so does citizenship. It is not meaningless, as so many of those residents who have proudly chosen to become citizens can attest. I look forward to the Minister’s response.

[Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)]

My Lords, the amendments proposed by the noble Lord, Lord Frost, would also apply the electoral franchise currently used for local elections in England and Northern Ireland to all elections in Scotland and Wales. In practice, this would mean that some foreign citizens would no longer be able to vote in local elections in Scotland and Wales, or elections to the Scottish Parliament or Senedd Cymru. For completeness, I also note that the noble Lord has tabled multiple amendments, some of which would remove Commonwealth citizens’ voting rights as well, although these would not.

The idea that because people move around the United Kingdom they will, somehow or other, be fogged by the fact that there are differences in its different countries seems very odd. I happen to think that the history of electoral arrangements in Northern Ireland—and in Ireland in general—have not been very happy, but the fact of the matter is that it is for Northern Ireland to decide how it is to be governed, as far as its own devolved position goes.

That is also true for Scotland. I dislike the Scottish nationalists; I think they are the worst Government in the United Kingdom. They have done terrible damage to Scottish education and to Scotland generally, but in the end it is the Scots who have to decide how their own Government are elected. The idea that we should take back to the United Kingdom Government the decision about how we do that seems to undermine the whole concept of devolution. I believe in devolution because the closer that people are to the decision-makers, the more they are likely to feel engaged and that they are their Government.

I hope very much that this House will not go backwards by suggesting that we should force other people to choose their Governments in the way that we like. It is right that everybody shall vote the same way for the central United Kingdom Government, but it seems, frankly, very old-fashioned and out of date to suggest that we should go back on what we do now.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, it is a great pleasure to follow and almost entirely agree with the noble Lord, Lord Deben, although I do not accept his label of the current Welsh system as odd. I am otherwise in 100% agreement. It is also a great pleasure to admire the speech of the noble Lord, Lord Wigley.

The noble Lord, Lord Jackson, said that this group of amendments would be a check on devolved power. It would be a check on the representatives chosen by the people in their own nations. I say to those who wish to defend and maintain the union that they should realise that denying and removing rights is no way to maintain it. I hope the noble Lord, Lord Frost, would accept that devolution is about difference: different choices in different nations. We have different languages that are protected and relied on in those nations. We have different rules about the management and treatment of land—we will park the Crown Estate in Wales on the side for the moment. We have different kinds of politics and those nations have made very different political choices. I do not think there is any evidence that a change in franchise has made a significant impact on the political choices that those nations have made.

However, I will mostly address a particular element of this group that the noble Lord, Lord Frost, did not address in his introduction, but perhaps he might in the wrap-up. There is an exception. We are talking about every election being under the same franchise, except for the City of London’s ward elections. I point noble Lords to my Amendment 269, which we will undoubtedly get to much later. It would abolish the business vote for the City of London Corporation elections. My amendment would end the nation’s last rotten borough. It would finally introduce the principle of one person, one vote in 2026.

[Lord Deben (Con)]

The noble Baroness kindly said that she liked following my speech. May I say to her that what she said is nonsense, and there is no reason at all to change what happens in the City of London?

18:45

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

I am delighted to allow the noble Lord to say just that. I am sure there are many people in your Lordships’ Chamber who would agree with him. In fact, I will point Members to a book that I was at the launch of last week. It is called The Assetocracy and is about the composition of the House of Lords. Noble Lords might find it of interest with relevance to the relationship between this House and the City of London.

Coming back to where I was, I am not going to cover fully the points that I will raise on Amendment 269. However, I ask the noble Lord, Lord Frost, to justify saying, in this context, that everything else has to be the same except the City of London. If you are going to impose uniformity, why have this odd little black hole in the centre of the City without democratic control? Why is that being excluded?

[Baroness Smith of Llanfaes (PC)]

My Lords, I will speak briefly, as my noble friend Lord Wigley has covered some of the most important points. It is also a pleasure to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett. It is interesting that there is the exception in these amendments for the City of London but not for whole nations, so it would be interesting to hear more about that in closing.

The only points I wanted to raise was that the Welsh Parliament, Senedd Cymru, is the people of Wales’s Parliament. Therefore, it is only right that the people of Wales decide how it is run. The same goes for Scotland and the Scottish Parliament. These amendments are, essentially, an unnecessary power grab. Why is it the business of this Parliament how the people of Wales and Scotland decide to be represented in their Parliaments there?

On the point in relation to different electoral arrangements and whether people understand those when you vote at 16, I want to share the story that during a lot of engagements with younger people across Wales, a lot of them raise how they understand the different systems, particularly because of what happened during the Covid pandemic. During that pandemic, Wales and England made different decisions on whether schools were open. They also made different healthcare arrangements. The younger people of today have experience and knowledge of that; they understand the systems and what the different Parliaments make decisions on. It is really important to share that and rebut what was said in earlier speeches; because of those experiences, they know those differences of opinions.

We take a different approach on matters, and that is devolution. I end by saying that this is a matter, in my opinion, for the Welsh Parliament and the Scottish Parliament only.

[Baroness Lawlor (Con)]

My Lords, I support these amendments in the names of my noble friends Lord Frost and Lord Jackson. I do so because it is important for this country and its constitutional arrangements that we have these changes. This country has always been a unitary power. It is one of the oldest unitary powers; it is also one of the most stable political democracies. That second characteristic matters as much as the first, and its nature, both being old and unitary and being a stable democracy, means they are linked to each other.

Constitutional change is for the whole country. First, it has historically involved the whole country through broadsheets and with long debates and public discussion. For all these Parliament has been, as Churchill once said, the forum for the nation. It was Samuel Johnson, I think, who made Parliament popular for the public by being the first person to report systematically its proceedings—he was long the precursor of Hansard.

Secondly, it is important to avoid sectional politics in constitutional decisions. One cannot help escaping the feeling that in some decisions taken by other assemblies in Wales and Scotland, there is the hint of political considerations in determining these grave constitutional matters. It is much harder to break the mould of one party’s popularity and, for that reason, it is not a particularly bad thing that we have constant changes of political parties in this country. It is very good for democracy and stability that the other people have a chance.

The Government will not support these amendments. The Government are committed to maintaining and defending the devolution settlements. Allowing the Scottish and Welsh Parliaments to set the electoral franchise for their own elections, as well as for local offices, is a fundamental part of those settlements. The Government see no clear benefit to changing that position, one that has held for many years. I say to the noble Lord, Lord Jackson—who I think answered his own question—that there was indeed a mandate for the devolution settlements through the 1997 general election.

19:00

Like the noble Lords, Lord Deben and Lord Wigley, and the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett, I fundamentally believe in devolution; our diversity across our nations is our strength. As we extend the devolution programme, this Government have made it very clear that we think that it should be people with skin in the game in their local area who take the key decisions about those areas. It is perfectly right that each of the Governments around the UK are free to do what they feel is right, within the competence of the Acts of devolution. As such, the Government cannot support these amendments.

We are going to have lots of debate around political finance in future groups, so I will park that for the moment. The Prime Minister has already announced that he will be instigating a national commission on electoral reform, so all the questions we heard about PR, and whether it is right, will be debated. That is the right way to do it; it is right to have a proper national conversation on electoral reform and whether we want it.

Finally, the noble Lord, Lord Wigley, spoke about the Welsh Youth Parliament. That is a very important point, particularly in view of our previous debate. When I was a council leader, I instigated a youth council—the members of which sat on the full council, where they could speak in our debates but could not vote—and a youth mayor for our town. It is that active participation in decision-making that encourages our young people to get involved. For now, I repeat that the Government cannot support these amendments.

[Lord Frost (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, I thank the Minister. I am disappointed, but not entirely surprised, to hear that she will not support the amendments. I thank those who have supported them. I also thank the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett, for raising the problem of the City of London. Actually, I slightly sympathise with what the noble Baroness said, but I did not want to increase the complexity of these particular amendments by getting into that slightly niche problem. I do not want to dwell too much on what has been said. I felt that we drifted slightly into a discussion of age limits and electoral systems, which I am sure we will come on to later.

This has been an interesting discussion because it revealed fundamental differences of view about what the United Kingdom is as a country. Is it, as some seem to be saying, a collection of nations—a sort of mini-EU—or is it what it legally is: a unitary state which has devolved powers to devolved nations? Because the United Kingdom is the latter, and because it has devolved powers to devolved nations, there must be a power for the Westminster Parliament to consider whether that settlement is correct in every detail. Of course there can be variation, but it must be the role of the centre to ensure that the variation is in the interests of the whole of the country, not just a sectoral interest in one of the devolved nations. I contend that that has been the risk of devolving the franchise, and the variation in that.

My worry is that “devolve and forget” will one day become “dissolve and forget”. I do not want that to happen, which is why this Parliament must remember the United Kingdom is a devolved country; it is not an aggregate of nations that have voluntarily come together. I am sure that we will come back to all those issues, but for now I beg leave to withdraw my amendment.

Amendment 5 withdrawn.

Amendments 6 and 7 not moved.

Clause 2 agreed.

Clause 3: Entitlement to be registered before reaching voting age

Amendment 8

Moved by

[Lord Fuller]

8: Clause 3, page 3, line 15, leave out “14” and insert “15”
Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment provides for registration at age 15, rather than 14, as registration at 15 gives sufficient notice for young people to register to participate in elections.

[Lord Fuller (Con)]

My Lords, it is a pleasure to lead this debate; I have the first two amendments in this group. Turning first to my Amendment 8, I think that registering to vote a year before the possibility of voting would give election officials sufficient time to draw up the register at the annual canvass. It is not as if many will be able to vote on their 16th birthday. By arithmetic, that excitement will be restricted to just 1,917 youngsters, who can then celebrate by going down to the scrapyard on a moped to sell some metal—two of the rites of passage that are permitted at that age, alongside piercing and opening a bank account without telling your mum. I do not agree with votes at 16. I will not repeat the reasoning here, but, if that is the proposal on the table, then registration at 15 seems to be quite sufficient. After all, we have an annual canvass for a reason.

If there is a theme to the Bill as it relates to young voters, it is that the Government have failed to integrate these attainers aged 14 and above into the existing registration system. The propensity for these attainers to move around is much greater than for the older population: they churn schools, colleges, jobs and apprenticeships, while some leave home for the first time. My Amendment 8 does not seek to fetter democracy or deny anybody access to the vote; it is aimed simply at reducing the administrative burden of collating the register, and it works along with the existing pattern of electoral registration and administration in this country.

That leads me to my Amendment 9, which looks at the mechanics of how a person under 16 can unambiguously be identified and authenticated by the electoral registration officer before they come on to the register as attainers. These youngsters may not have a passport, and they certainly will not have a credit card. Inevitably, they will not pay an electric or council tax bill, or any tax for that matter, to identify themselves—as you or I might. In the world as it is today, you register to vote by providing your national insurance number. Whether you use the centralised online form on GOV.UK or download a paper copy or form issued by the local council, you need to provide your national insurance number; if you do not, they want to know why. That is because there is a secure automatic authentication system that uniquely matches a person to a national insurance number across the HMRC, the DWP and other databases. It protects the register’s integrity and, in theory, helps identify duplicate entries.

Even in Scotland you need to give your national insurance number—although, helpfully, if you do not have one, the ERO invites applicants to provide a utility bill. Call me old-fashioned, but I do not know how many 14 year-olds pay the electricity bill, which is normally paid by their parents, but we will put that to one side.

If you cannot supply an NI number, it triggers a complex and intrusive manual validation system. Local officers are working hard enough as it is without more handwork burdens being thrust upon them. Today, I spoke to one electoral registration officer, who is a returning officer. As it is today, when somebody cannot provide a national insurance number, two hours over several weeks per person—which may lead to an attestation in court—is needed to finally authenticate them and validate their application to come on the register. Put simply, the 14 or 15 year-olds who do not have this NI will not be easily identifiable through the usual channels because these youngsters do not have the normal sets of identifiers.

Google, summarising the ONS census statistics, tells me that there are 1.4 million 14 and 15 year-olds in the UK who will be admitted to attain on their 16th birthday. They do not have NI numbers, so these youngsters are in a bind. How will they prove their identity? The electoral registration officer will not be any the wiser after; there is no standard administrative method. These young people will not have a driver’s licence—only certain 16 year-olds will have a moped—and they may not have a passport or gas bill, so how do they prove their identity without reinventing the entire wheel of administrative process that goes on in getting them on to the register?

Consider the child from a broken home. Perhaps he lives with mum on Acacia Avenue during the week and with his dad in a city apartment at the weekend. I am trying to prevent the introduction of duplicates into the system. It is possible that the mum and dad live in different electoral areas. The parents would think it was their duty to register their child and are not necessarily forced to tell the other. We have the prospect of automatic registration, perhaps by reference to the school roll. The child might want to register himself—after all, if he is trusted to choose a Government, he ought to be capable of filling in the form.

In this example, there are two EROs, two addresses and possibly two different names, because some children will assume double-barrelled names. Perhaps some of them are relatives of my noble friend Lady O’Neill—is that with or without an apostrophe? Multiple registrations of youngsters is not a possibility but a certainty, with all these people looking after the interests of the little boy, falling over themselves to duplicate him on the register—and the ERO will not have a clue about how to weed out the duplicates. I ask the Minister: who will be responsible for cases of double registration and, still worse, double voting by the child who did not realise that others were usurping him? Without my amendment to change the rules to issue national insurance numbers at 14, this is a ready excuse for ballot stuffing and family voting.

The impact assessment covers none of this, and it should. Although streamlining voter registration using other government services might be possible for those over 18, it is fraught with difficulty with those under 16. Why did the assessment not calculate, as I have done, that just registering 14 and 15 year-olds will take 2,000 extra local government staff for this provision alone?

We have an identifier already: the national insurance number. My amendment proposes a review so that the Government consider reducing the age of issuance of NI numbers to 14 under Regulation 9(3) of the Social Security (Crediting and Treatment of Contributions, and National Insurance Numbers) Regulations 2001—SI No. 769 of that year. This is an integral part of the voter system. No IT systems need to be changed and no new interfaces need to be created. It is the same system that the ERO can use to dedupe the surplus records. Critically, it will maintain the integrity of the register. I call for a review because it is the integral part that will reduce duplicates and ensure confidence in the register.

As I will explain on group 9, issuing national insurance numbers will significantly simplify the muddle that Ofcom has got into in trying to identify youngsters for social media. Its proposals include four different methods that put regulators and parents in an impossible position. Let us sort it out. Let us issue national insurance numbers at 14 and if it helps the children themselves think more closely and carefully about the world of work then that cannot do any harm either. I have said enough. I beg to move.

[Lord Rennard (LD)]

My Lords, in looking at this group of amendments, we all have a duty to try to discern which of them might be considered to be motivated by partisan considerations. My view is that Amendment 8 in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Fuller, is simply about reducing the number of people legally entitled to vote who are registered and therefore able to vote. I cannot see how it can be anything other than partisan to reduce the number of people legally entitled to vote who are able to do so.

Amendment 48 in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady O’Neill of Bexley, again seems to be a deliberate barrier to registering people who are legally entitled to vote but would not be able to do so because they would not be registered. Is that not a partisan consideration? Other amendments seek to block, delay or make the registration process weaker and less effective. I therefore consider those amendments partisan. The amendments in my name—

[Lord Fuller (Con)]

I cannot see how any of my proposals would be discriminatory in any way, shape or form because they provide that everybody would be given—not have to apply for but be given—a national insurance number, not at 16 but at 14, which is the age at which the Government propose these attainers would come on to the register. There is nothing discriminatory; it is actually enabling because it would get the state organised and individuals waiting to get that number so that they can get on to the register. I am sorry, but the noble Lord has misdirected himself as to the effect of my proposals.

19:15

[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.

Immigration: Earned Settlement

Monday 2nd November 2026 Lords Chamber

Statement

19:31

[The Deputy Leader of the House of Lords (Lord Collins of Highbury) (Lab)]

My Lords, I will repeat a Statement on the Government’s policy of earned settlement.

“A little over a month ago, at Labour Party conference, the Home Secretary promised we would adopt a policy on this issue that is guided, above all, by fairness—fairness towards those who come here legally and play their part, and fairness towards British citizens, already here, who should not be asked to bear a greater burden.

It is the responsibility of the Home Secretary to ensure that our migration system lives up to that ideal. Doing so depends on a contract between those who come and those already here. This country welcomes those who seek a new and better life within it. But I also know that there is an expectation of those who do that they will play their part, contribute to their community and become part of our national life. If we are to ask our fellow citizens to buy into a system of shared taxation and universal public services, they must know that everyone is playing their part. Solidarity is the precondition for social justice.

Creating a fair immigration system demands reform to settlement—the ability to live in this country for ever. Settlement confers some of the most valuable rights that this country can offer. At settlement, a migrant receives the right to free education, our NHS and, should they fall upon it, the welfare state. Until now, settlement rights have come at five years, almost exclusively as a result of time spent in this country. It has therefore been a right accrued with little expectation of responsibility. I do not believe this represents true fairness. Instead, I believe these considerable rights should come after responsibilities have been met and a contribution has been made. Settlement should not be automatic; it should be earned.

Today the Government publish a policy called ’earned settlement’. It ensures that the period someone must live in this country before they settle is determined by the contribution they have made. That starts by setting out clearly what we consider to be disqualifying criteria: first, a criminal record; secondly, a failure to speak English to a high standard; thirdly, any unpaid debt to the British taxpayer; and, finally, a failure to have made three years of national insurance contributions. This is the foundation of settlement: the non-negotiable expectations that we make of anyone who seeks to live here permanently.

For those who clear these bars, settlement then varies based on the contribution made rather than simply time served. This contribution is judged, crucially, not just financially but in terms of public service. A five-year path will remain open to all higher earners on salaries over £50,000 and those who have contributed in healthcare and education, in professions such as doctors, nurses and teachers. For those who make an exceptional contribution, even faster routes will be available. The highest rate taxpayers earning over £125,000 will, over the course of their lifetime, contribute £1.5 million. This funds the critical services that many, including the poorest in this country, rely on. Under these reforms, they will be able to apply for settlement after three years, as will those who arrive on our highest talent schemes. Everyone else will be placed on a 10-year path, including those earning less than £50,000. Settlement will still be available to them; they will simply have to show a sustained contribution to this country, and they will be able to renew their existing temporary visas until that point.

Conditionality runs both ways. Those who commit an immigration breach will see settlement pushed back to 20 years, while those who have claimed benefits must have had five continuous years without falling on the state before they make their application. A number of groups will see their path to settlement remain as today. These include Hong Kong British nationals overseas, members of our Armed Forces, those with a British connection and those on legacy routes, such as Windrush.

Before we finalised this policy, we took it to the country through a consultation. Over 200,000 people responded, and I thank them for doing so. Many of the responses were focused on one particular group: social care workers. Between 2022 and 2025, 250,000 people and their dependents arrived on or switched into the social care route. They came at a time when the sector was under considerable pressure following the Covid-19 pandemic and the unique challenge of that moment.

It is also the case, however, that this route was abused. The last Conservative Government may have talked of restoring control to our borders, but in truth they lost control entirely. Never was this more obvious than when the shadow Home Secretary was an Immigration Minister in the Home Office. Delegations were sent across the country to encourage ever more businesses to sponsor foreign workers, with little apparent interest in their suitability to do so. As a result, there was significant abuse of the care route, sometimes because of fraudulent and exploitative companies, and sometimes because individuals themselves came here knowing there was no job they could fill.

A fair solution must address both sides of this, recognising the service of those who cared for our sick and elderly at a time of immense national need and addressing the abuse that was present on this route. The Government’s solution does so in two ways—first, by providing a five-year path to settlement for care workers who lived up to the promise they made on coming to this country, worked hard and answered our call when we needed them. Those who earned £25,000 a year working in the social care sector, which was a condition of their visa, will therefore be able to settle on their existing five-year path.

The second group, who have not fulfilled the conditions of their visa, represent about a quarter of those who came between 2022 and 2025 or switched into that route. We will offer them a second chance to make the contribution they came to this country to make. They will be able to apply for another five-year care visa, and they will not be tied to their old employer, allowing those with rogue sponsors to break away from them. The Government have already stripped around 1,800 exploitative employers of their licences, and we are lifting standards in care with our fair pay agreement across the sector. The Government will now help workers to find a new position with a legitimate provider, and we will give them a longer period of time to do so before their existing visa is curtailed.

There remain tens of thousands of legitimate vacancies in the care sector today, so those who seek a new job in care and have the requisite skills should be able to find one. At the completion of their new five-year visa, these workers will be able to apply for settlement once more. Everyone will have a fair shot at making their contribution, and no one will be punished for the sins of their employer. But we will also preserve the critical element of this reform: that settlement must be linked to contribution. The same transitional arrangements will be applied to public sector workers in roles identified by the Migration Advisory Committee in healthcare and education, such as auxiliary nurses. This country has been highly dependent on them, and their contribution will be recognised.

These transitional arrangements apply to those who joined before this Government published the immigration White Paper in May 2025. After that point, as our consultation shows, the Government’s position of a 10-year path to settlement was widely understood. These are exceptional exclusions for exceptional circumstances, and it remains the case that the rules around settlement are determined when a settlement decision is made, not at the point when someone arrives. This position is long established in this country and has been tested conclusively in our courts.

The responses to our consultation focused also on settlement rights for refugees. I know that the people of this country wish to continue welcoming genuine refugees; however, I also know that there is nothing fair in allowing unsafe and illegal entry to this country. It is not fair that our borders are run by people smugglers. It is not fair that women and children are dying in the channel. It is not fair that, after historic levels of illegal arrivals, British citizens are paying £4 billion a year to fund asylum support. As we open new safe and legal routes for genuine refugees, we must also discourage dangerous, unsafe and illegal crossings, and settlement plays a part in this.

We will place those who come to this country on one of our new safe and legal routes on a five-year path to settlement. This is as fast a path as for higher earners entering Britain today. At the same time, we will discourage the use of unsafe and illegal routes; the standard qualifying period for all refugees who have not come by a safe and legal route will become 20 years. A further 10 years will be added for those who entered the country by an illegal method, such as by small boat.

We want to promote integration into this country for all those who are here. For that reason, those who enter work or study will be able to earn settlement 10 years earlier. This means a refugee who did not arrive by small boat and who is working or studying could qualify for settlement after 10 years. Let us not forget that, regardless of the question of settlement, for as long as a genuine refugee requires protection in this country, we will provide it. The British people’s sense of fair play means that they welcome refugees and those who seek to contribute to our society once they are here, but, at the same time, there is nothing fair about incentivising unsafe and illegal routes into this country, and I will not do that.

These reforms are the right thing to do, both morally and financially. A full impact assessment will be completed and published as we implement the reforms. Our changes ensure that those who are net contributors are encouraged to come to this country and stay here. Meanwhile, the cohort who are most likely to impose a cost at settlement must instead seek work and meet the conditions of their visa before they can apply. As a result, the Department for Work and Pensions estimates that our reforms will reduce the benefits bill by billions of pounds. This solution is fair for those who come here legally and play their part, and it is fair to British citizens already here, who should not be asked to bear a greater burden.

Earned settlement institutes a new paradigm in our migration system that is long overdue: one of the greatest rights that we can offer now depends on a contribution made and responsibilities met. The right to live in this country for ever must now be earned; it will no longer be automatic. It is a fair settlement for all, so I commend this Statement to the House”.

19:45

[Lord Davies of Gower (Con)]

My Lords, I thank the Minister for bringing the Statement to your Lordships’ House this evening and for the opportunity to ask questions on the Statement.

It has been over a year since the Government announced their plans to establish a “fairer pathway to settlement”. The Home Secretary is to be commended for having the courage to stand up to the open borders advocates in her own party and proposing the original earned settlement plans. I applauded those plans when they were announced last year. Although nowhere near strong enough, they were at least a serious recognition of the scale of the problem and what needs to be done to solve it.

When the original policy was released, there were no exemptions to the earned settlement route. Yet today we have heard that the Home Secretary has caved in to pressure from those same open borders left wingers on her Back Benches and in the unions. The result of this climbdown is that now over 250,000 low-wage care workers, and their dependents, will get to stay for a minimum of 10 years, with many getting settlement in five, and almost 75% getting to stay in the country for ever.

The costs of this reversal are significant. The Home Office’s document released last year revealed that the median salaries for care workers on the health and care visa were between £23,000 and £26,000 in the financial year 2023-24, which is significantly below the median full-time salary of £37,000. The OBR estimated that, as a result, they are likely to have a net negative fiscal and economic impact. This is because the amount of tax they will pay will never cover the amount they will take out of the system in NHS costs, education costs if they have children, and welfare claims. It is the British taxpayer who will pay for this policy reversal. That is in no way fair.

We have heard the arguments that this large cohort of migrants has “contributed” to our country, and, as such, they seem to have automatically earned the right to stay. But, of course, many of them have not contributed, at least not fiscally or economically. The Home Office itself has estimated the total cost of exempting care workers to be approximately £10 billion. If these workers intend to keep working in the sector, I would have thought there should be no issue with having to wait 10 to 15 years, like everyone else. It becomes an issue only if they are using that sector as a stepping stone to settlement, and ultimately citizenship, and are frustrated at being made to wait to leave their care job. They responded to economic incentives: they were given the chance to come to the United Kingdom to work and they took it. They are exactly the same as all other people who have come to our country on work visas. If the Government believe it is only fair to require settlement to be earned, it should be earned by everyone. Exempting this subset of people creates a double standard.

This is particularly true given that only 18% of those who responded to the Government’s consultation were British citizens; 73% of respondents were current visa holders. Yet the Government seem to have taken their opinions to be representative of the entire country. Well, of course people who are not British citizens would have negative views of the Government’s original policy, because they are the beneficiaries of the current regime. Unfortunately, we are now in a situation where our country’s immigration policy is being decided based on the views of those who are not even British citizens.

Bizarrely, the Home Secretary even said:

“I know that the people of this country wish to continue welcoming genuine refugees”.


We have a long history of generosity as a nation, whether that be towards Jewish refugees in the 1930s and 1940s or to families fleeing Putin’s illegal war in Ukraine, but I suggest that most people, given the ongoing rate of illegal migration, do not support additional routes through which more refugees will come to Britain. We must get overall migration down before we even consider any loosening of our policy.

It seems to me that there are those in the Labour and Liberal Democrat parties who would have us believe that ever having had a visa ought to give a person the permanent and irrevocable right to stay in the country. This is not how the system works, nor how it ought to work. Being granted a work visa, whether that be a skilled worker or a health and care visa, is a privilege, not a right. Similarly, being granted indefinite leave to remain is a privilege, not a right. Just because a person has been allowed to come to the country, that does not mean they have the automatic right to stay here indefinitely. So I wholeheartedly agreed with the Home Secretary when she said in her Statement:

“Settlement … has therefore been a right accrued with little expectation of responsibility. I do not believe that this represents true fairness”.


The problem, of course, that she has broken her own test with this climbdown, because now the Home Secretary’s test of fairness applies to everyone but care workers, which is not fairness at all.

It says in the A Fairer Pathway to Settlement document that this is not about assimilation. I disagree. Assimilation into British culture should be the minimum prerequisite for any settlement. As my right honourable friend the leader of the Opposition has said, completely correctly, we may be a multiracial country but we should not be a multicultural country. The so-called diversity of cultures is a recipe for disaster.

A healthy society is built on trust. A shared culture is the underlying source of mutual understanding between groups of people who have no other way of relating to one another. It is, in that way, a source of trust. Without a single, common national culture, and without the trust that flourishes from it, we risk undermining our future as a peaceful, harmonious and functioning society.

That is why the debate matters so much. It is not just the fiscal cost of the Government’s surrender on immigration, although that is significant. It is the long-term social and cultural impacts that matter too. On both these tests, the Government have demonstrably failed.

[Lord Foster of Bath (LD)]

My Lords, I too thank the Minister for bringing the Statement to the House. He will know only too well how difficult and complicated issues around migration are, and I certainly saw that during deliberations on a report on immigration being put together by the Justice and Home Affairs Select Committee, which I have the honour to chair. Certainly, not all members agreed with all our final recommendations, but we were of course unanimous, as we are on these Benches, on wanting more action to tackle small boat crossings and the criminal gangs behind them, so we welcome the plans for more safe and legal routes.

On these Benches, and among many members of the committee, one of the greatest concerns about the original proposals from the Government was around plans to retrospectively change the rules for those already in the country. So we welcome some of the announcements about retrospection in the Statement, which row back from earlier plans. Whether they were brought about by our committee’s report or by rebellions on the Back Benches of the Labour Party or within the Cabinet, I suppose we will never know.

It is welcome that some social care workers—those earning £25,000 a year—BNO visa holders, members of the Armed Forces, the Windrush cohort and others will now have no change to the time taken to get to ILR. Other parts of the Statement are welcome: taking family income in the round into account rather than individual incomes, as the committee proposed; taking maternity leave into account so that a dropped income during that period does not lengthen the time to ILR; and allowing children to claim ILR with no rule changes. But there is nevertheless much to be concerned about.

Can the Minister confirm that around half a million people will get settled later than planned—later than they were originally told and promised? Does the Minister accept that many migrants have made significant long-term decisions—about housing, jobs, children’s education and so on—with the expectation of acquiring ILR after five years? Is extending their time retrospectively not a huge broken promise, and one that will make it much harder for people to settle and integrate if their certainty has been removed?

The Select Committee pointed out that the planned income thresholds, which earn a reduction in qualifying time to ILR, are not linked to migrants’ net fiscal impact but instead set at the higher and upper income tax rate thresholds. As a result, some migrants who are net contributors to public finances would still be required to wait 10 years to acquire ILR. We argue that proposals should focus less on income and more on making a positive contribution, and that the income levels that lead to a reduction in ILR pathways should be set not according to income tax thresholds but on the advice of the Migration Advisory Committee. Can the Minister explain why the Select Committee’s advice was ignored? Does he not recognise that sticking with tax thresholds means that somebody in London and somebody in Gateshead can be doing exactly the same job, but one can be on a five-year route and one on a 10-year route? Does the Minister really think that is fair?

There are other concerns about increasing the length to achieve ILR. First, would somebody facing a much longer ILR wait, not least those facing 30 years, do anything other than drop out into the shadow economy and simply stay out of touch with the Home Office? Secondly, what incentives are there to make efforts to integrate into our society? The Statement is absolutely silent about crucial issues around integration. Requiring a higher standard of English is all well and good, and we support it, but what are the Government doing to boost provision of English language tuition, which is in very short supply at the current time? What are they doing about changing the frankly appalling Life in the UK Test of people’s understanding about our country, when its questions in the past have included things such as: what is the height of the London Eye?

Finally, people now have a no-debt requirement, including repaying the cost of their asylum accommodation, which will be capped at £10,000. We know that of those who were employed eight years after the grant, 37% were in full-time work, with a median earning of £23,000, with internal analysis of the published Refugee Integration Outcomes database showing that 40% earned at least the minimum wage. If somebody had a £23,000 income, they could perhaps just about pay £100 a month back to the Government. I doubt that is realistic, but let us assume they could. If they could, it would take them eight years and four months to pay back the £10,000 debt—so their ILR time would be not five years but eight years and four months, and it is very easy to see how much longer it is likely to be. What is the Minister’s answer to those 60% who are not earning even at the minimum wage?

These issues are simply not fair. On these Benches we hope very much that the Government will go away and think again before the final details are published next month.

[Lord Collins of Highbury (Lab)]

I thank noble Lords for their questions and contributions. I have pointed out before that here we are addressing a mess created by the previous Government. I do not want to be too partisan about it, but that is the simple fact. The noble Lord, Lord Davies, speaks about migration, but the simple fact is that we have already cut net migration by 82%. Now we are setting out a fair solution to the so-called Boriswave: fair to those who have come here and played their part, and fair to the British citizens who are already here. I want to make that point before I address some of the other questions.

Today, the Home Secretary set out a total transformation of settlement, which is no longer automatic and based on time served; instead, it is now earned, based on contribution to this country. As the noble Lord, Lord Foster, reminded us, we conducted a genuine consultation and we have set out a response that is fair to those people who came here and played their part and to the British citizens already here. The previous Government lost control of the migration system. Settlement for those who came in those years will now be based on contribution, not just on time served. As the noble Lord, Lord Foster, pointed out, as a result of these reforms, we expect that over 500,000 will settle later. That has been an important consideration. As I said, in the Home Secretary’s Statement, a determination was made that this will come into effect when people apply; that has always been the case, so there is no retrospection.

What we have understood, and what the consultation has acknowledged, is that the people who have come here made a very necessary contribution while this country faced a pandemic. Recognition of that is important. We have designed a settlement system that rewards those who contribute and that is better and less costly than the system we inherited. The noble Lord, Lord Davies, referred to the £10 billion figure as if all social care visas will be waived through—but this is not happening. We are setting a test that means that those most likely to claim will not get settlement at five years. As a result of our reforms, over 500,000 people will need to contribute more and wait longer before settlement.

These transitional arrangements will see care workers who are in work being able to reach settlement at five years. Those who are not in work will have to apply for another five-year visa and make the contribution they came here to make before they can apply again. Until that point, they remain with no access to social housing or any other benefit. The DWP estimates savings in the billions to the welfare bill as a result of this policy. We have taken a fair approach to care workers. Those who answered the previous Government’s call during Covid, worked in the sector and played their full part will be able to settle after five years. Those who did not will be able to apply for a new five-year visa, to make that contribution themselves before they can apply again.

The noble Lord, Lord Foster, made a point about education. The Home Secretary in the other place made it clear that we are consulting with all government departments, particularly the Education Secretary, to ensure that English language education support is available. We are committed to do that. On the implementation of this programme, our response will be to work on a cross-Whitehall basis to ensure that we have a joined-up approach; we will ensure that that applies.

We have made it so that settlement will be based on contribution, not just on time served, as it was under the previous Government. We have cut net migration by 82% from its peak under them, but we will not leave young British people behind. That is why—again, following a point addressed by the noble Lord, Lord Foster—we are investing an additional £2.5 billion to support almost 1 million young people into education, employment and training. This is about getting a system that is fair and that ensures that we can have the confidence of the British people—something that, I am afraid, we did not see under the 14 years of the previous Government.

20:04

[Baroness Lister of Burtersett (Lab)]

My Lords, like the noble Lord, Lord Foster, while I welcome the compromises in the Statement, I fear it will not reassure most of the migrant workers who have emailed me expressing anxiety, anguish and bitter disappointment at the retrospective measures they consider unfair, having come to this country in good faith only for the goalposts to be moved. Nor will it reassure refugees seeking asylum and sanctuary in this country. Organisations such as the Refugee Council and Coram have expressed real concern about the implications for refugees and their children. Can my noble friend the Minister say why the promised impact assessments will not be published until actual implementation? That will be too late to be of use. Can he tell me what assessment has been made of the measures’ impact on the Government’s strategies to reduce child poverty and homelessness and to strengthen integration— a point raised by the noble Lord, Lord Foster?

[Lord Collins of Highbury (Lab)]

The Home Secretary in the other place addressed the latter points that my noble friend made. We are committed to work with the DWP. As the noble Lord, Lord Davies, pointed out, many of those who responded to the consultation we conducted were visa holders. They were quite happy with the proposals on earned settlement; they recognised that as part of their commitment in coming to work in this country.

We will continue to protect refugees as long as protection is needed. Those who come on the UK resettlement scheme or by sponsored safe and legal routes will qualify after five years. It is right that we seek to disincentivise illegal entry into this country, such as by small boats. The first stage of implementing the changs to the Immigration Rules will begin in December and take effect in January 2027. Further immigration rule changes will come in in 2027 and 2028. Further technical detail and a full impact assessment will be published before implementation, informed by continued engagement with affected groups and stakeholders.

[The Lord Bishop of Leicester]

My Lords, by the Government’s own admission, some 500,000 people will take longer to get indefinite leave to remain. Those are 500,000 people who will be living with uncertainty, in many cases for a very long period: up to 30 years. Can the Minister reassure us that the impact assessment will take account of that uncertainty and, in particular, its effect on social cohesion and integration into this country?

[Lord Collins of Highbury (Lab)]

There are two parts to that question. I believe that, as the Home Secretary made clear, settlement gives people rights. When people come here for a visa, they work and they comply with the visa’s conditions. If they wish to have settled status, what we are now saying is that it is not just simply a time-served arrangement; they have to meet those commitments. I say to the right reverend Prelate that we are committed—I spoke about this in debates last week—to seeing how we can establish safe and legal routes. We are talking today about settled status, but we have a broader policy that will address net migration into this country. We need a very clear policy about what people are expected to do when they wish to stay here permanently. I do not think that is unreasonable; I think the consultation reflected that and most people on visas understood it.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, my question relates specifically to the refugees arriving through irregular routes, who now face a 30-year settlement time. Some of them will be women fleeing the Taliban. Some of them will be those whom I shared a room with last week as we commemorated the first anniversary of the awful massacre in El Fasher—Sudanese who share ties of history, language and family with us. When they were forced to flee, they came here, and no routes were available to them except irregular routes.

The Law Society has said that, in its judgment, this 30-year rule contravenes the 1951 refugee convention, to which we have long been signatories. Under that, the UK promised to help those coming to our country to seek protection to integrate and build a new life. If you are lucky, 30 years will be half of your adult life. How can the Government possibly justify this under the refugee convention?

[Lord Collins of Highbury (Lab)]

I can and I will, and the Home Secretary has made it clear in the other place. Settlement for refugees will encourage safe and legal routes and promote integration, while discouraging the use of unsafe and illegal routes. The Home Secretary was right to point out that it is absolutely appalling that people, including women and children, have suffered death as a consequence of trying those illegal routes on boats. We are absolutely looking at policies that discourage that. Refugees on safe and legal routes will qualify after five years. That is the incentive side of this policy. All other refugees will qualify after 20 years, although there will be a 10-year discount for entering work or study. Again, it is about people making a contribution. Those who came by small boat will receive a 10-year additional wait, to discourage those dangerous and illegal crossings. It is not simply about saying that there will be a 30-year wait for refugees; we are adopting a policy that will secure refugees’ future properly.

[Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)]

Can the Minister look at that question slightly differently? Is the message to migrants arriving illegally on small boats that, if they come to the UK then they can stay here for 30 years, and not work or study, and at the end of that 30 years be given leave to remain—and in the meantime they will have been living off the generosity of the British taxpayers and the welfare system, and so on? Can the Minister clarify why that is a disincentive? Further, last year, when the Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood launched her reforms—I am one of her fans—she said that migration was “unaffordable” and that it was “immoral” to carry on, and she was very clear and very firm about those reforms. She has backed down on those reforms now. Why? Is that not saying that we are now going to have to be able to afford what we cannot afford, and that somehow she has been forced to accommodate on her morality of last year?

[Lord Collins of Highbury (Lab)]

The Home Secretary has not compromised one bit. What she announced today is a settled status that includes a range of contributions. She made it clear at the introduction of her policy that there were disqualifications to being able to earn settled status. However, the noble Baroness is conflating issues. There are people who have genuine asylum claims, which are properly assessed, and those people will have their status understood through the conventions that we are signed up to. That is the country we are; we value those things. When I had a debate last week, we were talking about Ukrainian refugees who have come here. Most of them want to return to their own country. There are many other refugees who have come here and who we have given protection to who also want to return to their country. I do not accept the idea that everyone is a freeloader. That is why the system that we are putting in place recognises their contribution, whether it be work or study.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, since there is time, I have another question referring to the other end of the scale. I was talking about refugees waiting 30 years. It is three years to settlement for the highest-rate taxpayers, who earn over £125,000 per year. I note that, before the Budget, Bloomberg reported what was a very clear trial balloon being floated, suggesting that the Government might bring back golden visas—that thoroughly discredited scheme by which money launderers, corrupt people and criminals came into the UK, as is widely acknowledged. Of course, very rich people can easily arrange to pay themselves a large sum of money over three years, and then they will have got a very fast route into the UK. What will the Government do to make sure that this is not another open door for the kind of people who we allowed into our country and who helped to give us the label of the “London Laundromat”?

[Lord Collins of Highbury (Lab)]

Fortunately, my noble friend who is sitting next to me is the Minister for Fraud, and he has just spent a week ensuring that we collaborate internationally on addressing the issue of fraud. We talked about higher tax payers and the tax brackets. That is not the only contribution, but they make a net contribution over a period, so they earn that right for settlement. It is not about wealthy people buying visas. They come here to do very important work, whether in our sciences or in other research areas. We are not talking about oligarchs; we are talking about people who make a contribution to the United Kingdom’s economy, and that contribution, through their earnings, will be recognised in the ability to seek and earn settled status. It is not about buying it.

Representation of the People Bill

Committee stage
Monday 2nd November 2026 Lords Chamber

Committee (1st Day) (Continued)

20:16

Clause 3: Entitlement to be registered before reaching voting age

Debate on Amendment 8 resumed.

[Baroness Lister of Burtersett (Lab)]

My Lords, I will speak to Amendments 59 and 67 in my name. Amendment 67 requires publication of a plan for the implementation of registration without application, and Amendment 59 requires two government databases to be in use for such registration ahead of a 2029 general election.

I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Pack, and the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett of Manor Castle, for their support, and now to the noble Lord, Lord Rennard. I very much welcome the Government’s commitment to improving voter registration, which chimes with public opinion as, according to the Electoral Reform Society, a YouGov poll found that four-fifths of the electorate support automatic registration, almost half strongly so.

As the Explanatory Notes to the Bill note, in 2023, the Electoral Commission reported that an estimated 7 million to 8 million eligible citizens were either incorrectly registered or not registered at all. The IPPR has pointed out that young people, renters, working-class and minority ethnic citizens are more likely to be unregistered and that electoral turnout is shrinking, particularly among younger, lower income and renter populations. Registration is thus crucial to achieving greater political equality, a point emphasised also by Generation Rent.

We compare badly with other countries as, in most liberal democracies, forms of automatic or assisted voter registration are the norm. Research in 159 countries by the Electoral Integrity Project at the University of East Anglia shows that it has led to more accurate and complete electoral registration. The project also found that at the 2024 general election, four-fifths of poll workers turned away citizens because they were not registered. Although it was usually only a handful of people, a few workers reported turning away over 100.

The UEA academics, together with Generation Rent and Unlock Democracy, criticized the absence of any timetable for the introduction of automatic registration. This is what Amendment 67, with the assistance of Unlock Democracy, would supply through the introduction of a clear implementation plan, while Amendment 59 helps to inject an element of urgency. The amendments would help to meet the aspiration of the Electoral Commission, which, in emphasising the importance of complete and accurate registers to democratic participation, has urged

“the Government to work quickly to introduce automated systems to enable voters to be added to UK parliamentary electoral registers … in time for the next general election.”

Amendment 59 takes up its suggestion that this could be built on existing services, such as applying for a passport, updating a driving licence or receiving a national insurance number at the age of 16, which has been referred to earlier.

The Government’s election strategy, published in July 2025, made it clear that they were planning to deliver significant voter registration improvements, including registration without application, in this Parliament, yet the briefing on this year’s King’s Speech suggested that implementation during this Parliament is now unlikely. Where is the sense of urgency, when as many as 7 million to 8 million of our fellow citizens could remain excluded from full democratic engagement without automatic registration? These amendments would help to inject it by ensuring a suitably ambitious implementation plan.

I quite understand the need to pilot arrangements, but we can learn from others, such as Wales, which, with more limited resources, will have its system of automated registration ready for May 2027, despite it becoming law less than two years ago. There will be no compromise when it comes to security and accuracy, as no voter will be registered without the standard checks carried out by the electoral registration officers, as now. The EROs would have much better and more reliable data to work with. According to Unlock Democracy, the Electoral Commission, leading academics and international experts all believe that automated registration using some government databases, as proposed by Amendment 59, is deliverable within two years.

Florence Eshalomi MP was sponsoring a timeline amendment to the Bill before her promotion to ministerial office. A commitment to a timeline or plan of some kind would represent an important statement of intent on the part of the Government. If automated registration is not in place by the time of the next election, it could be as long as 2034 before it took effect for a general election. How many of our fellow citizens would be effectively disfranchised in the meantime?

These amendments are designed to support the Government’s goals. I hope, therefore, that even if my noble friend cannot accept them, she will give a commitment to bring forward a timetable herself, preferably before Report, so that noble Lords can consider it.

[Baroness Royall of Blaisdon (Lab)]

My Lords, I agree with the point my noble friend makes about urgency, but I rise very briefly to support Amendment 52, to which I have added my name. It is virtually the same as an amendment I moved to the Higher Education and Research Bill, as the noble Lord, Lord Rennard, said, in 2017. At the time, my amendment was adopted at Report. I then had negotiations with the Government and I agreed to a compromise, which was rather weaker than my original amendment. The compromise was to introduce guidance to ensure that electoral officers were encouraged to share data with universities, so that students could easily be registered, thus maximising the number of young people voting and ensuring that students could vote when an election took place during term time.

At some universities, students are semi-automatically registered when they register at university, but it is certainly not happening at every university. It should be mandatory at every university, hence my support for this amendment. I have one question for my noble friend the Minister. When automatic registration comes in, will a student automatically be registered both at their home and at their university? They have the option to vote in either and it is important that they are registered in both places as soon as possible.

[Lord Udny-Lister (Con)]

My Lords, my Amendment 47 seeks safeguards that would require the verification of nationality and immigration status before an individual is automatically added to the electoral register.

I fully recognise and uphold the importance of ensuring that every person who is legally entitled to vote should have the uninterrupted opportunity to register and to participate fully in our democratic process. That is a fundamental right and has long distinguished us internationally. There is an equally important principle, however, which I fear risks being overlooked in this Bill—that only those who are legally entitled to vote should be entered on to the electoral register in the first place.

I fear that, left unamended, this part of the Bill will weaken the integrity of elections. Clause 17 introduces a significant change to our electoral arrangements. It would place a duty on electoral registration officers to register individuals automatically where certain conditions are met without those individuals having to make an application to register themselves. I recognise that there could be a potential administrative benefit in this, but it is for your Lordships to ask whether the safeguards accompanying this fundamental change are robust enough, especially on establishing nationality and immigration status.

In presenting Clause 17, the Government are attempting to allow for the modernisation of the system. I welcome that, but I caution that modernisation must never come at the expense of electoral integrity and that operational convenience must never take precedence over establishing voter eligibility. Therefore, through this amendment, I am seeking to introduce an additional safeguard that will require an electoral registration officer to positively verify that the person satisfies the relevant nationality requirements and, where applicable, the necessary immigration status before being registered.

The parliamentary franchise rightly extends to Irish citizens and qualifying Commonwealth citizens. Different nationality and residency requirements apply to other elections. An individual’s immigration status may determine whether they qualify for that registration. For example, a person may be lawfully resident in the United Kingdom in employment, paying taxes and accessing public services, without necessarily being entitled to vote in a particular election. That is not a criticism of the individual but simply a recognition that lawful residence and electoral entitlement are not the same thing. It is precisely why we must make sure that this Bill distinguishes between verifying someone’s identity and their electoral eligibility. A government database may confirm somebody’s name, address and date of birth. A national insurance number may assist in establishing identity. However, neither by itself necessarily establishes nationality or entitlement.

I have tabled this amendment as I am concerned that, as the Government move towards an automated system, we risk treating the existence of an administrative record as sufficient evidence of electoral eligibility. The Electoral Commission has emphasised that the success of registration will depend entirely on the accuracy and reliability of the underlying data, so that only eligible individuals are registered. Having been around the upper echelons of government and local government through much of my adult life, I must confess that an unquestioning faith in the accuracy of government-held data is something that I have not been able to acquire. This is not a question of the dedication of the many officials who maintain the system, but my experience over the years has taught me that our systems are far from infallible.

I also appreciate the responsibilities already placed upon the electoral registration officers. They have a mammoth task in maintaining the accuracy and completeness of the registers, often against a background of considerable administrative and financial pressure caused by a lack of local government funding. My amendment does not intend to place further obstacles in their path—quite the opposite. It would establish a statutory requirement, supported by prescribed evidence or information lawfully obtained from public authorities.

I would therefore be grateful if the Minister could address three questions. First, what arrangements would exist to distinguish between a person’s identity and their legal entitlement to vote when records are obtained from government departments and other public bodies? Secondly, will electoral registration officers have timely access to the information necessary to verify immigration status where it is relevant, and who will bear the administrative cost? Thirdly, what safeguards will prevent an individual being entered on to a register for an election in which they are not legally entitled to participate?

20:30

I put it to your Lordships that these are not constitutional niceties. These are the questions that go to the very heart of public confidence in our electoral system. We must remember that confidence in our elections depends on ensuring not just that legitimate voters are included but that the rules governing eligibility are properly and consistently enforced. The right to vote is fundamental in our democracy and it is too important to be established by assumption. If the Government are determined to automate registration then they will also be determined to guarantee the integrity of the process. I hope therefore that the Minister will recognise the importance of this distinction and give consideration to the safeguard that I have proposed.

[Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, the motivation of the noble Lord, Lord Udny-Lister, is very important; it relates also to the earlier comments by the noble Lord, Lord Jackson, on Amendment 51 about ensuring that eligibility is strictly adhered to. There can be nothing more destructive of democratic trust than believing that anyone is playing fast and loose with who is allowed to vote in an election. We have just sat through an incredibly complicated Statement about the various degrees of the new immigration status. That will have to be taken into account in terms of eligibility and we have to be confident that the system can cope with it.

In that spirit, I thought that the noble Lord, Lord Fuller, did us a real a favour earlier when he talked specifically about the nuts and bolts of how we deal with the fact that children will now be voting and they will not necessarily have at their fingertips the usual adult forms of ID, as he illustrated rather wittily and very well. I was rather disappointed that the noble Lord, Lord Rennard, was so cynical that he saw these comments as somehow partisan. In fact, I thought that cynicism was itself rather partisan rather than anything else. It is really important, if you are going to extend the franchise in the way that we have been discussing, that you ensure that the franchise is strictly and absolutely foolproof and safe. One of the things that the noble Lord, Lord Rennard, said was that surely we want as many people to vote as possible. In that sense, you could just carry on expanding the franchise ever younger, or you could also say that anybody who happens to be wandering in can have—

[Lord Rennard (LD)]

I was absolutely crystal-clear that I meant all those people legally entitled to vote; “legally entitled” is very important and a part of the principle of everything I have argued for.

[Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)]

Clarification understood. Therefore, I ask the noble Lord to consider that the noble Lord, Lord Fuller, was trying to ensure that people who were entitled to vote were checked up on. The accusation was that he was somehow trying to limit the franchise and I was defending him in relation to that point.

I want to ask the Minister about something that was in a government amendment in an earlier group—we kind of run out of time but it relates to this—which is that registration officers will now have to obtain information, or will be given the right to obtain information, about 14 and 15 year-olds throughout the land and to retain that information for use when inviting them to then register to vote. I thought the point about any Government’s history—I am not making a sectarian point—of looking after data and keeping it safe was a point worth noting, especially if children’s data has been gathered up.

On registration officers collecting data, could the Minister say whether there will be any consideration of the suggestion from the noble Lord, Lord Fuller, about using national insurance numbers? I thought that was a really good suggestion, but I am really asking the Government whether they are open to detailed discussions on the nuts and bolts of how we are going to make this work in relation to both immigration status and the expanded franchise for 16 year-olds. Will there be an opportunity or are there plans to ensure that this is watertight?

To reiterate, if people believe that elections are happening that are not safe, with people being able to vote who have not been strictly checked on or are not registered, then it will undermine democracy. I know that that is the very opposite of what the Government aim.

[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.

20:45

[Lord Hayward (Con)]

My Lords, I shall follow on from my noble friend’s comments and pick up the question that the noble Baroness, Lady Royall, referred to earlier about double, if not treble, registration. The noble Baroness said that she hoped that all universities and academic centres will ensure that they have maximum registration of people resident in that town or city as voters. However, those people will have a home residence as well. Therefore, one is inflating the electoral roll in university cities to the disadvantage of those communities in other parts of the country that do not have university cities nearby.

The noble Lord, Lord Rennard, referred to boundary reviews and political advantage. I must admit that I enormously admire his comments about parliamentary boundaries in these circumstances. The places with high levels of student registration that will benefit under automatic registration are the big cities—the Londons, the Manchesters, the Birminghams. As he explained to his Lib Dem colleagues, come the next boundary review, there will be fewer constituencies in Somerset, Wiltshire, Dorset and other similar counties, such as Gloucestershire, a fair number of which, much to my chagrin, currently have rather large numbers of Liberal Democrat MPs.

I make the point quite seriously that, if one is going to include all those people who register for a second residence, one will be expanding the electoral rolls dramatically in London, Manchester and Birmingham to the disadvantage of the shire counties. I do not think that is an appropriate route to go down. There may be solutions where people register at their first home and their second residence is not included for, for example, parliamentary boundary revision, but we cannot have a position whereby large numbers of people are registered to the disadvantage of resident communities in neighbouring shire counties.

I make these comments on the basis that I have heard from a number of people, particularly the Liberal Democrats, that they want free and fair elections. Free elections are that people should be allowed to register to vote themselves—encouraged, yes, but they should have the freedom not to do so. The Bill goes through at inordinate length, saying, “Oh well, we’ll register everybody, and if you don’t want to be on the electoral roll you can deregister”. However, the process involved is pretty tortuous, and large numbers of people genuinely want to hide where they are for a whole series of reasons; I take, for example, abused women as a case in point. They are going to be on the electoral roll, and it will not be a case of, “We will take you off immediately”, because people will not know that they are on until they are notified that they are on.

That takes me to another point, which is that we have to register all these people so that we can improve turnout. Might it not be a good idea if politicians—and I include in that category noble Lords and those in the other Chamber—improved their reputation with the public at large so that those people want to turn out to vote?

Talking of which, the Government have a very good website where you can register to vote. I could walk out of this Chamber now and register immediately. People might wonder why I had nothing better to do, but on Saturday evening I actually went on that site. What astonished me was that 54 people had registered in the preceding few minutes. I challenge noble Lords to go on it on Christmas Day; they will be astonished by how many people register to vote on Christmas Day and Boxing Day. It is not that difficult.

My noble friend Lady Coffey referred just now to the fact that, in an election period, 2.8 million people registered to vote—it was just between 2.8 million and 2.9 million. The problem there was that some 40% of those people were already registered. One thing we have not done today is given enough credit to both the Public Bill Office here in the House of Lords, for the speed with which it has drafted and ordered our amendments, and the day-to-day work of returning officers around the country. I shall return to this subject at a later point, but those officers do a phenomenal job. If you have 2.8 million extra people registering to vote during an election, as I say, that seems to show it is not that difficult to do it—and, by the way, if all those students who are moving off to university are unable to go on to a website, I have a serious doubt about whether some of them should be at university in the first place.

The 40% of people who registered at the last election who were double-registered imposed an enormous burden on the returning officers. I have said over and over again that we should move to a read-only access process. In other words, if Robert Hayward wants to check whether he is on the electoral roll, he just goes on the website with his password and can check that he is there. Instead of that, because Governments of all persuasions have refused to introduce a read-only system, we impose a burden on returning officers which is unacceptable at the time of an election, when they are trying to administer all sorts of other things.

It is not difficult. We have been told by government and officials over and over again that it is an expensive and difficult process. Is it? Local authorities—

[Lord Fuller (Con)]

My noble friend has correctly highlighted how the process actually works if you go on the Government’s website, and so many of the district councils or other local councils which are registration authorities have their own skin in that same machine. When you type in your name, date of birth and national insurance number, the system goes automatically to HMRC and the DWP to validate you before you have even pressed the button; they will validate you almost immediately. I think the point my noble friend is making, which is absolutely correct, is that having this unique identifier—the national insurance number or some other method that might be defined by regulations—gives an absolutely unambiguous way of determining whether you have a duplication.

[Lord Hayward (Con)]

I thank my noble friend for his intervention, which was slightly longer than I had hoped for, since I want to keep to my time. As I say, there is a system; we were told it is impossible, but what have the Northern Irish done? They introduced a read-only system and have done that themselves. It operates effectively in Northern Ireland without any problem.

These massive changes are, I believe, unnecessary—although, yes, they were advertised—and without great benefit. I will quote now from the impact assessment, to which I may return on another occasion. On page 113 it says that

“we assume that the completeness of registers will increase by 3 percentage points (from 85.9% to 88.9%) by the end of the 10-year … period”.

Are we going through all these changes for that?

In conclusion, I must pick up the noble Lord, Lord Rennard, on his comments about my support for automatic registration. I believed that I had made it absolutely clear that I support it for attainers, whatever age they may happen to be, because I want to introduce them to the democratic system. Thereafter, I do not support automatic registration for that very small gain.

[Lord Pack (LD)]

My Lords, we have heard two interesting contrasting themes in this group. Some of us are very keen on automatic voter registration and want to see it introduced sooner and better. Others are nervous about the potential implications of automatic voter registration. I think it is worth starting with a recap of the reasons why something like automatic voter registration is required, particularly as the noble Lord, Lord Hayward, eloquently put the case against.

In part, it is because making good use of data is, when done well, an effective way of improving services and reducing administrative burdens. It is worth contrasting how a registration process would start under AVR with the current system. Several noble Lords have expressed concerns about how a database might result in registrations flowing from that data. However, under the current system anyone can request and be sent a paper form that they can fill in, without having to provide a national insurance number. That, under our existing system, is enough to start the process rolling for registration. If we are relying on the right, good-quality datasets, that is a much more secure starting point than anyone being able to request a paper form that anyone could fill in. It is also worth bearing in mind that the current system was very well described by one of the international experts in elections we are lucky to have in this country: Professor Toby James. He called it a

“Victorian system in need of repair”.

I think this Bill’s efforts to repair it are very welcome.

A good example of that is the surge in registration applications we typically have in the run-up to a general election. The Electoral Commission’s latest research estimated that between 7 million and 8 million people are either missing from the electoral register or registered at the wrong address. There is a substantial problem that needs addressing. We have heard that in the run-up to a general election there is a surge in applications; for example, last time, there was a surge of nearly 3 million. As was rightly pointed out, many of those were duplicate applications. When you strip those out from the numbers and compare that with the 7 million or 8 million missing and wrong addresses on the register, even the general election surge is not getting us that far towards fixing the problem.

Action is needed. Of course, we should not therefore think that any action is wise. But I hope, therefore, we will hear positive noises from the Government, particularly on Amendments 49, 50 and 52 from my noble friends Lord Rennard, Lord Wallace and Lady Thornhill, and the noble Baronesses, Lady Royall and Lady Bennett, all of which in different ways would improve the supply of data into the system.

My Amendment 58 would provide ward-level data, which I think is important, particularly with local government reorganisation increasing the size of many councils. Council-level data will not tell us how well or how badly registration systems are working in future; we need that data at ward level. We need it to understand how the system is working. We need it for researchers and experts to figure out whether the promises are being delivered. We need it for the campaigners, of all parties and none, who are trying to improve involvement and engagement with democracy, to be able to see where their efforts are most needed. We need it for media, and indeed for us politicians, to be able to understand how systems are working.

I turn to some of the other amendments in this group. On Amendment 8 from the noble Lord, Lord Fuller, I must admit I am not convinced by the case that the noble Lord made. Under the current system, with a voting age of 18, we register attainers with some aged 16 and most aged 17. The current system is that some people who are two years below the age for voting get registered as attainers. That is because of the use of the 1 December cut-off date and the following one-year window, which means that some people may be more than one year away and need to be in the records.

If we are changing 18 to 16, it seems absolutely sensible that 17 and 16 should, in turn, also get reduced by two years to 15 and 14. Therefore, with respect, the amendment from the noble Lord, Lord Fuller, would achieve the opposite of what he argued for. We have an existing system that is well established, that people are used to using and that works; by reducing the years across the board, we are essentially transferring the existing system over to the new voting age, rather than creating a new system that would not work with the 1 December window and following 12-month period.

21:00

However, the noble Lord, Lord Fuller, certainly made some good points on his Amendment 9. I would be interested to hear what the Minister has to say on how we can best ensure that the right data is available, because I think it fair to say that what we have heard from the Government so far on how data from educational institutions may be used is not yet fully fleshed out in huge detail.

I will also touch on Amendments 47, 51 and 62, all of which, in different ways, express, dare I say, a slight fear of what might happen with automatic voter registration and the desire to put in extra safeguards for particular groups. Again, I would contrast them with how the existing system works, whereby anyone can request a form and you are not required to provide a national insurance number. For myself, at least, the case is not made that a system based on data run by someone else is somehow less secure than the current system and therefore needs those additional safeguards targeting particular groups. The key thing is not just to get AVR introduced, and introduced well, but for this not to be a very slow-moving, long-running process. I think we all hope that AVR will be in place before HS2 gets completed.

I turn to Amendments 59 and 67. Amendment 67 is in my name, and the noble Baronesses, Lady Lister and Lady Bennett, both spoke to it. It is important for there to be a little bit of pressure on the Government to move not at reckless speed but at a reasonable pace, particularly given that parliamentary boundary reviews are coming at some point, as the noble Lord, Lord Rennard, pointed out and the noble Lord, Lord Jackson, agreed. Part of the very logic for automatic voter registration, in terms of improving the register, is improving the core basic data that parliamentary boundary reviews have to use. It is therefore important that we have that data in as good a state as possible by the time we get to the next parliamentary boundary review. I very much look forward to hearing what the Minister has to say on that topic.

[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.

21:15

Electoral registration officers are responsible for determining eligibility for direct registration. They must be satisfied that a person is entitled to be registered before adding them to the register. If the available evidence is insufficient, an ERO should not issue a notice of direct registration and the ERO will be held responsible for that. We are considering carefully with the election administration sector which data sources electoral registration officers will be able to use to provide evidence of entitlement. Further detail will be set out in secondary legislation under the affirmative procedure in guidance.

Electoral registration officers already have powers to seek further information or documentary evidence where they are not satisfied as to the person’s nationality or immigration status. They may also request that a person’s immigration status is checked against Home Office records, and we are working in detail with the Home Office on this at the moment.

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.

[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.

21:30

[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.

[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.

Amendment 8 withdrawn.

Clause 3 agreed.

Amendment 9 not moved.

Clauses 4 to 6 agreed.

Schedule 1: Further provision about registration of young voters etc

Amendment 10

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.

21:45

This amendment would bring consistency and timeliness to the electoral counting process, helping to restore voters’ confidence in that process. It is not an unrealistic proposal. At general elections, the law already requires that the counting of votes must begin as soon as practicable within four hours of the close of poll. In 2024, only eight constituencies did not begin counting within the prescribed timescale. Beginning the count at local elections on polling day can be achieved. An efficient voter count improves the efficacy of voting as an accountability measure and a mandate conferred upon representatives. It has an impact on voters’ decisions; I do not think most voters favour lengthy counts, and we have to think of their trust in the electoral process.

Amendment 128, on the voting machine pilot schemes, is one for the serious electoral anoraks. I look to the noble Lord, Lord Pack, because I know that this is the sort of thing that, apart from focus leaflets, he probably thinks about more than anything else. This proposed new clause

“would allow a small number of supervised pilots of voting machines at local and general elections, with a paper audit trail, independent certification, and an evaluation report to Parliament before any wider rollout”.

This is not totally unknown—it has been tested in real elections around the world. Some 19% of countries use e-voting at a national or sub-national level. Electronic voting could reduce administrative costs and make voting more accessible and straightforward for many voters, potentially contributing to improved voter participation. Indeed, over a decade ago the Electoral Commission called on the Government

“to bring forward proposals for a comprehensive electoral modernisation strategy, setting out how the wider use of technology in elections will ensure the achievement of transparency, public trust and cost effectiveness”,

stating that it had been arguing since 2007 that government should

“conduct a comprehensive electoral modernisation strategy”.

The Government now have the opportunity to implement, through supervised pilot schemes, what the Electoral Commission has believed necessary for over 10 years. The UK has not conducted electronic voting or counting pilots since 2007.

I move finally to the very important amendment about the review of undue influence offences. I am sorry that my noble friend Lord Pickles is not in his place, because he would be much better qualified in speaking to this amendment. In passing, I also commend Amendment 136 from the noble Lord, Lord Walney—who is not in his place—which is a similar amendment about religious influence and coercion. This proposed new clause would require Ministers to review the spiritual injury provisions regularly. The Pickles report recommended that the offence retain a reference to spiritual or religious influence. The Representation of the People Act 1983 prohibits spiritual injury as part of its undue influence provisions. The provision was historically an attempt to limit the perceived undue influence of Roman Catholic clergy when introduced as the corrupt and illegal practices Act in 1883.

A high-profile recent case involved Lutfur Rahman, who was elected Mayor of the London Borough of Tower Hamlets in the 2014 mayoral election but was subsequently found guilty of electoral fraud, with the election declared null and void. Erlam v Rahman 2015 found Rahman guilty of undue spiritual influence during that election. This referred, for instance, to a letter in his support signed by 101 imams, which stated that their opponents were

“spreading jealousy and hatred in the community. We consider these acts as abominable and at the same time condemnable”.

The court also found that Rahman had engaged in false statements about an opponent, including claims linking him to racism and hostility toward Muslims, bribery and illegal election expenditure.

We do not have enough time to debate this issue as fully as I would like, but I think this amendment provides an obligation for Ministers to keep this issue under constant review. It is about the integrity of our electoral system and, significantly, about protecting ordinary voters—whatever their background, religion or belief—from undue influence and de facto threats by individuals, groups and organisations. On that basis, I am happy to put forward all three amendments and I look forward to the Minister’s response.

[Lord Rennard (LD)]

My Lords, Amendment 125 in my name and that of my noble friend Lady Thornhill would insert a new clause to confer on the Secretary of State statutory powers to establish pilot schemes for flexible voting options. We worry that low turnout in general elections, which was less than 60% in 2024, is caused, in part, because it is easy for people who are retired or not working to vote on a particular Thursday, but harder for other people to vote then. That is why we want to extend the ways in which people can cast their vote and, we hope, increase participation.

People who are busy working, or are working shifts, long hours or with long commutes, or those who have caring responsibilities or who are looking after children, do not find it so convenient to vote, and we believe they may be discriminated against. Our amendment would establish a few possibilities, on which we would like to see more controlled, evidence-based innovation. We are aware that the Electoral Commission is carrying out a number of pilots. In particular, we would like to see an extension of advanced voting in the days preceding the main polling day. We would like to see additional polling days, in particular weekend voting, which I do not think is being piloted anywhere. On weekends, people with families and those who still have Monday to Friday jobs may have much greater flexibility.

Community voting hubs situated in accessible, busy locations could help, as could different polling stations, allowing voters choice over where they can vote within their electoral district. Transportable or mobile polling stations could bring the ballot box directly to underserved rural communities or into care environments. Flexible voting is a modernising necessity, but it would require some other changes to the way in which we conduct elections, in particular by-elections and general elections, which can be called at short notice.

The Electoral Commission is seeing some pilots at the moment. We believe that they should go further in scope and at a faster speed. We would like to see these schemes evaluated, but we also need the commission to consider whether to extend the election timetable.

There is a problem with postal voting; perhaps 26% of the votes in the last general election were cast by post. If early voting is used—say, 10 days before the normal polling day—many votes would be cast at a halfway point in the election campaign. If we move to alternative methods of voting, we will need to consider again the election timetable, to ensure that electoral registration officers can conduct the process fairly, safely and securely, and that voters have sufficient time after the calling of a by-election or general election to consider the issues before they have to cast their votes.

[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.

House resumed.

House adjourned at 10.01 pm.