House of Lords
Wales: Constitutional and Policy Divergence
(1 day, 9 hours ago)
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Baroness Wilcox of Newport
To ask His Majesty’s Government what assessment they have made of the impact of constitutional and policy divergence in Wales on the integrity of the United Kingdom.
Lord in Waiting/Government Whip (Lord Katz) (Lab)
My Lords, devolution allows Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland to take different approaches which reflect particular circumstances, while continuing to benefit from the pooling of resources, the sharing of opportunities and the collective strength that comes from being part of the United Kingdom. The integrity of the United Kingdom is best protected when our four Governments work constructively and effectively together on shared challenges. That is what the Prime Minister is committed to, as he made clear to the Heads of the devolved Governments in the National Economic Council meeting last week.
Baroness Wilcox of Newport (Lab)
I thank the Minister for his reply. Does he agree with me that the true measure of successful devolution is not the accumulation of constitutional difference but whether it delivers better outcomes for the people of Wales while strengthening their place within the United Kingdom?
Lord Katz (Lab)
My noble friend is right; what matters is what works. The guiding principle for our engagement with the Welsh Government is how to deliver better outcomes on the issues that matter for people in Wales. That is why we are supporting people in Wales with the cost of living and by driving good growth and creating thousands of jobs in the process. We were pleased to discuss our ambitions for industrialisation and good growth with the Welsh Government at the National Economic Council and look forward to building on this in the coming months. I agree with my noble friend that this is also about strengthening and championing the contribution that Wales makes to the UK’s collective security and prosperity in bolstering the UK’s defence, producing our steel and leading the way in industries such as compound semiconductors and life sciences—our union is stronger from having Wales in it.
Baroness Smith of Llanfaes (PC)
My Lords, why is it a problem when Wales chooses to do things differently but not when England does? What assessment have this Government made of the impact of the constitutional and policy divergence in England on the integrity of the UK?
Lord Katz (Lab)
If one thinks about devolution across the whole of the United Kingdom, Wales is at risk of becoming one of the most centralised countries. There are opportunities to deepen devolution in Wales and to take a more place-based approach to growth. That is an ambition that the UK and the Welsh Government share. We are keen to explore that in a respectful partnership with the Welsh Government. This means empowering places right across Wales so that they can realise their own growth ambitions.
Captain of the Honourable Corps of Gentlemen-at-Arms and Chief Whip (Lord Kennedy of Southwark) (Lab Co-op)
It is the turn of the Lib Dems.
Baroness Humphreys (LD)
As the Minister already said, devolution in Wales has given us the ability to do things differently from the rest of the UK if we feel it meets the needs of the people of Wales. That inevitably means divergence. Wales needs to move on and to travel further on its devolution journey. We face a number of choices highlighted in the Senedd Commission’s report: the status quo, Plaid’s independence or the Lib Dem preference for a federal future. What steps do the Government intend to take to progress further powers to Wales?
Lord Katz (Lab)
I agree with the sentiment that the noble Baroness has expressed. Last week at the National Economic Council, the Prime Minister set out an offer on empowering local regions to deliver good growth and thus develop better public services to prevent Wales maintaining its position as highly centralised. This involves all sorts of things, such as devolving more employment support on the condition that it reaches down into Wales’s regions and communities and exploring how we can improve city region deals. Constitutionally, we need to carry on talking respectfully to all our partners in Governments across the United Kingdom. The Prime Minister is looking forward to Cardiff hosting the next meeting of the National Economic Council next spring. I am sure that these discussions will continue.
Baroness Goldie (Con)
My Lords, the noble Baroness, Lady Wilcox, is absolutely right in advancing the test, as she does, of the quality of public services delivered. The experience in Scotland is sad and instructive. After 21 years of SNP incumbency, we have had a relentless prosecution of the case for independence—rejected by the Scottish electorate—and a cataclysmic decline in public services, while being the highest-taxed part of the United Kingdom. Can the Minister reassure this House that his Government will take steps to ensure that Administrations in the devolved parts of this nation are concentrating exclusively on the services they are supposed to deliver for their electorates?
Lord Katz (Lab)
I agree completely with the noble Baroness. I am absolutely clear that the UK Labour Government were elected with a mandate to defend and strengthen our union, including in both Wales and Scotland—that is what we are doing now and will continue to do. We will never support independence. On her comments about looking out for the people of the respective nations, whether in Wales, as originally posed in the Question, or in Scotland, we are clear that nations and Governments need to focus on what is best for the people. We are very pleased that the Welsh Government have decided to follow the UK Government’s lead in passing on the £100 household energy payment that was announced in last week’s Budget. We are also clear that, when we are giving record funding settlements, as we are to Wales, the devolved Administrations need to focus on spending them on public services that improve the lives of their citizens, not spend all their time on constitutional questions.
Lord Anderson of Swansea (Lab)
Does my noble friend the Minister agree that one of the abiding problems in Wales is the concentration of power and prosperity in Cardiff and the south-east? What are the Government doing to encourage a greater spread of power and prosperity within Wales, and real devolution?
Lord Katz (Lab)
I agree with my noble friend. As I have previously said, we want to see full regional empowerment and power passed down not just from Westminster to Cardiff Bay but through there to reach all parts of Wales. On the specifics, we are supporting the Welsh Government in investing across the whole of Wales. I point to the Gwyndod investment in Ynys Môn for nuclear energy, and urge Plaid Cymru to be clear about how it supports the ambitions we have for nuclear energy to provide both energy security and lots of good, high-skilled jobs in Wales and across the rest of the UK. We are also talking about improving transport links through a new station in Deeside. The UK Government are supporting lots of investment in Wales, but we also want to see the Welsh Government supporting regional empowerment throughout the whole country of Wales.
The Earl of Kinnoull (CB)
My Lords, intergovernmental relations are set out in a quarterly report. In the first six months of this year, the Northern Ireland Executive had 29 interministerial group meetings, the Scottish Government had 23 and the Welsh Government had only 21. When one looks by department, one sees that the Wales Office managed to have only one in the first six months. The interministerial group structure is one of the key things for making our United Kingdom work properly. Does the Minister feel satisfied with the number of meetings that I have just described? What plans are there to increase that number for Wales?
Lord Katz (Lab)
I thank the noble Earl for that observation; I am not keeping quite as close a tally as he is on the number of meetings. I point out that, just this weekend, we had the first meeting of the new National Economic Council, and it was positive to see the Prime Minister convene it. He made a very clear offer to the leaders of all the devolved Governments to put politics aside and to work in partnership with the UK Government. That is the spirit in which he wishes to work with the Heads of the devolved Governments; I hope that it will be taken up by them in the same spirit, and I am sure it will be.
Baroness Bloomfield of Hinton Waldrist (Con)
My Lords, both the Minister and the noble Baroness, Lady Wilcox, whom I congratulate on raising this issue, have spoken about outcomes from devolution. The Minister will understand how personally upsetting I find it to see Wales falling behind in so many devolved areas. The latest PISA results were shockingly bad, highlighting the challenges facing Welsh education, yet the Welsh Government continue to seek further powers, including the devolution of law and policing. Will the Minister rule out further constitutional divergence, where it risks undermining the integrity of our United Kingdom? A quick, one-word answer will suffice.
Lord Katz (Lab)
I can spare more than just one word. I agree that we are looking for the Welsh Government—and, indeed, the Scottish Government—to concentrate on spending public money on improving people’s lives, not on constitutional questions.
Lord Wigley (PC)
My Lords, in undertaking his responsibilities on matters which impact on devolved services, from where does the Minister get his advice?
Lord Katz (Lab)
Personally, I get advice from officials in the Wales Office. Part of the reason the Prime Minister is convening the National Economic Council is to have frank, open and positive conversations with the leaders of the devolved Governments, including the Plaid Cymru Administration in Cardiff, to ensure that we have an open dialogue about Wales’s challenges. They need to come to the table—I am sure they will—in that spirit of openness and with a willingness to work in partnership on what matters to people in Wales, which I would say is improving public services.
Local Housing Allowance: Freeze
(1 day, 9 hours ago)
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Baroness Lister of Burtersett
To ask His Majesty’s Government what consideration they have given to lifting the freeze in local housing allowance; and what assessment they have made of the effect of lifting that freeze on homelessness and the demand for temporary accommodation.
The Minister of State, Department for Work and Pensions (Baroness Sherlock) (Lab)
My Lords, this Government are spending tens of billions of pounds on housing support each year. We are also investing over £40 billion over 10 years in the social and affordable homes programme. We know the causes of homelessness are complex, both personally and structurally. My department is working with MHCLG on the national plan to end homelessness. The Government’s investment in homelessness and rough sleeping services is now over £4 billion over the next three years, building on the actions set out in that strategy.
Baroness Lister of Burtersett (Lab)
My Lords, poverty and housing charities and the LGA are very disappointed that the local housing allowance freeze, made under austerity, was not lifted in the Budget, despite the Government’s welcome commitment to tackling homelessness and child poverty. The shortfall for low-income private renters has reached an all-time high, with consequences for poverty, destitution and homelessness, and the need for temporary accommodation and food banks. The Prime Minister himself told the Commons recently:
“The freeze does not save money, because it just creates an unfunded pressure in council budgets”.—[Official Report, Commons, 1/9/26; col. 63.]
Will the Government therefore now consider classifying the LHA as preventive spending, with a view to restoring its original annual uprating from April?
Baroness Sherlock (Lab)
My Lords, the starting point is that my department spends £38 billion a year on housing support. No other OECD country spends a greater proportion of its GDP on housing help. Around one-third of households in the private rented sector now get housing support from DWP. That costs over £13 billion a year; it went up by over £3.5 billion in the last decade and keeps rising. In the end, we have to address the root cause of this issue, and the only way to do that is to secure an adequate number of decent affordable homes. That is why the Government have recently announced an extra £1.5 billion to deliver around 10,000 homes in England, prioritising social rent, especially council homes, and we will keep building up the resources to do that. Discretionary support for housing costs is available from local authorities for those receiving housing support who have a shortfall in meeting their housing costs.
Baroness Teather (LD)
My Lords, LHA levels have now fallen so far behind market rent levels that fewer than 2% of properties are affordable, leaving hundreds of thousands of families stuck—stuck on social housing waiting lists with no chance of housing; stuck in temporary accommodation, unable to move on; and stuck while other homeless families wait for that space to be freed for them. Can the Minister not see that solving the homelessness crisis requires us first to unstick LHA levels?
Baroness Sherlock (Lab)
My Lords, the starting point is that it needs to be the other way around. The noble Baroness mentions 2%; she will know that that is not a figure the Government recognise, but we do recognise the affordability pressures faced by those living in the private rented sector. That is why we have taken a whole series of actions: the Renters’ Rights Act in May, powers to challenge excessive rent hikes, giving greater security through the abolition of no-fault Section 21 evictions, and taking practical steps through that Act to help renters tackling rental discrimination. In the end, the only way to drive down rents in the sector is for there to be enough supply of housing, which is why the Government have prioritised that. We are also investing significantly in supporting councils, in addressing problems in temporary accommodation and, crucially, in addressing the root causes of homelessness. That must be the priority.
Lord Young of Cookham (Con)
To build on the question from the noble Baroness, Lady Lister, the Government want to move asylum seekers out of hotels and into private rented accommodation, and to end rough sleeping, which means providing move-on accommodation for rough sleepers when they leave hostels. Both these groups are, by definition, on low incomes. How confident is the noble Baroness that those two worthy ambitions will be met if the local housing allowances do not cover local rents?
Baroness Sherlock (Lab)
My Lords, the noble Lord raises important points, and there are different groups of people who need housing support, but they all need to be tackled in different ways. I will not go into detail about what has happened with asylum accommodation, but we know that a lot of work has gone into that. Crucially, the investment of significant amounts of extra money—another £432 million to address homelessness and rough sleeping, bringing that to over £4 billion in three years—is addressing a whole range of questions. These include trying to get people off the streets, but then supporting them to move on and operate independently, addressing whatever the underlying issues are, such as mental health, elsewhere. We are also taking action in different areas. We are working to tackle the inappropriate and illegal use of B&B accommodation for families over a certain area. We have committed £30 million in support of a three-year emergency accommodation reduction programme, specifically to support local authorities with the highest pressures. The Government are acting in all the different areas, but in the end, the solution has to be more housing.
The Lord Bishop of Leicester
My Lords, councils spent £2.8 billion on temporary accommodation last year, while it is estimated that restoring the local housing allowance would cost around £2 billion a year by the end of the decade. Did the Government weigh the cost of the freeze to councils against its savings to DWP?
Baroness Sherlock (Lab)
My Lords, the Government weighed all the issues involved in housing across the piece. As I was saying to the noble Lord, Lord Young, we have a housing market, and all these things are interrelated. It is not a matter of simply pressing down here and comparing it with what happens over there. In the longer term, if we do not have enough decent affordable homes, rents will keep rising. It is a simple law of supply and demand. The Government have to meet the challenge of addressing prices in the short term, which is why we have been doing lots on temporary accommodation; addressing prices in the long term by investing over £40 billion over 10 years in the long-term development of additional housing; and investing in the immediate term with discretionary support so that, where there is rent shortfall, renters can apply for help from local authorities. We have also put the first part of a multi-year settlement into local resilience support. So we are doing it across the piece but, in the end, we have to get the market sorted.
Lord Best (CB)
My Lords, does the Minister accept that very few landlords are going to let to anyone on housing benefit if they know there is a gap to be filled between the rent the tenant receives as benefit and the actual rent that has to be paid? No landlord is going to take the risk with such tenants, and this is already leading to a drying up of accommodation provided by private landlords for anyone on the lowest incomes.
Baroness Sherlock (Lab)
My Lords, there is certainly a relationship—at least, we assume so—between the amount of money the state will spend supporting housing and how much landlords charge. That cashes out in various ways, as I have just been trying to describe. The reality is that a significant number of people in the private rented sector who receive housing support, either housing benefit or universal credit, apply and get help from their councils through discretionary housing payments and the wider crisis and resilience fund. It will carry on being there to support them, and they can use that to help to pay their rents.
Baroness Warwick of Undercliffe (Lab)
My Lords, bearing in mind what the Minister has said about the Government’s priorities, what assessment has she made of the short-term case for restoring local housing allowance to the 30th percentile, in order to make the private rented sector more accessible while the country builds the social homes we know are needed to meet sustainable long-term housing need?
Baroness Sherlock (Lab)
We will continue to keep the rate of the local housing allowance under review. To give the House a sense of the cost involved, in April 2024 there was a one-year increase in the local housing allowance; that cost an extra £1.2 billion in 2024–25. Over five years, that one rise will cost over £7 billion. I am extremely sensitive to the points being raised. The Government are investing money through a long-term crisis and resilience fund and through local discretionary support to help meet the shortfalls. But in the end, the Government’s priority is to tackle emergency problems in the short term, tackle emergency accommodation, tackle temporary accommodation, invest extensively in tackling homelessness, and provide extra support while the market is sorted.
Baroness Stedman-Scott (Con)
My Lords, if increasing supply is the sustainable way to make housing more affordable, do the Government accept the OBR’s forecast that 190,000 fewer additional homes will be delivered over the forecast period, which will mean higher housing costs as a direct result of this Government’s failed housing policy?
Baroness Sherlock (Lab)
My Lords, I am not sure that, if I were on the Benches opposite, I would be talking too much about a failure to build houses over a long period. Since we are on the subject, this Government are providing an extra £1.5 billion to provide 10,000 homes in England for social rent now. We also have a target to build 1.5 million new homes—we know that that is stretching. Our latest statistics suggest that we built 437,900 net additional homes from the start of this Parliament through to 20 September this year. It will take time for the impact of our planning reforms to flow through to the published data, and we know this is a difficult environment; the geopolitical context is not easy. We know it will be challenging and that it will take time to turn the tide and deliver more homes. We expect housebuilding to ramp up further in the later years of this Parliament, but I urge the whole House to get behind an ambitious target. We need Government after Government to keep doing this. This Government are determined to do it.
Baroness Nargund (Lab)
My Lords, homelessness and temporary accommodation are not just housing issues; they are public health issues. Housing is an important determinant of health. The report published by our Government in December 2025 showed that during the last Government, from 2019 to 2024, temporary accommodation was a contributing factor to the deaths of 74 children, and 58 of those children were under the age of one. Will the Government consider the public health consequences of homelessness and temporary accommodation, and work jointly with the Department of Health and Social Care and the NHS when planning these prevention strategies?
Baroness Sherlock (Lab)
My noble friend raises an excellent point. It is not just a matter of temporary housing; there are issues about the quality of housing. The Government are working very hard on this. In particular, we take the issue of non-compliant landlords renting out substandard properties very seriously indeed. Local authorities have various powers to make sure landlords can be held accountable, and these can be robustly enforced. My department is working with MHCLG to increase enforcement activity and to make our data available to make that easier. One example is Awaab’s law, which came into force in the social rented sector in October last year. It means that all social landlords must repair all emergency hazards within 24 hours and fix dangerous damp and mould within fixed timescales. That will be extended further in phase 2. I am grateful to my noble friend for raising this issue, and I assure her that the Government are on it.
House of Lords: Relevance
(1 day, 9 hours ago)
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The Parliamentary Secretary, Cabinet Office, and Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (Baroness Twycross) (Lab)
The Government value the role played by the House of Lords as a revising Chamber. Through the expertise and experience of the Members of your Lordships’ House, and by holding the Government to account, this House improves legislation and delivers better outcomes for the UK public. We will, and are, taking forward long overdue reforms to your Lordships’ House; these changes will ensure that the second Chamber can continue to perform its vital scrutiny role with maximum effectiveness and public confidence going forward.
Lord Mann (Lab)
We know what we are, but we know not what we may be. AI will usurp the revising Chamber; that much is obvious. Is our future to be merely the hallucinators? The hereditaries flew their perch with barely a murmur, but what of us? Will we waltz into oblivion or quickstep into a brave new world?
Baroness Twycross (Lab)
Of all the questions I thought my noble friend would come up with as a supplementary, I was not anticipating one on AI. I am not convinced by my noble friend’s arguments about AI. Clearly, AI will have a wide range of purposes and will enable us to do our jobs better in so many ways. However, I believe that, with a modernised House of Lords, we will continue to have a purpose for many years.
Viscount Hailsham (Con)
My Lords, does the Minister agree that the failure of the House of Commons to debate many clauses of the Bills brought before it demonstrates the relevance of this place?
Baroness Twycross (Lab)
My Lords, how those in the Commons scrutinise legislation is a matter for them, not for us. They have their procedures; we have ours. The two Houses are not and have never been a carbon copy of each other, which is probably where one of their strengths lies.
Lord Weir of Ballyholme (DUP)
My Lords, I hope I am not hallucinating at this particular point. What examination have the Government done during their reforms to the composition of the House of Lords of whether there will be a disproportionate or differential impact on the countries and regions of the United Kingdom in its membership? If the Government come to the conclusion that there will be a disproportionate impact, what plans do they have to restore geographical balance to the House?
Baroness Twycross (Lab)
The Government are clear that we should have regional and national representation as part of whatever form your Lordships’ House takes going forward. We want to reform the appointments process—that is a manifesto commitment—to ensure the quality of new appointments, and seek to improve the national and regional balance of the second Chamber. As we work through potential reforms, this will remain a commitment from the Government.
Lord Pack (LD)
Does the Minister agree that an excellent way of reinforcing the relevance and reputation of this House in contemporary and modern Britain would be to finally deliver on the promise made in the Parliament Act 1911 and make this a democratic Chamber?
Baroness Twycross (Lab)
I am not clear that that would necessarily solve all the problems, and there are a number of arguments against that as well. At the moment, our focus as a Government is on considering the recommendations of the Retirement and Participation Committee. The overall objective is a smaller Chamber that better represents the UK’s regions and nations.
Baroness Finlay of Llandaff (CB)
My Lords, in order for us to fulfil our scrutiny function fully, when will the Government increase the number of appointments through the House of Lords Appointments Commission? These applicants are very carefully scrutinised to ensure that they are able to fill any gaps there are in the knowledge in the Chamber in looking at legislation.
Baroness Twycross (Lab)
The House of Lords Appointments Commission plays a vital role in vetting and nominating Cross-Benchers to the Lords. In our manifesto we committed to reform the process of appointments to the House of Lords. We have already strengthened transparency in the appointments system and will continue to work with the House of Lords Appointments Commission as part of our process of reform.
Baroness Finn (Con)
My Lords, does the Minister agree that much of our legitimacy in the eyes of the public flows from our effectiveness as a scrutinising Chamber? Indeed, many regard this House as the finest scrutinising Chamber in the world. Does she agree that proposed changes should always be motivated by a desire to improve effective scrutiny?
Baroness Twycross (Lab)
Absolutely; I wholeheartedly agree with the noble Baroness. I have a list of the activity of the House of Lords: from 17 July 2024 to 29 April this year, apparently your Lordships spent 2,624 hours scrutinising legislation, which speaks to the role of your Lordships’ House in scrutinising legislation.
Baroness Foster of Aghadrumsee (Non-Afl)
My Lords, I am privileged to sit on the Northern Ireland Scrutiny Committee, which is not only relevant to the people of Northern Ireland and its businesses and consumers but is the only body that carries out that function. It is important that we allow that relevance to become known, not just in Northern Ireland but across the UK. How can the Minister increase the knowledge of what happens here, not just in this Chamber but in committees across the House?
Baroness Twycross (Lab)
On one level, this has to be a matter for the House itself. One of the ways we can all make sure that people are clear on what we do as an institution is by sharing that knowledge. I know that a huge number of noble Lords take part in the Learn with the Lords programme. Promoting what people do across the House is hugely important. I understand that 330 Members of your Lordships’ House sit on committees. I was surprised by that figure, and if I am surprised by how much work goes on behind the scenes on committees then I think we all have a role in promoting the work of our incredible committees.
Baroness Hayman (CB)
My Lords, the Minister said—I think I heard her correctly—that the Government’s policy was to have a smaller House and to improve the appointments process. In that context, and if the Government really want to achieve that, is it therefore their policy to constrain the unconstrained prerogative of the Prime Minister to appoint as many Peers as possible to this House without the full scrutiny of the Appointments Commission?
Baroness Twycross (Lab)
We are committed to reform, and we have already taken steps to modernise the House of Lords via the House of Lords (Hereditary Peers) Act. It is a long-standing precedent across the political spectrum that Governments recommend new Peers to the sovereign. Retirements and other departures mean that new Peers will be needed to ensure that the Lords has appropriate expertise. In the first instance, we intend to respond later this year to the report by the committee of the House that made recommendations.
Baroness Goldie (Con)
My Lords, I may not regard myself as contemporary, but, coming from Scotland, I am a proud member of the United Kingdom, with British citizenship, and I am privileged to be in this House. Very recently, I have seen at first hand the manifestation of the expertise to which the Minister has been referring. The 97 year-old noble and gallant Lord, Lord Craig of Radley, delivered a crucial amendment to the Armed Forces Bill that was accepted by the Government, and my venerable noble friend Lord Young of Cookham, who is in his mid-80s, has brought unrelenting pressure on the Government in respect of housing issues and child trust funds. Does that not suggest to the Minister that the Government should be very careful about interfering with the unique equilibrium which enables this Chamber to do the excellent job it does?
Baroness Twycross (Lab)
The Government’s manifesto committed to a mandatory retirement age, and clearly that was a large part of the consideration of the committee that was made up of Members of your Lordships’ House and which reported to it earlier this year. Although we have incredible examples of what Members of your Lordships’ House who are over the age of 80 do, that does not necessarily mean that we should not take forward reform. The Government will respond to the committee’s proposals in due course, as I made clear, and I look forward to future debates with Members from across your Lordships’ House.
Prison Recalls: Breach of Licence
(1 day, 9 hours ago)
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Lord Farmer
To ask His Majesty’s Government what action they are taking in response to the number of recalls to prison for breach of licence in the year to June.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Ministry of Justice (Lord Lemos) (Lab)
My Lords, recall is an essential public protection tool. Through the Sentencing Act we have reformed recall, replacing short-term recalls at 14 and 28 days with a fixed-term recall of 56 days, to provide time to address risks and resettlement needs to ensure safe re-release.
Lord Farmer (Con)
My Lords, MoJ data between April and June this year shows 12,278 releases from custodial sentences, and 11,898 recall prison admissions. Despite radical early release schemes, we seem only to be breaking even. The Minister has a great track record in offender rehabilitation, but the Government need to end this merry-go-round and make prisons a place of reform. How will they ensure that politicians no longer ignore the game-changing role that relationships play in rehabilitation? HMPPS staff and front-line charities are completely seized of its importance but need those responsible for policy setting to make the case to a public desperate for change. Will the Government buck the trend of the last 20 years and explain why they are not being soft on crime to make healthy relationships prominent in penal policy?
Lord Lemos (Lab)
Well I hope we do buck the trend, certainly of the last 14 years, but I will answer the noble Lord fully. Recall is a public protection measure, as he knows, and people are recalled because they have broken licence conditions. The way for offenders to avoid recall is to comply with their licence conditions. On his wider point about relationships and rehabilitation, I think he knows, as we have worked together on this before, that I have a great deal of sympathy for what he is saying. If there is indeed a gap between policy and practice, I shall be very happy to champion closing it—with, of course, his wise advice and help.
Lord Phillips of Worth Matravers (CB)
My Lords, does the Minister agree that special steps are urgently needed to reduce the number of IPP prisoners recalled for breach of licence conditions?
Lord Lemos (Lab)
Yes, I do agree with that, and I am very proud that the Government have announced decisive steps to address the IPP problem. It has gone on far too long and we are going to address it, as the Prime Minister and the Lord Chancellor have announced. I should say, of course, that we shall not compromise public protection in doing that and, with regard to recall of IPP prisoners, we must make sure that the public are safe. But, as far as the IPP sentence is concerned, it must go.
Lord Marks of Henley-on-Thames (LD)
My Lords, recalls are at their highest level ever, with more people now being recalled than are released. More than 70% of recalls follow non-compliance, while only a fifth follow reoffending. Non-compliance is often not deliberate but results from an inability to meet conditions, often because of housing or debt issues, rather than wilful breaches. How is it decided where recalled prisoners are placed and what support they are offered while back in prison for 56 days to help break the cycle of repeated recalls?
Lord Lemos (Lab)
There are several parts to that question; let me try and answer them quickly. On the question of recalls for administrative breaches, we are trying to improve the administrative procedures and use technology to ensure that, as far as possible, offenders on licence can avoid recall for those reasons. Of course, the noble Lord is absolutely right: the way to avoid recall is to prevent people becoming homeless and support all the protecting factors that prevent reoffending or, indeed, recall. Since we started our community accommodation service in HMPPS, we have helped to house 36,000 people, and the number of homeless ex-offenders has come down, but there is more to do. Finally, on the 56 days point, the reason we have done that, as the noble Lord knows, is to ensure that something meaningful and purposeful can happen when people are recalled.
Lord Woodley (Lab)
My Lords, picking up on the last two speakers, there are countless people serving IPP sentences who have been recalled for no further offence but who have to wait up to two years to satisfy the Parole Board that they are indeed safe for release. Does the Minister agree that IPP prisoners who have been deemed safe for release should not have to prove yet again that they should regain their freedom?
Lord Lemos (Lab)
I think my noble friend knows my views on this; we have worked closely together. He is a tireless campaigner on behalf of IPP prisoners and I pay tribute to him for that. We are going to end the IPP sentence without compromising public protection, and that includes ending the licence period.
Lord Wolfson of Tredegar (Con)
My Lords, I think we can all agree that, unless we have the facts about a government policy, none of us can evaluate it properly. The Telegraph reported that, in the first week after the introduction of the early release scheme, the number of recalls went up by 10%. In the Ministry of Justice figures released last week, in the relevant quarter the number of recalls went up by 27%, but no data is provided on how much of that 27% is due to the early release scheme. Will the Minister commit to providing that disaggregated data, so that we can see precisely how many of the recalls are due to the early release scheme?
Lord Lemos (Lab)
May I politely correct the noble Lord, first of all? It is not an early release scheme? Early release schemes were started as an emergency measure under the last Government. What we have introduced under the Sentencing Act, which I have spent many happy hours here debating, is an earned progression scheme.
Lord Lemos (Lab)
Well, noble Lords may laugh; I am sorry, but this is a big change in sentencing policy which we have debated at length, and it is now the law of the land. It is very early days for people released as part of this model. The data would not be meaningful, but we will publish data in the normal way.
Baroness Gohir (CB)
Can the Minister give a breakdown of the types of perpetrators that are being recalled to prison: for example, how many are domestic abuse or sexual abuse perpetrators?
Lord Lemos (Lab)
As I say, we will publish the data in the normal way, but I am very happy to point the noble Baroness to where that data is available and what breakdown is given.
Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe (Lab)
My Lords, many of the prisoners who are released have drink and drug addiction problems. Is the Minister not concerned, as I am, that we have unfilled beds in residential rehab centres around the country, yet we have prisoners being released who are then quickly going back to drink and drugs, when we should be making a match, filling those beds, getting people proper recovery and stopping the cycle?
Lord Lemos (Lab)
Yes, I am concerned about that. I know from being involved with HMPPS for many years that the pathways to drug treatment for people leaving prison are very complicated and disparate around the country. We need to improve access and, as my noble friend said, the matching to drug treatment services. It cannot be right that more offenders need to receive that treatment when the treatment is available. It is an absolutely crucial part of reducing reoffending.
Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)
My Lords, on why prisoners breach licence conditions, as we have seen prisoners released early armed with tents because they do not have houses to go to, is that not a guarantee that they will breach their licensing conditions, as the Probation Service seems to be using recall as a mechanism to cope with the early release system by getting people off the books? Is it not the case that policy is assisting them to breach their licence conditions? Secondly, on the IPP question, will the Government look urgently at removing the IPP label from those in the community who have had to jump through high-threshold hoops to prove they are safe for release? Why not just get rid of the IPP label so that they will not be recalled egregiously and promiscuously, as too many of them are?
Lord Lemos (Lab)
I should make it absolutely clear to your Lordships’ House that we do not issue tents to people leaving prison, and the noble Baroness should not believe everything she reads in the newspapers. On the question of IPPs, I was pleased that she attended our briefing on that, so she knows the progress we are making on that and I appreciate her support—and I wish all noble Lords a good day off tomorrow.
Private Rented Sector Database Regulations 2026
(1 day, 9 hours ago)
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Baroness Taylor of Stevenage
That the draft Regulations laid before the House on 9 September be approved.
Relevant document: 13th Report from the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee (special attention drawn to the instrument). Considered in Grand Committee on 28 October.
Poundland
(1 day, 9 hours ago)
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Lord Sharpe of Epsom (Con)
My Lords, our thoughts are with those 12,000 Poundland workers and all those in the Poundland supply chain, who are facing an anxious Christmas.
However, only last week the Chancellor had the perfect opportunity in his Budget to reverse £25 billion in employer and national insurance contributions, to cut the most damaging regulations in the Employment Rights Act, to tackle some of the highest industrial electricity prices in the developed world and to reform a business rates regime that is crushing the high street. Instead, he chose to make a bad situation worse. According to a new report, since 2024 the cost of employing a worker on minimum wage has increased by £4,462. For an 18 to 20 year-old, the cost has increased by £4,859. That is double the rate of inflation. Is it any wonder that we have a NEETs crisis? It is sad to say, but Poundland will not be the last. When will the Government get a grip and cut the taxes and regulations that are driving businesses to the wall?
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Business and Trade (Lord Leong) (Lab)
My Lords, I thank the noble Lord for coming in to ask this question despite having a very heavy cold. I wish him a speedy recovery.
Poundland stores remain open, but I know how worrying the uncertainty is for the 12,000 workers, their families and the wider supply chain. Gordon Brothers cites inflation and shoplifting, yet Poundland sales have grown and private buyers have come forward. Therefore, the owner needs to explain what is holding up the sale of the company. For the wider high street, the Budget will take around 70,000 more retail, hospitality and leisure businesses in England out of business rates from April 2027. We are committing £210 million to the community assets programmes, supporting local communities to reimagine and revive the struggling high streets.
Lord Fox (LD)
My Lords, in the 1970s Prime Minister Edward Heath coined the phrase the “unacceptable face of capitalism”; if Gordon Brothers turns its back on the acquisition, closes Poundland and lets these important jobs go, that will be unacceptable. Therefore, I am a bit confused by the Minister’s response yesterday in the Commons. She seemed to be clear when she said that the Government would not
“sit by and do nothing”.
That would be clear, had she not said in the previous paragraph:
“We are not interfering with the auction. There are ongoing commercial negotiations about this private business, and we do not want to impede or influence that process”.—[Official Report, Commons, 3/11/26; cols. 729-30.]
Can the Minister clear things up? Which of these are the Government not doing?
Lord Leong (Lab)
Currently, the Government are not going to intervene in the ongoing commercial negotiations regarding a private business. It would not be appropriate for the Government to intervene right now. We really need to wait and see what happens after the negotiations. Let us remember that Poundland is currently trading, it has appointed an administrator and there is creditor protection for 10 days, which expires next week. Under such terms, we want to see the negotiations carry on. However, the Government nevertheless want all viable options that are capable of protecting jobs and supporting a sustainable future for Poundland to be properly considered.
Lord McTague (Lab)
My Lords, it is clear that many small businesses are being pestered by Poundland to continue to supply to it even though their invoices have not been paid. Can my noble friend the Minister please give them some advice? How should they respond to that request?
Lord Leong (Lab)
I thank my noble friend for that very important point. For a small supplier, one unpaid invoice can mean struggling to pay its monthly payroll. Suppliers need to know when invoices will be paid and on what terms they are being asked to send more stock. I would advise all suppliers to look at the terms of supply and see whether they have a Romalpa clause in the invoice, meaning that the title does not pass until the payment is made. We are pressing Poundland’s owner to explain how Poundland will protect suppliers as well as staff. The Home and Gift Association has an open register where suppliers can record their exposure.
Lord Harper (Con)
My Lords, I take the Minister back to the situation that was raised by my noble friend on the Front Bench—the wider trading conditions. In its report ahead of the Budget, the OBR made it clear that unemployment would rise in the next year and that the costs from the Employment Rights Act were very significant. These came on top of the very significant national insurance rises. Those were all factors in pushing up unemployment and all under the control of the Government. What are the Government going to do to improve the wider trading conditions for the retail sector?
Lord Leong (Lab)
As I explained earlier, regarding Poundland we need to look at not only national insurance but other employment costs. However, looking at the history of Poundland, there was a restructuring High Court hearing in 2025, at which the court said that Poundland was in financial distress. This has been ongoing for some time. The Government mentioned in the Budget that they are taking every step to support businesses, high streets and small businesses, and we are committed to doing so.
Baroness Wheatcroft (CB)
My Lords, Poundland is owned by Gordon Brothers, which in turn is owned by Stone Point Capital. These companies are effectively private equity organisations and, as is so often the case, they load companies that they purchase with debt that cannot be serviced. Does the Minister agree that this is the essential problem at Poundland?
Lord Leong (Lab)
My Lords, I have I spent my working life building businesses and I support all forms of capital to help businesses to grow in scale. I recognise that there have been questions about Poundland, but our immediate priority is to establish the facts and support Poundland’s workforce. If incidents and wider questions such as the noble Baroness says do emerge from this case, of course we will consider them carefully.
Lord Sikka (Lab)
My Lords, private equity has devoured town centres for years. Can I urge the Government to do two things? First, can they abolish the tax relief on interest payments for corporations—a process begun with the Finance Act 2017 by the party opposite. Secondly, can they appoint worker-elected directors on the boards of large companies? If the Minister finds these suggestions too radical, can he make his own?
Lord Leong (Lab)
I always find my noble friend’s questions, which are sometimes very challenging questions, quite interesting. On his point about interest, the Government’s position stays as it is. Regarding directors on boards, we can have ongoing conversations, but there are no immediate plans for this.
Lord Redwood (Con)
Will the Government rule out specific Poundland subsidy or nationalisation as a solution?
Lord Foulkes of Cumnock (Lab Co-op)
My Lords, does the Minister share my concern that chief executives get rises of often more than what their workers get paid in a year and very rich Tories opposite blame a lot of the problems on paying the poorest the minimum wage?
Lord Leong (Lab)
My noble friend has a point when it comes to the minimum wage. The Government support the minimum wage. As far as directors’ remuneration, it is entirely up to the company to decide how much it pays its directors.
The Earl of Effingham (Con)
My Lords, how can this Government credibly claim to champion the high street while at the same increasing employers’ national insurance and business rates?
Lord Leong (Lab)
There are so many ways in which one can answer that question. I refer the noble Earl to my previous answer to his noble friend.
Lord Leigh of Hurley (Con)
My Lords, I take the point from the noble Baroness, Lady Wheatcroft, that private equity does typically put debt into businesses. Sometimes that works and sometimes it does not. In this instance, capital has been put into Poundland. When the last restructuring happened, it was going into financial difficulties in any event. But the point remains: does the Minister think that this business has benefited from more tax and regulation, or would it benefit from less tax and regulation?
Lord Leong (Lab)
I have tried many times and in different ways to address the point about additional employment costs and tax. As far as Poundland is concerned, there are still ongoing negotiations about a possible sale. Until such time as that happens, the Government will work with Poundland and the owners to try to get a sale going.
Representation of the People Bill
(1 day, 9 hours ago)
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Lord in Waiting/Government Whip (Lord Wilson of Sedgefield) (Lab)
My Lords, before we continue to debate Amendment 10, I remind the House that this is an adjourned debate. Therefore, unless Members were present at the start of the group, they are are not able to contribute. The Clerk at the Table has a full list of those who were present.
Lord Fuller (Con)
My Lords, I was here on Monday evening at the point of adjournment, and not only am I in my place but I am next to the noble Lord, Lord Rennard, who was in the same place as well. Things move on.
On nearly every amendment to this Bill, and in other parts of the work of your Lordships’ House, I support my noble friend Lord Jackson of Peterborough, but, regrettably, I cannot support his Amendment 124, which would require by law that election counts be started overnight following the polls closing. It is important to explain why.
Running an election is a complicated task for election staff. You have to recruit presiding officers, polling inspectors and count staff, and handle all matter of other ancillary tasks, such as fetching and carrying the ballot papers. I know that this happens at a general election, and it is important that we maintain the requirement for overnight counting in those contests, but we have to recognise that local government works over a much larger geographical canvas. It often encompasses multiple constituencies. There are many more electors in the race. We have multi-member wards. We have funny business when it comes to alternative and supplementary votes for some contests. More people and different and more complicated systems add complexity and time.
Local elections are different to the national elections, where, simply, the person with the most votes wins. Let us not forget that, unlike a parliamentary vote, where there is just one election to count, local elections may have many wards interspersed with town council by-elections, so the number of contests is not just greater; it is an order of magnitude larger.
Attracting presiding officers and count staff, who have historically come from our high street banks—tellers and other high street financial workers—is harder. In the age of tap and pay, we just do not have tellers who are used to handling banknotes any more, so we have ended up with a diminished pool of talent to operate the election. The facts of life are that, oftentimes, we rely on presiding officers, who have done a stretch from 7 am until 10 pm, to turn up again the following day to do the count. If we want to have confidence in our democracy, we cannot have people working for 24 hours non-stop in the most delicate and mentally taxing work, which requires huge concentration not just for validation but for the count, banding, bundling and tallying. Local elections have many more types of parties and candidates and therefore a higher propensity for recounts, where many contests are decided by just a handful of votes or even a coin toss.
As I warm to my theme, this short debate gives us the opportunity to remind the Prime Minister that if he is minded to change the current parliamentary voting system, any changes are likely to prejudice the ability for overnight counts if greater complexity is introduced. The voters rejected electoral change in a referendum in 2011, but he does not seem to be listening. The consequences of change are likely to be that the ability to count overnight is diminished or, at the very least, the announcement of the results and the clarity the electorate deserve will be delayed. I do not believe that has been taken into account in any other forum; here is my opportunity to mention it.
To return to the amendment, this is detailed work. It needs staff who are as bright as a button and on the ball to do these local elections, which are more complicated, take more time and provide more opportunities to go wrong than parliamentary contests, where there are often just two or three main candidates slugging it out and the majorities are weighed in handfuls of thousands, not handfuls of votes. For these reasons, I cannot support my noble friend in his endeavour, attractive though it may be. It is better to take your time and get it right than rush and live with the consequences.
Lord Jackson of Peterborough (Con)
Does my noble friend at least concede that this is not a prescriptive amendment but rather a probing amendment? Clause 4 allows electoral returning officers to disregard the obligation in emergencies or specific circumstances. It is not a draconian amendment forcing every ERO to do the same.
Lord Hayward (Con)
My Lords, I broadly support my noble friend Lord Fuller’s comments. Although I understand my noble friend Lord Jackson’s intervention, the key factor that one has to look at here, to which my noble friend Lord Fuller referred in passing, is the sheer number of parties that now operate on a regular basis in multi-member wards. I am looking at the noble Lord, Lord Pack. As a fellow pedant, I would be quite happy if he wishes to correct me, but if one looks back to the 2022 elections, I think there were only three wards in the whole of England that delivered three councillors from three different parties or independent parties. In 2026, there were three wards in Bradford alone that delivered three members from three different parties, let alone the rest of the country. I see the noble Lord nodding, so I feel reassured that I have been pedantic and accurate enough. That makes my point, which is that the probability for recounts has risen dramatically in the current political circumstances. Whether that continues is another matter, but we really should allow the EROs and local councils the capacity to decide, and decide sensibly, how they conduct the counts, so that there are not errors. At the moment, it is remarkable that there are relatively few errors in local government elections, even where there are recounts that have taken place many hours after the count has started, let alone when election day has begun, which is of course many hours before that.
Having said that in disagreement with my noble friend Lord Jackson on his amendment, it is important that I pick up on one or two other matters that he raised with which I agree. In our adjourned debate, he said that the objective of his amendment was to “to restore voters’ confidence” in the electoral process. That is key in everything that we do daily. In the complexity in which we now operate in this country, it is staggering that there are not more errors—I refer here to the Electoral Commission’s report on the elections in May which identified very few genuine errors—but it is still important that everything we do in this Bill should be aimed at ensuring or restoring, depending on which is necessary, public confidence in the electoral process. We should consider both public confidence and the candidates’ confidence.
My noble friend referred to amendments relating to influencing voters through religious messaging, to which the noble Baroness, Lady Thornhill, who is not in her place, gave strong support. I note that my noble friend Lord Pickles is in his place. He did a thorough report on a whole range of electoral issues, and this was addressed in the 2022 legislation. The noble Lord, Lord Walney, is in his place, and he has an amendment. Unfortunately, he was not here previously—these things happen—but I hope I am going down the path that he would have gone down, which the noble Baroness, Lady Thornhill, went down, in saying that there are clearly issues that need to be addressed and kept under consideration, and therefore they have to be reviewed on a regular basis to ensure that we are operating sensibly.
My apologies for the slight interruption, but I am going to have to rest on a crutch for the rest of my contribution.
I draw attention to the other comments that the noble Baroness, Lady Thornhill, made in relation to intimidation and crowds outside polling stations, which do nothing for confidence in the electoral process. I shall be returning to this issue later with my amendment on polling, issuing accreditation to tellers and the like, and the process of policing outside polling stations, but I just identify my support for what the noble Baroness, Lady Thornhill, referred to. I do not know how many Members of this place are aware that in the most recent parliamentary by-election, Holborn and St Pancras, there were so many crowds outside one polling station that the presiding officer asked for those people to be moved. In the end, the agent of the Green Party had to come down and tell the people to move because they were—in effect, being realistic—intimidating voters outside the polling station. This is a matter to which I shall return later, but I hope I have covered adequately at this stage the different issues that are raised by the amendments that we are considering in this group.
Lord Jackson of Peterborough (Con)
I beg the indulgence of the Committee to conclude my remarks on Amendment 129, which I had to curtail because of time on Monday. I want to refer to what my noble friend Lord Hayward said. I was very grateful for the comments of the noble Baroness, Lady Thornhill, about her lived experience in Watford in support of my amendment on undue influence.
Following the Pickles report—I am delighted that my noble friend is in his place—steps were taken in the Elections Act 2022 to strengthen the provision by “adding undue spiritual pressure”. The Electoral Commission’s review noted that
“unacceptable activity which many people consider electoral fraud—including pressure and intimidation both in the home and outside polling stations”,
which my noble friend Lord Hayward referred to,
“—may not be reported by victims”.
This is a valuable provision in law. It is important that it is regularly reviewed by Ministers to ensure that it is upheld properly and is up to date with the challenges of the UK’s changing demographic and religious landscape. Without regular reviews and monitoring, such provisions risk stagnating or becoming subtly and consistently subverted. The law means nothing if it is not enforced. The Pickles review and recent legislative changes reflect the importance of the provision for the UK’s electoral integrity. It is vital that it is not diminished.
I look forward to hearing the Minister’s response, and I especially look forward to hearing the contribution of the noble Lord, Lord Walney, who I know was not present on Monday, which was commented on from the Liberal Democrat Benches. I am sure he will explain that there was a perfectly good reason. His Amendment 136 and my Amendment 129 are very similar. I thank the Committee for its indulgence.
Lord Wilson of Sedgefield (Lab)
My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Walney, was not here during the debate on Monday so he cannot speak.
Lord McCobb (LD)
My Lords, I will add to the comments of the noble Lords, Lord Fuller and Lord Hayward, some of the practical implications of Amendment 124. I make it clear that, like many people here today, I love an overnight count as much as anyone else. I have been to more than I can remember—including, ironically as it happens, the count at which the noble Lord, Lord Wilson of Sedgefield, was elected as a Member of Parliament in 2007.
Like everybody else, I understand that election nights are special, and I understand the desire to preserve the excitement that comes with overnight counts, as well as, for the broader public, a quick understanding of the implication of local election results for the country as a whole and what they mean for the Government of the day. However, this amendment would not deliver that in practice. It requires only that verification begins on polling night, not that a single vote is counted or a result declared. What it would do is remove a returning officer’s ability to plan a count properly on those nights where, in practice, that judgment matters most.
Let me take an extreme, but real, example. On 6 May 2021, voters in the village of Waterbeach in Cambridgeshire went to the polls, to be handed five ballot papers. They voted for their county councillor, a district councillor in a by-election, a parish councillor in a by-election, the combined authority mayor, and the police and crime commissioner. The law as it stands allows the returning officer to have ballot papers cast into either separate ballot boxes or into the same one for elections happening at the same time. Suppose the returning officer had, as they are permitted to do, provided a separate ballot box for each election. If this amendment were implemented, three of those five elections would, by law, have to have begun the verification in the two hours between the close of poll and midnight, and the other two would not.
However, it is not uncommon for voters to put ballot papers into the wrong ballot box, so in order to carry out the task in this complex scenario and make sure that, for example, a parish council ballot paper sitting in the police and crime commissioner ballot box was found and properly included in the count, in effect, all five ballot boxes would have to have been opened before midnight for those counts to be completed in parallel. Today, a returning officer can use one trained team to verify each election in turn, whereas this amendment would force all five verifications to happen in parallel at the same time before midnight. That would mean more staff, more tables and more supervisors for already pressed local authorities trying to run elections effectively. That would be simply impractical.
The exemption that the noble Lord referred to does not help either because it covers emergencies and safety risks but does not cover the ordinary, foreseeable complexity of running multiple elections on the same day using parallel or shared ballot boxes. While the Waterbeach example is an extreme example of what might happen, it is a real one that happened in practice. Returning officers are already accountable for how they run their counts and, ultimately, as one of the previous speakers said—
Lord Fuller (Con)
I would like to make a supportive comment. I used the Waterbeach example at Second Reading. Not only were there five different ballot papers, there were three different voting methods—first past the post, STV, and AV for the mayor and the PCC. That adds a further complexity to the point I think the noble Lord is trying to make.
Lord McCobb (LD)
I am grateful for that additional point. Returning officers are already accountable for how they run their counts, and, ultimately, accuracy matters more than speed. However much we love a traditional election night, we should not allow that desire to impose unworkable or unnecessarily restrictive practices on already stretched returning officers.
Lord Frost (Non-Afl)
My Lords, I put my name to Amendment 124 in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Jackson. I want to explain why and bring one element into this debate that we have not had so far, which is the voters and how they perceive the electoral process in local elections. It is quite a recent development that counts have drifted into the next day—really only since the late 2000s in local elections. We seemed to manage the situation perfectly well before that. Certainly, elections have got more complicated since then, as many noble Lords have noted. Nevertheless, we seemed to do it, and it is not an inherently implausible suggestion that we might be able to do it again.
In UK elections there is a sense of drama, and that sense of drama is important: the idea that something significant is changing as a result of the ballot. The drama of democracy is quite important. That is more true at general elections, but it is something we should not lose in local elections, which have, in many ways, just as big an effect on people’s lives as general elections.
On Monday, the noble Baroness, Lady Thornhill, said:
“The main beneficiaries of immediate counts are not the voters”
but
“the campaigners, candidates and commentators”.—[Official Report, 2/11/26; col. 1452.]
That struck me as an interesting comment, because I am not sure I entirely agree with it. Speaking as somebody who has seen elections on TV and listened on the radio far more than I have actually participated in them, one of the things that has struck me with our longer counting process is that it allows much more opportunity for political parties, the party leadership and party-aligned commentators to spin the results. Long before we know what the actual results of a whole period of local elections are, we have media comment on them. We have party spokesmen telling us how to interpret the results long before we know what the actual results are.
One or two councils take on exaggerated significance because they come relatively early in the sequence and shape the narrative, and that suits political parties. I am not making a party-political point; I think it is true of all parties. It blurs what is important. It allows scope for commentary and spin, and the actual results of the process take longer to come out. By the time we know the results, what is more important is the nature of the commentary. So, there is an issue here. I am happy to give way.
Lord Hayward (Con)
My noble friend has not addressed the issue of the extra matters on which we now give local voters the opportunity to vote. He referred to 2000, but in the previous Conservative Government and before that, we introduced things such as environmental neighbourhood referenda, mayoral elections and police and crime commissioner elections. I am not going to delay the House by listing them all, but that is one of the reasons why, as was identified, you finish up with people being asked to vote on three, four or five different decisions on one day.
Lord Frost (Non-Afl)
The noble Lord makes a good point. It has been touched on already that the situation is much more complicated than it used to be. But those practical angles cannot be the only thing that is brought into the debate. We have to remember what we are doing here. We are marking the achievement through democracy of a shift in political power, potentially, from one set of people to another. How that is accomplished, how people see it happening, and the media discussion of it are just as important. It should not be neglected when we consider how local elections are conducted.
That balance is important. Of course, different authorities can reach different judgments on that balance. The amendment from the noble Lord, Lord Jackson, as he noted, allows for that balance to be reached in certain cases, but we must not forget that these are elections about the shift of power. Administrative and bureaucratic convenience—how it is done—cannot be the only determining factor. We have to think about what is happening here and that is why the amendment from the noble Lord, Lord Jackson, deserves discussion and support.
Lord Pack (LD)
My Lords, I will start with a different amendment in this group, Amendment 123 on the issue of poll cards, because they are a topic that is well suited to the sort of scrutiny that we rightly pride ourselves on in this House. It is a niche issue and a serious one, but also, I concede, not the largest of issues. But we should not be too blasé about the issue, even though it is not the largest of issues, because a very considerable amount of money is spent on the production and distribution of poll cards. In the second half of 2019, for example, £19 million was spent, excluding the local and European elections that year. That was just for the general election. So, millions of pounds are spent each year on poll cards. And yet, I think it is fair to say, if any of us was involved in a recruitment process for a graphic designer and they were to show us proudly the main item in their portfolio a modern poll card, we would quite rapidly be thinking, “How can we bring this interview to an end?” Because, clearly, it is not very good.
In fairness, one should say that everyone involved in the process has a good alibi for why it is not their fault, because there is a complex interaction of legislative requirements, IT systems and their capabilities, and time pressures on returning officers. All of those interact. Everyone can say, “It’s not my fault”. But the reality is, we spend millions of pounds every year on something that we all know when we look at it is not very good.
We should also bear in mind that it is the one official communication that everyone on the electoral register receives about the election. If that is, as it were, the front door or the shop window of democracy to voters, it is both a poor use of money and also slightly embarrassing in terms of how we present democracy to people. So, I hope we will hear some positive noises from the Minister in due course on Amendment 123. I certainly welcome the fact that, elsewhere in the Bill, some of the proposals will simplify the legislative framework underpinning poll cards and will make it easier to improve their design in future.
I turn to the issue that has taken up most of our time on this group this morning. I, along with others, admire the irony of the timing of debating whether or not counts should be overnight on a morning when many of us would rather have been able to stay up later to watch the elections from the US. There is an important lesson from those elections, which is that we should not underestimate the importance of speedy election counts in terms of giving confidence in the security of the system.
Thankfully, in Britain, those concerns, broadly speaking, are a long way in the past, but the reason we have the system where it used to be the norm that just about everything was counted overnight was because of the fear that ballot boxes would be interfered with. We should not be blasé about the risk of those fears in the future, but, as several noble Lords, including the noble Lords, Lord Hayward and Lord McCobb, have pointed out, there are significant good, practical reasons why overnight counts are not always possible. Indeed, in some cases, they would be so difficult to practically organise that one would even go so far as to say that on some occasions they are not even desirable. So, while I sympathise with the thrust of the amendment from the noble Lord, Lord Jackson, I do not think a central, top-down mandate in the way that it suggests is the right way to progress on that.
I will speak more positively about a couple of other amendments in this group, including one from the noble Lord, Lord Jackson: Amendments 125 and 128. Their proposals are welcome. We saw in our discussions on the first day of Committee the value of election pilots. In this case, several references were made to the pilots that have been carried out in Wales around automatic voter registration. Those pilots properly inform our decision-making. It is fair to say that the election pilots on other topics that we have discussed so far have not been hugely successful. There seems to be a relatively small number of ideas that are piloted and never turn out to be particularly effective. So, the spirit of Amendments 125 and 128 is very welcome, and I hope we may hear in due course from the Government a willingness to be a bit more imaginative about what is piloted.
I will throw in one example of what I mean. In academic research into the turnout in local elections, the evidence is pretty strong that, if you have to walk more than 600 metres to your polling station, turnout drops significantly in local elections. There are different possible ways of piloting having more polling stations so fewer people have to travel long distances to them, which is the sort of slightly more imaginative approach to piloting I hope we can hear about in the future.
Finally, on Amendments 129 and 136, I have little to add to what my colleague and noble friend Lady Thornhill said eloquently about them and what others have contributed today. I simply add that it is fair to say that, as we saw, for example, with the Gorton and Denton by-election, there are significant differences of view about what may be the exact scale and nature of the problems that these amendments seek to address. But that seems to me a good reason to want to face up to that—to want to have a good evidence base and careful consideration, rather than simply ignoring the issue completely.
Lord Jamieson (Con)
My Lords, I must declare my interest as a councillor in Central Bedfordshire.
I am grateful to my noble friends Lady Coffey and Lord Jackson for their amendments and for the amendments from other noble Lords. These raise important questions about the safeguards necessary to maintain public confidence in our electoral system. I echo the comments of my noble friend Lord Hayward: the objective of this should be to increase public confidence in the electoral system.
My noble friend Lady Coffey’s Amendments 10 and 11 concern the exemptions applying to younger electors in relation to the duties of election and electoral registration officers. These amendments highlight a wider question about consistency in the Government’s approach to lowering the voting age and the need to ensure accuracy of the register. As my noble friend Lady O’Neill of Bexley observed at Second Reading, the Government must explain where we draw the line between the rights and responsibilities of 16 and 17 year-olds. If young people are to be entrusted with electing their representatives, it is reasonable to examine how that decision interacts with existing duties and protections in electoral law.
As the Minister made clear in debate on Monday, EROs are responsible for ensuring the accuracy of the register. Should not the same tools be available to an ERO, irrespective of age? Can the Minister explain the rationale behind retaining these exemptions? Have electoral administrators been consulted about the practical implications? As I said at Second Reading, electoral law is already overly complex and conflicting. We should be seeking opportunities to simplify its administration, rather than further increasing inconsistencies.
I turn to the amendments tabled by my noble friends Lord Jackson of Peterborough and Lord Frost, the noble Lord, Lord Rennard, and the noble Baroness, Lady Thornhill. Amendment 125 seeks to pilot schemes for more flexible voting, including early voting, mobile polling stations and alternative voting locations. Such pilots have already been undertaken locally. Amendment 128 raises the question of piloting electronic voting machines. Our established paper-based system has considerable advantage, in being straightforward and transparent. Electronic systems always raise the issue of cyber security, as we have seen in the Health Bill with the single patient record. Can the Minister tell us what assessment the Government have made of the security risks associated with electronic voting machines, and how the accuracy of an electronic count will be independently demonstrated and verified?
One topic we have debated a lot this morning is in my noble friend Lord Jackson’s Amendment 124: whether counting should begin on the day of the election. Having stood as a candidate on many occasions, I have great sympathy with this and would like to know sooner rather than later. However, as a previous leader of a council, I also have to agree with the comments of many other noble Lords in this Chamber about the difficulties and complexities of doing a count. As a number of noble Lords raised, local council elections are frequently much more complex than a national election, with multi-member wards and an increasing diversity of candidates making the process longer and more complex, along with the potential for multiple elections on the same day. At the same time, many councils are finding it increasingly difficult to get sufficient staff—a matter that has been raised elsewhere in debate on this Bill. Ultimately, I believe that we need to trust the ERO to make the appropriate decision.
My noble friend Lord Jackson’s Amendment 129 and Amendment 136 in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Walney, concern undue influence such as religious or spiritual pressure on voters. The secrecy of the ballot is fundamental. Every elector must be able to vote freely without intimidation, coercion or improper influence. I appreciate the comments of many noble Lords on this; so far, there seems to be consensus that it is an important topic and that these amendments need addressing.
At Second Reading, my noble friend Lord Udny-Lister raised concerns about family voting and the particular vulnerability of younger electors to the pressure they might face at home. These concerns deserve careful consideration as the Government propose to extend the franchise. Does the Minister consider existing law sufficient to protect voters from coercion, both in polling stations and where postal voting is used? It is not just the law but the implementation thereof that is important. Will there be further guidance given to polling staff?
This also relates to Amendment 123, in the names of the noble Lord, Lord Pack, and the noble Baroness, Lady Pinnock, on improving polling cards. Ensuring eligible voters understand the secrecy of their ballot and the voting process is crucial.
We should remember that those responsible for administering elections must make these provisions work in practice. The robustness of our electoral arrangements is fundamental to electoral integrity. I hope the Minister will address the concerns raised in this group and explain how the Government intend to preserve the security and transparency of the ballot, while avoiding unnecessary complexity.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government (Baroness Taylor of Stevenage) (Lab)
My Lords, I am grateful for this extended debate, which was broken in the middle of the group. I will make a couple of general points before I respond to individual amendments.
I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Hayward, for using his crutch to stand up. If he wishes to remain seated when making his contributions, I am sure the Committee would be very happy with that.
I agree with the comments that the noble Lord, Lord Pack, made about the interesting situation that we saw unveiling in the United States overnight. It would have been nice to have been able to stay up and listen to those results—I did not, but was very tempted. That points to some interesting issues as we discuss this group, which contains matters that go right to the very heart of our democracy. There were comments made early this morning—for example, by James Talarico —about attempts at enormous financial and other influence on the elections process. We will come on to some of those later in discussing our own Bill. It was a pleasure to see the power of the democratic process overcoming something of that. We need to make sure, as we go through our own discussions, that we retain that faith in democracy and continue, as the noble Lord, Lord Hayward, said, to give the people of this country the confidence that it is the democratic process that takes precedence, even where there are attempts to have financial and other interference. That is very important to all of us in this House.
Noble Lords will have to excuse my sniffles; this is my second cold in two weeks. I am going to have to speak to my friend the Health Minister to suggest that having two colds in two weeks should be banned.
I add my tribute to the EROs and election staff. We have a very safe and secure system in this country, and that is down to a lot of work from our returning officers and election staff, so I am very grateful to them for all the work they do.
I will now address the individual amendments. I turn first to Amendments 10 and 11, in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Coffey, and her Schedule 1 stand part notice. These amendments would remove measures from Schedule 1 that safeguard those under 16. This would result in electoral registration officers being required to conduct activities such as house-to-house inquiries and making telephone calls to under-16s. I say to the noble Lord, Lord Fuller—or perhaps it was the noble Lord, Lord Jackson—that election administrators are included in these discussions.
These age-based measures are important for implementing the franchise change effectively. In extending the right to vote to 16 and 17-year olds, it is vital that they are given the same opportunities as any other voter to be accurately registered. The Bill provides for people to register to vote from the age of 14, so they are ready to cast their first vote at the age of 16. This arrangement will bring significant benefits, but it must be accompanied by additional measures to protect these young people who are not yet entitled to vote. This is the approach taken throughout the Bill, which includes measures in Clauses 7 to 13 to safeguard young people’s data, mirroring the approach taken in Scotland and Wales. We should take the safeguarding of those under the age of 16 seriously, and these amendments would remove safeguards that we consider vital. I emphasise to noble Lords that it is not those of voting age who are being treated differently but those below voting age. For those reasons, we cannot support these amendments.
I thank the noble Lord, Lord Pack, and the noble Baroness, Lady Pinnock, for raising the important issue, through Amendment 123, of how electoral information is communicated to voters. We agree that the information provided to electors should be clear and accessible, and I take on board the comments from the noble Lord, Lord Pack, about polling cards. We already recognise that there is scope to improve election documentation, including poll cards, and we intend to consider how their design and clarity can be enhanced as part of wider research into how people learn about the electoral process. However, we do not believe a statutory requirement to report to Parliament within 12 months is necessary to take this work forward. Frankly, we just need to get on with it, and I am very happy to report back to the House when we have concluded our work.
I turn to Amendment 124, from the noble Lords, Lord Jackson of Peterborough and Lord Frost. As someone who was elected many times over 27 years, I recognise the importance of election results being declared promptly, and I have much sympathy with what the noble Lord, Lord Jamieson, said about this. We all want to hear our results as quickly as possible. Noble Lords have highlighted very graphically how local elections take place—so I do not need to give any further examples—and, as such, they require greater operational flexibility than parliamentary elections. Decisions about when to begin verification and counting are therefore best made by returning officers, taking account of those local circumstances. This amendment would replace that operational judgment with a rigid statutory requirement, subject only to narrow exceptions for emergencies and safety risks. We do not believe that that restriction is necessary or proportionate.
In speaking to Amendment 124, the noble Lord, Lord Fuller, raised some issues around different elections using different systems. I say to him that I recognise that there was a referendum in 2011 on different voting systems. The Prime Minister has decided the best way to take this issue forward is to initiate a national commission on electoral reform, which is the right way to start a national conversation on this issue.
I turn to Amendment 125, from the noble Lord, Lord Rennard, and the noble Baroness, Lady Thornhill. Section 10 of the Representation of the People Act 2000 already provides powers to pilot changes to when, where and how voting takes place at local government elections—powers the Government used to pilot flexible voting in the May 2026 polls and will use again in a further round of pilots in May 2027. We understand the amendment seeks to go further by enabling flexible voting to be piloted at elections beyond those currently provided for under Section 10, potentially including UK parliamentary elections. We do not believe it would be appropriate to extend the piloting power to parliamentary elections at this stage. Our priority is to continue testing these approaches at local elections and build that evidence base before considering any wider changes. I share both noble Lords’ enthusiasm for more modern and flexible voting arrangements as a matter of principle, but it is important that we test these thoroughly and build the evidence base before we go any further.
On this theme, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Jackson of Peterborough, for his Amendment 128. However, the use of electronic voting machines creates the potential for hacking, computer error and interference. Although elections are not always no-fail events for candidates—we do fail from time to time, as I have on occasion—they must be no-fail events in terms of process, and the integrity of the ballot must come first. That is why we have no plans to introduce electronic voting in the UK, and therefore it does not make sense to run pilots. I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Jackson of Peterborough.
I will address the amendment from the noble Lord, Lord Walney, as he is in the Chamber.
Lord Hayward (Con)
I thank the Minister for her very generous comments at the start of her contribution. On the amendment from the noble Lord, Lord Pack, and the noble Baroness, Lady Thornhill, I omitted to observe that, when reviews of pilots take place, cost should be considered. If one is taking trials over a period of days, there are all sorts of attendant costs in addition to the question of whether the system worked.
Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)
The noble Lord is quite right: any assessment of pilots must take cost into account.
I turn to Amendments 129 and 136, tabled respectively by the noble Lords, Lord Jackson of Peterborough and Lord Walney. It has been good to have the opportunity to consider this important and sensitive issue. Our electoral law must protect voters from coercion and undue pressure, while ensuring that faith leaders and communities remain free to express their religious and moral views and participate fully in our democratic life. I understand the wish of the noble Lord, Lord Jackson, to ensure that the provisions relating to spiritual injury and undue spiritual pressure continue to strike that very careful balance and remain clear and workable for faith communities, campaigners and voters alike. Examples of what constitutes “undue pressure” have been provided in the Explanatory Notes to the Elections Act 2022. I hope I can offer some reassurance that the Government continuously keep electoral law under review to ensure that it remains effective, proportionate and responsive to evidence about how it operates in practice. However, setting out a requirement for a review in statute is unnecessary.
On Amendment 136, from the noble Lord, Lord Walney, as I am sure he will be aware, spiritual injury and undue spiritual pressure are already capable of falling within the “undue influence” offence in Section 114A of the Representation of the People Act 1983. We do not consider a separate polling station offence to be necessary. Undue influence is already unlawful wherever it occurs, and the focus should remain on the coercive behaviour itself, rather than creating a separate offence based on proximity to a polling station.
Baroness Coffey (Con)
My Lords, I thank the Peers who spoke to this wide-ranging group. I am slightly disappointed by what the Minister said to my amendment. I just hope that, as soon as somebody becomes 16, there is a way for electoral registration officers to follow up on the integrity of the register to check it is valid. A whole range of things have been considered. With that, I beg leave to withdraw my Amendment 10.
“Part 3Canvass conducted in England before the coming into force of section 3Introduction
20 (1) This Part of this Schedule applies in relation to an annual canvass conducted under section 9D of RPA 1983 in the implementation period by an English registration officer.(2) The “implementation period” means the period beginning with the day on which this Act is passed and ending with the coming into force of section 3 of this Act.(3) In this Part of this Schedule—“English registration officer” means a registration officer appointed under section 8(2) of RPA 1983;“pre-commencement canvass” means a canvass described in sub-paragraph (1);“the RPR (E&W) 2001” means the Representation of the People (England and Wales) Regulations 2001 (S.I. 2001/341).Modification of the purpose of a pre-commencement canvass
21 (1) In relation to a pre-commencement canvass conducted by an English registration officer, section 9D of RPA 1983 (duty to conduct canvass in Great Britain) has effect as follows.(2) Subsection (2) has effect as if it provided that the purpose of the canvass included ascertaining the names, addresses and dates of birth of persons aged under 16 who will, as a result of section 4(4A) of RPA 1983 (inserted by section 3 of this Act), be entitled (on the coming into force of section 3 of this Act) to be registered in a register maintained by that officer.(3) But the power to make house to house inquiries under subsection (5) of section 9D does not include power to make inquiries for the purpose of the matter described in sub-paragraph (2).Youth detention accommodation: no duty to canvass
22 In relation to a pre-commencement canvass conducted by an English registration officer, nothing in section 9D of RPA 1983—(a) applies in relation to the registration of persons in respect of residence in youth detention accommodation as defined in section 248(1) of the Sentencing Code;(b) requires the officer to ascertain the names, addresses and dates of birth of persons resident in such accommodation.Design of canvass communications and form
23 The Electoral Commission must design a version of the communications and form described in regulation 32ZBG(1)(a) of the RPR (E&W) 2001 (canvass communications and forms: Electoral Commission duties) for use in England in relation to a pre-commencement canvass.24 For that purpose, regulation 32ZBG has effect as if—(a) in paragraph (1) there were inserted after sub-paragraph (a)—“(aa) send the communications and form to the Secretary of State before the end of the period of 14 days beginning with the day on which the Representation of the People Act 2026 is passed;”;(b) paragraph (2) were omitted;(c) for paragraph (4)(d)(iii) there were substituted—“(iii) to provide the registration officer with the full name, date of birth and nationality of each person aged 14 or 15 who is residing at the address to which the communication relates;”;(d) for paragraph (5)(f) there were substituted— “(f) require the recipient to provide the full name, date of birth and nationality of each person aged 14 or 15 who is residing at the address to which the form is given.”;(e) after paragraph (5) there were inserted—“(6) The canvass communication B referred to in paragraph (1)(a)(iii) must require—(a) the occupier, or(b) if there is no occupier, or it is not reasonably practicable for the occupier to provide the required information, the person in charge of the premises,to provide the full name, date of birth and nationality of each person aged 14 or 15 who is residing at the address to which the communication relates.”Other modifications of RPR (E&W) 2001
25 The RPR (E&W) 2001 have effect in relation to a pre-commencement canvass with the modifications set out in paragraphs 26 to 29.26 Regulation 32ZBA (annual canvass) has effect as if in paragraph (6), after “an address” there were inserted “, or that a person aged 14 or 15 may reside at an address,”.27 Regulation 32ZBD (canvass where changes to register are likely to be required) has effect as if—(a) in paragraph (4), for “to (9)” there were substituted “to (9ZA)”;(b) after paragraph (9) there were inserted—“(9ZA) A registration officer may not visit an address in order to speak to a person aged under 16.”;(c) in paragraph (10)—(i) in the definition of “canvass form” and “paper communication”, after “designed” there were inserted “for use in relation to a pre-commencement canvass”;(ii) after the definition of “paper communication” there were inserted—““pre-commencement canvass” has the meaning given by paragraph 20 of Schedule 1 to the Representation of the People Act 2026.”28 Regulation 32ZBE (canvass where changes to register are unlikely to be required) has effect as if—(a) in paragraph (4), at the end there were inserted“; and(c) provide to the registration officer the full name, date of birth and nationality of each person aged 14 or 15 who is residing at the address.”;(b) after paragraph (7) there were inserted—“(7A) If, after complying with the requirements of paragraphs (3) to (6), a registration officer—(a) has reason to believe that a person aged 14 or 15 may reside at the address, and(b) is not aware of that person’s full name, date of birth or nationality,the officer must conduct the annual canvass in accordance with regulation 32ZBD in respect of the address.”;(c) in paragraph (8), after “designed” there were inserted “for use in relation to a pre-commencement canvass”;(d) after paragraph (8) there were inserted—“(9) In this regulation, “pre-commencement canvass” has the meaning given by paragraph 20 of Schedule 1 to the Representation of the People Act 2026.”29 Regulation 32ZBF (canvass in respect of particular types of property) has effect as if—(a) in paragraph (4), for “paragraph (5) or” there were substituted “paragraphs (5) and (5ZA) or paragraph”;(b) after paragraph (5) there were inserted— “(5ZA) The registration officer must attempt to make contact with the responsible person and must request the full name, nationality and date of birth of each person aged 14 or 15 who is residing at that property.”;(c) in paragraph (6)—(i) for “paragraph (5) or” there were substituted “paragraphs (5) and (5ZA) or paragraph”;(ii) after “appropriate” there were inserted “(subject to paragraph (6A))”;(d) after paragraph (6) there were inserted—“(6A) A registration officer may not visit the property in order to speak to a person aged under 16.”;(e) in paragraph (7), for “paragraph (5) or” there were substituted “paragraphs (5) and (5ZA) or paragraph”;(f) in paragraph (8), for “paragraph (5) or” there were substituted “paragraphs (5) and (5ZA) or paragraph”.Retention of information
30 (1) Where an English registration officer obtains personal information relating to a person aged 14 or 15 when conducting a pre-commencement canvass, the officer may retain that information until the end of the specified day.(2) The “specified day” is the earliest of—(a) the last day of the period of 6 months beginning with the day on which section 3 of this Act is commenced,(b) the day on which the registration officer receives from the person an application made under section 10ZC of RPA 1983 for registration in a register maintained by the officer, and(c) the day on which the registration officer gives the person an invitation to apply for registration under section 9E(1) of RPA 1983.(3) Nothing in this paragraph affects the ability of the registration officer to otherwise lawfully retain the information described in sub-paragraph (1) after the specified day.(4) In this paragraph,“personal information” means a person’s name, address, email address, telephone number, date of birth or nationality.”Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment would enable a registration officer carrying out a canvass in England before Clause 3 of the Bill (entitlement to be registered before reaching voting age) comes into force to obtain information about 14 and 15 year olds and to retain that information for use when inviting those persons to register once clause 3 is in force.
Lord Hayward
Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment, and others in the name of Lord Hayward, seek to allow for a debate on the complexity of electoral law as affected by this Bill.
Lord Hayward (Con)
My Lords, I hope that I can please the Government Whip by indicating that, although I tabled a few amendments in relation to one particular aspect of this group, I could have tabled dozens of amendments on this subject. The subject was possibly best described by someone whom one might describe as a half-Irish lyricist who was brought up in inner south London. Four years ago, when he spoke to this Chamber, he said:
“I hope that, when we get a new Prime Minister, they will look at the whole issue of our electoral law”.—[Official Report, 15/7/22; col. 1709.]
That half-Irish lyricist from just south of the river is, of course, the noble Lord, Lord Kennedy, who made an observation on the Ballot Secrecy Bill. I gave him notice that I intended to quote from his speech on that occasion.
As noble Lords can see, the one amendment I have tabled to Clause 7, Amendment 13, runs to a whole page. We have to look at a string of legislation, much of which was introduced by my Government and previous Governments. It has been a clear fact for years that our electoral law is a complete mess and is in desperate need of consolidation into one Act. Page after page of this Bill just refers to one piece of legislation or another. I could understand it if it was dealing, as the noble Lord, Lord Deben, referred to on Monday, with devolved powers and therefore devolved legislation, but in far too many instances that is not the case. We have what I would best describe as a complete cacophony of electoral law.
If we think this is a mess, just imagine the sets of circumstances under which the returning officers have to operate. Whereas we can spread out our discussions on electoral law over a number of days, the returning officers are operating, particularly when they do not have notice of an election—for example, a general election—under extreme pressure. It really is astonishing that we have so few cases of an error being made in one form or another. Just think of what we will be coming on to talk about, whether it is postal votes, entitlement to vote from abroad, or registration of votes. Whatever it may happen to be, the poor returning officers are looking at this on an hour-by-hour, day-by-day basis. It is truly astonishing that we do not get petitions asking that matters do not go to the elections court and challenging the result in one form or another. I have paid credit to returning officers previously, but I will do so again on this occasion. As I say, there are many amendments that I could have put down here, but I chose not to.
On the other broad category of amendments, this is where we have a serious problem. I ask the Minister clearly to identify when she replies why on earth we need all these amendments saying that, instead of a registration officer we have a senior registration officer, or that we have to ensure that councils call in every possible officer to administer the elections. I will come back to that point in a minute.
We are talking here about devolution. One of the great mantras of this Government is that we must devolve power. The Prime Minister went to Lanarkshire the other week to tell the Scots that they are not devolving powers enough. The Minister herself, earlier this week, said:
“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”.—[Official Report, 2/11/26; col. 1407.]
If we are devolving powers to local councils, how is it that clause after clause tells local councils what role and status the registration officer should hold within a local council? Birmingham City Council’s chief executive is paid £300,000 a year. Surely, he knows better than the Minister and officials in Whitehall who should be deputed to handle what aspect of elections. It is true throughout the land that we have highly paid chief executive officers, one after another; yet Whitehall seems to think it knows best how an election should be administered. I could understand it if a whole series of elections had gone wrong—but I refer again to the Electoral Commission’s report on general elections. There is not one reference to a general election going wrong; in local elections, there are one or two very minor exceptions. I genuinely believe that this is Whitehall dictating utterly unnecessarily to local councils who should handle what.
The bit of the Bill that astonishes me most is the clause stating that a council should require all its officers, whatever they may happen to be—this is implicit in the phrasing of the Bill—to be called on to administer elections. Are we going to insert in an education Bill that every employee of a council should be called on to help with education; or that every employee should be called on to help with environmental matters or hygiene matters, or whatever it may happen to be? There is no justification for this, given that we do not have a failed electoral system; we have an extremely challenging one, but we do not have a failed one. I see no reason whatever why there is a series of clauses in the Bill suggesting that Whitehall knows best.
In conclusion, I referred to the Prime Minister going to Lanarkshire to deliver his message on devolution. He should go to Marsham Street and deliver the same message in relation to this Bill. I beg to move.
Lord Shamash (Lab)
My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow my noble friend Lord Hayward. I woke up this morning thinking that I would love to quote Martin Luther King—that I had a dream. I will give a tiny bit of history. The Representation of the People Act 1983 is the core legislation that everything has sprung from. It was 18 years from 1983 to the creation in 2001 of the Electoral Commission, in which I, and maybe others here, was involved. It is now 43 years since the 1983 Act came into being, and there have been repeated amendments and additions: the Electoral Administration Act, the Elections Act, and so on. We are getting to the point where, to move election law, you need a pick-up truck. It is completely crackers that we are in this situation.
The most important thing, as mentioned by my noble friend Lord Hayward, is consolidation. I have discussed the possibility of that with others, including my noble friend the Minister, and it is a major undertaking. But there is a new kid on the block, and that is AI. We must get to a situation where we can do this, because it is impossible to operate. I should have declared my interest as a former election lawyer to the Labour Party for many years. Having to deal with this legislation is very difficult, and you can miss things out very easily. My plea to the Minister is to take this idea away to the officials, so that my dream can actually come true and we can have a bit of consolidation in this Act.
Lord Fuller (Con)
My Lords, I support the comments made by my noble friend Lord Hayward and by the noble Lord, Lord Shamash. We have heard in the debate so far that we need a consolidation. The points made by the noble Lord, Lord Shamash, are very persuasive. Not only do we not have consolidation but the Bill contains all sorts of contradictory provisions and inconsistencies. I cannot wait to see what the government amendments will be—I am sure there will be several groups of them.
Lord Pack (LD)
My Lords, this may be the group on which we have the most widespread agreement from all corners of the Committee. I very much agree with the broad thrust of the comments from the three noble Lords who have spoken so far.
To give one further illustration: in preparing my ring binder of things that I thought might be useful to have with me during Committee, I thought it might be useful to print off copies of the Representation of the People Act 1983 and PPERA 2000, the two pieces of primary legislation that we will, I hope, amend through this legislation. I dutifully downloaded the PDFs for both from legislation.gov.uk. One comes in at 543 pages and the other at 524 pages, which is about the length of the last copy of War and Peace I saw. I decided not to print those off, but it illustrates the problem, which was quite rightly touched on earlier, about how staff and volunteers have to grapple with understanding large parts of what is a very complex legal landscape.
However, I would not want to disappoint the noble Lord, Lord Hayward, by not taking the chance to quibble just a little over a couple of his amendments in this group. His Amendment 16 would remove a cross-reference, but I would go the other way and say that we need more cross-references in legislation. But he is absolutely right with Amendment 17. I am sure that there is some fine legal brain in this House who will be able to elucidate why the definition that would be removed by Amendment 17 is not simply a rearranging of the words. That definition adds very little meaning.
Overall, it is welcome that we have seen, in one of the more recent government amendments tabled, a tidying-up by the proposal to repeal some previously uncommenced legislation. I hope that the debate on this group will encourage the Government to look at further steps for tidying up as we progress through the Bill.
Lord Jamieson (Con)
My Lords, I will be part of the agreement across the Committee on this one. I am grateful to my noble friend Lord Hayward for introducing these amendments and agree with all of them as a point of principle—to be slightly different from the noble Lord, Lord Pack.
We need this debate on the complexity of electoral law and administrative bureaucracy. I echo the Minister in recognising and thanking electoral returning officers for their job. It is not an easy job, as various noble Lords have made clear, to deal with all the legislation. The noble Lord, Lord Pack, said that just two Acts added up to over 1,100 pages. They are long, complex, inconsistent and, on occasion, in conflict. Electoral returning officers have to deal regularly with new regulations, guidance and changes. It is a surprise that anybody actually wants the job.
In addition to dealing with that, there is the sheer difficulty of running the operation. You may be dealing with 200-plus polling stations. You have to make sure that you get all your polling booths to them. You have to send out thousands of postal votes and rely on the postal system, which itself always has the potential for error. You have to make decisions on the spot in order to overcome all these various things. The Bill then prescribes, as my noble friend Lord Hayward has said, exactly how someone is supposed to do the job and who in the council is supposed to do the job and, as my noble friend raised, includes that specific point about requiring all staff to be made available. What happens if all staff are not willing to be made available? What sanction can the chief executive have? Will it be part of their work contract? What about needing them potentially to be made available to another neighbouring authority that needs more people? The system works. The EROs get the job done. It is a difficult job and, as I said in my previous speech, we should trust them.
I will go through some of these amendments, beginning with Amendment 13 to Clause 7(4)—reiterated in Amendment 16 to Clause 14—which defines “absent voters records”, “overseas elector lists”, “overseas elector’s declaration”, “registration officer” and “voter register”. Subsection (5) then clarifies the roles of a deputy electoral registration officer and a person assisting the electoral registration officer. My noble friend has already raised concerns over how other Whitehall departments determine this. I can go on through all the various clauses—and that is before I get on to the clauses that my noble friend has opposed in order to prompt this debate.
It is clear that our electoral system, local government and layers of administrative bureaucracy are complex. We are fortunate to live in a parliamentary democracy and to work in a system that has evolved, relatively organically, over time. Some legal complexity is perhaps expected, but we are concerned that, rather than seeking to improve the situation, some provisions in the Bill risk unnecessarily increasing the bureaucracy and practical complexity. I will not go through it all, but it is very clear from across the Committee that the Bill is overly complex, adds complexity and does not do what it should do, which is to make life simpler and more certain.
I hope that the Minister will take on board some of the recommendations made by noble Lords on how and where electoral law and administration could be made a little less complex without weakening the system’s strength, especially at the local level. In fact, by increasing consistency and simplifying where appropriate, it would strengthen the system. Perhaps the Minister can give an indication of what further government amendments we can expect.
Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)
I am grateful for this debate; it has been a very interesting subject to discuss. Knowing the noble Lord, Lord Hayward, I am sure he will have equally lobbied his own side on these issues before the Bill came to the House. This is the first election law I have dealt with, but I am sure that he will have been urging his own side to consider these issues in all the legislation that has gone through in the previous 14 years.
This Bill came forward to serve three specific purposes: to introduce voting for 16 and 17 year-olds, which is a manifesto commitment from my party; to take steps towards automatic voter registration, so as to tackle the under-registration of some 7 million to 8 million people; and, lastly, to tackle overseas political finance. During the course of the Bill, some of those issues have been the subject of much public debate, and we have had the Rycroft review of political finance, which has added to the Bill. There will be further amendments which will, I think, be laid on 9 November. In response to the request from the noble Lord, Lord Jamieson, he will have sight of amendments before we get to a further day of Committee on this Bill.
The consolidation of electoral law is a key issue. I have heard loud and clear, both at Second Reading and in the engagement meetings I held with noble Lords, the importance of doing this. In the process of the Bill, it is not possible to tackle the whole consolidation of all election law—I am sure it is even more than the number of pages that the noble Lord, Lord Pack, outlined. However, it is important we take that on board and look at what the process is going to be for what is certainly a job that needs to be done. I am going to take that back to the department and, at a later stage of the Bill, I will come back to it, because I understand what noble Lords are saying.
I took very seriously the comments of the noble Lord, Lord Hayward, about read-only access to registers, which he made during the previous session, and I pushed for more information on this. There are complexities around the localised nature of the register. In effect, we have 300 separate electoral registers, which is probably the point that the noble Lord was making around data protection. I will do some more work on this and I am happy to discuss it with him further in due course.
I recognise the broader concerns the noble Lord has around the complexity of electoral law and the administrative burdens which are placed on those responsible for delivering our elections. However, removing from the Bill important provisions which contain essential legal definitions, which his amendments would introduce, is not the right way to address either of those concerns. The legal definitions clarify the scope of the provisions so that it is clear who is captured by them—namely registration officers and those assisting registration officers—and confirm that the measures do not attach to absent voting lists which relate only to devolved elections. These clauses are not unnecessary additions. They contain substantive measures designed to improve the operation of our electoral system, as well as definitional information to aid the proper interpretation and application of the law.
The noble Lord asked specific questions about the measures on electoral registration officers and returning officers. Electoral registration officers and returning officers carry personal legal responsibility for functions fundamental to the effective operation of our democracy. Discharging those responsibilities requires access to staff, premises, systems and other resources from across the local authority, often within tightly prescribed statutory timetables and during periods of considerable operational pressure. Requiring ultimate responsibility to rest with an appropriately senior officer will help ensure that the officeholder has sufficient organisation-wide authority and accountability to secure the necessary support and provide effective oversight. This is a proportionate safeguard to ensure that returning officers have the authority and access to resources they need to run elections effectively. It provides a clear minimum standard, while leaving local authorities flexibility over whom they appoint within that framework.
The Committee will have the opportunity to debate all the measures in the Bill as it progresses. The Government will continue to make their case for each of them, but I assure the noble Lord I am listening carefully to all views expressed in the Committee.
I thank the noble Lord for his clause stand part notice on Clause 44. I will explain briefly the importance of this clause to the Bill. At present, political parties cannot withdraw their support for a candidate once the nomination papers have been submitted, even when serious issues arise. Clause 44 enables parties to act where concerns arise during the nomination period. The scope of the provisions is very carefully limited. Support may be withdrawn only up to 48 hours before nominations close, ensuring the candidate still has time to stand independently or for another party, and the party can nominate a replacement. This clause forms part of a suite of new safeguards designed to protect the integrity of elections and prevent and deter personation or false nominations. Removing it would weaken the Bill.
I have listened carefully to the debates, particularly on the consolidation of election law, and I am very happy to continue those discussions.
Lord Hayward (Con)
I thank the Minister for her comments in general, and I want to continue the conversation. I seek clarification on her last comments about the particular clause. Are her comments fully supported by both the Electoral Commission and the AEA on behalf of returning officers?
Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)
My understanding is that that the EC and the Association of Electoral Administrators were consulted on provisions in the Bill, but I will go back and check and answer the noble Lord in writing.
Lord Hayward (Con)
I have heard some interesting comments from the Minister and, as I indicated just now, I appreciate her offer to have further conversations in relation to the specific matters. I think we all knew that, on the question of consolidation, sadly, we are going to have to live with Encyclopaedia Britannica, whether it is on AI or any other system, for the future. It is grotesquely challenging for everybody who is involved. However, on that basis, I beg leave to withdraw my amendment.
Baroness in Waiting/Government Whip (Baroness Ramsey of Wall Heath) (Lab)
My Lords, we will now move to the lunch-break business. We will therefore not return to the Bill before one hour and 15 minutes from now. However, to clarify, we will not cut short the 90-minute debate for the SI; this is just in case it finishes earlier, and we can resume Committee business.
Global Human Rights and International Humanitarian Law Sanctions Regulations 2026
(1 day, 9 hours ago)
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14:39 - Division on the Amendment to the Motion. - Ayes: 94 / Noes: 90 - Amendment to the Motion agreed.
Lord Wood of Anfield
That the Regulations laid before the House on 12 October be approved.
Relevant document: 15th Report from the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (Lord Wood of Anfield) (Lab)
My Lords, these regulations revoke and re-enact, with expanded purposes and designations criteria, the Global Human Rights Sanctions Regulations 2020.
This instrument was laid on 13 October, under powers in the Sanctions and Anti-Money Laundering Act 2018. The measures in this instrument, subject to the made affirmative parliamentary procedure, entered into force on 15 October.
Since coming into office, the Foreign Secretary has been clear that we will be stronger in our values, bolder in our action and relentless in pursuing alliances with our partners across the world.
Sanctions are a powerful lever that we have to advance our foreign policy goals in the face of action that breaks the law and is unacceptable. When we impose sanctions, we do so to isolate those responsible, to restrict their ability to act and to change their behaviour. We do it to send a clear message, far beyond those we target, of the values that the UK will stand up for. We try to do it, where possible, alongside our partners to maximise the impact of the sanctions we impose.
The global human rights sanctions regime—now the global human rights and international humanitarian law sanctions regime—is particularly vital for this. Since the regime began in 2020, the UK has delivered over 180 designations, and under this Government we have used the global human rights sanctions regime to tackle issues such as forced labour in south-east Asian scam centres and extremist settlers violently attacking Palestinians in the West Bank, and to those responsible for the violent crackdown on protesters in Georgia.
The global human rights sanctions regime is of course not our only tool: we also make extensive use of our range of geographic sanctions regimes. For example, last week we announced the designation of 15 commanders, on both sides of the conflict in Sudan, who are suspected of perpetrating or inciting heinous atrocities against civilians, in particular conflict-related sexual violence. As we mark the anniversary of the horror we saw after the fall of El Fasher, these designations remind the perpetrators of atrocities that the international community is watching them, and that actions have consequences.
However, the action on Sudan was possible only because our Sudan sanctions regime permits designations on the grounds of violations of international humanitarian law. Before we laid this instrument, the Government did not have the flexibility to respond in this fashion to similar atrocities taking place in countries that did not happen to have their own geographical sanctions regime. As a result of this revision, now we do.
This instrument also expands our ability to stand up for our values and tackle injustice and suffering around the world in other ways. The expanded regime addresses a broader range of human rights abuses and violations by adding the right to security of liberty and person, and also gives the Government powers to respond with sanctions where aid has been deliberately prevented from reaching civilian populations.
I will now turn to each measure in this instrument in more detail. I want to be clear this is a strong enhancement of our existing powers. The global human rights sanctions regime gave us the ability to use sanctions where there were reasonable grounds to suspect serious violations or abuses of the right to life, the right not to be subjected to torture or cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment, and the right to be free from slavery and not to be held in servitude or required to perform forced or compulsory labour. These amended regulations allow all pre-existing sanctions to remain in force but give us a powerful lever to respond to a broader range of situations.
The expanded sanctions regime now allows designations to be made where there are reasonable grounds to suspect serious violations of international humanitarian law. This strengthens the UK’s ability to respond to serious conduct that arises during armed conflict, such as the targeting or mistreatment of civilians, where international humanitarian law provides the most relevant legal framework.
As the Foreign Secretary set out to Parliament on 8 September when he committed to laying this instrument, it gives the UK the powers to target those constructing illegal Israeli settlements in the West Bank, such as those participating in E1 settlement expansion.
As I have said, the previous version of the regime permitted designations where there were reasonable grounds to suspect serious violations of the right to life, the right not to be subjected to torture or cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment, and the right to be free from slavery and not to be held in servitude or required to perform forced or compulsory labour. This instrument now adds the right to liberty and security of person to that list of rights. This ensures that the regime can now better address issues such as arbitrary detention and related conduct.
The global human rights and international humanitarian law sanctions regime also adds a new ground of obstruction of the delivery or distribution of, or access to, humanitarian assistance. This addition reflects the serious humanitarian consequences that can result when aid is deliberately prevented from reaching civilian populations—an objective I am sure noble Lords will agree is important.
The amended regime also adds the power to designate by description. This allows the UK to designate where a specific name is not available and, in doing so, to capture all members of a specific group or organisation, allowing greater flexibility and reach under the regime.
I note that the noble Lord, Lord Leigh, has tabled an amendment of regret, and I look forward to hearing from him and responding to his concerns.
To conclude, this instrument provides the Government with vital new general powers with which to stand up for British values and respond to serious human rights abuses and serious violations of international humanitarian law around the globe. I beg to move.
Lord Leigh of Hurley
At end to insert “but this House, while recognising the importance of effective targeted sanctions, regrets that the Regulations permit designation on suspicion of indirect involvement, benefit or association without clearly defining those terms; notes the absence of safeguards to protect lawful trade with Israel within its pre-1967 lines; and calls on His Majesty’s Government to (1) confirm that such trade will not be affected by these Regulations, (2) publish clear designation criteria and an evidence-based framework to ensure consistent global application, and (3) provide an impact assessment and annual report to Parliament on the operation of the regime”.
Lord Leigh of Hurley (Con)
My Lords, in moving the regret amendment in my name, I declare my interests as set out in the register.
Sanctions, precisely targeted and founded on clear evidence, are a legitimate instrument of British foreign policy and have my support. But these regulations do not meet that test. They seem, to many, to be there to satisfy the local domestic political objectives of the Foreign Secretary and his Government.
This is a major change in British foreign policy, made without consultation, without an impact assessment and without a vote in either House. Parliament is being asked to approve powers already in use. That is not scrutiny; it is ratification. I move this amendment because I believe this policy is a mistake.
The Explanatory Note makes no reference to Israel, but the Foreign Secretary’s Statement in the other place makes it clear, as has the Minister, that his concern is about settler violence in the West Bank, or Judea and Samaria, and that is driving this legislation through. Let me be quite clear: I condemn such violence, by either side. Those who break the law should be arrested and punished. But I am disappointed that the Foreign Secretary made no mention whatever of the numerous attacks on Jewish people in that area. Violence by terrorists against any civilians must be condemned. The Government already have the tools to act: 38 people have been sanctioned for settler violence, and the Government’s relentless and unequal focus on measures against Israel has left many Jews in this country fearful.
The regulations came with three promises: that they would be targeted, that they would not touch Israel inside the green line, and that they would be global. Not one of them survives a reading of the text.
The first promise was that they would be targeted. But a person can be designated not for committing an abuse but for providing “support” for it, obtaining “any other benefit” from it, or being “associated with” someone involved. That is not a scalpel; that is a net, and the Government know it. They have said themselves that these powers
“widen the net … to anyone who facilitates, promotes, incites, or funds”
the conduct in question, including the banks that finance settlement growth. So, what does “associated with” mean? A relative? An accountant? A customer? When the penalty is seven years in prison, a British business is entitled to know where the line is drawn. It is a fundamental feature of the rule of law that the law, especially a law with criminal penalties, should be clear, so that everyone knows what they can and cannot do.
The second promise was on the green line. On 8 September, the Foreign Secretary told the other place that the Government would
“absolutely ensure that it does not hit green-line Israel”.—[Official Report, Commons, 8/9/26; col. 887.]
They would “absolutely ensure” that. So, where is it? These regulations contain no safeguard for trade inside the green line, and no definition of where that line runs.
And what of Jerusalem? Two weeks ago, I was in east Jerusalem, as the UK chairman of the Jerusalem Foundation, for the opening of the Beit Hanina sports complex. It is the first ever swimming pool in east Jerusalem. It was paid for in part by the city, and in no small part by international Jewish donors, and it will be handed as a gift to the local community to run. It has been so successful that we would like to build a second swimming pool in east Jerusalem, to match the many in west Jerusalem. But donors have now told us they are not prepared to consider such a proposal, because they may be caught under this legislation. Can the Minister assure British charities that their work will not be caught by this instrument, when their trustees face the real possibility of criminal penalties?
The Government treat east Jerusalem, including the Western Wall, Judaism’s holiest site, as occupied territory, so I ask the Minister: is the Western Wall within the scope of this regime—yes or no? Could a British citizen who buys a flat in the Jewish quarter of the old city from a Jewish seller be at risk when, if they made the same purchase from an Arab seller, they would not be? The Government, and every party to negotiations, have always said that the status of Jerusalem must be settled in negotiations, not in regulations.
The real cost is trade between Britain and Israel, which is worth some £5.9 billion a year, and at the heart of it sit Israel’s major banks. Those banks lend across the country because Israeli law forbids them from refusing customers due to where they live. Under these regulations, a mortgage in a settlement could be “support”, the interest on it a “benefit” and, on suspicion alone, the bank could be designated.
Anyone who has worked in the City knows how compliance departments work. They will face undefined tests and a seven-year criminal sentence. They will not ask, “Is it lawful?”; they will ask, “Is it worth the risk?”, and they will say no. That is how a boycott of Israel begins: not by decree but by deterrence. The Government say they oppose the BDS campaign, yet they have written its sharpest element into British law.
So who pays? I am afraid that we in the UK pay. British banks pay and firms with US operations pay: US federal law treats measures against any territory controlled by Israel as a boycott, so compliance with these regulations would expose them to US penalties. The NHS pays. One in seven generic medicine packs prescribed here comes from an Israeli company, Teva. British business pays: firms with American operations now risk anti-boycott penalties. Palestinians pay: some 30,000 depend on jobs with settlement-linked employers. This smacks of collective punishment. I ask the Minister: will the Treasury issue general licences to protect the NHS’s medicine supply?
The third promise was that this regime is global. Take Northern Cyprus. Turkey has occupied the north of Cyprus since 1974. The UN Security Council has ruled the self-declared republic as legally invalid, and this country is one of Cyprus’s three guarantor powers. How many designations have the Government made? None. How many restrictions on trade? None. One rule for Turkey, one rule for Israel.
Then there is Xinjiang. Its settler corporation has been sanctioned in full by the US since 2020. Here, goods from the region enter without restriction. Then there is Hamas’s and the Iran-backed Houthis’ hostage-taking, diversion of aid and detention of UN staff, yet Ministers have given no indication that these powers will be used against them. That is not a global regime; it is a regime with a global title and a single target.
The cost is not hypothetical. Within a day of the announcement, Israel ordered the closure of our consulate in Jerusalem, expelled British personnel from the centre co-ordinating—
Baroness in Waiting/Government Whip (Baroness Antrobus) (Lab)
I respectfully remind the noble Lord that the limit for this is six minutes.
Lord Leigh of Hurley (Con)
I was graciously given a minute by the noble Lord, Lord Wood, but thank you.
There were 1,962 antisemitic incidents over the past six months in the UK. These regulations do nothing to reduce the tensions in the UK.
I conclude by asking the Minister five questions. Will he confirm that trade with Israel inside the green line will not lead to designation? Will he assure British banks that they will not be penalised for continuing to deal with Israel’s banks? Will the Government define the terms on which people can be sanctioned and report annually to Parliament on how this regime is used, country by country? Will the Government assess the impact, particularly on charities, before going further? Will the Government refrain from designations while Israel forms a new Government at this crucial time? I beg to move.
Baroness Ludford (LD)
My Lords, I speak from the perspective of being a vice-president of the Liberal Democrat Friends of Israel, not as a spokesman of my group.
This is an even more unstable and unpredictable time in Middle East politics than usual. We have the aftermath of elections in both Israel and the US, with lots of speculation but not so much actual knowledge of what the next few weeks and months will hold. I hope for a Change Government in Israel—my party, the Liberal Democrats, is allied with Yair Lapid’s Yesh Atid—but everything is up in the air there, as it is in Washington. The possibility of a US-led renewal of hostilities in the Iran war cannot be dismissed, regardless of the domestic Israeli situation, and could influence the coalition talks.
I ask the Minister what forethought is going into the application of these sanctions and their potential repercussions at this time. Let us recall, as the noble Lord, Lord Leigh of Hurley, did, all the things that happened within a day of September’s announcement: the closure of the British consulate-general in east Jerusalem and other consequences. Did the Government foresee that response by the Israeli Government, as they should have done? Does the Minister accept that the UK now has less influence over Israeli policy, events in Gaza and the future of Jerusalem than it did on 7 September, and that relations with the Palestinian Authority are made harder by a much reduced presence in east Jerusalem?
Looking at the situation now, and the question from the noble Lord, Lord Leigh, about designations during coalition talks, will the Government undertake not to issue designations while a new Israeli Government are being formed? The Foreign Secretary said in the House on 8 September 8 that
“our argument is not with the people of Israel … our argument is with the conduct of its Government”,—[Official Report, Commons, 8/9/26; col. 880.]
so should the UK Government not prioritise getting a change in the conduct of a new Israeli Government, away from the destructive policies of the Netanyahu Government? What assessment will the UK Government make, before any designation, of the impact not only on those coalition talks but on relations with whatever Government emerge?
The opposition Change parties have said that they will, thankfully, crack down on the horrendous settler violence in the West Bank, show more flexibility in moving forward with a post-war plan for Gaza and mend fences with Israel’s allies, so do the Government really think now is a good time to apply these sanctions, about which there are many questions? Will the Minister confirm that any designation will be preceded by a formal assessment of its diplomatic consequences, including in the light of emerging US policy? Finally, will the Government confirm that the decision will be taken by Ministers, not officials alone, given the political and diplomatic minefield that is before them?
Lord Walney (CB)
My Lords, yesterday evening, some of us had the privilege of gathering in the Robing Room, with the permission of His Majesty, to celebrate the life of our dear friend Meta, Baroness Ramsay. We miss her greatly. Having had the privilege of serving with her when she was the long-standing chair of Labour Friends of Israel in the House of Lords—I had a much briefer stint as chair in the Commons—I think I can say with confidence how dismayed she would be, not only by these sanctions targeting Israel in the way they do but by the turn this Government have taken since the new Foreign Secretary took his place, with the Minister supporting him.
The tributes reflected on how loyal and faithful Meta was to the Labour Party over many years—more faithful, I have to say, than I have been. I think she rebelled fewer than half a dozen times in her whole career in the Lords, so if this were brought to a vote, it is highly unlikely that she would have voted against the Government. However, I think the Minister knows from his time observing her on the parliamentary committee that she would have made her views known in a courteous but persuasive way. In her absence, I will finish with a number of extra questions.
The new aid-obstruction ground in the sanctions covers those who facilitate or finance the disbursal of aid. Will the Government use it against Hamas, which grew out of the Muslim Brotherhood, and against those who finance and shelter it, including the IRGC and Hamas figures operating from Turkey? What safeguards will prevent the definitions “associated with” and “supported” being weaponised against Jewish charities, donors and trustees who wish to give lawfully to Israel? Finally, the Government said that these regulations will not affect freedom of religion. Have the Government assessed their impact on Jewish religious observance? Will the Minister confirm that worship, religious visits and support for synagogues and other religious institutions will not be treated as support for settlement activity?
Lord Pickles (Con)
My Lords, I declare my interests as set out in the register. I support my noble friend Lord Leigh and wish to focus on one issue: certainty. If these regulations are truly targeted, those affected should be able to understand where the boundary lies. Yet the Government have failed to provide that clarity. Faced with serious penalties, many will simply err on the side of caution. Can the Government state clearly whether buying a home in East Jerusalem, including near the Western Wall, or making a charitable donation would become grounds for designation? What legal test distinguishes a lawful transaction from sanctionable support? Will that test be published? Trustees, donors and charities should not have to guess whether lawful activity crosses an invisible line. If the Government have a clear test, they should publish it. If they do not, that is precisely the problem.
There are wider consequences. If charities and individuals cannot determine where the line is drawn, why should banks and businesses? Many will simply withdraw from dealings with Israel as the safest course. What assessment did the Government make of the impact on UK businesses with US operations in light of American anti-boycott laws? What assessment was made of any wider implications for the UK-US relationship? What guidance will be issued? If those assessments have been undertaken, they should be published. If guidance has been prepared, it should be issued.
The House is not being asked this afternoon whether certainty is desirable. It is being asked to approve regulations whose boundaries remain undefined in practice. Where sanctions carry serious penalties, uncertainty is not a technical flaw; it is a fundamental defect. If those affected cannot know with confidence where the line is drawn, the House should be concerned about what it is being asked to approve. Whether it was intended or not, this is in effect BDS by the backdoor. That is why I support the regret amendment.
Lord Verdirame (Non-Afl)
My Lords, I supported the principle behind the global human rights sanctions when they were first introduced but, like many good things, this instrument carries a risk of mission creep. I fear that that is what we see in these new regulations.
I am concerned about the extension of the regime to three new grounds, in particular violations of international humanitarian law. I am also concerned about the new mechanism of designation by description, whereas until now we had been able to designate only by name. Both questions matter because the threshold is quite low. “Reasonable grounds to suspect” is not a demanding test, particularly when applied in the fog of war. I do not think that there has ever been a war in the history of warfare in which there were not reasonable grounds to suspect that the laws of war were being broken. If we want to apply consistently this threshold of reasonable grounds to suspect, we would be required to consider imposing sanctions in connection with every ongoing armed conflict, including those involving allies.
I wonder whether the Government have thought about the relationship between this instrument and the arms embargo regime, where the threshold is “clear risk” and is higher than “reasonable grounds to suspect” —particularly when we consider that individuals associated with someone may also be sanctionable under the new instrument. Does that mean that we could still potentially sell arms to individuals whom we have sanctioned? How do the two regimes operate together?
I have further questions for the Minister. Will the Government publish examples that show what “reasonable grounds to suspect” specifically means in evidential terms in the context of an armed conflict? What independent assessment will the Government make of evidence from the UN, NGOs, media or foreign Governments, particularly where an allegation is repeated in report after report despite often being based on the same second-hand source?
Most importantly, how will the Government ensure that these new grounds and mechanisms are generally applied consistently? If the Government impose sanctions in connection with a settlement in the West Bank, will they set out the legal reasons for not doing the same in other occupied territories such as Western Sahara and the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus?
Baroness Altmann (Non-Afl)
My Lords, I apologise to the House and beg its indulgence. For me, this is a serious issue that places the Jewish people under significant antisemitic—
Baroness Antrobus (Lab)
The noble Baroness was not present at the start of the debate.
Baroness Altmann (Non-Afl)
I do not think that the Government realise how serious this is. I beg the House’s indulgence that I may make a few remarks. I thank the House for that; I will be very brief.
Lord Sacks said that antisemitism is defined by the language of its age, which seems now to be human rights. I am afraid that the West is being played, and this statutory instrument will simply stoke further Jew hatred. It rewards those who are opposed to a two-state solution. It will not promote or help in any way the people who want the two-state solution or the Palestinians who will lose their jobs because they are working alongside Israelis. I beg the Government to understand the danger of singling out Israel for special punishment, when so many of us who are Jewish citizens of this country are trying to warn of the dangers that this entails.
Lord Gold (Con)
My Lords, the new sanctions purport to be global, but in reality they apply only to Israel. As my noble friend Lord Leigh of Hurley pointed out, there have been no designations over Northern Cyprus, which has been occupied by Turkey since 1974. The Xinjiang settler corporation in China is unsanctioned. Ministers have not said that the powers will be used against Hamas for diverting aid in Gaza or the Iran-backed Houthis, who are detaining UN aid workers.
Failure to take any action over Cyprus is particularly heinous. As guarantor under the 1960 Treaty of Guarantee, the UK has a particular responsibility. The UN Security Council declared the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus “legally invalid”, the Council of Europe has condemned the “colonisation” by Turkish settlers, and the European Court of Human Rights has found that Turkey violated the property rights of displaced Greek Cypriots. Indeed, homes continue to be built and sold on their land, including to British buyers, but no sanctions have been imposed. Yet the Government claim that the sanctions regime is global. If so, why has no action been taken in these other cases?
If the Government’s view is that settlement activity in occupied territory constitutes a serious violation of international humanitarian law, presumably that view rests on Article 49 of the Fourth Geneva Convention, which applies equally to every alleged occupying power. The Government speak out loudly against antisemitism, but singling out the one Jewish state for sanctions raises serious doubts as to the sincerity of such a claim. Does the Minister accept that a decision not to apply the regime to comparable conduct elsewhere could be open to judicial review if it rests on a different legal test? Will the Government undertake to publish the criteria that they apply? Will the Government also now confirm that action will be taken against those responsible for these other violations? If not, how will the Government show that it is not being applied to Israel alone?
Lord Austin of Dudley (Non-Afl)
My Lords, I draw attention to my entry in the register of interests.
When announcing these measures, the Foreign Secretary said that the Government would “absolutely ensure” that this regime
“does not hit green-line Israel”.—[Official Report, Commons, 8/9/26; col. 887.]
and that trade with Israel would continue to be supported. That trade is worth around £6 billion, with UK exports worth more than half of it—a trade surplus in Britain’s favour of roughly £1 billion. Over the past five years, more than 400 Israeli companies have been established or expanded in the UK, creating 4,000 jobs and bringing in £1 billion of investment. This makes a huge contribution to the UK economy; they are highly skilled and well-paid jobs, and I am sure the Minister will agree that none of them should be put at risk.
Despite the Foreign Secretary’s commitment, the Minister will know that businesses involved in UK-Israel trade, people in Israel and—as we have heard from a number of speakers in this debate—many people in the Jewish community want to be reassured about the precise impact of these measures and that they will not affect trade within Israel’s pre-1967 lines. Will the Treasury and the Foreign Office issue clear guidance, so that banks know that ordinary trade finance and payments to Israeli businesses are not to be affected? What assurance can we give to Palestinian banks which clear shekel payments through Israeli correspondent banks? Given claims by Members of Parliament that a recent event recruiting Jewish doctors to work in Israel would have contravened these regulations, will the Minister make it clear that lawful healthcare, medical recruitment and Jewish communal events are not within scope?
Only last night, these regulations were cited when Birmingham City Council’s Lib Dem and Green coalition —supported by Labour councillors, I have to say—passed a motion on divestment from Israel, including a review of pension fund investments and the council’s banking relationships. This is a city that has had to be rescued from bankruptcy by taxpayers, where rubbish has been piled high in the streets and that is the youth unemployment capital of Britain. Yet the clowns on the council are more concerned—obsessed—with a war 3,000 miles away that they know next to nothing about and can do even less to solve. So will the Minister make it clear that this is not government policy? Will he confirm that the Government’s opposition to boycotts of Israel applies to Labour councillors too? Will he commit to monitoring whether UK banks and businesses are withdrawing from lawful trade with Israel, and to act to deal with that if they are?
Baroness Foster of Oxton (Con)
My Lords, I support my noble friend Lord Leigh and want to provide a gentle reminder of why we are here today. Three years ago, on 7 October, more than 6,000 Palestinian men invaded Israel. They slaughtered over 1,200 men, women, children and infants. They tortured, beheaded, burned alive, blew up, gang-raped and sodomised their way through the Nova festival and a number of kibbutz. Their second war crime was to take over 250 innocent civilians hostage, including children and infants, and into the tunnels of Gaza, where they were tortured and raped, with many murdered and some kept hostage for more than two and a half years.
Some employees of UNRWA were complicit, and these actions were supported by the Palestinian Authority, whose members have never condemned the attacks. In fact, it was due to their weakness and cowardice that Hamas and the Palestinian jihadis were able to take control of Gaza in 2006, when the one and only election took place. The Islamic Republic of Iran pulled the strings of its proxies, and the rest is history.
Having witnessed one of the worst crimes in living memory on the citizens of Israel—an ally, by the way, that provides us with intelligence, cancer drugs used by the NHS and much more—what have this Government done? Let us take a look, shall we? This Government decided to recognise a Palestinian state, despite there being no such thing. There are no borders, no rule of law or anything, in fact, to warrant such a decision. This Government have allowed pro-Palestinian, antisemitic hate protests to take place weekly, to this day. The protesters who take part, including Islamist supporters of Hizb ut-Tahrir, all continue to call for the annihilation of Israel and all Jews. Is it then surprising that British Jewish citizens have been, and continue to be, bullied, attacked and murdered on the streets of the UK? Jewish children and their families are living in a ring of steel and antisemitism is at a level I never thought I would see in my lifetime.
Finally, I come to sanctions. Because of a disputed territory—of which we have plenty of our own—this Government place sanctions on our ally, along with the likes of Afghanistan, Iran, Iraq, Yemen, Russia, Somalia, Syria and other despotic, barbaric regimes, and yet again give succour to our enemies by appeasing and rewarding those terrorists who threaten to attack Israel, again and again. The truth is that this Government have kowtowed to those who shout loudest and to those they hope will keep them in power. Their actions are shameful and a blight on the freedoms we have fought for. They run completely counter to the silent majority of this country. We know a distraction when we see one, and this regulation has to be one of the worst examples yet.
Lord Mendelsohn (Lab)
My Lords, time precludes a more general review of the expansion of these sanctions. I hope the House will forgive me if I focus on some questions relating to the Government’s current favourite target: Israel.
Since the Clinton parameters, every serious peace proposal has envisaged Israel retaining major settlement blocs, while compensating it with land swaps. This does not excuse violence, dispossession or unlawful expansion, but it recognises the compromises and complexities on which peace has always depended and the pursuit of has always required. Is residential construction in those major blocs in itself a serious violation of international humanitarian law for the purposes of these regulations? If it is, what assessment have the Government made of the effect on the prospects for a negotiated two-state solution? Have they assessed how restrictions on civilian economic life in these same blocs might affect the prospects of an agreed territorial compromise?
Has the Minister considered how the regulations will apply? Banks and insurers, confronted with uncertain tests and grave penalties, may well withdraw from perfectly lawful Israeli trade. The Government say they oppose boycotts. If British institutions withdraw from lawful trade with Israel as a whole, how is that different, in effect, from a boycott? What do the Government intend to do to prevent that? We would be grateful for officials’ current briefings on this, which have indicated that the regulations are setting terms that Israel cannot meet, even by breaching its own law.
What assessment have the Government made of the West Bank economy, and what support and arrangements are needed to support Palestinian financial institutions and banks, given the changes?
Will the Minister please also give us some view as to what safeguards there are to ensure that, if a company de-lists or stops a relevant activity, the Government will reassess its designation so that the regulations are always applied on an up-to-date, factual basis?
Why does Regulation 8(3)(e) on supplying goods or services contain no requirement of knowledge when Regulation 8(3)(d) does? How promptly will a person designated by a description receive a usable notice, and how can they obtain clarification of whether the designation applies to them? How frequently will the Government reassess the factual basis and continuing appropriateness of each designation, or will they publish aggregate review outcomes? What remedy is available to an innocent third party suffering losses from a mistaken identification or mistaken ownership and control assessment? How will the Government distinguish a remote or incidental financial benefit from a sufficiently direct benefit under Regulation 8(3)(f)? Under Regulation 8(3)(e), can a supplier with no knowledge or reasonable cause to suspect wrongdoing nevertheless be treated as involved, and what proportionality safeguard would apply? What factors merely distinguish an innocent professional, familial or charitable association from an association sufficient for designation under Regulation 8(1)(d)?
Lord Shinkwin (Con) [R]
My Lords, I speak in support of the amendment in the name of my noble friend Lord Leigh of Hurley.
Yesterday, I spoke to a group of amendments to the Health Bill, which dealt with the need to address the pernicious threat to the NHS posed by antisemitism and other forms of racism. I spoke then from a patient’s perspective, in my case as someone who owes so much to my childhood Jewish refugee consultant, most of whose family were murdered in the Holocaust, and in whose memory I will always defend Israel’s right to exist in peace and security and refute the charge of genocide in the tragic situation that is Gaza.
Today, I speak again from a patient’s perspective, and I have two specific questions for the Minister. First, can he say what contingency arrangements would be put in place to maintain medicines, emergency medical treatment and aid payments if a major intermediary became designated?
Secondly, can he say what assessment the Government have made of the effects that would be felt as a result of any settlement-related sanctions or proposed services restrictions on access to healthcare for Israeli and Palestinian patients, including continuity of care and the recruitment of clinicians? I look forward to the Minister’s reply.
Lord Frost (Non-Afl)
My Lords, I support the regret amendment from the noble Lord, Lord Leigh of Hurley, and draw attention to my entry in the register of interests.
I will raise briefly two specific concerns on this proposed legislation. The first is the risk that the sanctions under consideration will not be effectively targeted. The noble Lord, Lord Leigh, talked about the chilling effect, as I think one could describe it, of the ambiguity of aspects of these sanctions and definitions. That is a negative risk, if you like. However, the Foreign Secretary in the Commons, when announcing these sanctions, also set out a positive duty. He said that
“we will absolutely ensure that it does not hit green-line Israel”.—[Official Report, Commons, 8/9/26; col. 887.]
He also said:
“We will continue to support important and valued trade with green-line Israel”.—[Official Report, Commons, 8/9/26; col. 882.]
If those were not just words, they imply a positive duty to act, by embassies, government officials and departments that support trade between the UK and Israel. Businesses need to know what positive, practical support the Government can still give, and government officials need to know what they can and cannot do under these sanctions. Can the Minister explain what the Government will do to deliver on the Foreign Secretary’s positive commitment? Will they publish guidance, for example to make clear what trade and investment is supported by HMG and their officials, and what is not? That is my first concern.
The second is how the follow-up regulations to these sanctions are to be handled in practice. They are presented as the first stage in a series of measures tightening restrictions over time, and the Government’s planned measures to prohibit or restrict import services advertising will be very far-reaching. They will hit a lot of people who probably never imagined they were going to be hit by this. There is a high risk of getting the detail wrong or having inadvertent consequential effects.
This does happen. Some of us may remember that the Russia (Sanctions) (EU Exit) (Amendment) (No. 3) Regulations 2023 banned legal advisory services. They were made on 27 June that year and came into force three days later. It took an outside stakeholder, a law firm, to tell us, the legislators, that these regulations actually made it a crime for UK-based lawyers to advise on how to comply with the sanctions. The firm went on to say that this was “unnecessary, and likely unintended”. Your Lordships’ Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee went on to confirm this was the effect and it took the Government a year to get the legislation right.
This happened in a sanctions regime that by then was well understood and often used, so will the Government commit to doing the maximum to avoid a similar situation arising again? Instead of drafting follow-up laws and simply bringing them into force, will they commit to ensuring that measures under this legislation will be published in draft, consulted on and properly debated in this Parliament first?
Lord Evans of Guisborough (Con)
My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow my noble friend Lord Frost, who has demonstrated his considerable knowledge and experience in this field.
It is a hallmark of bad law that it encourages shadow compliance and overcompliance. British companies and institutions quite rightly wish to obey the law, but also wish not to be test cases. It takes time and money to be a test case and, after all, it is not their job to clarify UK law. The Government should be responsible for saying exactly where the boundaries lie. Because of that, I ask the Minister for his assurance about the assessment that the Government have made that their actions are going to be proportionate under this legislation to their stated aims and consistent with their obligations under international law.
I have considerable respect for the Minister and I understand that he will want to do his best to get this right, but we in this House always remember that statutory instruments and other legislation that we approve will be used by future Ministers. That is why, because I do not necessarily trust people who in future might pick up this responsibility, I ask the Minister for a further safeguard: that he restore the duty to report to Parliament on sanctions regimes which was scrapped back in 2022. This is a considerable extension of the Government’s power of sanctioning, and it is right that both Houses of Parliament get a report every year about what has happened, who has been sanctioned and what the results are going to be. I hope the Minister will be able to reassure me on both those points.
Baroness Gill (Lab)
My Lords, the acute human cost of current global conflicts provides the undeniable catalyst for today’s debate. The plight of civilians, particularly in the catastrophic situation of Gaza, is of profound concern. The Government are entirely right to use these regulations to expand our foreign policy toolkit. By making the intentional obstruction of life-saving humanitarian assistance and serious breaches of international humanitarian law explicit, sanctionable offences, they are creating a necessary legal lever to address atrocities worldwide.
Crucially, these powers are truly global. While the immediate focus of many is the Middle East, the updated framework allows the UK to target perpetrators across other devastating theatres of war. It strengthens our hand, as the Minister has already outlined. It is to penalise those orchestrating violence or blocking food and medicine in Sudan, for example, where we have recently seen severe human rights violations and the restrictions of aid.
The updated framework gives us an explicit legal baseline to act decisively in conflicts across Myanmar, Syria, the Democratic Republic of the Congo and the Sahel region. Previously, punishing these acts required slow, country-specific geographic regimes. Today, we establish a unified global standard for accountability.
Furthermore, updating our powers to allow designations by descriptions rather than just by individual name provides the agility that is required in fast-moving conflicts. It ensures that the UK can act in immediate lockstep with international allies to deter actions that undermine humanitarian law—whether against violent settler networks in the West Bank or warlords in east Africa.
Procedural questions regarding delegated legislation and legal thresholds are fair matters for this House to scrutinise. However, technical caution must not paralyse urgent humanitarian leverage. Rather than regretting these regulations, our focus must be on efficient enforcement. Can the Minister confirm that the Foreign Office has the dedicated intelligence resources to rapidly monitor aid obstruction globally, ensuring that these powers are deployed effectively to protect vulnerable civilians in Gaza, Sudan and beyond?
Lord Young of Acton (Con)
My Lords, I declare my interest as the general secretary of the Free Speech Union, a director of the British Friends of Israel and the editor-in-chief and majority owner of the Daily Sceptic.
Sanctions should target wrongdoing, not lawful disagreement. No academic or journalist should fear sanctions and losing access to their bank account for challenging the Government’s account of a conflict. Yet these regulations risk blurring that distinction through broad, undefined references to “promotion”, “support” and “association”. The risk is particularly acute if the Government intend to rely on notoriously unreliable UN reporting on Israel. What happens to the academic who challenges such a report, or the journalist who exposes its flaws? As the publisher of the Daily Sceptic, would I be at risk of designation for publishing such an exposé?
Will the Minister confirm that lawful journalism, academic inquiry and political argument will not by themselves justify designation under these regulations? Will he also confirm that the Government will not rely on contested UN findings as evidence for designation without first testing them independently?
Lord McCabe (Lab)
My Lords, I draw attention to my entry in the register of interest.
As the noble Lord, Lord Leigh, told us, this decision represents a significant change in the position adopted by British Governments over many years. It is also a serious departure from long-standing Labour Party policy. Like many others, I worry about the implications of this and the damage that it might do to our relations with a vital ally and many innocent parties. The Foreign Secretary tells us that we cannot outsource our moral responsibilities, so he is taking the decision to act under our global human rights and international humanitarian law. However, unless we are going to see a raft of other measures, that sentiment could have a very hollow ring. What kind of moral responsibility does it show to act in one instance while turning a blind eye in many others?
Like other speakers, I ask my noble friend: if the Government are applying a global approach, can we expect soon to see measures directed at those who seized property and settlements in Northern Cyprus? Will we see real measures to curb the IRGC and the Iran-backed Houthis? Will we see measures against China and the Xinjiang settler organisation—and against Hamas for diverting aid in Gaza? If not, how can our Government avoid the charge that this decision is about acting against and singling out Israel?
Given the uncertainty and potential risks associated with these measures, was the Department for Business, Innovation, Science and Trade fully consulted before they were announced? Can my noble friend say with confidence that the regulations and the planned import ban are compatible with the UK-Israel trade and partnership agreement?
Lord Polak (Con)
I refer the House to my registered interests. Over many years, I have taken more than 150 delegations of parliamentarians to Israel and the region. I have seen what Britain can achieve when we are trusted and when we are in the room, and I have sadly watched this Government give it all away.
As my noble friend Lord Leigh said, within a day of the announcement our consul-general in Jerusalem was ordered to leave. British personnel were removed from the centre co-ordinating the Gaza ceasefire and rebuilding. Our training of Palestinian Authority security forces was stopped. Not one designation had been made, yet we lost our seat at the table before the ink was dry.
And for what? These regulations will not bring peace one day closer. How would the Government even know? Beyond counting designations, what measurable outcomes will they use to judge whether these sanctions improve humanitarian access?
The Abraham accords have shown that peace is built through trade, investment and partnership. Britain should be part of that. Instead, with tests that no one can define and penalties of up to seven years in prison, British banks and businesses cannot know where the Government’s line falls. Many will simply walk away from Israel. That damages British trade, it damages Israel and it damages the relationship between our two countries. I gently remind the Minister that the British mandate ended almost 80 years ago.
Only yesterday, in relation to our national security and defence, my right honourable friend Kemi Badenoch said:
“This is not a student union; this is the running of our country”.
This sanctions policy is another example of student politics at its worst.
During this debate, by my calculation, there have been about 40 legitimate questions posed to the Minister. We did not have an opportunity before the SI was laid, so I struggle to understand how such a flawed policy can be rushed through with no parliamentary scrutiny and done on purely domestic political considerations, with a by-election in Holborn and St Pancras and, frankly, pandering to the mob.
These measures do not help the two-state solution that the Government say they support. As the noble Lord, Lord Mendelsohn said, every serious peace proposal since the Clinton parameters of 2000 has expected the major settlement blocs to remain part of Israel.
So, if this policy is to stand, I ask the Minister three simple questions. First, how do these sanctions bring the two-state solution closer? Secondly, if the green line is now the line on which British sanctions turn, will the Government publish where it runs and say clearly whether east Jerusalem and the Golan Heights fall within it? Thirdly, will the planned advertising ban stop British estate agents, newspapers or community organisations from advertising homes in the Jewish neighbourhoods of Jerusalem?
Peace is built through engagement, not sanctions. Britain should be building bridges in the Middle East, not burning them.
Baroness Antrobus (Lab)
My noble friend Lord Mendelsohn omitted to declare his interest earlier and wishes to briefly do so.
Lord Mendelsohn (Lab)
My Lords, I apologise. In hacking my speech down, I omitted at the very beginning to declare my interests as set out in the register.
Lord Purvis of Tweed (LD)
My Lords, I should state that repeatedly in this debate there have been incorrect references to interests. The Companion is perfectly clear that references to interests need to be specific. There have been a number of instances in this debate that I hope the Government Whips and Opposition Whips will reflect on the handling of.
I welcome these sanctions. Indeed, having scrutinised all the sanctions that the UK has passed since 2018, I have called for the updating and expansion of the human rights sanctions. I welcome the new elements and criteria and also the fact that descriptions of actions will be put in place to prevent circumvention.
I shall refer briefly to the regret amendment. We already have designated individuals within the Israeli Government. Many Israeli actors have been designated under the human rights regime. I slightly regret the partisan tone in this debate, and I want to quote the noble Lord, Lord Cameron, when he was Foreign Secretary under the last Government:
“Today’s sanctions place restrictions on those involved in some of the most egregious abuses of human rights ... Extremist Israeli settlers are threatening Palestinians, often at gunpoint, and forcing them off land that is rightfully theirs. This behaviour is illegal and unacceptable”.
That was in February 2024. There are many elements of this debate today that are not new. Indeed, I agreed with the noble Lord, Lord Cameron. In fact, I questioned him in this House. Many who have taken part in this debate today did not.
Outposts are illegal under Israeli law. I do not understand why we should allow UK bodies to be immune from our law, facilitating settlements and outposts that are illegal under Israeli law. We have an obligation in this country to ensure that UK entities do not facilitate human rights abuses and egregious breaches of international humanitarian law, as the noble Lord, Lord Cameron, outlined in 2024.
I welcome the fact that this is a global regime, as the Minister said. Indeed, we can now move more quickly beyond Sudan, Syria, Myanmar and the DRC, where there is country-specific scope, as the Minister indicated. I am glad that the Minister mentioned Sudan. I welcome the fact that the commanders are now being sanctioned for the terrible human rights abuses in that conflict. The Minister normally says that Ministers do not comment on individuals to be sanctioned, but it is worth noting that the UK still has not sanctioned General Burhan and General Hemedti, the two people most responsible for the world’s worst humanitarian abuses.
My final point is about humanitarian relief. There is scope under these measures to have a Treasury licence for exemptions. Humanitarian scope is in place. I hope the Minister can confirm that the Government do indeed intend to have a humanitarian assistance licence.
Lord Callanan (Con)
My Lords, when the Government announced these sanctions, the Government and the Official Opposition reasserted our commitment to the two-state solution and Israel’s right to defend itself. We all want to see sustainable, long-term peace in the region. I know there is a broad consensus in the House on that matter. Also, for the avoidance of doubt, we all condemn settler violence, and I hope that the Israeli authorities will clamp down on many of the abuses we have seen.
However, as I said in September, the test by which the Government’s sanctions will be judged is whether they bring us closer to a sustainable two-state solution. We on these Benches are far from satisfied that the Government’s approach is any closer to achieving that. We were particularly concerned by the Government’s decision to announce these sanctions, which will take months to be implemented, surprisingly close to the Holborn and St Pancras by-election, which, incidentally, meant creating a further political row during the lead-up to the elections in Israel. This was a serious misjudgment, leading many of us to suspect that domestic political considerations were at the forefront of the Government’s consideration.
I share many of the concerns raised by noble Lords across the House today, including on the government Benches. I hope the Minister will be able to give full answers to the many serious questions that have been put to him today. If he needs to write to noble Lords to provide detailed replies, I would be grateful if he would commit to sharing those detailed answers with all Peers for the information of the House and laying copies of his replies in the Library.
I hope the Minister will forgive me if I add some questions to his extensive list. On religious freedom, the Government have said that these regulations would not affect freedom of religion. What assessment have they made of the impact on Jewish religious observance, including acts of worship, religious visits, religious goods and related payments; and of compatibility with Article 9, on freedom of religion, and Article 14, on prohibition of discrimination, of the European Convention on Human Rights that the Government keep telling us they are committed to, as given effect by the Human Rights Act 1998? Will they publish objective criteria distinguishing support for worship and religious institutions from financing settlement expansion before charities, donors and banks are expected to apply them?
Will the Government report annually to Parliament on designations and decisions not to designate by country and build an annual review or sunset clause into the operation of the regulations, so that their efficacy, fairness and proportionality can be assessed every year by all of us? Will the regulations be applied in a manner proportionate to their stated aims and consistent with the UK’s obligations under international law? Can the Minister tell us whether the Treasury, BIST, DHSC and relevant financial regulators were consulted on the wider effects, and will the Government publish a summary of their assessments?
Finally, on the necessity of these regulations, what specific conduct could not be addressed adequately under the 2020 regime, and what evidence led Ministers to conclude that these additional 2026 designation grounds were necessary, beyond domestic political considerations? I look forward to the Minister’s response, but should my noble friend Lord Leigh put his amendment to the vote, I will certainly support him.
Lord Wood of Anfield (Lab)
My Lords, I thank noble Lords for their contributions to this debate, and I echo what the noble Lord, Lord Walney, said about Meta Ramsay. We all miss her very much. I am sure he is right that she would have disagreed with many, if not the preponderance, of today’s SI amendments. The expansion of the global human rights sanctions regime, now the global human rights and international humanitarian law regime, shows how the UK is taking bold action to stand up for British values around the world.
On the amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Leigh, I am sorry to see opposition. I understand many of the arguments made by the noble Lord and others concerning the specific cases of Israel that he and most other noble Lords focused on, but I am disappointed to see opposition to this as the vehicle by which they express their passionate, strongly held views on the question of Israel and the UK’s relationship with Israel. Why? Because today is about something slightly different from what the majority of noble Lords have been focusing on. It is about an instrument whose purpose is to strengthen the UK’s ability to respond to serious abuses of human rights and violations of international humanitarian law wherever they occur. If the amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Leigh, were successful, this House would be on record as regretting the expansion of the Government’s powers to act wherever abuses of human rights or serious violations of international humanitarian law occur across the globe, and I do not believe that that is the message this House wants to send.
These regulations are not targeting any country; they are expanding the range of abuses upon which the global human rights regime will be based and upon which the UK Government can act. They are global in scope. They are designed to ensure the UK has the necessary powers to hold individuals and entities accountable for serious misconduct across a range of situations around the world. They provide an important and proportionate addition to our sanctions toolkit and strengthen our ability to act in defence of fundamental rights and international norms. I take the point made by my noble friend Lady Gill very much to heart. We need to maintain strong monitoring of human rights abuses and international humanitarian law rights abuses, including information from the United Nations and many other sources as well, to go back to the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Young.
Through his amendment and in his contribution, the noble Lord, Lord Leigh, has raised many specific questions about trade with Israel. To be clear, as the Foreign Secretary has said, we will continue to support important and valued trade with green-line Israel and its people. These regulations do not affect that trade. Indeed, they not about trade; they are about behaviour. The noble Lord also asked whether the Government will publish clear designation criteria and an evidence-based framework. The designation criteria are set out in the regulations themselves, specifically in Regulation 8.
Any designation must meet the legal tests established in sanctions legislation and be made in accordance with the Human Rights Act 1998. Decisions are made by Ministers on the basis of evidence and are subject to the safeguards and scrutiny established by Parliament. As a passing remark, Regulation 8 sets out the designation criteria and is almost identical, I believe, to Regulation 6 in the 2020 regulations. The idea that there is some massive redefinition of the small print is simply not true. The main changes are in Regulation 4, where we have added
“serious violation of international humanitarian law”
and wider human rights grounds. Many noble Lords’ comments are not correct in saying that there is a subversive expansion going on here to get particular cases in. That is factually incorrect.
Questions were raised regarding impact assessments and reporting to Parliament. A de minimis impact assessment has been completed and concluded that the expected additional impact on UK businesses will be negligible. That is because the regulations are enabling legislation only and are global in scope. The sanctions regime itself is not targeted at any specific country, conflict, sector, product, market or group of businesses. Any economic impacts arise only if Ministers decide to designate specific persons under the expanded regime. These designations are separate and case-by-case, and each designation follows a robust legal process. We designate according only to the specific grounds of the appropriate regime and our reasoning must be properly evidenced, with credible sources that can be relied upon in court. We regularly keep sanctions regimes and designations under review.
The noble Lord, Lord Evans, was right that the duty to report annually to Parliament was scrapped in 2022, by the previous Conservative Government. However, this House and the other place have a range of mechanisms through which sanctions policy and implementation are examined, including debates, Questions, committee scrutiny, correspondence and evidence sessions—and through extremely friendly text exchanges with friends such as the noble Lord, Lord Polak, on a regular basis. My honourable friend Minister Doughty writes regularly to the chair of the Foreign Affairs Committee, setting out the Government’s sanctions work in detail. Such correspondence is available in the Libraries of both Houses. I am committed, as I am sure noble Lords across the House already know, to continuing regular engagement with Members across this House on sanctions and related issues.
Let me respond quickly to some individual remarks—I can deal with only some of them. A number of noble Lords asked whether this instrument was singling out or focused on Israel in some way. This is not about Israel; it is a statutory instrument amending the global human rights regime. Let me refer to some of the designations that have been made: in Georgia, as I mentioned before; in Sri Lanka, where we sanctioned individuals responsible for serious human rights abuses and violations during the Sri Lankan civil war; and in Cambodia, where we have used them to deliver high-impact sanctions against global conglomerates running sham and scam centres, as well as their enablers. It is simply not true that this is a regime targeted on Israel or any one country.
Baroness Foster of Oxton (Con)
May I just bring to the attention of the Minister a press release that came out on 8 September, a week after Sir Keir Starmer resigned? It read:
“UK to bring forward new powers to respond to moral emergency in Palestine, and target illegal settlement activity in the West Bank to protect the viability of a two-state solution”.
I will happily give this document to the Minister when he has completed his response.
Lord Wood of Anfield (Lab)
I thank the noble Baroness; I am familiar with that document—I may even have had a hand in helping to write it. There is confusion, if the noble Baroness does not mind me saying so, at the heart of her point. On 8 September, the Foreign Secretary announced two things—in fact, he announced many things, including a series of sanctions, which some noble Lords have forgotten, on the financing arms of Hamas and Hezbollah, but he announced two things in particular.
First, the Foreign Secretary announced that there will be a new sanctions regime designed to stop UK economic activity supporting the expansion of illegal settlements, and that that would be laid before Parliament within six to nine months. Many comments made by noble Lords and noble Baronesses in the last hour have been focused on a Bill that is yet to be produced and measures that have yet to be clarified. I take very seriously the injunctions of many noble Lords, including my noble friend Lord Mendelsohn, for clarity to be provided, as much as is consistent with those new rules. But today is about the second thing the Foreign Secretary talked about: the expansion of our existing global human rights regime. That is what we are discussing, and it is not what the quote the noble Baroness read out was about.
I will happily come back to noble Lords on specific issues, but I am afraid I do not have time to go through everything now.
As I said earlier, if this amendment was successful, we would not be taking action on any one country; we would be saying no to the expansion of the Government’s ability to act in response to abuse of human rights or serious violations of international humanitarian law. Is that the message we want to send, or do we want to make a general modification to an established and successfully operating set of regulations to expand our ability to act against abuses that we all debate, day-to-day, and which people rightly get upset about and ask me Oral Questions about on a regular basis?
Lord True (Con)
My Lords, I understand that the Minister wishes to make progress, and I welcome the fact that more time was given to this through the usual channels. However, the Minister says he has no more time. Will he assure the House that he will place in the Library a full response to all the questions raised by noble Lords in this debate?
Lord Wood of Anfield (Lab)
I will happily provide answers to the questions I have not been able to address.
Lord Wood of Anfield (Lab)
I am happy to place them in the Library.
In recent years, the UK has transformed its use of sanctions and continues to lead internationally in their implementation. This amended global human rights and international humanitarian law regime gives us a stronger and more flexible means of promoting accountability and responsibility, and responding to some of the gravest abuses seen around the world. I therefore respectfully urge noble Lords not to support the amendment from the noble Lord, Lord Leigh. It is motivated by things that are not the substance of today’s regulations, which concern the global human rights regime rules.
To conclude, I once again thank the House for the many insightful contributions and the continued cross-party support for our sanctions regime. We continue to lead internationally on sanctions implementation. This amended global human rights and international humanitarian law regime will give the UK a powerful tool to respond to human rights abuses and international humanitarian law violations across the world.
Lord Leigh of Hurley (Con)
My Lords, I thank the very many noble Lords who spoke in this debate. I listened to some extremely powerful, passionate and very well-informed comments from all sides of the House, and I am extremely grateful to those noble Lords who took the time and trouble so to do.
There were some 40 to 50 questions asked, and I think the Minister answered about 10. The purpose of our Chamber is to look at things in more detail and express reservations, and there are clearly enormous reservations about these statutory instruments. The protections we have asked for and the concerns we have raised have not been answered. It is therefore more than appropriate that the opinion of this House is tested, and I wish to do that.
Representation of the People Bill
(1 day, 9 hours ago)
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Lord Fuller
“(2A) A local authority in England, Wales or Scotland must ensure that information given to relevant young people relating to registering to vote in an election is neutral or politically balanced and not designed to favour one outcome or party over another.”Member's explanatory statement
This amendment is intended to ensure that all sides of the argument are presented to relevant young people under clause 15 regardless of the local authority's political control.
Lord Fuller (Con)
My Lords, I have Amendments 18 and 19 in this short group. Both are related to the way in which looked-after children are encouraged to register to vote and the information that has been provided to them to inform that choice, and they would ensure that party politics can play no part in that decision if there is automatic registration, so that one political outcome was not unduly influenced over the other. Both my amendments relate to the entirety of the United Kingdom, with Amendment 18 referring to Great Britain and Amendment 19 the mirroring provision for Northern Ireland. It is the local state in Great Britain—the councils and their agents—that has responsibility as corporate parents for looked-after children, the “relevant young people” referred to in these amendments. In some cases, that corporate parenting responsibility lasts all the way up to the age of 24.
There are some things that should be apolitical, but it is an inescapable truth that councils are political organisations. While this amendment does not suggest that councils behave politically in every decision they take, given the importance of this Bill to the underpinning of democracy in the United Kingdom, the amendments take a belt-and-braces approach to being explicit that, in encouraging young people to come on to the register, that choice cannot, or should not, be tainted or otherwise influenced by party-political considerations. We must remove the temptation for anyone to improperly influence the register by tilting the balance so that only some cohorts are registered but not others.
Nothing in this group is meant to imply that councils are seeking to act improperly. We have to recognise that councils now engage with certain external organisations, such as private care homes, privately run caring establishments or even charitable bodies, to deliver their caring and corporate parenting responsibilities. They may be within the council’s own territory or in another part of the country. Together, my amendments would ensure that the duty of neutrality would be extended to not only the local authorities or health boards but those in that wider care ecosystem that benefits children and is paid for by local government wherever they are. Those organisations, councils or care homes, are in an extraordinarily influential position in the care of relevant young people. They provide food and accommodation, are responsible for health and welfare and all the other issues of day-to-day life.
By definition, without the guiding hand of their natural parents, these children are more socially vulnerable and susceptible to undue influence. These amendments therefore provide an additional level of certainty and assurance to ensure that such vulnerabilities are not taken advantage of politically by the council, through its policies, or more subtly by the political predispositions of individual care workers, wardens or other members of the professional staff on the front line, as well as by that ecosystem of contractors and charities. It is as simple as that. I beg to move.
Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)
My Lords, in speaking to my Amendment 18, I will also touch on issues raised in the similar amendments, Amendment 43 tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Lister, and Amendment 44 tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett of Manor Castle.
We are very much concerned that the reduction of the age limit to 16 has to be accompanied by a real effort at proper civic education. As a Liberal, I would say there should be a much greater effort at civic education anyway. The extent to which our young are not taught about British values and the rights and obligations of British citizenship is profoundly worrying and needs to be overcome.
Others will speak about some of the surveys that have been done on the thinness of civic education in schools. I went around three schools in the spring, one in Yorkshire and two in London, just to see from a very unrepresentative sample what they were doing, and was shocked, even in the public school I attended—one of Britain’s best public schools—at how little time was spent on this. I was given the lesson plan by the head of PSHE at one school for all the things she had to teach in one hour a week each year, including sexual behaviour, financial education, disease, and heaven knows what else, and of course, with political education fitting into that. All the teachers I spoke to said, “This is simply not possible to achieve; we need to have more time”. That is part of the message we want the Minister to give us some answers on: that the current curriculum review recognises this and that it will be expanded.
For Liberals and for people who believe in liberal democracy, the teaching of citizenship is a fundamental part of teaching people how to take their part in a democratic society. I am well aware that there have been many, particularly in the Conservative ranks, who are doubtful about the possibilities of teaching people political education, particularly in state schools. As a historian, I have read a number of debates from the early 19th century in which Conservative Peers doubted that education as such should be provided to the working class, because it would give them ideas above their station. Education is, of course, subversive. It teaches people how to question the conventional wisdom and how to think for themselves. That is part of what we should be doing.
In the United States, we have seen recently an even more fundamental attack on liberal education in the Trump Administration’s attack on American universities as unavoidably left-wing and liberal institutions, because they are concerned about evidence, doubt, argument and a number of things that the Trump Administration appear not to like. I hope none of us here share such a view.
As we see in some amendments in this group and later, there has been some concern about the possibility of neutrality. I declare an interest as someone who spent much of my career teaching politics and international politics in various universities. Of course, we all come with our biases, but we try to teach people how to think for themselves. At the London School of Economics, I had a number of Hong Kong and Singaporean students. The hardest job I had with them was to persuade them that they were supposed to disagree with their teacher. I see the noble Baroness, Lady Royall, nodding in agreement.
Baroness Lister of Burtersett (Lab)
My Lords, my Amendment 43 seeks to ensure that the extension of votes to 16 year-olds, as argued by the noble Lord, Lord Wallace of Saltaire, is accompanied by the necessary citizenship education to prepare young people to exercise their new rights and responsibilities as citizens. A number of noble Lords emphasised this in the debates about 16 and 17 year-olds on our first day in Committee. The amendment calls for a catch-up programme of political and media literacy and citizenship, supported by teacher training, with particular attention to the needs of student groups who face socioeconomic disadvantage or most lack electoral confidence, including girls and young women.
I should say that the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett of Manor Castle, who supports my amendment, asked me to give her apologies that she cannot be in her place to speak to her Amendment 44, which would place responsibility for citizenship education on the Electoral Commission; otherwise, it is very similar in its tone to my amendment.
I applaud the extension of the franchise to 16 and 17 year-olds, but I am well aware, from research that I was involved in as an academic some years ago, that some young people, not surprisingly, lack confidence about voting. Professor Bryony Hoskins of the University of Roehampton—who has conducted more recent research and whose assistance I am grateful for—tells me that
“young people approach their first election with unequal access to political learning, unequal confidence and different opportunities to practise making their voices heard. Without action to address these differences, there is a risk that the reform will disproportionately benefit those already equipped to participate”.
This underlines the importance of good citizenship education. I was a member of the Select Committee on Citizenship and Civic Engagement, the spirit of which lived on in the recent QSD in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Norton of Louth. The committee emphasised:
“Citizenship education has a crucial role to play in helping to build active citizens”.
Its importance is all the greater in the context of the extension of the franchise to 16 and 17 year-olds.
More recently, the APPG on Political and Media Literacy—supported by Shout Out UK, to which I am also grateful for its help—has pointed to
“a growing body of research indicating that young people who receive structured political and media education demonstrate higher levels of civic engagement and greater resilience to misinformation”.
They are more likely to become first-time voters, which increases the chances of them voting subsequently.
With regard to gender, Professor Hoskins’s research shows that even though girls tend to outperform boys in civic knowledge, they demonstrate lower confidence in their ability to understand and engage in formal politics. Longitudinal research in England shows that the gender gap in political confidence widens between ages 11 and 16, precisely the years preceding the proposed voting age.
When it comes to socioeconomic disadvantage, the IP-PAD UK adolescent study found that civic confidence diverges sharply by place. Its report suggested that
“'democratic confidence is shaped not only by age, but also by socio-economic experience”.
Another study, by Dr James Weinberg at the University of Sheffield, underlined the current fragmented state of democratic education in England, with stark disparities between private schools and state schools serving affluent communities on the one hand and state schools in economically deprived communities on the other. More affluent parents are more likely to talk to their children about politics and to feel confident doing so. It is perhaps not surprising that other research found that, when they had access to it, disadvantaged students often gained more from citizenship education than their more privileged peers.
Research undertaken by Professor Hoskins for G-EPIC—Gender Empowerment through Politics in Classrooms—has developed and evaluated teaching approaches designed to strengthen political confidence, particularly among more disadvantaged girls. Its research should inform the kind of catch-up programme envisaged in this amendment. Indeed, ACT—the Association for Citizenship Teaching, which has done so much to press the cause of citizenship education—is currently promoting these teaching resources.
I welcome the Government’s appreciation of the importance of citizenship education, especially to newly enfranchised voters, as expressed, for example, by my noble friend Lady Smith of Malvern in winding up the recent QSD.
I have a number of questions for my noble friend the Minister. First, how will the Government ensure that newly enfranchised young people receive appropriate citizenship education before their first opportunity to vote? Secondly, how will that provision address the gender and socioeconomic inequalities in political confidence that I have raised? Thirdly, what teacher training and resources will support inclusive delivery? Fourthly, how will implementation be evaluated to establish its success in benefiting young people facing the greatest barriers to political participation?
In concluding, I stress the urgency of the kind of catch-up programme envisaged in this amendment. In its briefing on the Bill, the Electoral Commission notes:
“We’ve long recommended improvements to democratic education in schools, and the lowering of the voting age makes this more pressing”.
As my noble friend Lady Smith of Malvern said at the end of the QSD:
“This is a pivotal moment for citizenship education”.—[Official Report, 19/10/26; col. 545.]
The need to act quickly was emphasised by my noble friend Lord Blunkett, the honorary president of ACT, who regrets he cannot be in its place. He warned that, if we fail to revise the curriculum so as to inform, educate and equip young people to take on voting at the ages of 16 and 17, it will be a dereliction of duty. Can my noble friend the Minister reassure us that we will fulfil our duty to the young people who will exercise their rights and responsibilities as citizens for the first time—I hope—at the next general election?
Baroness Royall of Blaisdon (Lab)
My Lords, I will briefly speak in favour of Amendments 23 and 43. Following on from my noble friend Lady Lister, I know that my noble friend Lord Blunkett would say that the new curriculum, in which citizenship will be made a compulsory subject for primary schools, with a stronger emphasis on the subject in secondary schools, should be introduced in 2027 rather than 2028. Can my noble friend the Minister say whether it might be possible to change the curriculum and introduce the changes in 2027?
I understand that the citizenship GCSE is really rather good and I encourage all schools to ensure that the maximum number of students can study for that GCSE, but I know that there is a dearth of citizenship teachers. Can my noble friend the Minister say what we are doing to ensure that there are more teachers qualified to teach citizenship? As the noble Lord, Lord Wallace of Saltaire, said, that is the way to ensure that it is properly taught, and taught impartially.
Lord Farmer (Con)
My Lords, I will speak to my Amendment 24, to which my noble friend Lady Meyer added her name, as well as my Amendments 280 and 287.
At Second Reading, I spoke against plans to lower the voting age to 16 on three grounds: evidence on brain development; the confusion that these plans bring to our policy approach to maturity; and the Government playing to the imperative to give ever more stuff to voters, in this case young people. Young people face far more pressing issues which are far harder to resolve; progress on these would lead to much more substantive and beneficial change.
Today, I will focus on the first of those grounds. I tabled Amendments 24, 280 and 287 partly in response to the Minister’s reply. I am grateful that she found time in her closing remarks at Second Reading to refer to my speech, but what she said concerned me as to how clear I had been. She mentioned the scientific evidence I gave against 16 and 17 year-olds being able to vote, saying that
“we do not give people the vote based on their intellectual or cognitive abilities, and that applies to 16 and 17 year-olds—as it does to all our voters”.—[Official Report, 14/9/26; col. 1058.]
I had not at all been arguing to restrict voting to those with sufficient cognitive and intellectual ability: that would be elitist. I was not talking about what a 16 year-old understands. My remarks were exclusively about maturity. I mentioned how staff across the Youth Custody Service always refer to 16 and 17 year-olds as “children”, not because of their cognitive ability but to remind themselves of their relative immaturity.
Neuroscience has quantified and plotted on a graph what brain maturation looks like at 16. I cited the much-respected developmental psychologist Professor Laurence Steinberg, whose studies have found that, across all demographic groups and both sexes, resistance to peer influence increases in a linear fashion between the ages 14 and 18 and seems pretty set for the majority at the end of that period. Hence, typically, by 18 most young people have developed the capacity to stand up for what they believe and withstand peer pressure.
I highlighted other studies of the brain’s control system or executive functions, which enable young people to regulate their emotional reactions, perhaps to a shared reel or video short, and make independent judgments. They stabilise to adult levels only in late adolescence—at 18 to 20 years old. As the researchers of a key study say:
“Results provide a canonical trajectory of executive function maturation that demarcates the boundaries of adolescence”.
Lowering the voting age tramples these boundaries and appears evidentially indefensible.
Baroness Meyer (Con)
My Lords, I rise to speak to Amendment 24, tabled by my noble friend Lord Farmer, to which I have added my name. This amendment asks for something entirely reasonable: proper assessment of the evidence on the decision-making capability of 16 and 17 year-olds, compared with those aged 18 or over. Surely, before lowering the voting age, Parliament should have that evidence.
This is not about questioning young people’s intelligence or enthusiasm. It is about whether, at that age, they have developed the maturity and independence of judgment to understand the long-term consequences of their decisions. The scientific evidence is there. To give an example, Professor Sallie Baxendale, a clinical neuropsychologist at UCL, explains that, during adolescence, the brain undergoes extensive rewiring. The connections responsible for rational judgment, impulse control and assessing long-term consequences are still developing. In other words: at 16, the brain is still very much a work in progress.
Research also shows that teenagers are particularly sensitive to emotions, immediate rewards and peer pressure. This is particularly so in today’s world of social media, influencers, foreign interference and online campaigning. Of course, many 16 year-olds are intelligent and politically engaged. But intelligence is not the same as maturity. Most of them are still at school, living at home, and have yet to experience real independence.
Voting is not just about expressing an opinion; it is about choosing who governs us, who taxes us and who makes decisions affecting our future. We already recognise that young people need protection. Both the Children Act and the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child generally recognise that those under 18 are children. As noted before, in England, people cannot marry, buy alcohol or tobacco, serve on a jury or stand for Parliament until they are 18. I remind the House that the Mariage and Civil Partnership (Minimum Age) Act 2022 passed with cross-party support, including from Labour. It raised the minimum age of marriage to 18, even with parental consent. Why? To protect children from forced marriage and family coercion. If we protect children from family coercion over marriage, should we not be equally concerned about pressure from parents or other adults enticing them to vote in a particular way? Surely, the principle is the same: protecting children from coercion.
Only a few months ago, the Government announced plans to restrict children’s access to social media in order to
“give kids their childhood back”.
But how does involving children in political decisions give them their childhood back? Is it not bizarre that the Government consider 16 year-olds to be still in need of protection from TikTok yet old enough to choose who will govern the country?
The Bill proposes bringing children into the electoral registration system before they are even old enough to vote. When questioned the other day, the Minister told us that,
“Even by the age of 14”,
children
“have decided what subjects they want to continue to study”,—[Official Report, 2/11/26; col. 1390.]
as a reason why children at age 14 should be involved. Surely choosing school subjects is hardly comparable to choosing who should govern our country.
Baroness Royall of Blaisdon (Lab)
My Lords, I do not know whether the noble Baroness was in the Chamber when we discussed these issues only two days ago, but all the arguments which she has quite rightly addressed this afternoon were indeed rehearsed then. They have been discussed and debated very widely.
Baroness Meyer (Con)
I was basically talking to the amendment, which requires evidence. That is why I was talking about how we do not have the evidence, and that the evidence we have shows us the contrary: that children under the age of 18 are probably not mature enough.
Surely choosing which subjects you study at school is not comparable with choosing who should run our country. This is where a lot of noble Lords before me questioned whether the Government think that this measure will encourage young people to vote for them. I suspect that, if the figures were different and young people voted for the Conservative Party, we would have a very different argument at this stage.
Baroness Meyer (Con)
I am sorry, but changing the voting age should be a matter of principle, not electoral advantage.
I am particularly concerned about vulnerable children, including children in care, who, evidence tells us, are more susceptible to pressure or manipulation. Surely before extending the franchise to younger and potentially vulnerable people, the Government should establish whether they have the maturity and independence of judgment to exercise that right without undue influence.
Lord Balfe (Con)
As someone who grew up as a child in care, I can assure the Committee that I did not fit into the description put forward by the noble Baroness.
Baroness Meyer
The Government point out that, in Scotland, Wales, the Isle of Man, Jersey and Guernsey, children aged 16 can vote in certain elections. However, UK general elections determine who takes responsibility for our national defence and security, and so are quite different from elections in those smaller countries and areas. These are decisions on war and peace.
If the Government are confident that 16 is an appropriate voting age, surely they should welcome a proper assessment and explain why they are prepared to disregard scientific concerns about maturity and independent judgment—or is political advantage the real reason behind this proposal? I ask the Government to look at this amendment and bring forward some evidence. Frankly, some of us might even question whether we have fully acquired the maturity needed to vote at the age of 18.
Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)
My Lords, I share some of the worries summed up by Amendments 18 and 19, in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Fuller, about ensuring that all sides of the argument are heard by our newly enfranchised 16 year-olds, especially looked-after children.
I have noted Amendment 43, in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Lister, and Amendment 44, in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett, which both focus on the role that education can play in preparing young people for voting. As a former teacher, I always welcome more knowledge-based education, but I am concerned, for a number of reasons which I raise now.
First, this would put an undue burden on teachers. As we know, every time there is a social problem in this country, somebody says that education will solve it, and teachers are tearing their hair out every time they hear that. Secondly, how on earth might we trust that, if this is the main source of information that young people are going to get before they vote, it is suitably impartial?
In an earlier group, there was a very important discussion in which concern expressed about undue influence on voters, sometimes from families, sometimes women being coerced, sometimes from religious groups, and so on and so forth. We all took that seriously, as it is an important debate. Here we have to ask whether young voters could be unduly influenced, and by what. I am concerned about how we ensure, when talking about education and linking it directly, as these amendments seek to do, to 16 year-olds being prepared to vote, that it is based on impartial information.
As noble Lords will note, my concern in relation to votes for 16 year-olds is about their dependence on state bodies, as people who have not got the majority, because I want to protect the notion of the independence of all voters. It seems to me that we are going to have a group of voters who, by the nature of the way society is organised, are not independent. That most expresses itself, funnily enough, in school or in instances of looked-after children, dependent on the state or local councils, as the noble Lord, Lord Fuller, explained.
I have a general concern that the whole discussion could lead to the politicisation of schools, and that really worries me. The noble Lord, Lord Wallace of Saltaire, made the point that education is subversive. It absolutely is, and, to be fair, I am a great fan of being subversive—I try to make a habit of it. However, linking the idea of education as subversive with saying, “You must now go out and be a responsible citizen and vote”, could get us into some difficulties.
Baroness Lister of Burtersett (Lab)
The noble Baroness referred to my amendment and has concerns about it. I remind her that I made the point about training and resources, because it would have to be adequately resourced. Does the noble Baroness not agree with the whole concept of citizenship education, because that seems to be the tenor of her remarks?
Baroness Fox of Buckley
I am about to explain my concerns about the amendment of the noble Baroness, Lady Lister. I think citizenship education can be excellent, and a
“catch-up programme of political and media literacy”
sounds like a sensible, impartial and pragmatic intervention. But I have concerns, and I am raising them. I am not opposing the amendment; I am probing.
In recent years, citizenship education has, in my experience of going into schools and working in educational settings, become somewhat muddled in its agenda, and is often a vehicle for social justice campaigning, when you actually look at what is going on. To use one example, there is a call in the amendment for
“experts, charities and civil society organisations”
to give advice to the Government on citizenship education. We are talking about charities—what could go wrong with that?—civil society organisations and NGOs, but we all know that, very often, they are highly politicised, highly partial and there are all sorts of controversies around them.
To take one recent example, during the Black Lives Matter period in relation to George Floyd, many schools invited NGOs, charities and organisations to help them sort out how they should best deal with the response to Black Lives Matter. We ended up with quite extensive and, in some instances, toxic examples of the introduction of critical race theory into classrooms, unconscious bias training, children accusing others of having white privilege, off-the-scale decolonising of the curriculum and so on. We have to be careful that charities and third parties, in relation to educating children for elections, are not just a vehicle for political propaganda.
Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)
My Lords, I am doing my best to follow the logic of the noble Baroness’s argument. Is she saying that civic education is fine but that no social justice should be taught?
Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)
I am suggesting that a particular reading of social justice is one-sided and political. We need to show some caution. Civics education per se is one thing. This is an argument that civics education should be used to prepare young people to vote in elections, which is a different thing. We must show some caution. I am going to come back to this, noble Lords will be delighted to know, in a later group.
I finish with one example that might illustrate my point. I was on a panel for a debate on education after the last election. A head teacher on the panel shared with the audience, with horror, that a citizenship studies mock election in his school had seen some pupils stand as Reform candidates. Even worse, they won—overwhelmingly. He used this as an example of the dangerous radicalisation of youth and the need to tackle extremism and that the school was now working on ensuring that pupils who exhibited such traits would be introduced to ideas that would counter them.
I make no party-political point here, but this raises the kinds of issues that I am concerned about. How dare the head teacher see a political party in this country as the wrong political party. I was shocked and argued back, as noble Lords can imagine. With voting for 16 year-olds on the horizon, we must ensure that such political prejudices do not become undue influences on political decision-making by 16 year-olds who are being told that they are being treated as adults in making up their own minds. If we depend on schools to shape their minds around the political issues that they will have to choose around, then we are in trouble.
Lord Leigh of Hurley (Con)
My Lords, it is always a pleasure to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Fox, in the debate on this Bill. I will speak to two amendments. On Amendment 24, I congratulate my noble friends Lord Farmer and Lady Meyer, who know a huge amount in this field and are experts in this area. I am very grateful to them for their contributions and their amendments today.
The area I want to focus on is peer pressure. The noble Baroness, Lady Royall, is right; we did discuss this two days ago. But this is a slightly different perspective. When I raised the issue of peer pressure last time, the Minister responded by saying that the Government do not go into cognitive development and do not wish to, which I accept. But this is a different issue; this is about peer pressure.
Last time, again, the noble Baroness, Lady Royall, challenged me on the scientific evidence I cited, and my noble friend Lady O’Neill gave an answer, which was independently confirmed by my noble friend Lady Meyer. The expert in this field, Professor Laurence Steinberg of Temple University, has written extensively, both on his own and with others, about peer pressure and the inability of children to resist it. It gets better for children as they reach the age of 18 and beyond. That raises important questions. I say this in a co-operative spirit: the Government need to recognise that there is a potential problem of peer pressure for voters aged 16 and take steps to ensure that children are able to make decisions without that peer pressure.
The noble Lord, Lord Wallace of Saltaire, after he had gone into the internal machinations of the Conservative Party, which is one of his favourite subjects, made the very good point that it is vital that voters make independent decisions based on their own experiences and determination. My fear is that there will be gangs and influencers, and in certain communities extensive family pressure on people to cast their vote a certain way. The earlier response from the Front Bench—that there is always peer pressure—is fair, but we are saying that there is evidence that 16 to 18 year-olds are more susceptible to peer pressure than people over the age of 18. What steps will the Government take to ensure that they are protected?
Lord Fuller (Con)
My noble friend has just mentioned people who are aged 16 to 18 and can vote, but the Bill throughout assumes that people aged 14 or above, as attainers, are going to prepare to vote. I wonder whether my noble friend might think a little bit about not just people who have reached 16 but also those who are under 16 and even more susceptible to peer pressure?
Lord Leigh of Hurley (Con)
I could not agree more. I did not want to go down that route, because the counter argument would be, “We are only giving the vote to 16 year-olds”. But who knows? In future, it might be 14 year-olds. My noble friend Lord Fuller is absolutely spot on.
In the absence of my noble friend Lady Berridge, I want to address Amendment 44A. I am very worried about this. I have done a lot of canvassing. I have canvassed in every election since 1979—all for the same party I hasten to add—and not always with much success. Nevertheless, I have been out there regularly in a multitude of constituencies. Regularly, particularly in my own constituency of Queen’s Park and Maida Vale, which was previously Westminster North, I have found myself canvassing people who literally speak no English. When I knock on the door and try to communicate with them, they immediately pick up the phone and speak to their spouse or someone—I do not know who—and ask for instructions on what to say.
That is one issue, but the particular issue in Amendment 44A is about protecting children. Again, as a canvasser—I am sure that all noble Lords have done their share of canvassing—in the past, when the door is answered by a 16 year-old, one has simply said, “Can I speak to your parents?” Now, we will have to engage with 16 year-olds, which presents some challenges.
I am not particularly comfortable with the idea of having to knock on the door and engage in conversation with a 16 year-old to try to persuade them to vote for my party. I just do not want to be in that position. I am comfortable with an 18 year-old; I am not comfortable with doing that with a 16 year-old. Indeed, the Government recognise that 16 year-olds have to be protected. If I want to interact with 16 year-olds at the various schools with which I am involved, I have to be cleared to do that. I cannot just rock up at the classroom without having various checks, but as a canvasser, I can knock on the door and engage with a 16 year-old without any checks. I am not worried about me, but I am worried about other people.
Let us take this to not an absurd but a logical conclusion. What is to stop predators identifying children now on the electoral roll and going to see them, supposedly to canvass them but actually with other purposes in mind? I am very worried about this. They can justify to the authorities that they are entering into a dialogue with a 16 year-old because, they will claim, they are out canvassing, but they have an ulterior motive. I want to know from the Government what protection they plan to give in those circumstances.
It gets a lot worse if we are saying that 14 and 15 year-olds need to be educated. What happens if someone says, perhaps with some credibility, “I want to go and talk to 14 and 15 year-olds because they need to be persuaded to vote for my party”? Heaven knows what is going to happen on the doorstep. When I go canvassing, I am regularly invited in to discuss the subject over a glass of wine, a cup of tea or whatever. I always refuse because that is the guidance, but that does not mean that other people will. We are giving people the opportunity to enter vulnerable people’s homes and, if children are on their own at home, to have a discussion with them, supposedly about political matters—but who knows?
I do not have the answer to this problem, but I can see that it is a real problem, and I would be grateful if the Minister could address it now or later.
Lord Rennard (LD)
My Lords, as a young person, I was so susceptible to subversive influences such as BBC television news, Radio 4’s “World at One”, which I listened to every day, and the Guardian, which I bought daily, that by the time I was 14 I was treasurer of my branch of the Liberal Party, and by the time I was 16 I was secretary of the constituency. I do not suggest for a moment that that is normal for a teenager, but my point is that people are very different and should be treated differently.
Turning to these amendments, the most publicised aspect of this Bill is that which we debated on Monday—the principle of extending the franchise to 16 and 17 year -olds—and I do not wish to go over those arguments again. However, I do wish to say that the good intention of seeking to encourage the engagement of young people in political processes will fail unless we do much more about citizenship education. I accept that there are greater risks to our democracy, especially in the internet age, as most young people rely on information obtained online. The All-Party Parliamentary Group on Political and Media Literacy, of which I am an active member, says in its briefing that foundational political and media literacy education is crucial to the health of our democracy. It warns that simply changing the voting age will not in itself encourage more civic responsibility or more sustained participation in democratic processes. I mentioned on Monday how Jersey lowered its voting age to 16 in 2008, but it was not such a successful experience because of the lack of civic education to support it.
The research compiled by the academic advisory group to our APPG reveals both an overwhelming desire among young people to engage and a troubling structural deficit in how our current school system prepares them for it. Young people rely heavily on social media. They are therefore more vulnerable to digital misinformation and less educated and equipped with critical media literacy tools that should be part of citizenship education.
The noble Baroness, Lady Lister of Burtersett, quoted the excellent research from Dr James Weinberg, who studied information from over 3,000 teachers across over half of all secondary schools. He found that at present, less than a third of secondary schools offer weekly lessons in political or citizenship education and over a quarter provide no democratic education whatsoever. The noble Baroness also drew attention to how state schools serving economically deprived communities provide significantly less political literacy education than private schools or state schools in affluent areas. Democratic confidence must not remain the preserve of the privileged. The danger of ignorance among the most disadvantaged represents a threat to the principles which should underpin a democracy.
Lord Pack (LD)
My Lords, as several noble Lords have illustrated in their speeches and in their amendments in this group, it is important that we get the information and educational framework right. That would be the case even if this Bill did not contain a change in the voting age, but it is all the more so given that it does. I hope we will hear some positive noises from the Government in due course on that important topic.
As we all know, whether we agree with it or not, the decision that this Bill legislates for, to reduce the voting age to 16, was a manifesto commitment from the party that won a clear majority under our voting system—and I know some noble Lords near me are particularly keen on that voting system. The Labour Party won an overwhelming majority with a clear manifesto commitment. I am therefore not sure how good a use of time it is—given the many other important issues we need to get stuck into in Committee—to be continually relitigating that basic point of principle, which was a manifesto commitment that has been debated extensively already. Having said that, I will follow my own advice and bring my remarks to a close.
Baroness O’Neill of Bexley (Con)
I will start where the noble Lord left off. I am grateful to all noble Lords who have contributed to this debate. The amendments in this group raise many important questions about the responsibilities that accompany the Government’s proposal to lower the voting age to 16. It is a manifesto commitment, we accept that, but there are responsibilities that go alongside that and things the Government need to be aware of and address, because there is no doubt that people out there will be asking about this.
We should all agree that young people ought to understand how our democracy works, how to register to vote and how to exercise their democratic rights, but we must consider whether the Government have put sufficient thought into the education and safeguards necessary if the change to the franchise is to go ahead. My noble friend Lord Fuller’s Amendments 18 and 19 would sensibly require politically neutral and balanced voter registration to be provided to young people. These amendments seek to prevent local authorities run by any particular party from influencing election material one way or the other. We must not forget that councils are fundamentally political organisations.
My noble friend Lord Fuller has accurately identified that looked-after children are socially vulnerable and at risk of being influenced by the authority that looks after them. We should be aware of that fundamental point. Information provided by public authorities must be impartial, especially when it concerns young people who may be engaging with the electoral system for the very first time. Can the Minister explain what safeguards will ensure that registration information provided by local authorities, and the relevant bodies in Northern Ireland, is politically neutral? How will be compliance be assessed and monitored?
I welcome my noble friend Lord Farmer’s Amendments 24, 280 and 287, concerning the decision-making abilities of 16 and 17 year-olds. I congratulate my noble friend Lady Meyer on putting the case for considering the safeguards around that as well. These amendments ask the Government to assess the evidence before implementing a significant constitutional change. They are not saying that that change is not going to happen but that they should consider it beforehand. Can the Minister explain what assessment the Government have undertaken of the decision-making abilities of 16 and 17 year-olds, and will she commit to publishing that evidence before the new voting age comes into effect?
The amendments concerning citizenship education and political literacy are also relevant. Amendment 43, in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Lister, proposes a programme of education and citizenship in secondary schools. The noble Lord, Lord Wallace of Saltaire, has also raised that the Secretary of State should report on progress in the changes to citizenship education. Thus, there is clearly a shared recognition across your Lordships’ House that extending the franchise cannot be considered in isolation from the education that young people receive—everyone is in agreement on that one.
However, I must respectfully disagree with Amendment 44, tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett, albeit that it was not spoken to. While I welcome the underlying suggestion that children should be educated about their duty to vote, we should not single out groups of children and educate them based on supposed groupings. Different children must not be educated differently about the vote they share. As we saw in the fruitful debate on ballot secrecy, we must be careful that political education does not become political persuasion. Can the Minister tell us what guidance will be provided to schools and teachers to ensure that such education remains balanced, and what additional resources will be made available to deliver it?
My noble friend Lady Berridge is, unfortunately, unable to be in her place today. My noble friend Lord Leigh of Hurley referred to her Amendment 44A, in which she raises a very valid point. I think most of us in this Chamber have canvassed and knocked on doors. When we see a young person, we generally say, “Can we speak to Mum and Dad, or your carer?” We will now have to assess what age that young person is and maybe engage in conversation with them. We really need to consider that as a consequence of this proposal as canvassers will be engaging with younger voters.
My noble friend raises whether there will need to be necessary safeguarding guidance for political campaigners engaging with children. We should be thinking about that particularly important issue. If political parties and campaigners are to engage more directly with younger voters, appropriate safeguards must be in place. Will the Minister explain what guidance will govern contact between political campaigners and those children, and whether the Government intend to consult safeguarding professionals before the relevant provisions commence?
As I have said in earlier debates, electoral reform should strengthen public confidence in our democratic system, not introduce uncertainty about the protections on which it depends. The Government have chosen to lower the voting age as a manifesto commitment. It is therefore incumbent upon them to demonstrate that young people will receive impartial information, sufficient education and appropriate safeguarding. They should be properly prepared and protected when exercising that right. I hope the Minister will address these questions in detail and provide reassurance that the practical consequences of this change have been fully and properly considered.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government (Baroness Taylor of Stevenage) (Lab)
Before I respond to the amendments, I must correct a date I gave in the debate on the previous group. I said that the tabling date for amendments for the next set of Committee groups was 9 November, but it is 17 November. My apologies for that. The amendments in those groups will be tabled then.
I want to say at the start that the Government are committed to ensuring that everyone who is entitled to vote is able do so, and that they should supported and encouraged in that. The provisions we are making are designed to ensure that vulnerable people who are eligible to vote are enabled, but it is quite right that all young people must be prepared for this change to the electoral franchise. The Government are already working with the Electoral Commission, devolved Governments, the electoral sector and civil society organisations to raise awareness of the franchise change among young people to help prepare them to exercise their democratic rights. I will go into a bit more detail on schools provision in a moment.
I thought it might be helpful to say to noble Lords that we have carried out extensive research, both quantitative and qualitative, speaking to those aged 14 to 17. A total of 32 focus groups were conducted over two stages, followed by a nationally representative survey of more than 3,500 respondents, utilising online and offline data collection. The key headlines from that research were really interesting: most young people have a form of valid voter ID; most regard voter ID as necessary; the education system is seen by young people as a good way to learn about these topics; and the majority feel that their voice would matter more if they had the vote at 16. Those were the key headlines, but it was a big piece of research.
The other thing that slightly surprises me is that the debates on Monday and today have taken a direction that I was not expecting. It is a shame that significant doubts have been cast on teachers’ impartiality, and we now appear to have doubts being cast on the BBC and on those responsible for looked-after children.
Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)
Only two weeks ago, the Government intervened in the problem of the lack of impartiality among teachers on the Israel-Gaza-Palestine conflict. At the time, I congratulated the Government on taking a stance on the difficulties of that issue. The Government were clear that we have to be very careful. I cast no aspersions in general. The Government noted the particular issue of the rise of antisemitism and the politicisation of that war in schools, and they rightly intervened. I congratulated the Government then, and I congratulate them now. I did not think the Government were casting aspersions on all teachers; they were not, and neither were the rest of us.
Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)
These issues have to be tackled when and as they arise. The point I was making is that making general points relating to that is not helpful.
I will now address the amendments. I understand and share the intention of the noble Lord, Lord Fuller, for young people to receive impartial information, as expressed in Amendments 18 and 19. I assure him that Clauses 15 and 16 are deliberately narrow in scope. They require local authorities in Great Britain, and health and social care trusts in Northern Ireland, where the system is different, to raise awareness of the registration arrangements that apply to relevant young people and to help those young people register. This is about factual and practical electoral registration information and making sure that young people who are or have been in the care system understand how they can register, and, where necessary, helping them to do so. I therefore assure the noble Lord that we fully recognise the importance of political impartiality, but I do not consider that an additional statutory requirement of this kind is needed.
I turn to Amendment 23 from the noble Lords, Lord Wallace and Lord Rennard, and the noble Baroness, Lady Prashar. I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Wallace, on bringing such sartorial elegance to the Chamber this afternoon. It brings some panache to our debate at the end of the week.
Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)
I apologise; it is rather eccentric. The Parliament Choir is performing this evening, and the dress rehearsal starts at 4 pm—I have said that I will be late.
I add that there is strong scientific evidence that collective singing in schools improves social cohesion and concentration. I am not sure that the last Government accepted that scientific evidence—they did not act on it. But if we are talking about scientific evidence in schools, singing matters as well.
Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)
I wish the noble Lord well for his rehearsal and look forward to coming to one of the concerts in due course.
Noble Lords may recall that a similar amendment to this one was debated in Committee in the other place. Our position remains that a statutory reporting requirement is not the right way to approach this issue. The amendment would require the report to cover three areas: raising awareness, civic education and electoral registration. I will address each in turn.
First, on raising awareness, I agree with noble Lords that young people need to be aware of their new democratic rights. The Government are already working alongside the Electoral Commission, local and devolved government, the electoral sector and civil society organisations to make sure that young people are aware of the changes. Raising awareness will be a collective effort, involving organisations with different roles and responsibilities. A report from the Government would not provide a complete picture of that work. It would also not be right for the Government to report on behalf of other organisations involved in this work, particularly the Electoral Commission, whose independence from government is so vital and which already publishes its own research and analysis on some of the areas covered by this amendment.
Secondly, on civic education, I have no hesitation in agreeing with noble Lords on the vital importance of preparing young people to exercise their democratic rights. This is an area where we will continue to work with the devolved Governments and other partners. The Department for Education leads on education policy in England, while education is devolved in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. All partners will need to work together to support young people’s democratic engagement. I will say more on that when I respond to my noble friend Lady Lister’s amendment. Given these different roles and responsibilities, I do not believe that a statutory report from the UK Government is the right mechanism for assessing progress in this area.
Finally, on electoral registration, substantial information is already publicly available. The register to vote performance dashboard provides aggregate data on applications to register to vote, including breakdowns by age. The Electoral Commission has also conducted studies of electoral registration trends, and the Government are separately planning to monitor and evaluate the implementation and impact of votes-at-16 measures, which will assess evidence related to the awareness, education and registration of young people. We do not believe that a further statutory report is necessary. I hope I have reassured your Lordships that the Government share the underlying objectives behind this amendment and are already taking forward work to support young people as the franchise is extended to 16 and 17 year-olds.
I come to Amendments 24, 280 and 287 in the names of the noble Lord, Lord Farmer, and the noble Baroness, Lady Meyer. I point out to noble Lords that these amendments would prevent voting rights being extended to 16 and 17 year-olds until the assessment has been published. The noble Lord raised similar concerns about the maturity and decision-making capabilities of 16 and 17 year-olds during the Bill’s Second Reading in this House. Indeed, he quoted my response to him at the time, which I still hold to—that we do not give people the vote based on their intellectual or cognitive abilities. That principle applies to 16 and 17 year-olds as it does to all other voters. I am sorry to repeat back to him what he has already quoted, but that is the case.
Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)
Can I just finish responding, then I will happily give way? Our focus is on delivering this manifesto commitment—on which this Government were elected—which recognises that 16 and 17 year-olds have views that deserve to be represented and that young people should have a say in decisions that affect them. I simply cannot agree that young people at 16 and 17 do not have the cognitive reasoning to make decisions that impact on their lives. Indeed, as I set out on Monday, we have already asked them to do so. The question is not what else you can or cannot do at 16 but whether 16 is the right age to vote.
The point of this process of engagement is to introduce the concept of critical thinking. Indeed, young people of this age now have grown up having to develop their own ability to filter a whole plethora of social media in a way that my generation certainly did not.
Lord Farmer (Con)
I was not talking about cognitive ability. That was what the Minister mentioned at Second Reading, and I was trying to say that I was not talking about that. I was talking about the maturity of young people to withstand peer pressure and to make a reasoned decision. As we have heard today, electing a Government is a very important and responsible decision. We had the evidence from Professor Laurence Steinberg that it is at 18 that young people are able to make their own judgments, withstand things such as TikTok and peer pressure at school and make a reasoned political judgment independently. It is maturity I am talking about, not cognitive ability.
Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)
I have heard what the noble Lord has said. In my view, requiring such an assessment before these changes can be implemented would introduce a completely unnecessary additional step and could delay the delivery of a very important manifesto commitment on which, as I have said, we have done a good deal of research with young people.
The noble Lord, Lord Leigh, made some points around safeguarding and political canvassing. We have taken steps within the Bill, as he will know, to say that attainers—14 and 15 year-olds—will not be canvassed by EROs, but I understand that the point he is making is around political canvassing. I am sure that political parties will be developing their own safeguarding response to the provisions in this Bill.
Lord Leigh of Hurley (Con)
We are not talking about cognitive development or about taking tests. We are talking about what steps the Government are taking to protect people from peer pressure. So far, the answer is none, which is not very satisfactory.
Secondly, in respect of what happens on the doorstep, the Government cannot rely on political parties. My whole point is that there will be individuals who claim to be canvassers and will knock on doors and get entry into doors and into conversation with 16 year-olds under the pretext of being political campaigners. They will identify such people from the electoral roll. One cannot expect political parties to vet every single canvasser. It is up to the Government, if they are going to introduce eligibility for 16 year-olds to vote and to receive canvassers, to take steps to protect them.
Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)
There are all sorts of people who knock on our doors. I understand what the noble Lord is saying and I will take those points away, but I seriously think that the point of the education process is to teach young people to have that critical thinking capacity to make their own decisions about things. I am more than confident that our young people at 16 and 17 have the faculties to do that.
I will now talk a little more about the education process, which is important in this.
Lord Leigh of Hurley (Con)
When the Minister says that she is more than confident, is she refuting the evidence of Professor Steinberg?
Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)
I hope I will have an opportunity to speak to Professor Steinberg at some point, but I think we need to move on and talk about what we are going to do in terms of education.
I thank my noble friend Lady Lister for tabling Amendment 43 and the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett, who is not in her place today, for Amendment 44. I recognise the motivations of these amendments and I share the ambition to ensure that young people are supported to exercise their democratic rights and build lifelong engagement with our democracy. A fundamental point in all this is that we know that engaging young people at a much earlier age encourages that lifelong engagement with the democratic process.
This is a priority for the Government. We are already working to strengthen democratic education and engagement, including in response to the independent Curriculum and Assessment Review. Citizenship is already a statutory national curriculum subject at key stages 3 and 4 in maintained schools, covering parliamentary democracy, electoral systems and how citizens can influence decisions. The Government’s wider curriculum reforms will strengthen this further, including through clearer teaching of democracy, media literacy and active citizenship. We are considering what transitional support may be needed before those reforms take effect, including practical, non-partisan voter information, adaptable teaching materials and support for teachers on issues such as political impartiality and misinformation.
Alongside this, the Electoral Commission is undertaking important work to support young people’s democratic education. It is developing a democratic education framework in partnership with organisations across the education and youth sectors, providing practical resources to help educators and young people understand and participate in democracy. This is currently being piloted, and a formal launch is planned for March 2027, which I hope answers my noble friend Lady Royall’s question. The commission also runs Welcome to Your Vote Week, an annual campaign which provides schools, colleges and youth organisations with opportunities to help people understand elections and build confidence in participating.
Further, my department has established the democratic engagement fund to support politically neutral projects that help people understand, engage with and participate in democracy. I recognise my noble friend’s concern about young people from disadvantaged backgrounds and politically underrepresented groups, including girls and young women. The fund provides an opportunity to support projects that help break down barriers to democratic participation and ensure that more young people have the opportunity to make their voices heard.
I will comment on some of the points made about political impartiality in schools. Schools are already subject to clear legal duties on political impartiality. They must prohibit the promotion of partisan political views and take reasonably practical steps to ensure that, where political issues are brought to pupils’ attention, opposing views are presented in a balanced way. The existing Political Impartiality in Schools guidance makes it clear that these duties apply to public displays, including banners and posters, as well as school communications.
We will continue to work with the Electoral Commission, devolved Governments and civil society organisations to consider what additional measures can support schools, colleges and youth groups to deliver practical voter and civic education. I hope I have given my noble friend reassurance on these points, and to the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett, on the role of the Electoral Commission. I entirely recognise the importance of education and engagement in making votes at 16 a success, but I do not believe that further legislation is needed.
Finally, on Amendment 44, the Government recognise the importance of safeguarding young people, and the Bill provides strong protections where those are needed—for example, on data protection. In addition, 16 and 17-year-olds, and those who will turn 16 before polling day, should have the same opportunity as any other voter to hear from candidates and political parties to form an opinion before casting their vote.
We completely agree with the importance of appropriate conduct during campaigning. We welcome the Speaker’s Conference recommendation to establish a code of conduct for campaigning and have committed to work with the Speaker, the Electoral Commission and political parties to support the development of a code which is fit for purpose. I hope this responds further to the concerns of the noble Lord, Lord Leigh. As part of this work, we have the opportunity to consider the specific issue raised in this amendment, regarding the safeguarding of young people in campaigning. We therefore do not consider this amendment is likely to be necessary.
Baroness O'Neill of Bexley (Con)
I am grateful for that last point. I must admit that, as a council leader previously, when the point about campaigning was raised with me, it sent shivers down my spine because we know how important safeguarding is. It might be worth a conversation at the all-party group, so it is put out through all the different parties and they are aware of it. I am sure many of them may not have considered it, and it is worth sharing that information.
I have another point I would like to put across the Minister’s desk. The Minister says they have had a lot of research done. Is it possible to share it with the Committee?
Baroness Lister of Burtersett (Lab)
To save my noble friend the Minister having to bob up and down, I have a couple of questions, which she could perhaps write to me about afterwards. One is about the teacher training and resources that will support the kind of citizenship education we have been talking about. The other is about evaluation, particularly from the perspective of disadvantaged groups and those who lack political confidence and face the greatest barriers to political participation, such as girls and young women.
Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)
The noble Baroness, Lady O’Neill, makes a good point about the political parties panel, and I will take that back. I have some brief information about research, but I will write to her on that, if that is okay.
On the comments made by my noble friend Lady Lister, we are looking at this transitional support on how we make sure we have adaptable teaching materials and support for teachers on issues such as political impartiality and misinformation, and I am happy to update her once that work has gone a bit further.
Lord Fuller (Con)
My Lords, it has been an interesting debate, and I of course entirely support the comments from the Front Bench, that we understand that votes at 16 is a manifesto commitment. But what this last hour and 20 minutes has shown is how much the consequences of that manifesto commitment are going to mean for the safeguarding of children, the impacts on education and for people who have not really had to participate in economic society before. These are unintended consequences and we are going to have to iron them out, not just for the 16 year-olds but for those attainers from 14.
For all the warm words about strengthening democracy and improving transparency, which are littered throughout the impact statement, when it comes to amendments that would give effect to those noble causes, what I think I heard the Minister say was that they are prepared to leave it to chance: we are not going to cast aspersions, but we are going to address these issues—
Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)
If the noble Lord would kindly give way for a moment, I did not say we are leaving it to chance. I said that we welcome the Speaker’s Conference recommendation to establish codes of conduct on this subject, and we have committed to work with the Speaker, the Electoral Commission and political parties to support the development of a code which is fit for purpose.
Lord Fuller (Con)
I thank the Minister, and I accept those words entirely, but earlier on in the wind-up, when referring to the noble Baroness, Lady Fox of Buckley, the suggestion was made that we were casting aspersions on teachers and social workers, and that the Government would address those as they came along. I just do not think that is right. The Bill should be explicit about neutrality, particularly for schools and for looked-after children’s environments, so there is no risk. We must remove the temptation for those in positions of authority over some of the most vulnerable people without supportive natural parents to do it. If it is not a problem because there is no prejudice, then there is no problem in introducing it into the Bill.
I was very taken with the other comments about—
Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)
I am sorry to intervene on the noble Lord again—I do not like to do this—but I made it clear that schools are already subject to clear legal duties on political impartiality, and I gave the details of that.
Lord Fuller (Con)
That is covered in group 6, which we will return to later.
I was taken with the point made by the noble Baroness, Lady Fox, about schools. This has really been a debate not so much about schools but about young people more generally. I associate myself with the comments of the noble Lord, Lord Wallace, about the practical preparation, and the watchword of this part of the Bill, the protection of minors.
This may be something we return to on Report, and we need to catch up time, so I will beg leave to withdraw my Amendment 18. But we really need to think about some of these practical consequences before we get to Report, and I hope the Minister will meet with me and others in furtherance of that objective.
Lord Frost
“Part 1ANationality qualification for votingNationality qualification for voting and registration(1) A person is not entitled to vote as an elector at a relevant poll unless the person is—(a) a British citizen,(b) a citizen of the Republic of Ireland, or(c) a protected EU elector in relation to that poll.(2) Subsection (1) applies also to entitlement to be registered, or to remain registered, for the purposes of a relevant poll.(3) A person is a protected EU elector in relation to a relevant poll if—(a) the person meets the requirements in subsections (1)(a) to (d) of section 203B of RPA 1983 (meaning of “EU citizen with retained rights”) , disregarding paragraph (e) of that subsection, and(b) under the law governing the poll, apart from this Part, the person would satisfy the nationality qualification otherwise than by virtue of being a Commonwealth citizen.(4) For the purposes of subsection (3)(a), section 203B of RPA 1983 (meaning of “EU citizen with retained rights”) is to be read as if it extended to the whole of the United Kingdom.(5) In this Part “relevant poll” means—(a) an election for membership of the House of Commons, the Scottish Parliament, Senedd Cymru or the Northern Ireland Assembly,(b) a local government election anywhere in the United Kingdom,(c) a City of London ward election, and(d) any other election, referendum or poll held under an enactment at which entitlement to vote is determined by reference to a register of parliamentary or local government electors.(6) This section applies to entitlement to sign a recall petition under the Recall of MPs Act 2015 as it applies to entitlement to vote at an election for membership of the House of Commons.(7) In this Part—(a) references to registration include inclusion in a City of London ward list, and(b) “enactment” includes an Act of the Scottish Parliament, an Act or Measure of Senedd Cymru, Northern Ireland legislation and subordinate legislation. (8) Other voting rights provisions are to be interpreted consistently with this section.”Member’s explanatory statement
This new Part and its consequential changes would remove voting and registration rights based solely on Commonwealth citizenship throughout the United Kingdom, while preserving those of British and Irish citizens and the existing non-parliamentary rights of the pre-2021 EU retained-rights cohort. It provides for registration review and appeals, and protects the new provisions from modification by the devolved legislatures.
Lord Frost (Non-Afl)
My Lords, I will speak to my Amendments 25 to 29, 288 and 289, and 299 and 300 on the Marshalled List. Before I explain the thinking behind these amendments, I will give a brief explanation of how they work from a technical point of view.
These amendments form two alternative packages rather than a single scheme. I will explain why. Amendments 25 and 26 would end voting and registration rights based solely on Commonwealth citizenship across the UK, while preserving British, Irish and retained EU citizens’ rights. Amendments 27 to 29 offer a reciprocal alternative: one where Commonwealth citizens retained eligibility, but only where their country gave British citizens similar, exercisable rights at corresponding elections. Obviously, Ministers would have to designate those countries through regulations approved by both Houses, publish the assessment and review periodically.
The amendments are designed to focus on the Commonwealth issue, which is why they keep the existing non-national elections rights for the EU cohort and for Ireland. I will come to those points, although they merit debate at some point. Both packages also cover parliamentary devolved and local elections. The noble Baroness, Lady Bennett, who is not in her place, would be pleased to hear that they cover City of London ward elections, relevant referendums and other acts of democracy. They are drafted to be consistent with the amendments I put forward earlier in our discussions on devolution, although there is much room for debate about how far down the hierarchy of elections these provisions need to extend.
To complete the technical introduction, Amendments 288 and 289 would bring the relevant administrative and designation machinery into operation, with the first draft regulations required within 12 months. Finally, Amendments 299 and 300 would require the substantive nationality rules to start on the same day throughout the UK, at least six months after the regulations, unless polls and petitions were already under way.
I put forward these two alternative routes because they are probing amendments designed to provoke discussion about the nature of the franchise in this country. That is very much worth discussing. The only point I will make at this stage on the distinction between them is that the reciprocal arrangements require much more process. There is much more complexity. They require a system under which the Government have to review whether reciprocal arrangements exist and whether they have changed, report on them, and then, of course, feed that through to the electoral register. Such a system has to exist if a reciprocal arrangement is to work. It is more complicated and more likely, I guess, to be got wrong, but it is a possibility.
I will move on to the thinking behind the amendments. Once again, we come back to a “who” question: who gets to vote in the arrangements that we are describing? I find, when I discuss this issue, that most people assume that the franchise in a country is limited to citizens of that country. People are often extremely surprised when you tell them that is not the case in the United Kingdom—that we extend the franchise quite considerably. They often literally cannot believe it when they are told about the arrangements for Commonwealth voting, which illustrates to me that this is an issue that needs addressing.
The technical provision is that “qualifying” Commonwealth citizens are allowed to be on the electoral register. The word “qualifying” is really not very qualifying at all. Such qualifying Commonwealth citizens do not need to be permanent residents. Any permission to enter or stay in the UK would do, whether it is time-limited, conditional, student, worker, family member or whatever. The Electoral Commission spells it out:
“Any type of permission to enter or stay is acceptable, whether indefinite, time limited or conditional”.
So you can have a situation where a student here on a short visa could help elect a Government who could have a life long beyond the individual’s time in the country. Indeed, the Electoral Commission’s definition of “qualifying” is so wide that it is not obvious to me that it would not capture tourists or casual visitors—after all, we issue six-month visas and it is quite possible to register and vote over that period. It is not entirely obvious whether it would be possible, under the arrangements, to pick up and distinguish permanent residents from people who are here for a short period.
This means that our franchise is, in principle, open to 2.7 billion people around the world: the entire population of the Commonwealth. Any Commonwealth citizen who reaches Britain on any of the bases I have just described is able to vote here. That is the extraordinary breadth of the entitlement that exists in our law and deserves to be discussed.
My amendments are designed to provide for exactly that discussion. They maintain the provision under which Irish citizens will be able to continue to vote. It is a logical consequence of the Northern Ireland settlement, which recognises the right of its people to identify as British, Irish or both, and I suspect this is not the moment to open that question. Moreover, it is reciprocal: British citizens can register and vote in elections in Ireland. My amendments also retain the existing rights of EU citizens with settled status to vote in local and some other elections. In some ways, that is questionable and will probably need to be debated and dealt with at some point—but not now.
Commonwealth entitlement is quite different, and very hard to defend in its current form. For one thing, it is a complete anomaly internationally. No EU country allows non-citizens to vote in its national elections, with the exception of Ireland, through the reciprocal arrangement with us, and Portugal, in the arguably somewhat similar case of Brazilians. You cannot vote unless you are a citizen in national elections in Norway, Switzerland, Canada, Australia—with a small, technical exception—and the United States. What we do is very unusual. The only real exception is New Zealand, which allows all permanent residents to vote—all, not just a subset. That at least is logical. What we do in our franchise is extend the right to vote to a group of countries and their citizens, mostly but not entirely on the basis that Britain governed them half a century ago. This does not make logical sense in the world as we now have it.
These arrangements would be easier to defend if they were reciprocal. The problem is that they are not at the moment. Only a small number of Caribbean countries and a couple of relatively small African countries allow British citizens to vote. Even then, they generally have to be pretty permanent residents.
Indians can vote in Britain, but no British citizen can vote in India. It is the same in Pakistan, Canada, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Nigeria—I could go on with an extensive list of important countries with large populations. I do not blame them, though. Those countries rightly regard choosing their Government as the business of their citizens, and I think they are right in that. The argument is around why we do not do the same.
This is a bit of a hangover from the empire. The voting rates reflect the relationship that existed 50, 60 or 70 years ago; they are in law a legacy of the original expansive discussion of who could claim to be a British subject. The Representation of the People Act 1948 originally provided that citizens of newly independent Commonwealth countries were still to be regarded as British subjects for the purposes of nationality and voting. That provision has been tightened up a lot since then, and so has the definition of citizenship, but the legacy voting rights remain. They have nothing to do with citizenship of modern nation states as we now understand them. Of course, we all value the Commonwealth and our friendships with its members, but they are different countries, and that has to mean something.
Lord Mackinlay of Richborough (Con)
My Lords, I have followed this debate over the last couple of days. I give huge congratulations to my noble friend Lord Frost on bringing this forward; this is an area that has exercised me for some years. I pay tribute to the House of Lords Library for extracting a lot of information on this to try to bring out where reciprocation exists—and I have to say that the reciprocation arrangements within the Commonwealth are very skinny indeed.
The Government have opened up Pandora’s box with this Bill, because at its heart is the franchise, which the Government are attempting to expand to 16 and 17 year-olds. If the Bill before us is trying to change and tidy up things, and widen the franchise, then surely it is the right Bill to consider a wider franchise, which has not been considered since the Act in 1969.
We have to consider this against the backdrop of CHOGM, which is in progress at the moment in Antigua. As a huge supporter of the Commonwealth, I am somewhat saddened that, in the post-Brexit world, we have not made a better arrangement with our friends around the Commonwealth to create a new friendship and trading arrangement on preferential terms. I hope those sorts of issues are being discussed at CHOGM as I speak. But the electoral franchise is surely very odd. We have vast countries, with huge populations—India, Pakistan, Nigeria and Bangladesh, to pick out a few—of probably 1.5 to 1.8 billion people between them. A transfer of such people to this country, as temporary workers, students and all those good areas, is to be welcomed, but surely to come on a student visa for a short time and then be allowed to vote is a very strange situation.
I might consider that to be fair and reasonable if there was a reciprocal arrangement with those countries. As my noble friend Lord Frost has said, perhaps that is quite complicated to achieve. It would require a department of the Home Office to keep an eye on electoral franchises in those countries of the Commonwealth. Perhaps Amendments 25 and 26, proposed by my noble friend, are cleaner. Perhaps this is the time to make that breakaway, which most other countries have considered to be proper and correct, and say one has to be a British citizen.
As we know, British citizenship can be obtained. One of the reasons some people never bother obtaining it, even though they have lived here for a very long time, is the cost and aggravation, but it is achievable and doable. One has to pay the fee and do the Life in the UK Test, and then, lo and behold, one can become a British citizen, with all the rights and duties that come with citizenship. The powerful point behind my noble friend’s suggestions is that feeling of being part of this nation—one cannot just up sticks and return back to the country where one holds citizenship.
The Australian situation is rather odd. I believe it was Australia’s 1984 Act that made quite a separation between the new country and what might be called the old country. At that date, Australia decided that one could vote in Australia only if one was an Australian citizen. As my noble friend alluded to, a British citizen who had lived in Australia prior to 1956 but had never taken citizenship could still vote there.
The anomalies around the world are few and far between. As the Government have opened up the franchise for discussion, it is time that we use this Bill appropriately to consider the franchise of Commonwealth citizens. It is a throwback of yesteryear and, much as I like yesteryear, we are not there any more. We are in the modern world of 2026, and the day is done for the old colonial arrangements that those on the Benches opposite would like to throw off as rapidly as they can. We cannot have this subsisting into the future. I hope we can have cross-party support for this measure, and I look forward to the Minister’s comments as to why it is unacceptable. I would have thought such a provision would more likely come from that side of the Committee than from this, strangely.
I hope that the Government will listen to this. I know my noble friend said that this was merely a probing amendment, but I think it deserves to be more than that. I would like to see this beefed up for Report, when we can perhaps vote on such measures.
Lord Jackson of Peterborough (Con)
My Lords, I am pleased to support my noble friend Lord Frost’s amendments, particularly Amendments 28 and 29.
As we meet this afternoon and consider the American elections that took place yesterday, we can look back and think about the sanctity of the franchise and how important that is. We are very fortunate in this country that we do not, for instance, have gerrymandered electoral districts; we have independent Boundary Commissions. We are also fortunate in this country that most people believe that the franchise is clean and safeguarded and that the electoral process is one of integrity, honesty and transparency—and that is because, broadly speaking, it is.
Your Lordships will know that, in the United States, the Jim Crow laws and the residency, literacy and numeracy laws were used to ostracise and discriminate against African Americans and others. Thankfully, they are a thing of the past, but that goes to show how important it is that we protect the sanctity of our electoral process, which my noble friend Lord Hayward rightly mentioned.
The current Commonwealth voting right is outdated, as my noble friend said. It is anomalous and indefensible, and it is time to bring our legislation up to date. As has been said, the vast majority of Commonwealth nations do not have reciprocal voting arrangements with British citizens. There are around 1 million Commonwealth citizens living in the UK, 66% of whom are qualified and registered to vote, as at March this year.
The beauty of these amendments is that they are not harsh and draconian. They do not remove, with ministerial or statutory fiat, the right for Commonwealth citizens to vote. They are incremental, permissive, probing amendments that invite the Government to think about the reciprocity between countries. In so doing, they recognise how important the familial and friendship relationships we have with countries are, as my noble friend alluded to. The other thing is that they are colour-blind. They do not make reference to ethnicity, religion, background or gender. They talk about nations such as New Zealand, Nigeria, Ghana, Australia, Canada, Suriname—I think—Guyana and others that are members of our Commonwealth family.
Although the number of Commonwealth nationals residing in the UK and the percentage of Commonwealth citizens registered to vote in the UK have been estimated, the Government have been unable to produce accurate figures concerning the number of qualifying Commonwealth nationals in the UK. That is a very significant knowledge gap. If you are fighting a general election in good faith, you really need to know who the people are who are going to be able to vote for you. If you do not have a cumulative estimate nationally of how many of those Commonwealth citizens are able to vote, you may very well rather cynically feel that you are appealing to a nobbled jury. You have to be sure of who the electorate are.
Voting tied to citizenship is the global norm for a good reason. Elected representatives adopt significant responsibility to act in their electors’ best interests. If electoral accountability is to function properly, the electorate must be stakeholders in Britain’s long-term future. Unless this is robustly the case, representatives, be they mayors, MPs or councillors, will not be bound to deliver genuinely prudent decision-making. Allowing those who are not British citizens to contribute to electoral outcomes risks undermining the quality of that representation by detracting from candidates’ requirement to appeal to people who fundamentally care about their nation’s future.
This is the thin end of the wedge. If we do not get a handle and focus on that philosophical issue, we could quickly slip into the realms of divisive identity politics. We have already seen the beginning of that in our country, as we have in many parts of the world, and we wish to avoid that happening. At its worst, it may encourage political short-termism or the dilution of the representatives’ accountability away from the interests of British citizens and towards the interests of merely current residents. This is a nuanced yet important distinction. It is a fact that Britain is and has been for some time experiencing a sizeable growth in immigration, including from Commonwealth nations.
Baroness Coffey (Con)
My Lords, I too support these amendments, and I am grateful to my noble friend Lord Frost for making sure that people of Irish citizenship can definitely continue to register. I have heard other people ask: why displace the Commonwealth and not the Irish? We have a very different relationship with Ireland and the people of Ireland, and that is why I hope we see these amendments come back on Report.
Lord Pack (LD)
It is worth starting by paying tribute to the many Commonwealth citizens who, in both peace and wartime, have made very many significant contributions to our country. But it is also right, as several noble Peers have mentioned, that the Commonwealth is the creation of an unusual set of historical circumstances. If we were starting completely from scratch, maybe with a new written constitution for the country, we might take a slightly different approach to some aspects of it.
In the spirit of the noble Lord, Lord Frost, saying that these are probing amendments, there are two points worth highlighting. One is that some restrictions exist on which Commonwealth citizens are able to register to vote. The combination of the requirements under the RPA 1983 and the linked requirements under the Immigration Act 1971 does not provide the fully open door that was perhaps touched on in some of the speeches earlier. Also, this is only one part of a wider question, because one could similarly reasonably ask why, when it comes to the local government franchise, somebody who is living in this country for decades, legally here and diligently paying their taxes every year, and who has no criminal record, is not allowed to vote for their local council.
I use that as an example of how there are many related issues. It would be wrong to single out Commonwealth citizens as the only part of that complex picture, as if they are the only group about whose right to vote we should in some way feel concerned. If the Government decide to look further at this issue, I hope it will be in the spirit of seeing it as part of a wider, more complex issue, rather than there being a specific problem that means we should single out Commonwealth citizens above and beyond all those other aspects of the issue for consideration.
Baroness O'Neill of Bexley (Con)
My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Frost, for tabling these amendments and giving us the opportunity to have this important discussion on the voting rights of Commonwealth citizens. I also thank my noble friends Lord Mackinlay of Richborough, Lord Jackson of Peterborough and Lady Coffey for their thoughtful contributions.
It is right that the right to vote in our parliamentary elections and choose our Government is restricted to British citizens, although there are some exceptions for those with close historical links to our country. I have already spoken about our concerns in relation to the consequences of devolved arrangements in Scotland and Wales. The exceptions that I mentioned and that noble Lords have discussed during the debate are long-standing provisions that were implemented to reflect the special status of Irish and Commonwealth citizens in particular. I suppose I should declare an interest here, as both my parents were Irish. I do not remember them ever voting in Irish elections, but they always voted with pride here.
The arrangement we have with the Republic of Ireland precedes the EEC and the EU. It stems from the establishment of the Irish Free State in the 1920s and the administrative agreement on the common travel area. The two countries have broad, reciprocal voting rights. I appreciate the concerns that have been raised today about Commonwealth citizens’ eligibility to vote—especially what was said earlier, which is difficult for anyone to justify. However, these matters are complex, and we should be careful about rushing into changes without wider consideration of broader government policy on citizenship and integration.
No changes to election laws should be rushed, and we will be discussing the consequences of doing so throughout this Bill. I thank noble Lords for raising this issue and look forward to the Minister’s response.
Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)
My Lords, we always welcome probing amendments; they generate interesting discussions in this House. However, it may not surprise the noble Lord, Lord Frost, that the Government will not support these amendments.
Amendments similar to these were tabled in the other place during earlier Bill stages, and the Government’s views on the topic have been made very clear. The entitlement of resident Commonwealth citizens to vote reflects our very close historical ties with Commonwealth countries. The noble Lord, Lord Pack, referred to recognising the contribution from those countries. From the selfless sacrifice of Commonwealth forces who fought side by side with British troops in the two world wars, to the Windrush generation who made Britain their home and contributed to our society, community, culture and public services, the ties which bind Commonwealth citizens to the UK are inextricable. Those rights must be respected. Commonwealth citizens’ voting rights are not and have never been based on a quid pro quo. To be clear, a qualifying Commonwealth citizen who is only visiting the country and has no home here would not be eligible to vote. The Government will not be removing Commonwealth citizens’ voting rights.
On reciprocity, each Commonwealth country determines its own electoral franchise. Reciprocity is not a condition of the UK’s long-standing arrangements. As I have already set out in relation to the noble Lord’s Amendments 5, 7 and 31, the Government are also committed to maintaining and defending the devolution settlements.
Baroness Coffey (Con)
Does the Minister think that Commonwealth voters aged 16 should also be voting in the elections?
Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)
The same voting rights will apply across the franchise.
Lord Frost (Non-Afl)
My Lords, I thank the Minister for her response; as she said, I am not entirely surprised by it. I thank those who have spoken in this short debate. It has been worth having, and I do not think that the issue will go away.
I apologise to my noble friend Lord Mackinlay for not mentioning that he was the only noble Lord to raise this issue on Second Reading. He has followed it for some time and, as his intervention showed, he knows a lot about it. He mentioned Australia, which has an extremely restrictive policy generally. It restricts voting and candidacy to citizens, and it prevents dual nationality entirely as a condition for being a member of the legislature. Australia may be at one end of the spectrum; we are definitely at the other. The international norm is that only citizens vote and only citizens are candidates: I find it hard to see how one can defend any other position. Of course, citizens of many other countries in the Commonwealth and outside the Commonwealth have made huge contributions to this country, but that is not how we determine voting rights.
I have one last comment, for the noble Lord, Lord Pack. I entirely understand, and in some ways sympathise with, his asking, “Why should somebody who has lived here for a long time not get to vote in local elections?” That point is worth discussing, but national elections, referenda and questions are not the same as local questions and issues. It is something worth thinking about, but if one went down that road it should be for everyone, or at least for logically defined categories, not a hangover from the Commonwealth.
I will stop there. I thank noble Lords for a good discussion. We will reflect on what we will do on Report. It will probably be worth having further discussion and reflection on this. Meanwhile, I beg leave to withdraw my amendment.
“Members of the House of Lords: entitlement to voteA person aged 16 or over who is registered as a parliamentary elector is entitled to vote at a UK parliamentary election, unless disqualified from voting by virtue of sections 3 or 3A of the Representation of the People Act 1983.”Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment would allow sitting members of the House of Lords to vote in general elections.
Baroness Lister of Burtersett (Lab)
My Lords, I rise to move Amendment 32 on behalf of my noble friend Lord Blunkett, who regrets that he cannot be in this place. I have never really understood why noble Lords are disfranchised when it comes to general elections, so I look forward to my noble friend the Minister’s explanation.
I will focus my remarks on Amendment 41 in my name, the purpose of which is to extend the right to vote in general elections to UK residents who have settled status or indefinite leave to remain, and on Amendment 42, which would extend the right to vote in local elections to all residents with a form of legal immigration status. The amendments would do no more than bring UK elections into line with those in Wales and Scotland, both of which use the legislation that enfranchised 16 and 17 year-olds to extend the vote to foreign residents. I understand the extension is working well in those countries and administrators have not reported problems with implementation.
At present, there are 4.4 million foreign residents who cannot vote in UK general elections and 1.2 million who cannot vote at all in England and Northern Ireland. The case for my amendment is simple. It is undemocratic and unfair that so many residents contribute to this country in various ways, including but not limited to taxation, yet have no say in how it is governed and on decisions that affect them.
This would simplify the voting system considerably. The current voter eligibility rules are very complex, depending on nationality, date of arrival in the UK, whether the country of origin has a bilateral voting rights agreement with the UK, and which nation of the UK the person lives in. Only 66% of eligible EU and Commonwealth citizens are registered to vote. The complexity involved in understanding who can vote means that many who are eligible do not register. Extending the right to vote would improve turnout among those migrant residents who currently have the right to vote.
There is also a case on grounds of social cohesion. Democratic participation gives residents a stake in the future of their society and allows them to feel they are equal contributors. This could be particularly important when the franchise is extended to 16 and 17 year-olds, as I am told that some teachers are expressing concern about how they will discuss in school the fact that some pupils will get the vote while others will not. The Migrant Democracy Project, which brought this issue to my attention, has rightly said that
“democracy works best when it is inclusive for all who it serves. All those who call the UK their home have vested political and social interests in how their communities and country are governed”.
As I noted at Second Reading, the Lord Chancellor, the right honourable Alex Norris MP, tabled an amendment to legislation on similar lines in 2022. We now finally have an opportunity to achieve what he aimed for and catch up with Wales and Scotland. It is surely in line with the principles underlying the Representation of the People Bill. I hope therefore that my noble friend will accept the case, which I believe to be strong. I beg to move.
Baroness Pinnock (LD)
My Lords, Amendment 37 in my name seeks to consider the consequences of the two major changes proposed in the Bill on the size of constituency and council ward electorates, which could be significant. Improvements to voter registration are designed to make the electoral roll more complete. In some areas of the country, the difference between the number of people registered for health services and the number on the electoral register is stark. For instance, the Electoral Commission estimates that only 70% of 18 to 34 year-olds are registered. For those in private rented accommodation, the figure is as low as 66%, and for those who are in homes at social rent, it is 80%—so the electoral register is skewed against the young and those in rented accommodation. That discrimination obviously has an impact on election results, but also on the size of constituencies and then constituent council wards.
The other major change proposed in the Bill is the addition of 16 and 17 year-olds to the register. The House of Commons Library has a very helpful breakdown of people in each age group in every constituency. Adding 16 and 17 year-olds to the register has a disproportionate effect on constituency electorates and hence ward electorates. For example, Birmingham Ladywood has 5,070 16 and 17 year-olds, while Bradford West has 4,236. Both constituencies will then have more than 81,000 electors. The upper limit at the last boundary review was 77,000, so they will easily break the 5% tolerance criterion that was applied at that stage.
The additions then impact on ward electorates. In my council of Kirklees in west Yorkshire, based on the data, there will instantly be an additional 10,000 electors in the 16 to 17 year-old age group. On average, this will add 450 voters to each ward. However, in the Dewsbury part of the borough, there will be 600 additional electors per ward. Kirklees wards are already expected to have 15,000 electors. Some wards will then have nearly 16,000—and this is before attempts to improve registration have been included.
Unlike parliamentary constituencies, wards across the country are not required to have a roughly equal electorate. In many unitary authorities, there are fewer than 3,000 electors per councillor, whereas in others, such as my own, there are more than 5,000. This inequality of representation needs to be discussed. Is it fair on citizens that some are more equal than others?
Hence my Amendment 37, which requires the Secretary of State to lay a report before Parliament within six months to review what effect extending the franchise will have on the size of constituency and ward electorates. Will the Minister, who is not in her place, provide the estimated increase in electors for each constituency—it is possible to do it, given the figures in the House of Commons Library, certainly for 16 and 17-year-olds—and say whether that inequality is acceptable in a democracy? Will she also consider whether the wide disparity between ward electorates contributes to the equal access to democracy which this country is pledged to provide?
Lord Fuller (Con)
My Lords, I am very taken with the points just made by the noble Baroness, Lady Pinnock, about the distorting effects on existing boundaries from extending the franchise to 16 and 17 year-olds, but I think she could have gone further. The way in which automatic registration, which is also part of this group, takes into account the universities will have a further distorting effect, particularly on urban constituencies, in another insult to the country mass. This Government are always focused on the imbalance in the cities, but this particular case puts the rural areas at a disadvantage because, if a student from out of town is registered at home but is automatically registered at university, that person has two votes, which will disproportionately affect the concentrated urban situations.
I am sure the Minister, when she returns to her place, will dismiss the point made by the noble Baroness, Lady Pinnock, as wholly unnecessary and say this is nothing to be worried about, but I would like to give a lesson from history. The noble Baroness, who is returning to the Chamber, and I participated on some of those Covid calls during the pandemic in 2020, and there was a rush from the city to the countryside. People who lived in London, for example—but other cities are available—chased to north Norfolk in particular.
I see my noble friend Lord Prior on the Bench in front of me; he was a Member of Parliament for North Norfolk in a previous life. These people were not registered with the NHS and were not registered to vote, yet they consumed all the services in North Norfolk. My concern is that automatic registration will not reflect the reality. It is not just distorting the boundaries, important though that is, and the electoral numbers. The degree of automatic registration could distort the access to services that just do not keep up with these registers. So, I support the noble Baroness, Lady Pinnock. She has identified more unintended consequences from the double whammy of extending the franchise and automatic registration.
That leads me on to my Amendment 45 in this group, which is a probing amendment that asks how, with automatic registration, the electoral registration officer will know when a person is eligible to be registered, or just passing through, or has indefinite leave to remain, or is just a tourist. It seeks to say that, if you are not a British or Commonwealth citizen, you have to apply under individual electoral registration and demonstrate your eligibility, as you do at the moment. The duty is on these overseas electors to provide absolute proof of entitlement to vote, rather than pressurise the electoral registration officer to make guesses. The chances are that these people will not have national insurance numbers and will not be present on many UK databases.
How on earth is the ERO to know? How will he know to prevent a duplicate when a wife keeps her maiden name for professional purposes but has already registered for a married name? Just because there is a Mr Smith who pays the council tax, it does not mean that Mrs Smith is eligible if she happens to be a foreign-born spouse. I think the Committee can start to see quite a lot of different practical complications here.
I mentioned Mr and Mrs Smith, but there are some cultures where the husband and the wife have different surnames. I am thinking particularly of President Zelensky in Ukraine, whose wife is Mrs Zelenska. Neither of them is eligible to vote in our elections, but that is an example of the way in which foreign cultures have different mores to ours. Each ERO, if there is to be automatic registration, potentially of foreign subjects, will have to understand all these peculiarities. That is an unreasonable burden on the ERO.
My amendment is a small one, but it seeks to probe the burdens we place on the electoral registration officer to register people who have no legal or digital footprint in this country and who cannot be validated or authenticated. It would make it clear that if you are not a British, an EU or a Commonwealth citizen, and you are entitled to participate in our democracy, you must apply just as you do today. Let these people make their case with the appropriate documentation, so that the registration officer can scrutinise rather than make guesses. If the register is based on guesswork, it undermines the integrity of our democracy and, with it, trust in the democratic process and the institutions that flow from it.
Lord Jackson of Peterborough (Con)
My Lords, I do not really understand the amendment from the noble Baroness, Lady Pinnock, because she will know that local government boundaries are essentially informed as a result of physical or natural features and community links. Her amendment would have been more coherent if it had linked the delivery of key public services within an expanded ward which was the result of a greater registration of 16 and 17 year-olds, but I fail to see the point of producing a report saying, “There are going to be more people in this ward vis-à-vis other wards”.
If one is talking about the delivery of public services, that is a fair point to make. But equally, in places such as Christchurch, Worthing and Hove, you would also therefore talk about the delivery of services for older people, where there is a greater preponderance of them. Unless I am being particularly obtuse, I cannot see the point of the obligation she is seeking that the Government produce a report on the number of 16 and 17 year-olds, which numerically we will already know.
Baroness Pinnock (LD)
The whole purpose is so that we have a democracy that is based, first, on one person, one vote, but then on having boundaries for our electors that are more or less equal in size. Whenever there is a constituency boundary review, there are always parts of the country—in areas such as the highlands or the Isle of Wight—where reflecting the geography of the place means that it is better to have something outside the tolerance of the criteria that have been set to try to make constituencies of a similar size. That is because each is going to elect one person to Parliament to make decisions on behalf of their citizens. To have some representing 82,000 or 83,000 and some at the other end of the scale currently representing fewer than 70,000 leads to inequalities, which is why we have regular boundary reviews.
Within a local authority area, the number of wards is determined, which leads to the number of electors in each ward. In Kirklees, each ward has 5,000 electors per councillor, whereas 3,000 electors or fewer is the norm in London boroughs. If local authorities were required to have wards of a similar size, there could be more equal representation in those areas. That is my argument. We can do it for constituency boundaries, so why are we not doing it for local authority council wards?
Lord Rennard (LD)
My Lords, I support the principle behind Amendment 32 in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Blunkett, just as I previously supported the principle when the noble Lord, Lord Naseby, introduced a Private Member’s Bill in 2020 and when the noble Lord, Lord Dubs, introduced an amendment to what became the Elections Act 2022. The ban on Peers voting in general elections belongs to bygone times when the House was entirely hereditary and had an absolute veto over legislation, and when Members of this House were often Prime Minister. We no longer have an absolute veto on legislation; we have no say at all over financial measures, including the Budget; and we have no say on who is the Prime Minister, because that is determined solely by MPs.
The amendment is far from being our priority, however, when elsewhere in the Bill we are addressing issues of considerable importance, such as the many millions of ordinary people missing from the electoral registers who are therefore unable to vote. I also consider it ironic for Members of this House to claim the right to elect Members of the House of Commons without equally supporting the right of the people to have a say in who sits in this Chamber.
Lord Frost (Non-Afl)
My Lords, I will briefly speak to Amendments 41 and 42 in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Lister. These amendments arguably ought to have been in the previous group, because they raise very similar questions. For reasons of time, I will not run equal and opposite arguments to the ones I just ran in the other group, but I want to make two points.
First, the effect of Amendments 41 and 42 would be once again to extend the franchise beyond citizens, but in a different way. Once you do that, you lose a firm grounding for the principle you are trying to apply. In this case, it would extend the franchise to anyone with EU settled status or anybody with indefinite leave to enter or remain, which is something that can be changed quite quickly. As we have seen this week, it is relatively easy to change ILR conditions. If these amendments ever came into force, you could have two citizens identical in every respect except that one was a care worker and one was not. Under the proposals announced this week, one would get the right to vote five years earlier than the other. I use that example to show how fluid the electorate can become if they are not soundly grounded on the objective fact of citizenship.
The other point that I want to make that is relevant here is one that my noble friend Lord Jackson made in the previous group. He alluded to the fact that residents do not necessarily have the same interests as citizens; they are not completely substitutable—citizenship means something. In local elections, that may be less so, but with national-level issues, it seems reasonable to think that residents will have different interests on certain important questions—on trade policy, trade links, visas and travel, for instance, or even on defence policy, and which country we choose to be allied with. Those are questions that citizenship and a commitment to a country affect. Of course, constitutional issues are the last one; the sense of legitimacy about a vote on the constitutional future of the country, or an aspect of it, really depends on whether you are legally committed to that country or merely living here. If we extend that situation and make it even more disconnected from citizenship than it already is, we risk undermining the legitimacy of some really quite important votes, because people can see that residents from the EU or elsewhere do not necessarily have the same interests and views as citizens. For those reasons, to come back to the point that I made earlier, citizenship is the only safe basis, and any attempt to extend it for any less satisfactory criterion is inevitably going to work out less well.
Lord Hayward (Con)
My Lords, I shall comment briefly on one or two aspects of the debate. I first make the observation that I have a group of clause stand part debates later on, and it was my error that probably caused the officials serious concern when briefing the Minister as to why I wanted to have stand part debates on Clauses 18, 19 and 20 but had not included Clause 17. I shall leave that aside.
I have two other observations. One is in relation to the comments and amendment from the noble Baroness, Lady Pinnock. I have strong sympathy with her on the size of local government wards and the burdens imposed on some councillors in some parts of the country and not imposed on others. There appears to be no logic behind the position that we have from the size of one council or another. I could understand it if one was talking about large geographical areas—that is a perfectly good reason for saying that a councillor has difficulty in serving an area. The noble Baroness, Lady Pinnock, referred to Kirklees; there are other metropolitan authorities where the number of voters per councillor is substantially less than in places such as Kirklees and Birmingham—the noble Baroness cited London. There is no logic to that whatever.
I shall not go on to the question of parliamentary boundaries, because I referred to it during a debate earlier. I merely make two other observations. One is that Clause 17, in new Section 12A(1)(c), refers to
“the person appears to the officer to be of voting age”.
I am not sure that I am happy with that phraseology. Equally, my noble friend Lord Jackson referred in passing to Christchurch, and I am not happy about that reference either, although the noble Lord, Lord Rennard, because of his experience in winning the by-election that crushed my candidacy, would probably get more pleasure out of the reference than I did.
Lord Pack (LD)
My Lords, I was about to say that I would pick up where the noble Lord, Lord Hayward, finished, but I shall skip over Christchurch and come to the points that my noble friend Lady Pinnock made about her amendment. There is one important knock-on factor that has not yet been raised in this debate. The age profile of the population varies significantly across the country and hence varies between parliamentary constituencies and councils, but it also varies significantly within many councils. There are in many councils areas of, on average, much older population and, on average, much younger population. Therefore, it is very plausible that the extension of the franchise to 16 and 17 year-olds will have a very unequal effect on different council wards around the country as to the electorate in those wards. Hence there is a knock-on effect on councillor workload, the ability of voters to get a good service from their councillor and that fundamental democratic principle of trying to give everybody an equal vote. There is also a knock-on in terms of, for example, the work of the ongoing local government boundary reviews, which needs to be tied into giving 16 and 17 year-olds the vote. I hope that we will be able to hear from the Minister what thought has been given to how that process will be properly integrated with the potential knock-ons from this Bill.
In turning to some of the other amendments in this group, I simply observe that Amendment 32 from the noble Lord, Lord Blunkett, would be an excellent amendment to a Bill that introduced democratic elections to this place, and I hope that we have a chance to debate such a Bill in the near future.
On Amendment 45 from the noble Lord, Lord Fuller, I simply observe that there are some datasets in which EU citizens and Commonwealth citizens absolutely are present, which may turn out to be usable depending on how the automatic voter registration pilots continue to play out. I would not quite describe that group of people as completely unmoored from the data that is available.
I perhaps slightly pre-empt Amendment 55 from the noble Baroness, Lady O’Neill, and the noble Lord, Lord Jamieson, because I think there is a useful point to highlight here. I can understand why that amendment seeks in particular to prioritise providing information in writing. It certainly was the case in the past that being written to was a gold-standard form of communication that, rightly, was often prioritised: if something was legally important, it had to be in writing. It is, however, reasonable to say that we have moved on quite a long way from that, and for two reasons. The first is, sadly, the decline in the reliability of postal delivery services, whether it is Royal Mail or alternative delivery mechanisms. Saying that you are sending a letter to somebody does not have the same guarantee that it used to. Secondly, conversely, people receive information in a wide variety of other ways now. I take the example of HMRC. Every time I log in to its website, to do my tax return or to check things, HMRC is keen to encourage me to switch to having legally required notices about any tax return I might have to do sent to me electronically in future. Many people choose that. I happen to find it more convenient to have those notices sent to me the old-fashioned way so that I can scribble on them and so on, so I have not opted in yet, although I am sure that the incessant notifications will wear me down at some point. That illustrates why it is important to have a range of options available for providing information. Embedding in legislation that it must be in writing is not necessarily the best course. It is a regular feature of secondary legislation at the moment. It is something for which I think the Government should be given credit that we regularly see SIs come to this place that require legal notification to be given in some way and the Government put in quite modern wording that provides flexibility to use modern forms of communication, where appropriate.
Finally, on the right to vote, the split of amendments between this group and the previous group illustrates the point that I made earlier that there is an issue that may be worth looking at, but it should be looked at in the round, as a whole. There is a risk that, if we always single out particular groups of people who we are worried might get registered when they should not be, or who we think maybe should not have the vote, it can give the impression of being unduly fearful of, or uncomfortable with, those groups if we are not at the same time looking at the full, rounded picture. That is much the better way to proceed.
Baroness O'Neill of Bexley (Con)
My Lords, this has been an interesting debate on a variety of issues, and I thank noble Lords for their contributions. Amendment 32 from the noble Lord, Lord Blunkett, would allow sitting Members of this House to vote in general elections. Our disenfranchisement can be traced back centuries in common law as well as to a Motion passed by the other place in 1699 which stated that,
“no Peer of this Kingdom hath any Right to give his Vote in the Election for any Member to serve in Parliament”.
As Members of your Lordships’ House, we have a voice in Parliament. It is right that we do not also have our voices heard through elected representatives in the other place.
Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)
My Lords, I thank my noble friend Lord Blunkett for tabling Amendment 32, moved by my noble friend Lady Lister, which seeks to allow sitting Members of this House to vote in UK parliamentary elections.
I remember I had a fascinating conversation with my MP, Kevin Bonavia. He was talking about voting, and I said, “I’m sorry Kevin, I’m not going to vote for you”. He was a bit horrified and stepped back. He had not realised that I could not vote because I am in here. Of course, if I had been able to vote, I would have voted for him.
I recognise that the noble Lord has raised this issue before and that he wishes to address the difference between the voting rights of sitting Members of this House and those of other electors. However, it is important to recognise the particular role that we, as Members of this House, have in Parliament. We can participate in debates, introduce and scrutinise legislation, and ask Parliamentary Questions. As such, unlike other voters, we have the opportunity to represent our views directly in Parliament, rather than relying on an elected Member of the other place to do so. This is the basis for the long-standing restriction—I think the noble Baroness, Lady O’Neill, said it goes back to 1699—on sitting Peers voting in UK parliamentary elections, and the Government do not believe there is a case for changing these arrangements. Of course, this does not mean that Members of this House are excluded from voting altogether. We can vote in local and devolved elections, where we do not have the same direct role. I hope that explains the Government’s position on that amendment.
Amendment 37 appears to require the Secretary of State to report to Parliament within six months on the impact of extending voting rights to 16 and 17 year-olds on the number and boundaries of council electoral areas. The Local Government Boundary Commission for England is already considering how to incorporate newly enfranchised electors into its electorate forecasts and does not anticipate that the changes will require a different approach to electoral reviews.
The noble Baroness, Lady O’Neill, asked me a question about local government reorganisation. Most of the proposals that were put forward for LGR did not involve boundary changes. Those that do will of course be subject to review by the Local Government Boundary Commission.
I know the noble Baroness, Lady Pinnock, has raised these issues before about the variability of ward sizes, and I am happy to continue that conversation with her. But I am sure she knows that this is really a matter for the Local Government Boundary Commission, so we do not see a clear need for a separate review by the Secretary of State. I thank my—
Baroness Pinnock (LD)
I am sorry to interrupt, but unfortunately, it is not the role of the Local Government Boundary Commission to make those decisions. That is the point I hope to make. The determination is made by the council. If there is no guidance to councils—as there is not—on seeking to create wards of a similar size across the country, the existing disparity will continue and get worse.
Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)
I am very happy to carry on that conversation with the noble Baroness. I feel that, in the end, we are going to come up against local determination versus national determination, but we can have that conversation.
On the amendments tabled by my noble friend Lady Lister, and the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett, let me be clear that the Government recognise the enormous contribution made by people from other countries who choose to make the United Kingdom their home. However, the Government do not believe that lawful residence alone should confer voting rights. Citizenship restrictions, rather than residence alone, are the norm for participation in elections in most democracies. The Government have no current plans to extend voting rights to further nationalities or to introduce a residency-based franchise.
There are, of course, different choices within the United Kingdom. Scotland and Wales have chosen to extend their devolved franchises more widely. We respect their right to take that approach within their devolved competence, just as it is right for this Parliament to determine the franchise for elections for which it is responsible.
I thank the noble Lord, Lord Fuller, for his engagement, via Amendment 45, with the Bill’s provision for improving voter registration. Although I would never wholly dismiss his points and he has been very calm today, he needs to calm down a bit sometimes. His points on Monday suggested that democracy was in imminent danger of collapsing because the EROs and the computers that assist them could not recognise an apostrophe, and today he is worried about the duplicating Mr Smiths. Our EROs already deal with all these issues. Under long-standing rules, to be registered to vote in a general election you must be a British, Irish or qualifying Commonwealth citizen. In England, qualifying EU citizens are also able to register to vote for certain elections, such as for local councils, although not for UK parliamentary elections. The Government have no plans to change this. I do not think that 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. The noble Lord referred to President Zelensky and his wife having different surnames. Actually, our Prime Minister and his wife have different surnames. EROs are very used to dealing with these situations.
I turn to Amendments 46, 53, 54 and 55, tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady O’Neill, and the noble Lord, Lord Jamieson. The Government agree that direct registration must operate accurately and with appropriate safeguards. Clause 17 already secures those outcomes. New Section 12A requires a person to appear to the registration officer to be both of voting age and entitled to be registered before a person is directly registered. New Section 12B also requires a person to appear to the registration officer to be both of voting age and entitled to be registered before the notice is sent. This requires the officer to assess the available information and reach a view on whether those conditions are met.
As well as making the point in the amendment, the noble Lord, Lord Hayward, raised the phrase “appears to the officer”. This is established language in electoral registration law. Section 10ZC of the Representation of the People Act 1983 uses the same formulation for registration following an application. This clause preserves that test with respect to direct registration. Schedule 2 to the Bill will preserve that test while distinguishing the existing application-based process from the new process without an application. As now, registration officers will remain under a statutory duty to ensure, so far as is reasonably practicable, that everyone entitled to be registered is registered and no others.
Finally, new Section 12B(3) already expressly requires a notice to be given in writing to a person before they are directly registered. The power concerning how it may be given relates only to the method of delivery—for example, by post, by hand or electronically. Therefore, the amendments would add no further protection to the safeguards already contained in the Bill.
On Amendments 56 and 57, Amendment 56 raises an important consideration that is already envisaged by the Bill. If an electoral registration officer leaves their role, their successor in the job would hold the records until the end of the retention period. This helps to ensure that people who have opted out of direct registration during the response period do not receive further notices, even if their electoral registration officer changes. I can also clarify that retention of direct registration notice records for five years will ensure that those people who have responded to a notice and subsequently claimed an exemption will then not receive another notice during that time. However, they will be liable to be invited to register by an electoral registration officer. If they remain unregistered after five years and still appear to be eligible, they will be sent another notice. The Government believe this to be an appropriate length of time and it is consistent with the period the Electoral Commission holds copies of a register, which in turn aligns with the maximum length of a Parliament. I hope this provides sufficient reassurance on these points.
Lord Hayward (Con)
Could the Minister further consider her comments on the point I raised? The Minister referred quite rightly to legislation that is now in effect that is some 40 or 50 years old. In those days, the vast majority of people did not have a passport, a driving licence with a picture on it or virtually any other form of proof of identity. Therefore “appearing to be” was a judgment that one made in those days. We have introduced voter ID and all the associated requirements with it. Given that this legislation intends to modernise and bring up to date our election law, could I please ask that the Minister give that further consideration?
Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)
I thank the noble Lord for those comments. I am always happy to give things further consideration. Under new Section 12B, the registration officer has to be certain that a person appears to be of voting age and entitled to be registered before they send the notice. Voter ID is another reassurance once they get to the polling station. I will reflect on his comments.
Baroness Lister of Burtersett (Lab)
My Lords, I thank noble Lords who have contributed to this debate on this rather eclectic group of amendments, and I do so on behalf of my noble friend Lord Blunkett —who I sense has got the bit between his teeth on this, so I think we have probably not heard the last of it.
I must admit I was not convinced by the arguments against the amendment. As the noble Lord, Lord Rennard, pointed out, we have rather changed since 1699. We are a very different House than we were then. It did strike me that the argument used by my noble friend could just as well be used to say that the Members of the other House would not have the vote—they have got all that influence.
Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)
I thank my noble friend for giving way. The point is that MPs stand down when the election is called, so they are technically not MPs when they go to vote.
Baroness Lister of Burtersett (Lab)
I thank my noble friend for that correction. However, I suspect my noble friend Lord Blunkett will not be convinced and will be back with much stronger arguments than I have at present.
I accept the arguments that have been put on my own amendments. It is a shame that we cannot follow Scotland and Wales. It may be that, in time, the evidence from there will show that citizenship is still taken seriously even if the franchise is extended in that way, but I will not go into that now. I shall not try to cover all the points that were made in what was an eclectic debate, so I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Lord Fuller
“Age-appropriate election informationThe Secretary of State or Electoral Commission must take steps to publish neutral and impartial information relating to the conduct of elections on social media channels, which is suitable for those who may be a “relevant child” under section 214A(2) of the Online Safety Act 2023 (power to require providers of internet services to prevent or restrict access by children to internet services), but who are registered to vote and may be under 16 years of age.”Member's explanatory statement
This amendment seeks to ensure that politically impartial information is published suitable for 15 year olds who are registered to vote and who will have never voted before.
Lord Fuller (Con)
My Lords, I am calming down. This group, in which most of the amendments are mine, is related to the third group but there is more detail this time. I am trying to put your Lordships’ House in the shoes of the 16 year-old casting their first vote on their birthday. Statistically, 1,917 16 year-olds are likely to be able to go down to the polling station and vote on their birthday, and I am thinking of them. This cohort will not have voted before. There is a serious need for neutral information about the mechanics of the election for those whom the Government want to vote for the first time.
My Amendment 34, which goes with the rub of the Bill, proposes that the Electoral Commission is given a special statutory duty to design media that appeals to the inexperienced cohort about how elections work, how you prove your identity, how not to invalidate the ballot paper by marking it with your initials—a mistake I once made as a youngster—and so forth. I spoke to the noble Baroness, Lady Benjamin, earlier; times have changed since we were young. We were brought up on “Play School”, “Blue Peter”, “Bagpuss”, “Crackerjack!”, and Kate Adie and Alastair Burnet reading the news. Nowadays, news is consumed in snippets on social media, phones and tablets—at home or on the go—and youngsters are not interested in what the BBC says any more, still less than the noble Baroness, Lady Fox. It is important that the information produced by the Electoral Commission is not just produced in an age-relevant manner but distributed appropriately, and that means online.
That brings me to the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Act 2026 and the amended Online Safety Act, which give the Secretary of State powers to restrict access to social media for those under 16. We understand the reasons, but sometimes legislation requires a trade-off to prevent a greater harm. The Act gives powers to segment that ban by age and material, so I am not proposing something revolutionary that would nullify Parliament’s decision. I want to use the powers in the Act to carve out an exception for people under 16 who are, importantly, registered to vote, allowing them access to election-related materials on social media in advance of an election. This would include those who will vote on their 16th birthday, who would otherwise have been excluded up to and including the day before.
How can these children be expected to form a view of whom to support at the ballot box if they cannot see in advance the full gamut of election materials through social channels, including practical information from the Electoral Commission about how the mechanics of the vote work? My probing amendment seeks to bring into focus the obvious dichotomy that, on the one hand, youngsters are mature enough to play their part in choosing the governance of our nation but, on the other, they are so immature that they need to be shielded from the messages on which that election depends. This is the consequence of the muddle that this Government have created in blurring the boundary between childhood and adulthood.
My amendment says that a social media ban that keeps youngsters away from the candidates, and more particularly from the Electoral Commission’s information, would be the greater harm, by undermining the democratic foundations of our nation. Technically, Section 214A of the Online Safety Act 2023, added by Section 70 of the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Act, would be amended—if you are registered to vote, you would be able to join the social media revolution. The Government say that they want to improve young people’s engagement in democracy; I cannot think of a stronger recruiting sergeant for democratic involvement than incentivising youngsters who are preparing to vote by giving them access to the socials. That is why I suggested in group 3 on Monday that the age of voter registration should be set at 15, not 14, partly because 15 would be an appropriate age as those who had registered could access social media. I am sure that we will return to this on Report.
However, there is another second-order consequence of my proposal. We currently have no definitive method to authenticate somebody under 16 proving their age for the purposes of the Online Safety Act. Ofcom is getting in a right muddle, trying to think of four different ways by which youngsters can prove their age. If they were registered to vote, they would be on the database and that would be enough, so there are some other areas in which this would enable internet service providers to fulfil an identity and age check. At a stroke, it would lift a weight from parents, who are subject to intolerable peer pressure from their children and their friends to let them have a social account when we know that, if they are too young, it is just not in their best interests. Amendment 39 would strengthen the hand of parents and the current system of age verification.
Amendments 35 to 37 cover the schools angle, which was covered in group 3 earlier today. At Second Reading, I warned that the Bill brings party politics into schools. I am not talking about the pedagogy of politics but of political partisanship. The Bill puts teachers in a difficult position. It drives wedges between pupils and invites parents to complain that their own political prejudices have not been adequately reinforced. It is our job to set the statutory ground rules for how electoral politics is treated in our schools. I heard the Minister earlier, but we need to show teachers, pupils and parents that we will not permit a Wild West that disrupts classrooms and increases tension. We need to strengthen their hand and resist providing a conduit for party activists.
My amendments do not suggest that schools should not discuss the election at all. After all, the young people will not have voted before, and teachers will have a role in explaining the process. However, that does not mean that schools should be a dumping ground for all manner of party leaflets. Otherwise, schools will become a magnet for activists, who will conclude that they can reach hundreds of voters at once—which is a damn sight easier than knocking on hundreds of doors.
My amendments are not just about party activists; I am also interested in protecting children from the undue influence of a teacher’s personal political predispositions. My Amendment 35, on the duty to be impartial, is intended to strengthen teachers’ ability to insulate themselves from outside influence and ensure that learners aged 14 to 18 can make neutral, informed decisions about their vote. My Amendment 36 prohibits the display of election materials in educational establishments outside the structured classroom environment, which must be scrupulously impartial. Amendment 38 seeks to ensure that hustings held in schools are politically balanced and that all candidates are given reasonable notice and the opportunity to attend, although whether they actually turn up will be up to them.
This is an important group. The other place failed to consider the practicality and second-order consequences of extending the franchise to those who are so young that they are still at school. We must stop turning schools into political battlegrounds, sowing division and reinforcing sectarianism. This happens in some areas with campaigning in Urdu, which places teachers and schools in an invidious position. Just as importantly, this group will allow those who are mature enough to vote to look at the socials, provided that they have exercised the privilege of registering to vote in the first place. I beg to move.
Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)
My Lords, Amendments 34, 35, 36, 38 and 39 in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Fuller, do us a favour in that they force us to consider the second-order consequences of a very big constitutional change. Regardless of one’s views on votes for 16 or 17 year-olds, it is a hugely important shift in the franchise and we should take seriously what it means for how society and politics operate. I therefore found just thinking through these issues very important.
I want to raise something I have been wondering about, which is not quite reflected in this but comes from it, which is a nervousness about electoral or party politics coming into the classroom. Will there be a different atmosphere among teachers who are actively engaged in politics—and we want them to be; that is what you want citizens to be like—when instead of just educating pupils, they might want to win their votes and not just win their hearts and minds to ideas?
Baroness Lawlor (Con)
My Lords, I support my noble friend Lord Fuller’s Amendments 34, 35, 36 and 38, which would require non-partisan teaching and non-party political posters, which would require balanced hustings, with all the candidates invited and with proper notice. They are very important amendments. It may be argued by the Minister that they are already covered by law under Sections 406 and 407 of the 1996 Act. Indeed, the law requires schools to
“prohibit the promotion of partisan political views”
and
“take steps to ensure the balanced presentation of … views”.
There are also teachers’ standards, which require teachers not to use their standing or position to influence pupils who may or may not be vulnerable due to their age. We also have the duties under the Human Rights Act and the Equality Act, as well the promotion of British values. All these are there.
I do not know how the Minister will respond to these amendments, but they are important because we are now looking at an entirely new category of people aged 16 and 17. The law as it stands was framed for the general teaching of youngsters at school, most of whom would not be going to the polls during their school years —maybe some at the very end but mostly not. Therefore, the idea of what teachers are doing is a pretty abstract notion. But now we are going to be teaching impressionable youngsters—children—who will be going to the polls and for whom this is not an abstract matter at all.
As other noble Lords have said, there is a danger of influence—maybe not intentional, but non-intentional —by the kind of material displayed and the kind of teaching mentioned by the noble Baroness, Lady Fox. How can somebody who is a committed member of any party avoid somehow influencing youngsters? It is necessary for the Government to think about how to put in special provisions for people at school who will be voting, as opposed to the cohorts at whom we have, to date, aimed the law, most of whom will not be voting in parliamentary or other elections.
Lord Pack (LD)
My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Fuller, touched on perhaps the most interesting element of this group, which does not directly affect the Bill at all. It is the potential wider knock-on effect on the Online Safety Act. If we get to a place where we have 16 and 17 year-olds registered, the existence of that electoral register, as the noble Lord rightly mentioned in passing, may become an important building block in future age-verification processes under that Act. So, I suspect that in some ways the most important issue these amendments raise is not for this Bill but for other areas that exercise us at other times.
A general point has come out through these amendments and in several earlier groups, which is that we will have two fundamentally different processes. Under this Bill, we will have the right to vote from 16; under the Online Safety Act the key age threshold is 18. I will not relitigate the previous debate, particularly in light of my comments earlier, but just observe that those two ages being different is not a reason to be particularly hostile, because we have many variations in all sorts of other areas, as was noted in previous debates. However, we should recognise that those two numbers are different. It would be helpful to have more clarity from the Government about their plan to ensure that the different age threshold under the Online Safety Act does not provide inadvertent, unwanted consequences that damage the extension of the franchise to 16 year-olds.
I do not agree with all the details of the methods that the noble Lord, Lord Fuller, has chosen in his amendments, but one important point is worth drawing out, which comes under his Amendment 35. Lawyers might argue over the word “outcome”. I think it is reasonable for schools to teach children about the values of democracy. If we look at, for example, the decisions made about the national curriculum under previous Conservative Governments, there is a very clear direction that we, as a nation, are not neutral between democracy and dictatorship. Therefore, it is reasonable for schools to communicate that we want people to participate in elections. It has to be done in a way that is fair and that recognises there are people who may wish to spoil their ballots or not to vote as a matter of principle, but promoting democracy is a reasonable part of our education system. Although there are some details I disagree with, the basic point about how the Online Safety Act world and the world to be created by this Bill are going to interact is one on which it would be helpful to hear more from the Government.
Lord Jamieson (Con)
My Lords, I am grateful to my noble friend Lord Fuller for his amendments, which raise important questions about young people’s access to electoral information and the need to ensure political balance in our schools. We have had a number of useful contributions. This has been one of the shorter debates, but some important issues have been raised.
As I recollect our discussions so far on this Bill, most, if not all, noble Lords have been in almost universal agreement about civic education. The noble Lord, Lord Murphy of Torfaen, who is not in his place today, said he spent 17 years teaching the British constitution. In fact, my first exposure to democracy was learning the British constitution, and I am pleased to say I passed.
My noble friend Lord Gascoigne made an important point on the first day that votes at 16 cannot be seen as an end in itself but must be accompanied by an understanding of what citizenship is and what playing a part in our free, liberal, democratic society means and entails. It is important—and we are spending quite a lot of time on it—that we consider those two things in parallel.
This group again addresses the complete inconsistency in the Government’s approach to votes at 16. As my noble friend Lord Markham told us at Second Reading, if we consider a 16 year-old old enough to choose a Government, we must accept that they are old enough to hear all the arguments. The noble Lord, Lord Pack, raised the fact that we have a distinct difference between the Online Safety Act age of 18 and votes at 16. We need somehow to reconcile that and recognise that we need to make sure that those who are going to vote have the information they need.
My noble friend’s Amendment 34 would require politically neutral, age-appropriate election information to be published on social media; that recognises the reality that young people, as has been said several times today, obtain their information online on social media and not through the more traditional channels of newspapers or TV. If the Government intend to extend the franchise, they must ensure that newly enfranchised voters can access the information necessary to exercise that right. Will the Minister explain how the Government intend to ensure that young people can receive accurate and politically balanced electoral information?
Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)
My Lords, Amendment 34, tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Fuller, seeks to require extra steps to be taken to publish impartial, age-appropriate election information on social media suitable for young people who may be subject to restrictions on social media access. The Government agree that extending the franchise to 16 and 17-year-olds 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.
We are also clear that that the social media ban must not inadvertently cut young people off from valuable information that is essential for their democratic participation. While the Government’s proposed social media restrictions will apply to young people under 16, they will still have access to many websites, including news sites, and to political information from a wide range of trusted sources, including schools, colleges and the Electoral Commission.
We have committed to working with regulators, industry, civil society and subject matter experts to ensure this information is accessible and easy to find for young people affected by the ban. We are also working across government to strengthen democratic education and media literacy, helping young people to develop the knowledge and skills they need to engage confidently with our democracy. For those reasons, I do not believe that an additional statutory duty to publish election information on social media is necessary.
Turning to Amendments 35, 36 and 38, tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Fuller, on political impartiality in schools and educational settings, I of course recognise the importance of ensuring young people receive politically balanced information and can make informed decisions about their vote. However, we do not consider these amendments to be necessary. As I mentioned in response to amendments in group 3, schools are already subject to clear legal duties on political impartiality. They must prohibit the promotion of partisan political views and take reasonably practicable steps to ensure that, where political issues are brought to pupils’ attention, opposing views are presented in a balanced way.
Existing Department for Education guidance makes it clear that these duties apply not only to classroom teaching but to public displays and school communications. This picks up the point made by the noble Baroness, Lady Lawlor. There are also specific safeguards during election periods to prevent schools being used to promote a particular party or candidate. In relation to hustings, on one occasion when I was a parliamentary candidate, I was invited to attend hustings which were then cancelled because other candidates were not available to attend. I can verify that schools take this very seriously.
At the same time, schools have an important role in helping young people understand democracy and the electoral process. Schools can harness the interest generated around election periods to raise political awareness through activities such as mock elections. Of course, it is true to say that teachers have been educating voters since 1969, when votes at 18 were introduced, and before that teachers in colleges and universities. For many years, primary schools have organised mock elections of the kind I just referred to; I have participated in those myself. The Government therefore consider that the existing framework already provides an appropriate, judgment-based approach which protects political impartiality without unnecessarily restricting or proscribing legitimate educational activities.
I thank the noble Lord, Lord Fuller, for tabling Amendment 39 and so raising the important question of how we ensure that young people who have registered to vote have access to information to inform their voting decision and learn how elections operate. We agree that extending the franchise to 16 and 17 year-olds must go hand in hand with ensuring access to reliable information.
Earlier this year, we announced our intention to ban social media companies from offering their services to under-16s, alongside a package of other measures to improve their safety and well-being online. I understand the references made by the noble Lord, Lord Pack, to the Online Safety Act and making sure that these two things are working together. The Government must act where they see real evidence of harm. These changes seek to reset the rules so that children are protected from the platforms and online features that create the most harm. We are also clear that the social media ban must not inadvertently cut young people off from that valuable information which is essential for their democratic participation.
The Electoral Commission already provides a wide range of information, including resources specifically designed for young people. As I set out earlier, we are working across government to strengthen democratic education and media literacy. We also accept the issues around citizenship education and democracy—the very issue that the noble Lord, Lord Pack, referred to. It is important that young people understand, for example, that we value democracy, but they need to know the difference between that and a dictatorship, and some even worse methods of government.
For these reasons, we do not believe that an additional statutory duty is necessary. I hope I have reassured noble Lords that we have put provisions in step for political education.
Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)
Before the Minister sits down, I want to query two things. First, the social media ban will apparently not prohibit young people accessing trusted news sources. Trusted by whom? Who makes that call? That was partly my point. I would have thought that you could trust the Home Office to bring out an interactive game without getting it so badly wrong. That might be something to consider.
Secondly, the noble Lord, Lord Pack, is absolutely right: we have to look at this. When discussions came out about drilling for oil in the North Sea, searches on that were age-gated, and anybody under 16 could not get through. You had to prove who you were, prove your age and so on. That was quite a big discussion. Will the Minister at least take back to the Government the possibility of thinking this through a bit more, rather than just saying that it is all going to be all right? I do not agree with the ban on social media for under-16s. I had to listen to practically everybody in this House lecture me about how you cannot let under-16s anywhere near this stuff, how everything will lead to suicide, mayhem, bedlam and all the rest of it, and how we have to stop them getting access to it. Suddenly, it is okay if it is news—and that is news to me. We therefore need a bit more detail.
Lord Jamieson (Con)
I want a bit more clarity. I understand that schools are obliged to be politically neutral. In this country we have tens of thousands, if not millions, of teachers—I do not know the number. If we are to have 16 and 17 year-olds voting and want politically neutral education on the political landscape for them, it will be a lot easier, and we will have much more consistency, if there are clear guidelines that can be reviewed and seen by others. Is that the intention?
Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)
In response to the noble Baroness, Lady Fox, social media is not the only source of high-quality news content, nor always the most reliable, as we all know only too well. It is important that young people continue to have access to a wide range of trusted sources on political information. There will also be a defined list of exemptions including, for example, educational services. The noble Baroness is right to flag up the point that we are in a new area here. We need to continue to think about how we make sure there is access to the information needed to make the decisions that these young people will be making, while also protecting them from some of the terrible online harms we have seen.
The noble Lord, Lord Jamieson, referred to impartiality in schools. Existing guidance expressly allows schools to use election periods to raise political awareness and all those issues. I am not sure whether I am quite addressing his question. The existing guidance makes sure that, if there are mock elections, hustings or visits from candidates or party representatives, schools have to maintain a political balance. Schools already do this, and I am sure that they will continue to do so.
Lord Fuller (Con)
My Lords, this debate has not quite gone in the direction I anticipated. My noble friend Lord Pickles, who was Secretary of State when I was a council leader many years ago, once addressed a meeting of the Conservative local government group, and he said: “If you don’t trust the folks, don’t go into politics”. True words.
Politics is about cherishing and promoting the freedom of expression and freedom to explore, which is the bedrock of democracy. The Government are getting themselves in a muddle here. They cannot say on the one hand that these youngsters—I am thinking particularly of attainers aged 15 and above—are mature enough to vote or prepare to vote on their 16th birthday and make their own decisions but then, in the same breath, say that they are so immature that they need to be protected from socials.
Where this debate has gone in an unexpected manner is that we have now started to think about what information these youngsters will be permitted to see—and I am concerned about indoctrination, groupthink and censorship. Only state-approved media will be permitted for these rising attainers. We have to have a process whereby these attainers have access to social media, which in turn will do more for the promotion of registration to vote than any electoral registration officer or automatic registration. Rising attainers need to have access to make up their own minds—otherwise, they could be forced underground, and I think that is really dangerous.
Lord Hayward
“Review of cost of duties to raise awareness and provide assistanceWithin 12 months of the day on which this Act is passed, the Secretary of State must publish a report on the costs to local authorities of the duties in sections 15 and 16 (duties to raise awareness and provide assistance).”Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment seeks to probe the estimates in the impact assessment of the Bill of the national costs of its provisions.
Lord Hayward (Con)
My Lords, this amendment is essentially about the operation of the impact assessment and the way in which it looks at costs in general. I have chosen one particular example, but I will come back with more detail about one or two other elements of the impact assessment overall.
Before I do so, I make a broad observation that I am interested in the inclusion of Clauses 15 and 16, which put in an obligation to educate in relation to 16 and 17 year-olds. When we pass legislation in relation to obligations imposed on teachers, doctors or large numbers of other groups, there are no similar clauses in legislation. I do not know whether it is going to be a new development that each time we pass a Bill, we finish up introducing a clause that says there must be an education of farmers, seagoers or whatever it may happen to be. I call into question whether these two clauses should actually be in the Bill.
My other observation is in relation to impact assessments in general. They started several decades ago. The original intention of impact assessments, as I understand it—I have looked back—was to look at the burdens imposed on particular groups. That was all they were intended to do. I say that as somebody who was for a period the chief executive of the British Beer & Pub Association and had to deal with the changes associated with the Licensing Act. Impact assessments nowadays seem not only a question of an assessment of costs and burdens but—and I say this in particular in relation to this impact assessment—a justification of every decision that has been taken. It is quite striking: you read paragraphs that explain why the Government have taken a decision in relation to whatever it may happen to be. That certainly was never the aim of the impact assessment.
Coming on to my major concern, I pray in aid the impact assessment that went with the Football Governance Bill. Only a few weeks ago, it was identified as being out by over 100%, in 12 months. I have gone through this impact assessment and find myself in exactly the same quandary. I do not understand how many of the figures have been arrived at. I therefore ask the Minister: did the same people who drew up the impact assessment for the that Bill draw up this impact assessment, or others who have operated to the same broad rules? There are explanations of the principles that they have followed—I have read every single line of the impact assessment—but if they are following the same rules that resulted in another impact assessment being out by over 100% in 12 months, the Treasury will have quite a surprise when it discovers the actual costs of this Bill.
The chart with the assessment of costs that I want to refer to is on page 62. It relates to the costs associated with the introduction of votes for 16 and 17 year-olds. We heard from my noble friend Lord Fuller on Monday about the information that he had received on the costs for local authorities in registering new voters. The other side of the costs, which we have heard about persistently today, is the obligation to educate. The noble Baronesses, Lady Royall and Lady Lister, the noble Lords, Lord Pack, Lord Rennard and Lord Wallace, and any number of other noble Lords have said that there needs to be much greater levels of education for this group—and there does. It is about ensuring that they are not just registered but fully aware, as has been identified on any number of occasions, of the issues on which they are ultimately being asked to vote.
I will quote one or two parts of the impact assessment. In relation to staffing costs, paragraph 122 of page 55 says:
“Extra staff may be needed to deal with the additional demand in some LAs”.
Which local authorities are not going to have the extra demand? I am talking here about both registration and education. Paragraph 160 on page 61 says:
“Wider staffing costs associated with the Votes at 16 policy have been excluded, in line with the treatment of MHCLG departmental staffing costs in this impact assessment”.
Paragraph 174 identifies a particular issue and then says:
“Therefore, this cost is not monetised”.
I do not have the IT capacity to go through the whole document and find out how many times it says that a cost is “not monetised”, but I do not have to look much further than paragraph 174; I just have to go to paragraph 178, where the phrase is used again:
“these contributions are not considered significant in cost terms and have therefore not been monetised”.
What are these costs in paragraph 174 that have not being monetised? It says:
“There is an additional resource implication arising from the collaborative development of this policy, with staff time from other government departments, principally DfE”—
which comes as no surprise, given the debates we have had—
contributing meaningfully to its design … There is also a potential impact on education staff”.
That means education staff in every single local authority across the country. Therefore, how on earth does one come back to “may” have implications for some local authorities?
There are many other examples that I could quote, but, in conclusion, I come to paragraph 166 on page 59 of the impact assessment. The Electoral Commission was asked to submit its assessment of its costs, and there is no question that it has very substantial costs. In the central scenario, these are given as £39.8 million. You might think that the Electoral Commission has certain work, but think of all these local authorities, government departments and registration officers. If the Electoral Commission has £39.8 million of extra costs, what have all the other government departments and local authorities got? The figure is given as a mere £48 million. It is almost the same as it is for the Electoral Commission. I was going to use a word that I would normally hear more on a rugby pitch than in the Chamber, but all I will say is that this impact assessment, in so many ways, is not credible. I beg to move.
Lord Fuller (Con)
My Lords, I have not spent as much time as my noble friend Lord Hayward going line by line through the impact assessment, but I have spent some time with text search trying to find the paragraphs that relate to the issues that have concerned me most as we have debated the Bill thus far. They are the attainers and the 16 to 18 year-olds. Because so much of it says “non-monetised”, I have made my own inquiries of one the more senior electoral registration officers in the country, who also happens to be a police area returning office, or PARO.
We have heard in the debate hitherto how many assumptions are made about what the powers may be by extending the franchise and also from auto-enrolment. There is going to be so much more hand work and so many more duplicate entries created automatically. There will be a need to de-duplicate the duplicates that have been created, for the best of reasons: that is just where the legislation is. There are so many moving parts.
I did not realise that the noble Lord was going to mention the figure of £48 million, but I want to dwell on the provisions for registering the attainers alone: those aged between 14 and 16 who the Bill proposes will come on to the register but who do not have a national insurance card or a gas bill, because their parents do that bit. They do not have a driving licence and may not have a passport. In effect they do not really exist to the state.
Lord Hayward (Con)
I did not make reference to the question of automatic registration, but since my noble friend has encouraged me to do so, on page 101, improving registration is given as costing £5.2 million.
Lord Fuller (Con)
I think that would be characterised as the downpayment, but there we are.
So much is to be done by secondary legislation. I am not going to trespass too greatly on a future group, but when it comes to identification and bank cards, there are all sorts of unintended consequences. There are going to have to be huge changes in bank card systems if they are to be fit for purpose.
The noble Baroness, Lady Pinnock, who is not in her place, posited earlier that automatic registration and the duplicates may lead to more frequent boundary reviews. One thing is absolutely for sure: given the way the legislation is today, we are going to need duplicate and parallel IT systems, which will have to be reconciled, and that is going to be expensive. My focus has been on the 1.4 million attainers, but there are a further 1.4 million 16 to 18 year-olds, many of whom will also not have the documentary evidence.
I know that democracy has a cost. We live in a free society, and that costs money. But what we have not worked out are the costs in this impact assessment. The figure the noble Lord has referred to is just a downpayment; it is a drop in the ocean. Chances are, it is probably four times greater than that, and we should be told.
Lord Pack (LD)
That was an enthusiastic heckle, there.
I think it fair to say that the impact assessment, weighing in at 130 pages, is very on brand for election law, especially given our comments earlier about how voluminous election law is. I was struck, though, on looking through it, by how little there is about police time and resources. As the Minister will know well from previous questions and debates, councillors, MPs and members of political parties are already often quite frustrated, when they raise issues with the police—perhaps fears for personal safety due to harassment—by how often police resources are not really available to properly follow up such concerns.
In the parts of the Bill to do with political finance, which we will come to on future days rather than this evening, some of the issues we are looking at there, around, for example, crypto transfers, will require quite sophisticated and advanced investigatory techniques. It will not simply be a matter of whether the local police team has the resources to take seriously issues raised with it to do with election law; I am sure there will be quite a lot of pressure on many specialised parts of the police service, the National Crime Agency and so on.
It is striking that the impact assessment seems to be just about completely silent—I say that in case I missed something in my reading of it, but I did not spot any reference at all—on the potential costs to the police and the associated law enforcement apparatus of the range of offences that the Bill will create, toughen up or put a greater focus on. I hope the Minister can tell us a little about what assessments have been made of the potential costs to the law enforcement apparatus and what reassurance we have that, whatever form this Bill takes when it is passed—and then, we hope, commenced by the Government—the necessary resources will be available to actually enforce it.
Baroness O’Neill of Bexley (Con)
My Lords, I thank my noble friend Lord Hayward for tabling this amendment, and indeed for everything else he has done on this Bill. He has worked many, many hours.
The amendment seeks to address the numerous unqualified costs arising from the provisions of the Bill—which have surely not escaped anyone’s notice—some of which have been raised in the Chamber today, as well as those raised on Monday. I am really concerned that the Government are proposing substantial changes to our electoral system without providing a sufficiently comprehensive account of what those changes will mean. It is particularly concerning given the scale of the reforms proposed and the additional responsibilities they will place on electoral administrators and local authorities.
How does the Minister expect this House or those in the other place to properly assess value for money when one of the principal costs of implementing a major reform has not even been qualified? We are potentially looking at substantial expenditure on new IT infrastructure, data-sharing arrangements, staff training and ongoing administration costs. Can the Minister commit to evaluating the total cost of rolling out automatic voter registration first? We have yet to receive a number.
Moreover, the Bill seeks to place a greater burden on local authorities. Electoral registration officers already operate within a complex legislative framework. The Bill will introduce further obligations, potentially requiring new systems and additional verification procedures. Has it failed to escape the Government’s notice that this will be at great expenditure? We all know that local authorities are already under considerable financial pressure. It is therefore essential that the Government explain whether these additional costs will be fully funded by central government, or whether councils are simply meant to absorb them from existing budgets? I would welcome a clear answer from the Minister.
The Government have proceeded with substantial changes to electoral and political finance law without the degree of prior consultation that such measures deserve. Indeed, significant provisions have been introduced or altered during the passage of the Bill following the original impact assessment, as my noble friend Lord Hayward has identified already. That makes a comprehensive assessment of the cumulative financial impact all the more important.
I therefore ask the Minister two very straightforward questions. Will the Government publish a full estimate of the costs of implementing automatic voter registration, including those of the IT infrastructure? Will authorities be fully compensated for the additional burdens imposed by this legislation? My noble friend Lord Hayward’s amendment asks the Government to be transparent and accountable, and to use public money responsibly. These are not and should not be controversial principles. I hope the Minister can provide the Committee with substantive answers, rather than simply referring us back to an impact assessment that leaves significant questions unanswered.
Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)
My Lords, the provisions referred to by the noble Lord, Lord Hayward, are important to ensure that we encourage as many eligible young people as possible to participate in our democracy.
I will come on to the monitoring and evaluation in a moment, but will respond first to the noble Lord’s points about the impact assessment. All impact assessments produced by the Government are produced by departments in line with His Majesty’s Treasury’s investment guidance in the Green Book. We follow the rules set out in it. However, there have been a number of detailed questions raised about this impact assessment, so what would be most helpful at this stage of our debate is for me to write to noble Lords in response.
On local authority costs, as the noble Baroness will know only too well, and has probably lobbied on, as I have, where there are new burdens on local government then government has to respond by providing funding for those new burdens.
On the monitoring and evaluation of the Bill, our approach will comply with our published evaluation strategy, which is what we were referring to in the impact assessment. We will publish evaluation findings in a timely manner, consistent with our policy for the publication of research and government social research guidelines. That evaluation will include an assessment of the impacts of the reforms on electors, local authorities and others responsible for delivering elections; a process evaluation that will seek to examine how the reforms are implemented; and, as I referred to earlier, an economic evaluation to assess whether the benefits of the policies outweigh their costs.
These are difficult areas to address. Anyone who has tried to do it will know that net present social value is quite a difficult concept to evaluate in financial terms or to monetise, which is where some of the difficulty occurs. The appraisal of policies in the impact assessment relies heavily on qualitative evidence and non-monetised impacts, which do not get reflected in net present social value calculations. It is important that we get a clear picture and continue to look at the economic evaluation, which we will do.
The areas highlighted by the noble Lord will be covered by this monitoring work. I commit to write to Members on the specific financial questions they have raised this afternoon.
Lord Hayward (Con)
My Lords, I thank the Minister for her open response. One thing she referred to earlier that time did not allow me to comment on in my opening remarks was the fund; it is not referred to in the impact assessment, but she referred to it earlier. On that basis, I seek leave to withdraw my amendment.