Representation of the People Bill (Second sitting)

Lewis Cocking Excerpts

Committee stage
Wednesday 18th March 2026 Public Bill Committees

[Zöe Franklin]

Q I guess the question is whether there is more that could be done, potentially through this Bill, to empower every single person in our democracy to vote.

Councillor Golds: I have witnessed this several times in my life. I remember, after ’83, taking a blind woman to vote and watching the presiding officer do the process. He said, “I am clearing this area,” and he took the lady over and discussed it with her. He said, “Mr Jones, the Labour party candidate. Mr Smith, the Conservative party candidate. Mr Brown, the Liberal Democrat party candidate.” Then he asked, “Who do you wish to vote for?” She said so quietly and he marked the ballot paper. It was done incredibly professionally. I have seen it done with people with disabilities, where sometimes they are taken into a side room. What we are talking about goes straight back to where we began—it is the case that people do not know. The facility is there, you just need to get people to know.

Harry Busz: From our observations back in 2024, we found that there are two separate issues. One is the polling station building and whether that is accessible—importantly, independently accessible—for somebody to get to the presiding officer’s desk and a polling booth. Second is the type of aids that are there for them to be able to vote independently. It is very difficult to find the correct buildings and buildings that are accessible. Councils struggle, election to election, to go, “We have this much time. We need to find these spaces.” Over the last few years, we have seen a real improvement in the type of aids that are given to people. We have gone from just having a tactile voting device and maybe a pencil grip to a lot more councils having things like lighting and QR codes with audio lists of candidates on, which is really encouraging.

There are lots of countries around the world where we observe far greater levels of accessibility aids. I remember once seeing somebody in the USA, who was paralysed from the neck down, being able to vote independently by blowing through a straw—I did not really understand how that worked.

There are ways that we can improve. Obviously, it all costs a lot of money. Some of the opportunities to make elections more accessible for people could be through advanced voting, and having voting hubs and specialised pieces of equipment in a single polling station, which anybody could use if they were voting in advance of the election.

[Lewis Cocking (Broxbourne) (Con)]

Q I should declare that when I was a councillor, I did a number of things with Councillor Golds on similar committees at the Local Government Association.

Harry, earlier you mentioned a percentage of people in your data who get turned away at polling stations. Was that all because they did not have the appropriate ID? I have seen people get turned away from polling stations simply because they have turned up to the wrong one. Do those people get included in your data, or is it just people who fail to bring the appropriate ID?

Harry Busz: That figure is just for people who fail to bring ID. We do see people who are turned away because they may not be registered or they may be at the wrong polling station, but they are not included in those statistics.

[Lewis Cocking]

Q We have not touched on this with this group of witnesses: Richard, what are your views on automatic voter registration? In particular, what are your views on a situation where not everybody would be automatically enrolled at the same time for the same general election, potentially creating two groups of the electorate?

Richard Mawrey: We have not really touched on automatic registration. I can see the thinking behind it. My view is that it is going to be almost impossible to achieve in practice, because you can only register people automatically if you are satisfied that they are entitled to vote.

By the time that you have ascertained that they are entitled to vote, you have had to have carried out some form of inquiry—possibly even a house-to-house inquiry —on who is living where and whether they are entitled to vote. Assuming you have people living in a house, you go and knock on the door and say, “Do you live here? Are you entitled to vote?” If they say yes, do you then go further and say, “On what basis can you show that you are a relevant Commonwealth citizen?”, or whatever it happens to be.

It may be a marvellous idea, but in practice, it will turn out to be unworkable. I suspect that it will also turn out to be an opportunity for gaming the system. People will be automatically registered who have no right to be, because the registration office has been in good faith, so to speak, set up by fraudsters to do that.

By all means enact it, but I suspect that when push comes to shove, registration officers are going to start saying, “How do we do this?”, and they do not have the money, staff and resources. I think that it will turn out to be rather a damp squib. I am not saying it is a bad idea; I am just saying it is an idea that ain’t going to work.

[The Chair]

If there are no further questions from Members, I thank the witnesses for their evidence. We will move on to the next panel, and hear oral evidence from the Henry Jackson Society. We have until 4.10 pm for that panel. There will be a vote called during it, and I will suspend the Committee for 15 minutes at that point.

Examination of Witness

Alexander Browder gave evidence.