Representation of the People Bill

Lord Fuller Excerpts

Committee stage
Monday 2nd November 2026 Lords Chamber

[Lord Jackson of Peterborough (Con)]

My Lords, I am pleased to have the opportunity to support the amendments in the name of my noble friend Lord Udny-Lister. I have a significant concern about the Government’s proposal, notwithstanding that it was in the manifesto—a manifesto, incidentally, supported by about 20% of the electorate, with the lowest turnout since 2001 and Labour polling at 33.7%, so one line in one manifesto needs to be taken within a broader context.

My concern is that a really robust case has not been made with real-world evidence. We are looking back to the halcyon days of the past. If young people—16 and 17 year-olds—were so concerned about being part of the franchise, then their close approximation, 18 to 24 year-olds, would have voted in significant numbers at the 2024 election. In fact, the turnout in that age group dropped from 47% to just 37%, so it was not actually a great vote-getter.

If you listened to the noble Lord, Lord Murphy of Torfaen, for whom I have a great deal of respect, you would believe that Wales was a hotbed of psephological excitement and exuberance. But in fact that is not the case: this May, barely 51% voted for the national Parliament of the proud Principality of Wales, and as little as 42% voted in 2011. So there has not been a significant change in the number of people taking part in the ballot.

The comments of my noble friend Lord Bailey of Paddington were interesting. In 1950, 84% of people turned out to vote. But it was a different world then. People were encouraged, principally by their families and their social background—it was often a battle between capital and labour—as well as by public meetings, newspapers and the radio, although obviously not television. My noble friend made the vital point that young people are sometimes deeply influenced by a monoculture of social media. We can have many debates about that, but it would be wrong and completely irresponsible to ignore the context in which 15, 16 and 17 year-olds are making important decisions about how they vote.

In the past, the number one determinant for how a woman would vote was how her father voted. I am not saying I support that, but that was a societal psephological fact in those days. We are in a different world now, one where people do not read national newspapers or watch terrestrial television news programmes. They are very much interested in what other similarly aged people are saying on social media, and that will be a factor.

The main point is consistency, as my noble friend Lady Coffey brought up. Lowering the age while other adult thresholds stay at 18 is incoherent; it does not make sense. My noble friend Lord Leigh of Hurley made some very important points, and I would be interested in the Minister’s comments about how what is good for the constituency Labour parties and the Labour NEC should be good for the franchise for young people as well. My noble friend Lord Udny-Lister made an important point. It seems incongruous and odd that you can vote in an election but not for someone who is the same age as you. That seems very strange. If you are given the franchise—the responsibility of choosing someone to represent you in Parliament—surely you should be able to vote for someone who is your age.

As for international comparisons, we have already heard that, in mature liberal democracies such as the US, Canada, Australia and New Zealand, they all set the voting age at 18. This reflects a widely accepted understanding of what adulthood is.

There is weak evidence on benefits. I have already talked about turnout, which has traditionally been very low, for many years, among 18 to 24 year-olds. That is a function of a wider democratic malaise about the faith and trust that young people have in politics and government. I fear that, in the absence of a coherent argument from the Government for why they are bringing this forward—other than out of psephological and electoral self-interest, in that they believe that thousands of young people will turn out and vote Labour—I cannot understand the evidential basis for this policy.

Public opinion does not support it either. The House of Commons Library notes that polling suggests that the public are unsupportive of lowering the voting age to 16. It is not just old or very old people—given where I am speaking, I will not define “old” or “very old” here in your Lordships’ Chamber—but all manner of people from 18 onwards who are, at the very best, lukewarm and in some cases hostile to these proposals.

We have talked about undue influence and interference, and my noble friend talked about foreign interference via the internet. I do not think it is wrong to focus on the issue of maturity. I know that there is not accepted definitive science about the development of the human brain among young people. Obviously, colloquially and anecdotally, one is told that people are fully formed—physically, mentally, emotionally and socially—at the age of 25, but I understand and concede that that will happen to different young people at different ages. I joined a political party at the age of 16, which made me rather an old weirdo, frankly—the noble Lord, Lord Rennard, would probably say that nothing much has changed. The fact is that I was atypical. Most people are not politically engaged and they get their information on political policies second hand, through hearsay and through close family and friendship groups.

I make one final point about Scotland and Wales, which are, of course, an integral and important part of our country. The fact that they have decided to go their own way, in increasing the franchise to 16 year-olds, does not mean that England should back into that. This is the sovereign Parliament of our unitary state—our one country—the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. It is for us in this Parliament to make the decision. I do not believe that our Front Bench will oppose the principle of this, but it is beholden on the Government, and disappointing that they have not done so, to bring forward a much more comprehensive, convincing and coherent argument for these proposals.

[Lord Fuller (Con)]

My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Rennard, posed a question: do we want another referendum? Of course we do not, because, in 2011, there was a referendum where we asked the people whether they wanted to fiddle the franchise and mess around with the voting system, and the people said no by a very large majority. All noble Lords need to recognise that that is not the way we want to go.

I certainly agreed with the noble Lord, Lord Young of Acton, when he proposed his amendment about social media—something I will return to later, in group 9. I will not go under the bonnet now, save to say that I think he omitted, in thinking about 16 year-olds, to consider the attainers who will need to prepare to vote on their 16th birthday but may not be 16 yet.

I associate myself with the comments of the noble Baroness, Lady Hoey, and my noble friend Lord Jackson, who has just spoken, about the muddle that we are in within our United Kingdom relating to the vote and to the franchise. The Bill ought to be the opportunity to bring an end to the hotchpotch of different arrangements in different parts of our United Kingdom. At Second Reading I spoke about the different systems. Clearly, there is first past the post, where the person who gets the most votes wins—easily explainable in the pub, although obviously there are no 16 year-olds there. There is the alternative vote, which now is just used for the Scottish Crofting Commission elections. There is the supplementary vote, with open and closed lists. The noble Lord, Lord Foulkes, who is not in his place, entertained us at Second Reading when he explained to us how he got elected to Holyrood without standing in that election. Then there are thirds and all-outs. The franchise is also different: in Scotland, any resident, of whatever nationality, can vote, but you must be English, from the Commonwealth or from the EU for local elections here. And of course Peers cannot vote at all.

I was taken by the comments of the noble Baroness, Lady Hoey, who said that such arrangements risk the peace in our nation that flows from the Belfast agreement and the Windsor Framework. I am concerned that this is a slippery slope. The Prime Minister has already declared that he wants to review still further the voting system to consider proportional representation. We all need to be careful what we wish for, because PR will lead to more sectarianism, more minority voting and more campaigning in Urdu, where single-issue activists seek to hold the rest of us over a barrel, reducing trust in democracy and elections, and the institutions they serve.

I will consider Amendment 279, in the name of my noble friends on the Front Bench and the noble Lord, Lord Brady. Some months ago, I attended a Learn with the Lords session at the education service in Victoria Tower Gardens. I was surprised to be paired—I do not know why—with a load of gobby kids, each of them egging each other on, promoting and lionising the Tate brothers and, in my presence, voicing all sorts of unacceptable, misogynistic opinions about immigrants and women. It turned out that it was not Learn with the Lords but “learn from the kids”. I was really concerned.

This plays to the point of Amendment 279 and that which the noble Lord, Lord Hayward, has mentioned about where the boundary between childhood and adulthood is. I do not propose to go through another laundry list of the things you can do aged 16, although you can sell scrap metal to a dealer and you can get there on a moped—that would not be a big deal—or, in Scotland, get married without parental permission. I say to my noble friend Lady Coffey, who is in her place, that you may not be able to get a tattoo but you can certainly get a piercing. These are trivial examples, but it goes to the muddle we are in. When you are 18, you can fight on the front line, get a credit card, take out a loan, buy a pint and sit on a jury, as other noble Lords have said. You can make a will, buy land and property, hold a tenancy and rent an adult video—not that anyone rents videos of any sort nowadays. It illustrates the point that we must have the review contemplated by Amendment 279, to be fair not just to the adults in the room but—

[Baroness Royall of Blaisdon (Lab)]

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

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[Lord Fuller (Con)]

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

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

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

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Moved by

[Lord Fuller]

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

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[Lord Fuller (Con)]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[Lord Rennard (LD)]

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

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

[Lord Fuller (Con)]

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