Representation of the People Bill

Debate between Sam Rushworth and Anna Dixon

Report stage & 3rd reading
Wednesday 2nd September 2026 Commons Chamber

[Sam Rushworth]

I congratulate the new Minister, and welcome her to her place. It was, I think, a long overdue promotion.

It was a privilege to serve on the Bill Committee; it was my first time. I enjoyed the Committee, and I enjoyed the spirit in which we conducted our debates. There were many occasions when I thought that amendments proposed by Opposition parties were sincere and tabled with good intentions, and on more than one occasion the former Minister, my hon. Friend the Member for Chester North and Neston (Samantha Dixon), had to take me aside and explain to me patiently why the Government’s position was that we could not do something that seemed to me to be a reasonable request. Some complex issues have arisen today as well. I listened with interest to my right hon. Friend the Member for Hayes and Harlington (John McDonnell), who suggested that there might be a need for a second phase, and to many other contributions from Members who are more expert than me in in various fields. There has been a real sense of concern about the point that we have reached as a democracy.

I wanted to take a couple of minutes to continue my debate with the right hon. Member for Tatton (Esther McVey). She is no longer in the Chamber, but I should like to respond to some of her comments about her amendments. Broadly speaking, she seems to be of the opinion that contributing a single vote towards the election of a representative for a four-to-five-year period should be done at exactly the same age at which people choose who should be their marriage partner till death them do part. Let me explain why I do not think that is correct.

We can play a quick game of “higher or lower”. The compulsory school age is five. The age of criminal responsibility is 10. At 12, you can be trained to take part in dangerous performances. You can be kept in police detention if arrested, and you have to sign your own passport application. At 14, you can get a Saturday job. At 15, you can apply to join the Royal Navy or the Royal Air Force. At 16, you can buy spray aerosols, enter a pub on your own, drink beer or wine with a meal, join the armed forces, change your name by deed poll without parental consent, hold a licence to drive a moped, or gamble by buying a lottery ticket. You can enter a housing contract. You can leave home. You can apply for legal aid, and be assessed on your own means. You can consent to surgical or dental treatment. You can buy premium bonds. You can become a pet owner, you can consent to sexual activity, and you can obtain your national insurance number. You have to be 17, however, to donate blood. At 18 you can be deployed in the armed forces, you can act as the executor of a will, you can buy fireworks and explosives and you can buy firearms, but you have to be 21 to adopt, or to supervise a learner driver.

The point I am making is that the transition from childhood to adulthood is not like flicking a switch; it is a process. The question that we are really debating is: at what point within that process should we trust somebody to take their first step as a democratic citizen by thinking deeply and contributing one of many thousands of votes in an election for who represents them?

Speaking as someone who has raised three children to the age of 16, but also as someone whose career has involved working with children and youth, I believe that 16 is the right age for a number of reasons. In particular, the evidence is strong that getting young people engaged in the democratic process at that age means that it sticks with them throughout the rest of their lives, but there is another reason too. We have heard talk of this being vote rigging. I have to wonder what it is about so many Conservative Members that makes them automatically assume that a 16-year-old will not vote for them. Every party in this place has an equal opportunity to appeal to that young person for their vote, but when they do not have a vote, they can be ignored. We only have to look at the Conservatives’ record—cutting child trust funds, closing down Sure Start centres, cutting primary school budgets, cutting the educational maintenance allowance, cutting school transport, closing careers services, closing youth centres, tripling tuition fees, locking people out of the housing market, and not doing enough on climate change—to see why it is important that we give that generation a say in their future. The right hon. Member for Tatton made that commitment at Wilmslow high school nine years ago, and I am disappointed that she has rowed back on it today.

I strongly endorse the comments by my hon. Friend the Member for Milton Keynes Central (Emily Darlington). We need to look at the issue of deepfakes and protect our democracy, because we are all subject to it.

[Anna Dixon]

I add my congratulations to my hon. Friend the Member for Vauxhall and Camberwell Green (Florence Eshalomi) on becoming a Minister. It is great to see her on the Front Bench.

I really welcome this Bill. We can go back in history and look at the amazing enfranchisement that happened with the Representation of the People Acts 1918 and 1928, when suffrage was extended to women and those with no property. When I have visitors in Parliament, I love showing them the stained-glass windows where, here in this place, we celebrate giving more people the vote. I hope that when this Bill becomes an Act of Parliament, we can celebrate the enfranchisement of 16 and 17-year-olds. I am really proud that this Labour Government are extending the vote and reversing the Conservatives’ measures that disenfranchise people without voter ID, and that we are also going further with automatic voter registration. These are all really great strides forward in enabling more people to vote.

I hugely support a lot of other provisions in the Bill that ensure that our elections are free and fair, but I want to speak specifically to new clause 81, in my name. One part of a free and fair democracy is that it is essential that candidates and elected officials feel safe. My new clause would take forward a recommendation from the Speaker’s Conference on the security of MPs, candidates and elections, and put an end to the publication of candidates’ home addresses. Today, the default option is for a candidate’s home address to be published. In the increasingly hostile and toxic political climate in which we operate, that is clearly a cause for concern, and I believe it has a chilling effect on our democracy.

I echo my hon. Friend the Member for Southend West and Leigh (David Burton-Sampson) in remembering our dear colleagues Jo Cox and David Amess, who were both tragically murdered, and we think of the family of Ann Widdecombe as her horrific murder continues to be investigated. It is a travesty that death threats are now seen as part of the job, and as we know, it is women who are more at risk and more likely to be threatened. It has been reported—so, Madam Deputy Speaker, no worries—that a constituent of mine has recently received a suspended custodial sentence and a lifetime restraining order for a threat to kill me, in which he wrote:

“If I see you in public, I will try my best to kill you. I will work hard to find out where you live, and I will kill you there.”

That is why this amendment is personal to me. As things stand, if a candidate does not want their address to be published, they must actively request it. Thankfully, I had the foresight and I did, but it does put people like me who choose to do that at a disadvantage to other candidates by creating the impression that we do not want to be open and transparent. If this new clause were implemented, the requirements for those who decline to have their address published would become the default for all candidates, giving everyone confidence that, at least in their own home, they and their families would be safe.

I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Chester North and Neston (Samantha Dixon) for her earlier engagement, and I look forward to and hope that the Minister will continue to work with me and the Jo Cox Foundation, as this Bill progresses through to the other place, to ensure we can put in safeguards and protections for candidates, their families and others, such as agents, who support them. I am not going to push my amendment to a vote, but I do hope that we can take measures to protect all those who put themselves forward for elected office at all levels.

I add my thanks to my hon. Friend the Member for Leeds Central and Headingley (Alex Sobel), who is no longer in his place, for his leadership of the APPG for fair elections, of which I am a member. Others have commented on just how unfair, unrepresentative and unsustainable our electoral system is at the moment, so I do hope—even though we are not considering it—that, in summing up and her wind-up comments, the Minister will give assurances about the steps the Government may take to further protect our democracy and ensure that every vote counts by looking at further measures of electoral reform in the future.

It is vital that we protect our democracy against foreign interests and others who wish to undermine it, and I hope the Minister will consider my amendment and some of those of other hon. Members.

Carer’s Allowance

Debate between Sam Rushworth and Anna Dixon

Wednesday 16th October 2024 Commons Chamber

[Sam Rushworth (Bishop Auckland) (Lab)]

May I begin by expressing my appreciation of the family carers in the Bishop Auckland constituency? According to helpful researchers in the Commons Library, one in seven of my constituents provides at least an hour of unpaid care each week, and over half of them are eligible for carer’s allowance. Nationwide, as we have heard, our army of family carers is the equivalent of a second NHS.

I agree with the criticism made by the shadow Secretary of State that we must not risk opening the door to fraud, and it is precisely because I believe in the welfare state that I think it must always be watertight and widely perceived as fair. However, I am concerned that in a huge number of cases—I am inclined to believe that it is the majority of cases—overpaid carer’s allowance is the result of inadvertent error.

As others have said, this is a complicated benefit and when so many stressed family carers find themselves having to pay back large sums of money, there must be some onus on the Government to take responsibility. This issue is so widespread that I think every MP in this place will have been contacted by constituents facing hardship. These are decent, honest people who work hard, who serve their families and communities and who ask for little, and they feel as though they are being treated like criminals while the Government have become the nation’s biggest debt collector.

If I may, I will briefly raise a specific issue that two of my constituents have raised with me. They are being required to pay back thousands of pounds because of inadvertently earning just above the earnings threshold. However, as they have pointed out to me, carer’s allowance is counted as income in universal credit claims, so had they not claimed it, they would have received more in universal credit. I gently urge the Minister to consider this point as part of the review, as people are not only being pushed into hardship due to being made to pay back overpayments, but may actually be worse off on aggregate than if they had never claimed.

[Anna Dixon]

My hon. Friend rightly points out that this is a huge cause of stress to people. Not only that, but carers are actually leaving work, limiting their hours and not taking on additional responsibilities. Will he join me in calling on the shadow Secretary of State to apologise to the 134,800 carers who have outstanding carer’s allowance overpayments to a total value of £251 million?

[Sam Rushworth]

This sits among the many injustices that the new Government have to deal with, and I think an apology is in order.

In conclusion, I welcome this Government’s review. I think there have been some excellent contributions from all parts of the House, with some really serious issues raised such as students losing their eligibility to claim, my constituents’ point about universal credit and the points about respite care and young carers, and I do not think anyone has even mentioned kinship carers. I hope that this review will take account of all these things so that we can deliver a fairer deal for Britain’s army of unpaid carers.