Representation of the People Bill (Second sitting)

Samantha Dixon Excerpts

Committee stage
Wednesday 18th March 2026 Public Bill Committees

[Paul Holmes]

Mr Marshall, don’t feel you need to, but if you want to add something, you are more than entitled to.

David Marshall: I have nothing further to add.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government (Samantha Dixon)]

Q It is very pleasing to meet you both, as the two most important people in Northern Ireland’s elections, I would suggest. Thank you for joining us today. How do you see the Bill making things easier for running elections in Northern Ireland?

David Marshall: I manage a relatively small team in Belfast who run elections here. It is not the equivalent of Great Britain, where there are teams in local councils. There is an Electoral Office that covers all 11 councils here in Northern Ireland. We are tasked with running two sets of elections in May 2027—both the Northern Ireland Assembly and the local council elections—so most of my work and thinking is around that.

The Bill has a commitment to review the canvass law in Northern Ireland, which is very welcome indeed. The canvass law in Northern Ireland has not kept pace with changes in Great Britain, and it really needs to. That is an important step forward. In terms of the nomination process, the requirement for candidates to show a form of ID is a really sensible step forward, given the problems in Great Britain in 2024, and it would be relatively straightforward to implement. We think that is a great idea, as well as the timelines. As I understand it, the Bill brings forward a 12 noon timeline for the last day of nominations, which will help in terms of ballot paper proofing and then getting postal votes out to voters that bit earlier, which will obviously make it easier for them to take part in the election.

There are a whole host of other changes to postal vote deadlines for Great Britain, which in this instance aligns Great Britain to Northern Ireland. I am all for alignment if it changes Great Britain to be the same as Northern Ireland. That is really helpful. Lastly, from an electoral administrator’s perspective, the new penalties for intimidatory behaviour towards staff are critical, and it is really important that those are brought in. It is a really good step forward.

[Samantha Dixon]

Q Mr Marshall, to follow up on the point you made about the canvass, the current situation is that the canvass is scrapped every 10 years in Northern Ireland and you have to begin again, so the new measures are welcome.

David Marshall: They are very welcome indeed.

Cahir Hughes: To echo what David said, canvass reform is essential in Northern Ireland, so that measure is welcome. Automatic registration will also play a significant part in improving access to electoral services in Northern Ireland, and we are working closely with David on the practicalities of that.

David touched on the electoral administrative side of the Bill, as you would expect, but I want to highlight something in relation to the political finance side. The rules on political donations for registered political parties are slightly different in Northern Ireland, in that parties can accept donations from permissible Irish sources. The Bill says that that will continue, and that principle was enshrined in an agreement between the British and Irish Governments back in 2006, to allow Irish donors to give to parties here, in line with the Good Friday/Belfast agreement. Obviously, the secondary legislation will provide the detail on how this will operate in practice, but we can already see some difficulties in checking the permissibility of donations. For example, with company donations from a UK company, we can go on to Companies House and check the donation, as can the treasurer of a political party or the elected representative who is taking the donation.

Company registration in Ireland is very different, and it would therefore not be as straightforward to verify the true nature of a donation, if it comes from a company. Not only would that put the treasurer of a party in a difficult situation, but we as the regulator are also required to check 50% of the donations that are reported to us in Northern Ireland, so that will make compliance tricky for us. We wait to see the secondary legislation, but that is a concern for us in relation to the political finance aspects of the Bill.

[Lisa Smart (Hazel Grove) (LD)]

Q My question is about the calling out process in polling stations, which clause 46 will end. In practice, does calling out still happen in elections, bearing in mind that voter ID has been needed in Northern Irish elections for the last 25 years? Do you see this as being a significant change, or will—as I suspect—everyone involved in elections just roll with this and possibly forget it even happened?

David Marshall: This is one of those changes that should probably have been brought in when photographic voter ID was introduced in Northern Ireland in 2002 But frankly, whenever it was brought in, calling out in polling stations was removed in Great Britain as part of the introduction of voter ID there. The Government have seen fit to make it equivalent across Great Britain and Northern Ireland, which I very much welcome. We have a system for personation called “photographic ID”, and we do not need another secondary system. If necessary, we can manage any issues or concerns in polling stations by talking to polling agents at that point.

Cahir Hughes: Historically, the link was made with polling agents. When photographic ID was introduced, polling agents thought that it was very important that they still had a role to identify personation. I suspect that the legacy issues in Northern Ireland and distrust between parties and communities may have played a part in that. However, as we have discussed, photographic ID is very well established in Northern Ireland, so people are familiar with it. It provides the level of security that you would expect in polling stations. Of course, polling agents will continue to be allowed in the polling station.

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[Paul Holmes]

Thank you for your time, both of you.

[Samantha Dixon]

Q The voting age has obviously already been lowered in Wales and Scotland. As we approach the Bill, and it hopefully becomes law, allowing young people to participate by voting in our elections, what lessons do you think we should learn from the experience in Wales and Scotland over recent years?

Harriet Andrews: We have a really great split screen on this because we work in England and in Wales, in particular. At the moment, we are preparing loads of young people for the Senedd election. We are running 16 youth hustings for young people at the moment in Wales, so we have a lot of on-the-ground experience of this. I would say that supporting young people at 16 and supporting young people at 18 are not particularly different; it is the same process of preparing them to engage and vote.

From our experience in Wales, I can say that young people are taking it really seriously. They are thinking about the responsibility and are really excited to vote. The work that we are doing with young people is a positive experience, and they are engaging really well. If there are any worries about harm being done to young people aged 16, our on-the-ground experience suggests that that is absolutely not the case.

The one thing that we see in Wales is that votes at 16 needs to come alongside support—particularly democratic education and engagement in schools—so that young people know how to vote. Just changing the voting age in itself will not lead to a mass change in the way young people engage with politics and democracy. The lack of support in Wales has meant that there is not loads and loads of engagement at 16, so the surrounding support is really important, regardless of the voting age.

Andy Mycock: I have been involved in the evaluations of both the Scottish and the Welsh lowering of the voting age, and I have advised both Governments on that work. The first thing is that the lessons from 1969 were not learned in either of those cases. Simply lowering the voting age on its own does not have a mercurial effect in encouraging young people to engage and vote. The big problem is that there is a need to have a significant framework of support for young people as they grow up, before they vote, whatever the voting age is.

At present, in Scotland, Wales and the rest of the United Kingdom, there is a disconnection between the different stages of school—between primary, secondary, and further and higher education. The 50% of young people who do not go to university are dropped completely in terms of their support. It is a huge issue, and I urge you to look at it. What happens in schools and outside schools is very poorly connected, and what happens online is almost unregulated. There is a huge opportunity to think about media, information and political literacy at this point.

I urge you to think about what the House of Lords called a civic journey—the ability to connect all those different interventions and policies from Governments at different levels to a set of clear policy ambitions. At the moment, votes at 16 has very little in terms of a clear agenda for success, beyond the idea that young people might vote a little more over their lifetime. In Scotland and Wales, that has not happened.

In the independence referendum of 2014, 75% of 16 and 17-year-olds voted. It was seen as a huge success, until you look at the average turnout, which was 85%. Young people aged 16 and 17 in Scotland, although they vote more than their 18 to 24-year-old peers, continue to vote at considerably lower rates than the average turnout. That is because neither Government thought at the time they lowered the voting age about significant, consistent support for every young person as they grow up. They need to be heard, listened to and engaged with, not just in their lessons but in their communities. They need to meet you and local and other elected representatives regularly so that they feel they are part of the democracy, regardless of whether they are enfranchised or not.

The other thing that did not happen in 1969 was any evidence-based approach to finding out what the effect of lowering the voting age was. Lowering the voting age to 18 in 1969 was a policy failure. In every election after that until the late 1990s, turnout among 18 to 24-year-olds fell. This is likely to be a similar situation. Votes at 16 needs to learn to adopt an evidence-informed approach. We need a longitudinal study of the effects of what is happening. It is remarkable that this country does not have a centre for research around democracy. We have one on electoral studies, but we do not aggregate what is happening out there in the democracy.

As I said at the start, we are in a moment of huge precarity in terms of the future strength of British democratic resilience. I urge this Committee to think about how Government, Parliament, academia, and wonderful organisations such as the one Hattie represents and the Electoral Commission can come together and think about how we start to build an evidence base that starts to learn from the policy interventions that we invest in. We must start to think about the future health of British democracy.

[Samantha Dixon]

What you are saying is very interesting, and I will reflect on it. As we go through the Bill process, I think it will become clear that the Government have considered some of the points that you have raised, but thank you for raising them.

[Lisa Smart]

Q I should declare an interest as a director of the Joseph Rowntree Reform Trust. JRRT is one of the biggest funders of the democracy sector, so a number of the witnesses this afternoon will have received grants from JRRT, including the Politics Project and, I think, Dr Mycock, for a research project.

I strongly agree that we are in a moment of crisis for our democracy. An awful lot of things that I would have liked to see in the Bill are not there. You talked about the opportunity that this presents. Particularly looking through the lens of trust in politics and participation in our elections, what does your organisation, or you as an academic, believe could have been in the Bill that would have had a positive impact on trust in politics?

Harriet Andrews: The biggest thing in terms of trust in democratic institutions is the way that democratic institutions engage with the public, and with young people specifically. We specialise in connecting young people and politicians. We have evidence that we can systematically improve democratic trust, which is a fantastic thing to be able to do—not many people can do that—but that is done through loads and loads of conversations between young people and politicians, and there is not really a substitute for that kind of work. I do not know whether that is the role of this Bill, but it is definitely the role of every Member of Parliament. We also need to think about investment in places such as schools and youth groups, and ask whether they are being supported to engage with democratic institutions.

The other thing to mention is that a lot of people are really uncertain at the moment about whether they are allowed to engage with democratic institutions as part of their youth work or as schools, because they are worried about issues around impartiality. I would focus on really clear guidance on impartiality, partly so that people feel a lot more comfortable about what they can do. They can do a lot, but lots of people are scared about engaging with their local council or councillor on a local issue because they are worried about political bias. More training and support around that is needed.

Andy Mycock: I fully agree with everything that Hattie said. Contact—building a relationship at a very early age—is a critical part of this. By the time you get to secondary school, a lot of that good work is already past its time of efficacy. Primary school, when young people are socialising and their brains are growing, is proving to be, in all different aspects of growing up, the most important time. There is a stark lack of focus on primary school interventions. Much of what happens focuses on secondary school, when young people are overloaded; they are going through significant change in their lives—biologically, socially and educationally. Stretch the civic journey. Give it time to mature over time. Think about how you support young people after the age of enfranchisement, whether it is 16 or 18.

To go back to the Minister’s question, our work in Wales highlighted another thing—the voter journey. In Wales we found a lot of focus, in Government and other programmes, on getting young people to get on the electoral register and to know how to vote, but that did not get them to the ballot box. The principal reason was that they were not educated about political parties—what those parties stood for. This is not to open up the old debate about indoctrination, but young people simply did not know what the political parties stood for—they did not know how to read the manifestos, so they stayed at home.

I urge all the parties to move beyond this idea of the fears of indoctrination. The internet age has changed things. You cannot protect young people from political discourse on the internet. Our survey data is already starting to pick up that young people, particularly young men, are increasingly prone to misinformation and to populist ideas. If you do not socialise young people, so that they understand politics before they become enfranchised—whatever the age—it is likely that they will socialise themselves, or will socialise themselves in peer groups that may not be the healthiest in terms of democracy.

I would think strongly about the idea of the voter journey, and about things like automatic voter registration, or giving young people voter authority certificates at the age of 16. If they have a national insurance number, why not give them that certificate so that they have the document and do not have to look for it? Walk them through polling booths: get them used to the idea that these are not alien places. For those who come from middle-class families, it is likely that their parents will take them there the first time to vote. For those coming from maybe disadvantaged or disengaged families, it is highly likely that they will not.

Lastly, learn from other places. Australia has a wonderful celebration around elections where they have a democracy sausage, which you will have heard of now increasingly. We might not be a nation of sausages, but we are a nation of cakes. Why not think about the democracy bake? Have civil society organisations outside polling stations—turn voting into a celebratory act, so that young people feel that that first experience is positive, and that it is not a threatening environment for them to go to again.

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[Paul Holmes]

Q Professor Bernal, do you have anything to add?

Professor Bernal: I have one thing to add, and it is a very simple one: I would like the open register to be abolished—straightforwardly abolished. As a privacy expert, it seems to me that it creates more risks. In the age that we are in at the moment, we need to reduce the risks as much as possible.

[Samantha Dixon]

Q We have talked about automatic voter registration, which obviously operates in other countries around the world. Where have you seen good practice? What examples can you give to the Committee that we should consider?

Professor James: You can think of two basic, broad clusters of countries that have automatic voter registration in one form or the other. In one set of countries, you have a central single record for every single citizen: what might be called a civil population register. Those are countries such as Finland, Sweden, the Netherlands or Germany. That is where automatic voter registration is simpler to implement because, in practice, what happens is that, in short, there is a copy and paste of that register ahead of election day.

In other countries, including in Canada and Australia, there is not a single record for every single individual. What those countries have done recently—I say “recently”; it has been over the course of the last 20 years—is move towards automatic voter registration by automatically enrolling groups of people using specific pieces of data at points when they know the data is accurate and reliable. In the UK context, Canada and Australia are probably the most relevant examples.

[Samantha Dixon]

Q Do you have anything to add, Professor Bernal?

Professor Bernal: No, I have nothing to add to that.

[Samantha Dixon]

Q I am interested in what you said about the open register. The current proposal is to change it from opt-out to opt-in, but would you just like to scrap the whole thing?

Professor Bernal: I would like to scrap it. Going from opt-out to opt-in is great for the new people coming in, particularly with automatic voter registration and the votes at 16. However, there are millions of people who did not realise what they were opting in to—or what they would have opted out of—who are still on the register. If this is going to be retrospective, and you are going to say to everybody, “Do you want to be in after all?”, maybe that would help, but it would be simpler and better just to get rid of it.

We have to think very carefully about why the open register exists in the first place, and what use it is actually being put to. The uses are primarily commercial. In the current era, so many other forms of data are available to anyone wanting commercial use of data—we should leave it to them. What we need is as clear and simple a database as possible, with a single function to support our elections. That way, we get more security and privacy, and people will be more likely to trust it.

[Lisa Smart]

Q Mr Mundell, I refer you to my earlier declaration of interest as a director of JRRT, from which some of the witnesses have received funding for their work, including the two professors on this panel.

My question is about automatic voter registration and some of the civil liberties and privacy issues that we should considering as we look at this legislation. Can you help us think through some of the really important questions we should be asking, bearing in mind that, as you rightly say, a lot of the detail will be worked through in secondary legislation? What things should we be thinking about to make sure that we protect the population’s civil liberties and keep privacy where it should be?

Professor Bernal: I should outline my perspective from the beginning. When Toby asked me to come into this project, my initial thought was, “I don’t want this, because of the privacy things—I’m a data privacy specialist and that’s what I work on.” However, when I was talking to him, I began to be persuaded by thinking about this as a way to get greater integrity in the database. Privacy is not about hiding information but making sure that the right people get the right information at the right time, and with appropriate permissions and consents.

As a result, the first thing we should think about is: what will the database on which people are registered be used for? What functions will it be put to? Who is going to have access to it? What are they going to be able to do with that data? That is something that we should be doing anyway, regardless of whether we are bringing in automatic voter registration. We should be thinking about those things, particularly in an era when electoral interference is a known factor and happens in lots of different ways, and we should be working out the way to make things secure. As I see it, automatic voter registration actually gives us an opportunity to do that, because it means that we need to think about having a properly coherent and secured database. As we do so, we will think, “Who’s going to have access to this? What are they going to be able to do with it?”

One issue is that political parties will want access to this data, but they should have to produce a report on what they have done with this data and how, including who they have given it to. We need only think back to Peter Mandelson and what he was doing with his data—giving it to people who he perhaps should not have—to see that we really need to keep a proper grip on what is happening to the data. That would solve most of the civil liberties questions about this. If we make sure that we know exactly what is happening to the data, and if we have a good set of controls over who manages and runs it, and who has access to it, you do not have the problem.

The only civil liberties question left is a rather separate one: should people be able to not be registered to vote? However, that is a rather different question beyond the scope of what we are talking about here, because we have decided in this country generally that people should reply to electoral requests and so on. That is the only one, and I do not think that is a question that automatic voter registration is a problem for.

Professor James: I would draw the Committee’s attention to what happens to the electoral register at the moment in terms of, as Paul has set out, the issue of the open register potentially being a security risk, but also who has access to the marked and full registers. There is currently no requirement, as I understand it, for electoral registration officers to keep a record of who requests and uses those records. That could be introduced. The Electoral Commission could then provide a report on exactly who is accessing those registers and for what purposes.

Political parties, for example, are entitled—and this is correct—to have access to electoral registers so they can reach out to voters, but how parties themselves use the registers is an important question.

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[Samantha Dixon]

Q The Government’s election strategy said that our electoral system is not keeping pace with change. The Bill hopes to move us forward so that we do keep pace with changes in the electoral sphere. How successfully do you think the Bill brings us forward, and keeps us aligned and up to date?

Councillor Golds: I am a great believer in election law needing more. At some point, there needs to be a stop and a proper consolidated Bill that brings UK election law into the 21st century. When we did the ballot Bill, we suddenly discovered it needed umpteen pages of amendments, because to deal with the ballot for everything—from a Member of Parliament to a parish council representative in East Grinstead—every single one needed a separate statutory instrument. That is one of the problems.

In 1950, 82% of the electorate voted. At a time when people could not use petrol, there was no social media and postal voting was incredibly restricted, 82% of the people voted, because they wanted to vote. I have the view that you are trying to lead a horse to water and not make them drink. I believe that it is up to the politicians in Government to make sure that people wish to vote for and against Government. That is what will increase the turnout.

I am slightly concerned about many things that I have looked at here, and some things that are missing. For example, in the London borough of Tower Hamlets in May, we will go into the polling stations and the electoral papers will be computerised—I give my name, it goes, “boop doop doop”, and out comes the ballot paper. There are three polling districts in my ward, so why on earth could you not go into any one of the three—now that they are computerised—give your name and vote? Why could you not do that in a parliamentary election? That is what they do in Australia: you go into any polling station in the constituency and they will issue the ballot paper.

Richard Mawrey indicated dissent.

Councillor Golds: Commissioner Mawrey says otherwise.

Richard Mawrey: In answer to that, fraud is absolutely rife in Australia, and it is undetectable because they do not have numbered ballot papers. They can tell that fraud has taken place, but they do not know who the fraudulent votes are for, and those votes count. Quite frankly, an intelligent 10-year-old could game an election in Australia—and they probably do! That is a road down which I would invite the Committee not even to take the first step.

[The Chair]

Obviously, you are expressing your own view there.

Richard Mawrey: I have investigated the Australians, at their invitation. I am with Peter Golds on the point that modernising the law ought to take a consolidating statute. We do that with a lot of things, like the companies Acts and so on. It would be a new consolidating statute, as the last one was in 1983 and we are now 43 years on. That opportunity should be taken, first, to rationalise all forms of malpractice that are offences and corrupt practices; and secondly, to set up a coherent system for trying electoral disputes, because the present system is hopeless. Various proposals on how to do that have been put forward.

This is not the Bill in which to do it, but this Bill should not be saying, “Well, we have done that. We can park that for the next 10 years.” It ought to be a staging post in thinking, “Right, let us sit down and produce a coherent statute that modernises not simply electoral offences, but how we deal with them.” That is what I would counter. I agree that this Bill is not the one in which to do it, but it should not be treated as the end of the road for 10 years.

Harry Busz: As an organisation, we believe there are lots of positive steps forward in the Bill. Certain aspects around automatic voter registration, and improving the performance and accuracy of the register, are really important. For administrators, such like the extension of the postal vote deadlines will enable people to return their postal votes in a timely fashion. We also think that the issue of protecting staff and including them, as well as campaigners, is really important. Since the voter ID regulations came in, there has been a bit of a shift in the way the public views presiding officers and poll clerks in polling stations, as they now have the role of gatekeeper, having to essentially turn someone away from voting if they do not believe there is a likeness with their ID or similar.

There are areas that could go further, particularly around voter ID. At this moment in time, there is an issue where if somebody does not have a form of ID on the day, unlike in other countries, we have no off-ramp, whether through attestation or vouching, so that the person is still able to participate in the election on the day. The question we see as the most challenging is how these procedures will be done on the ground, particularly inside polling stations and for administrators. As long as there is the ability to increase funding and support for the council departments running the elections on the ground, there are lots of positive steps.

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[Samantha Dixon]

Q Thank you, Mr Browder. Are you aware of examples where cryptocurrency has already been used for foreign political interference?

Alexander Browder: It has been used throughout the west by bad actors to interfere in political elections, particularly by Russia. I want to highlight three notable examples. The first is a European political scandal linked to a bitcoin donation that almost toppled the Czech Government in the summer of 2025. The Czech Justice Minister, Pavel Blažek, accepted a Bitcoin donation worth $45 million. It turned out to come from Tomáš Jiřikovský, a convicted drugs and arms trafficker who spent three years in prison for operating a dark net drug marketplace.

It was particularly interesting that the donation and the connection to the drug trafficker was discovered by the public only after the Czech had auctioned it off. Blažek’s successor at the Ministry of Justice commissioned an external audit that concluded that the donation should have been refused due to the significant risk that it came from the proceeds of crime. In that case, it was discovered only with a significant delay from when the donation was made.

The second example took place during the Moldovan parliamentary elections, where authorities found that illegal funds from Russia were moved through crypto-currency accounts, laundered through illicit cryptocurrency exchanges and then distributed by couriers to buy votes for pro-Russian political groups and to make donations in cryptocurrency. Moldovan investigators blocked $107 million that was destined for pro-Russian political groups. There were also reports that connected crypto flows directly to interference campaigns that used apps to pay activists, conduct illicit polling and directly pay people. That was paid for with the largest stablecoin in the world, USDT, which is operated by Tether.

Finally, in the 2016 US elections Russian hackers used cryptocurrency to buy infrastructure that targeted US individuals involved in the presidential election. [Interruption.]

[The Chair]

Order. I will now suspend this sitting.

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[Paul Holmes]

If the Minister decides to make me the MP for overseas voters, I am more than happy to do surgeries across the world.

[Samantha Dixon]

Q Outer Mongolia, perhaps?

As an aside to Paul’s point, I do receive correspondence from constituents who live overseas, usually in respect of their pension arrangements. However, to tackle the point about apathy or disengagement, the Bill includes powers to pilot automatic voter registration. Do you think that that would be a valuable tool for overseas voters?

Colin Blackwell: As others have touched on, awareness is everything. Conservatives Abroad believes that what is vital above all else is raising awareness of the right to vote and encouraging overseas citizens to register, which is now done online.

Historically, the civil service has always said, “Oh, we can’t contact Brits overseas because we don’t keep a register. We don’t know where they live. We don’t know who they are.” That raises the question of how this part of the electorate would be suitable for automatic registration.

Today’s Government services are delivered digitally and electronically in a way that was not done before. Many Departments now interact digitally with millions of British citizens living overseas. The most obvious one is the Passport Office: half a million passports from overseas are renewed every year—over 10 years, that is 5 million. The international pension centre at the Department for Work and Pensions deals with more than a million overseas pensions. The Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office keeps registers of Brits in individual countries. Lastly, the first place people go when they move overseas is His Majesty’s Revenue and Customs to change their address. Millions of British people living overseas still pay British taxes in one form or another or make voluntary NI contributions.

What I am saying is that, if all these digital interactions between Government and overseas Brits were brought together, and a link to the online voter registration page were automatically provided in those interactions, you would overnight reach potentially millions of this invisible electorate with the exact place they need to go to register to vote. That is the approach that Conservatives Abroad would suggest you look at.

Imogen Tyreman: Automatic voter registration pilots are a great thing to look into, especially for overseas voters. I agree that we should look at how registering for a passport could link to registering to vote. Yes, it might miss some Brits, but unfortunately we do not keep a record of emigration, so it is the best opportunity we have. However, there needs to be a package of other measures or that will not necessarily affect turnout.

We see lower turnout in countries that have passive registration, so there must be accompanying measures, even if it is through the Electoral Commission, to help us to contact voters abroad to inform them. That could be something like a free post or an opt-in registration. Such options need to be explored, and the timeline for renewal also needs to be considered to make sure that people stay on the register.

Richard Williams: I agree with all the points that have just been made. There is one group of people who have emigrated who might fall through the cracks if you look just at the HMRC records of people who have emigrated: those born to British parents overseas. These people may have a right to citizenship but have never lived in the country. They have specific difficulties even getting on to the electoral register. In many cases, they need to provide evidence of their parents’ birth certificate and their own birth certificate, and then there is a question of where their vote should be assigned. This topic came up in discussions with other Labour International members.

Beyond that, if we speak about the choice architecture, we certainly echo the sentiment that we are in favour of trialling automatic and automated voter registration. One topic that came up in discussion with our members, which is perhaps a way to look at doing this, was the idea of automatic reminders upon passport renewal, which is an interaction that many Brits abroad will have. If you structured that in such a way that people would then have the choice—ticking a box to say, “Yes, I want to be on the register,” or “No, I do not want to be on the register”—it would simplify and consolidate the process for many people.

There is then the question of whether there is an opt-in or opt-out approach. In the notes accompanying the Bill from the House of Commons Library, there was a reference to the Sheffield University case study in which 75% of students were enrolled on the electoral register through a process whereby they were prompted upon their annual enrolment for university. That figure compares with 13% for other universities. If that system were explored in a pilot for voters abroad, we might expect to see similar results just by structuring the choice in such a way that people have this prompt, and we could then ask whether it should be an opt-in or an opt-out choice.

[The Chair]

We will come to you, Ms Shorten.

Jenny Shorten: May I cede the floor to Tom?

Tom McAdam: We are in favour of AVR. A YouGov poll at the last election showed that only 26% of Brits abroad understood their rights, so automatic registration, using the touch points that were previously mentioned, is something that we would support. On Imogen’s point about the free post, voters abroad should be making informed decisions and receiving literature from candidates in the same way as domestic voters, so we would support anything that enables, say, one free post or an electronic communication from candidates to citizens abroad so that they are able to make an informed decision.

Jenny Shorten: May I just add one other thing to the last point about the free post? If you look at the Select Committee report, it suggested a review of the general election process. It suggested that a good first step would be to centralise the records of overseas electors and have them all on one register. You could then start to have the target group effectively in one place. Informally, I chatted with electoral registration officers in the run up to the last elections Bill, and they were saying that we deal with pretty much everybody overseas—though not entirely everybody—by email, so our records hold that data. If you put together a centralised register and the fact that the councils already know where to find these people, you have the means by which to inform them.

It must be right that you can have the basic data flowing about who the candidates are. It is not about their vote, which is their choice—I am sure we will discuss digital in a moment—but about what their choice is. In this day and age, I do not think there is any excuse for why I am expected to vote for people I have never even heard of and who have not approached me.

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[Paul Holmes]

I would be one of the people sad enough to go to the National Archives to look at them, so I am fully in favour of it.

Azzurra Moores: Me too.

Chris Morris: See you there.

[Samantha Dixon]

Q Chris, you very ably pointed out how technology moves at breakneck speed and takes us forward, and it has been recognised that our electoral system is not keeping pace with it. Is there any way in which either of you feel that the Bill takes us forward and brings us up to speed—anything at all?

Chris Morris: It is not all doom and gloom. If we take the example of digital imprints, measures have been taken to extend the digital imprint regime. Our argument is simply that it does not go far enough, and it should go further. For example, it should cover things like fake newspapers or websites, which can be set up in seconds, that do not include their political party affiliation. The digital imprint regime is being slightly improved by the Bill, but it is simply not ambitious enough.

We also have to think not just of 2026, but of 2029. If you look at how technology has changed since the last general election in 2024, it is almost in a different league. I regularly ask my head of AI, “Where are we going to be in three years’ time?”, and he usually says, “I’m not sure where we are going to be in three months’ time.” We need to have the flexibility to make sure that the measures are as wide as possible, because even if we broaden them in the way that we suggest to include a wider variety of things, by 2029 we may be looking back and saying that it probably was not enough.

Azzurra Moores: It is very hard to disagree with Chris. The imprints work is huge progress. Obviously, it could go further, but I appreciate that a lot of the things we are asking for were not in scope when the Bill was being drafted. Does it cover the issues we are talking about? No, because it never intended to. That is where we are saying there is a real opportunity for the Bill to go further and be wider.

While it may have started with a narrow scope, perhaps once you hear what Philip Rycroft says through his review—and read our amendments slightly further—it will be appreciated that there is an opportunity to say, “How else can we make the Bill safeguard elections for the future?”

Chris Morris: To add to that, on a slightly different part of the legislation, it is good that the Electoral Commission will have greater powers on information sharing and enforcement, but we would like to see it have greater powers on information gathering.

There is a bit of a gap on who is responsible for regulating in that area. We would have liked to see that covered in the Online Safety Act 2023 and given to Ofcom. That did not happen, but one thing that could and should happen in this legislation is giving the Electoral Commission the power to compel people to hand over information or documents really quickly, such as in the heat of an election campaign, without having to turn it into a formal investigation, which as you probably know is laborious and takes time. A lot of this is about agility as well as transparency.

[Zöe Franklin]

Q For transparency, I have met representatives of Full Fact in preparation for the Bill.

I want to talk about doxing, and my understanding is that it is not currently within the scope of the Bill. For anyone who is not on top of doxing, it is where information is gathered about you and then dropped online so that people can find out where you live and other information. Given that the Speaker’s Conference and the Crown Prosecution Service have both spoken out about how important it is to address this, do you feel that it is a problem that doxing is not currently in or addressed by the Bill?

Azzurra Moores: What you are trying to address is the issue of online harassment. Doxing is one part of it, but online harassment takes many shapes. I certainly do not need to describe that to members of the Committee, who will have experienced it themselves.

We definitely feel that tackling online harassment is a massive missed opportunity in the Bill. For those of you who might have followed the work of the Online Safety Act Network, it has proposed a new code to tackle online abuse and harassment during elections. Again, that has not been tabled as an amendment to the Bill, partly because it was felt to be out of scope.

When looking at in-person harassment, we also need to understand that those in-person threats happen digitally as well. Certainly, the issues you are raising, such as doxing, could fall under that code. As I said, it is not something that has been tabled, partly because of the narrow scope of the Bill, but I encourage Members to look to that and perhaps have representatives from the Online Safety Act Network come in to give evidence.

--- Later in debate ---

[Paul Holmes]

Thank you, and thank you for the work you have been doing.

[Samantha Dixon]

Q What is your assessment of the “know your donor” regime set out in the Bill?

Dr Susan Hawley: We welcome the introduction of the “know your donor” regime, and the clarifications that it will have robust penalties for parties and candidates who do not undertake proper risk assessments. I am afraid that it currently needs some tweaks to be strengthened.

Obviously, we do not want to impose too much of a burden on parties but, if we are addressing foreign interference, it is very odd that the current “know your donor” policy does not say anything about addressing the potential source of wealth from high-risk jurisdictions or politically exposed persons. That is our first point. Any other regulated sector would and does need to address those risks.

Secondly, as the policy is currently framed, we think there is far too much discretion for political parties to decide what the risks are. That is unhelpful, because there will be inconsistent application of risk assessments across parties. That discretion should be reduced.

Finally, we have concerns that the fact that the Electoral Commission’s guidance can essentially be changed by the Secretary of State could lead to it being completely overridden, and that would be really problematic. We would like to see safeguards to ensure that cannot happen if there is to be a power for the Secretary of State to amend the Electoral Commission’s guidance.

[The Chair]

Q Do any other witnesses wish to add anything?

Dr Power: I would only add that I concur. The one slight concern I have with the “know your donor” requirements is overly burdensome regulation. The thresholds for conducting those requirements should align with the thresholds for the person having to undertake them, because you could end up with a situation where a regulated entity is looking at three different thresholds. I would want the Bill to be clear that these align, and I know that the Electoral Commission shares that concern.