Representation of the People Bill

My Lords, I am very pleased to open this Second Reading debate on the Representation of the People Bill. Noble Lords across the House bring great experience of electoral law, electoral administration and the practical operation of our democracy. I look forward to the contributions that will be made today and to the constructive scrutiny that our House will bring to the Bill. This Bill renews our democracy for a new generation, opening up participation and strengthening the integrity of our elections. It restores confidence, reinforcing trust with stronger political finance rules and better protections against harassment and intimidation, closing down opportunities for those who would seek to undermine our democracy. But it would be wrong to introduce this debate without acknowledging and reflecting on events of recent times. When I catch the 6.15 am or the 6.31 am train from Stevenage to London in the mornings, I share the carriages of that train and then the Underground with people whose interests are at the heart of our community: tradespeople, in their steel-toecap boots; public sector workers, including those in blue light services, heading for their early shifts; and small business owners getting an early start to prepare for their day. It is a fundamental principle of our democracy that every one of their votes is exactly equal to the votes of millionaires, crypto bros and industry magnates. It is that which sits front and centre in this Bill. We must put politics back under public control. We all share concerns about the rise of big money and its ability to dominate public power. At its heart, this Bill is about renewing the foundations of our electoral system so that it remains fair, secure, transparent and accessible in the years ahead. At the Last Night of the Proms on Saturday, the conductor, Sakari Oramo, referred to another version of AI, which was authenticity and integrity. That must sit at the heart of electoral reform, so that we restore the confidence of the 6 am crew that their voice really counts. Delivering on our manifesto commitment, this Bill extends the franchise to eligible 16 and 17 year-olds for UK parliamentary elections and other reserved and excepted polls. It enables more automated forms of electoral registration, broadens the forms of voter identification that may be used at polling stations, and makes a range of changes to the conduct and administration of elections, referendums and recall petitions. The Bill strengthens the rules on political donations and expenditure, including measures to reduce the risk of foreign money entering our politics. It improves transparency in digital campaigning material, strengthens enforcement and information sharing by the Electoral Commission, and requires tougher sentencing where offences are aggravated by hostility towards candidates, elected officeholders, campaigners or electoral staff. Opportunities for those who seek to undermine or illicitly influence our democracy must and will be closed down. This Bill responds directly to a changing and increasingly hostile threat environment and takes action to tackle risks by strengthening safeguards, closing loopholes and hardening defences. Taken together, these measures will help deliver a modern, secure and inclusive electoral system. They will support public confidence, protect our democracy from those who would seek to undermine it and open participation to a new generation of voters. The Bill is ambitious but practical. It addresses the everyday operation of democracy: who can take part, how they register and vote, how campaigns are funded and conducted, and how the rules are enforced. The balance is important. The Government are not seeking reform for their own sake. The measures in the Bill respond to real changes in political campaigning, how people participate in politics and how threats to democratic confidence can arise. Some of these changes are technological, some are administrative and some reflect the need to ensure that our democratic arrangements command confidence across generations. The Bill therefore looks both to the integrity of the system and to the experience of those who use it: voters, candidates, parties, campaigners and electoral administrators. The Bill is not the totality of our ambition for electoral reform; work will continue. As a first step, the First Secretary of State and the Secretary of State for MHCLG have written to the Electoral Commission to review spending limits, which we believe are too high. We are establishing a cross-government task-and-finish team to consider threats to UK democracy, including political funding, illegitimate influence and broader threats to political equality. As noble Lords would expect, the Bill has not remained frozen in aspic since its introduction; it has continued to develop through scrutiny, engagement and the Government’s consideration of how best to give effect to its objectives. During its Commons stages, the Government brought forward both substantive and technical amendments to strengthen the Bill in response to points raised by Members and to ensure it better delivers its policy intent. For example, the Government brought forward amendments to strengthen the “know your donor” requirements and further tighten the rules relating to donations made by unincorporated associations. Those changes were designed to improve transparency and ensure that the political finance regime keeps pace with the risks it is intended to address. These risks cannot be overstated. The threat to our democracy from foreign influence and hidden sources of political funding are an ever-growing danger—one that we cannot afford to delay tackling. Responding to further evidence of the threat we face—namely, the conviction of Nathan Gill, as well as cases such as Christine Lee—we commissioned Philip Rycroft to review foreign financial influence and interference in politics. His report was thorough and challenging, and the Government have accepted its recommendations. Safeguarding the integrity, transparency and fairness of our electoral system is a fundamental priority, and the Bill provides an important vehicle for taking that work forward. A number of recommendations from the Rycroft review were therefore implemented through amendments made to the Bill on Report in the Commons. Those amendments form a significant part of the Government’s wider response to the risks identified by the review. The first of those changes concerns crypto assets. The current political donations framework does not sufficiently reflect the particular risks that crypto assets can present, including the difficulty of identifying the true source of a donation. That creates a risk that malign actors, including state actors, could seek to obscure the origin of the funds. The Bill therefore introduces a ban on the use of crypto assets as a means of making political donations. To support that change, the Government have amended the Bill to clarify the meaning of a donation under the Political Parties, Elections and Referendums Act 2000. That will ensure that property, including crypto assets transferred to a party to meet an expense, is treated as a donation, so that the law cannot be circumvented simply because value is transferred through property rather than cash. The Bill caps donations to registered political parties by overseas electors at £100,000. This also applies to individuals who were formerly resident outside the UK, who are subject to the cap for a minimum of a calendar year after arrival here. That responds to concerns identified by the Rycroft review: first, that the origin of funds from overseas donors can be harder to trace; and, secondly, that democratic fairness may be put at risk if individuals are able to make unlimited donations into the political system while having only a limited connection to public life in the United Kingdom. Further amendments change the test for company donations so that it is based on profit rather than revenue. That change follows careful consideration of the Rycroft review and engagement with stakeholders. Profit provides a clearer indication of a company’s financial position and helps ensure that donations come from companies undertaking genuine economic activity. The Bill was also amended to implement the Rycroft recommendation that the Electoral Commission’s information-sharing powers should be extended. This will enable the commission to receive relevant information from relevant public authorities as defined in the Bill, supporting more effective regulation of political finance and a better understanding of emerging risks. The Government also amended the Bill to extend the commission’s powers to require disclosure of information outside a formal investigation, allowing the commission to more proactively monitor compliance, support timely regulation during election periods, and take a more proportionate and effective approach to enforcement. Beyond the Rycroft recommendations, on Report the Government introduced a targeted regulation-making power into the Bill to allow key political finance restrictions, including those relating to crypto assets, overseas elector donation caps and company donations, to be extended beyond political parties via secondary legislation in the future. This is to ensure that malign actors cannot circumvent the rules by providing to other non-party regulated donees. While much of the consideration of the Bill so far has been focused on strengthening the political finance provisions, the Government tabled further amendments on Report to extend the maximum duration of longer-term postal and proxy postal voting arrangements from three years to five, and to better align the duration of anonymous elector registration provisions with those changes. These changes will provide greater clarity and consistency while reducing repeated administrative burdens on people who may already be vulnerable. The Government have also amended the Bill to clarify when an overseas elector may be removed from the electoral register. Overseas electors must satisfy specific eligibility requirements when they register. Although registration lasts for three years, circumstances may change during that period. These amendments ensure that an individual who no longer meets the requirements can be removed, helping electoral registers remain accurate. Taken together, the Commons amendments strengthen the public scrutiny of political finance, reduce avoidable administrative burdens and ensure that the Bill responds sensibly to modern forms of participation, campaigning and donation. As the Bill has progressed, our desire to engage with all interested parties and our willingness to listen to opposing viewpoints has continued. Following the strength of feeling expressed at Second Reading in the House of Commons, the Government tabled an amendment in Committee to repeal the Government’s powers to designate a strategy and policy statement to which the Electoral Commission must have regard. That repeal supports our manifesto commitment to strengthen democracy and uphold the integrity and independence of the Electoral Commission. The Government have committed to tabling an amendment during the Bill’s passage through this House to strengthen accessibility at polling stations for voters with disabilities. We will develop that amendment in the spirit of the new clause brought forward on Report in the Commons, working with interested Members of both Houses to ensure that any new provision is proportionate, practical and deliverable. In addition to introducing a robust regime that ensures that donors contributing above the £100,000 annual cap must demonstrate a genuine and ongoing connection to the United Kingdom, we are considering how we will strengthen the residency requirements, including ensuring that the length of time spent in the UK aligns with broader government policy. We will continue to engage with political parties bilaterally and through the Parliamentary Parties Panel, and we will provide the House with further details in due course. I am keen for that spirit of constructive engagement to continue as the Bill proceeds through this House. I have hosted a drop-in session for all Peers, and I have been pleased to meet a number of noble Lords separately. Throughout the passage of this Bill, my door will remain open to those who wish to discuss any aspect of it with me. Outside this House, we have worked and will continue to work with bodies such as the Parliamentary Parties Panel and stakeholders across the electoral sector to ensure that the Bill operates effectively for political parties, electors and administrators. We have also engaged with Ministers and officials in the Scottish Government, the Welsh Government and the Northern Ireland Executive, recognising that implementation will require continued close working with the devolved Governments and legislative consent in those areas within the responsibility of the devolved legislatures. I also recognise that successful implementation will matter as much as the legislation itself. Electoral administrators, returning officers and those who support the running of elections locally will be central to making many of these reforms work in practice. The Government will continue to engage closely with them as the Bill progresses and as the necessary secondary legislation, guidance and operational changes are developed. We want reforms that are ambitious but also workable, clear and capable of commanding confidence on the ground. Democracy is not sustained by institutions and legislation alone. It depends on people believing that their voice matters, that the rules are fair and that the outcome of an election reflects the free choice of the electorate. That confidence must never be taken for granted. This is a substantial and important set of reforms to electoral law. I know that noble Lords will bring expertise, rigour and practical insight to its consideration. I look forward to engaging with those debates in the constructive spirit in which the Bill has been developed. I beg to move.

My Lords, it is an understatement to say that this is a constitutionally significant Bill. Particularly at a time when the political landscape is so turbulent, this is where your Lordships’ House proves its worth—with careful, considered scrutiny to improve the Government's legislation as best we can. Indeed, the amendment in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Rooker, is driven by the need for this thorough scrutiny, and I thank him. I thank all those who are speaking today; I am sure that a number of very important matters will be raised, and we will be listening to them very closely. The Bill seeks not only to give children the right to vote in all elections but introduces automatic voter registration, reforms political finance law and tackles foreign interference, while potentially leaving the door open for foreign citizens to vote. I also flag that the Bill was drafted with minimal engagement with other political parties. The Electoral Commission has said that “any legislative change on elections should be informed by the experience and insight of the electoral community, including electoral administrators, political parties and the wider regulated community”. There was no consultation with political parties on the 2025 election strategy, nor after the initial Rycroft recommendations. Why did the Government not wait two months until the Rycroft review was completed before proceeding with Second Reading of the Bill in the other place? If the Government wanted to fast-track their manifesto commitments on the voting age, why could they not separate the election measures from the political finance measures, as indeed the last Labour Government did with the Representation of the People Act 2000 and the Political Parties, Elections and Referendums Act 2000? This is not how election rules should be reformed. As Sir Winston Churchill said at the Second Reading of the Representation of the People Bill in 1948: “It has become a well-established custom that matters affecting the interests of rival parties should not be settled by the imposition of the will of one side over the other, but by an agreement”.—[Official Report, Commons, 16/2/1948; cols. 859-60.] Some of the provisions are indeed deeply troubling and risk setting dangerous precedents. Bills such as these should not be hyper-partisan, particularly in complex areas such as political finance. Even just the perception of partisan, targeted legislation risks breaking down long-standing political conventions and, crucially, trust in the system. We will all have heard the reports this weekend of crypto donations to Reform UK. It is our current understanding that these donations would be caught by the overseas contributors cap, but I would be grateful if the Minister could clarify how this proposed cap would work. Do the cap’s provisions apply to long-standing domestic electors and not just to overseas electors and overseas electors who return to domestic registration? Can the noble Baroness confirm the requirement for a full calendar year of prior UK residence when making a donation? The legislation commences these provisions retrospectively from March 2026, but the calendar year of UK residence requirement may predate March 2026. If an elector has dual permanent residence at home and abroad, would this class the elector as an overseas contributor? It is important that laws are clear. I would be happy for the Minister to write to me on this matter if she so wishes. As to the Bill’s other provisions, let me be very clear that we will not stand in the way of the Government’s manifesto commitment to lower the voting age. Noble Lords opposite may see themselves as having a monopoly on progress, but I gently remind them that when the Reform Act 1832 was passed—they know the answer—the Conservatives won the general election in 1841. It was the Conservatives who championed the Reform Act 1867, and we once again defied expectations following the Reform Act 1884, when the Liberals lost their majority in 1885 and the Conservatives returned to power in 1886. When women finally got the vote in the following decades, they were more likely to vote Conservative than men—very sensible. And when the voting age was lowered to 18 in 1969, the Conservatives won the general election the following year. From the days of the Primrose League to our Young Conservatives today, we will never be afraid of making our case to the British people. However, the Government’s position in this Bill is inconsistent with their policies elsewhere, which raises serious questions. The Government must decide whether they see 16 and 17 year-olds as children, in line with the Children Act and the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child. If not, then why not 15 year-olds or younger? What exactly is the Government’s rationale? Will they change other laws as a result? Children currently cannot stand for election, be deployed in the Armed Forces or buy alcohol or cigarettes. The Government have raised the age for buying fireworks, vapes and knives or for using sunbeds to 18 and are proposing to raise the age for obtaining a driving licence from 17. Where do the Government draw the line and why? We are also concerned about automatic voter registration. We believe it is up to individuals to register, to be inspired to register rather than be forced, and to undergo proper checks to protect the system from fraud, which is why individual registration was introduced in the first place. Do we really trust algorithms to keep accurate registers when there may be out-of-date entries on other databases, for example? How will it prevent those with residence but who are ineligible being registered, such as certain second home owners or unqualified Commonwealth and EU voters? So much for tackling foreign interference. Voters’ rights are rightly based on citizenship and not residency. No EU member state allows non-national citizens to vote in its national elections. Can the Minister confirm that eligibility to vote in general elections will remain the preserve of British citizens only? What is more, the Bill will water down requirements for photographic identification at polling stations, yet we still require photo ID to drive or for under-25s to buy alcohol. Again, what is the rationale? Where is the consistency? Amid the legitimate concerns in the recent Gorton and Denton as well as Birmingham City Council by-elections around family voting, is this really the time to water down safeguards against electoral fraud? This brings me to the rise of sectarianism in our country. In the other place, the Government, alongside the Liberal Democrats and the Greens, voted against an amendment to ban political campaigning materials in foreign languages. The Government have not said whether any assessment has been made of sectarianism in election campaigning. This is counterproductive to integration and brings into question whether this Government are serious about social cohesion. There are, of course, some aims in the Bill which we welcome. We support initiatives to safeguard candidates, campaigners and elected representatives from unacceptable acts of abuse, intimidation and violence while protecting the right to robust debate on strongly felt issues. The previous Government took several actions on this and we are happy to build on this work. Similarly, we will be constructive when it comes to election advertising regulation. The Elections Act 2022 introduced imprints for digital material, and the Conservative Party already voluntarily labels digital content which is AI generated. As I said earlier, the kinds of reforms proposed in the Bill should be based on consensus and cross-party consultation. Clearly, there are areas we agree on, but there are also areas of serious concern, not just about the proposals themselves but about the way in which the Government have introduced them. I would be grateful if the Minister could address the points raised and I look forward to hearing the valuable insights of other noble Lords on this hugely significant and wide-ranging Bill.

My Lords, in the light of the mega donations we have heard about to Reform in the past week, I start by emphasising the difference between liberal democracy and popular democracy—or illiberal democracy, as Viktor Orbán and others call it. Liberal or constitutional democracy recognises that democratic processes are open to abuse and require rules and regulations to ensure that all citizens, regardless of background or income, are able to play a positive part. Transparency in campaigning and finance is vital to maintain public trust. Safeguards against foreign interference, the buying of votes or dominance of the media by the wealthy are justified to ensure acceptance of the outcome and to prevent corruption. Popular democracy dismisses all this. Populist leaders claim that they understand what the people really want and that regulations are there only to protect the establishment. If they spend money from doubtful sources in huge amounts, that is justified by the need to counter the weight of the mainstream media and the power of the established elite. If others question their arguments, they dismiss reasoned argument as fake news. None of us should take our democracy for granted. In the 2024 election, less than 60% of our citizens turned out, and some 6 million to 8 million citizens were missing from the electoral register. Public disillusion with Westminster politics and with democracy itself is dangerously high in this country. Liberal Democrats argue that everything we put in this Bill must be geared to rebuilding public trust in our democratic institutions and encouraging every citizen to play an active part. Paragraph 84 of the Bill’s Explanatory Notes declares: “The Government wants as many people as possible to engage in the United Kingdom’s democracy”. Liberal Democrats share that objective and aim to amend the Bill to go further in pursuing it. Thankfully, Hungary’s experiment with illiberal democracy, with the massive corruption that went with it, has now been defeated, but we are watching democracy in the USA being undermined by gerrymandering, challenges to voting lists and attacks on the impartiality of election administrators, as well as by enormous flows of money. I hope that most of us in this House share a deep concern about current developments in the US and a commitment to sustain our liberal democracy against the threats it now faces. In a previous debate, the noble Lord, Lord Hannan, argued that the right to spend money in political campaigning was a part of free speech, repeating the argument the US Supreme Court made in overthrowing congressional limits on campaign funding. The noble Lord, Lord Frost, who will be speaking in this debate, dismissed the Rycroft report as “absurd”, which is to say, “fake news”. Money in politics is vital to political campaigning, but large donations—millions of pounds or dollars—distort and corrupt the democratic process. Commentary on this year’s US congressional elections frequently starts by telling us which candidate has raised the most money, as a key factor in whether they win or lose. We will support extending spending limits of campaigns and imposing clear conditions and limits on donations to prevent our democracy sinking into a similar funding race. I find it striking that populists who campaign to defend British sovereignty get so much of their money from sunny places abroad: Gibraltar for the Brexit campaign, and Thailand, Hong Kong, Montenegro and beyond for the Reform Party. It is gross hypocrisy to claim to represent the sovereign voice of the British people when they depend on shady money from sunny places. Some of the changes in this Bill aim to reverse the damage inflicted in the highly partisan 2022 Elections Act. The noble Baroness, Lady O’Neill of Bexley, has repeated the argument that there was an established convention dating from 1948 that changes in election regulations must be subject to consensus among the parties involved. I was the Liberal Democrat leader in 2022, and I remember no consultation from the Conservatives whatsoever. If there were such an established convention—I asked to see any evidence of this but was told they could find none—the Conservatives decisively broke it during the passage of that Act. I hope we all now behave better than that. The Conservative Party must own and admit the damage done to our country’s democratic institutions and to public trust under Boris Johnson as Prime Minister. It must own and admit its own shortcomings in allowing Russian money and influence to penetrate deeply into the party. I have just read an article by Dominic Grieve, then chair of the Intelligence and Security Committee, on Boris Johnson’s determination to limit the investigation of major donations to the Brexit campaign, as well as to delay publication of the ISC’s Russia report until after the 2019 election and to redact much of the damaging detail. Some of those involved in promoting the Conservative Friends of Russia and cultivating Russian donors now sit in this House. Rycroft distinguished between money that flowed directly to political parties and efforts to shape “the wider influencing environment”, including “attempts to create division and distrust among the wider public”. Direct donations may seem easy to regulate, but I recommend chapter six of George Cottrell’s recent book, How to Launder Money, which lists a variety of ways to donate to a politician or party without being caught: from high speaking fees and book deals to paying travel expenses and funding associated foundations and think tanks. As a fundraiser for the leave campaign and now for Reform, he is an expert in this. Oddly, he does not include paying extraordinarily high fees for TV work in the way that the loss-making GB News subsidises Nigel Farage. The wider influencing environment is a grey area in political regulation: non-party campaigners are hard to define; political movements that are not parties are not covered; and social media has become a powerful form of influence. Money from abroad is hard to trace. It is not only Russia and China that seek to influence UK campaigning; the Hungarian Government, under Viktor Orbán, reportedly provided almost all the funding for the Roger Scruton Legacy Foundation to support James Orr’s promotion of Christian nationalism. The Times last week reported that Daniel Pipes’ Middle East Forum, a strongly anti-Muslim American organisation, was funding both Tommy Robinson’s movement and Daniel Thomas’s Patriotic Platform that organised the demonstrations in Dover and Portsmouth. The significant surge of American money into British politics, now also from the Trump Administration itself, threatens to upset the balance of our domestic debate. The Bill may not be able to close all these loopholes, but we must try. This unregulated flow of money to the fringes of party politics is not entirely new. I recall many years ago a former treasurer of the Conservative Party telling me that when potential donors wanted to remain anonymous, he would suggest they donate to a friendly think tank instead. But it has become a more contentious issue as social media and private polling have opened up more space for unobserved funding to tip the balance of the political debate. The Rycroft Report’s recommendation on think tanks is clear, and we strongly support it: “The Government, working with the Charity Commission as appropriate, should ensure it has the capability to monitor the think tank landscape … to make transparent the engagement of foreign-funded think tanks in the policy process”. I look forward to the speech from the noble Lord, Lord Young of Acton, on this. Others on these Benches will examine the proposals on regulation of social media, on intimidation and abuse of candidates, on moves towards automatic voter registration and other aspects of the Bill. They will also address the deficiencies of our antiquated voting system, now that we have five to six parties competing in national and local elections. Noble Lords may not be aware of the magnificent Liberal Democrat victory in a recent Cornish by-election, in which the victor won just under 19% of the vote. Liberal Democrats welcome the extension of voting to 16 year-olds, as a contribution to building participation and trust in our democratic institutions within the younger generation. But it will need to be supported by an expansion of civic education in our schools, well beyond the very limited space provided within our current curriculum. I have talked to a number of secondary schools, and I am shocked by how little they are taught about democracy or our political institutions. We will look to the Minister and others for assurances that changes are now under way. Effective regulation, I hope we all agree, is a vital part of constitutional democracy. We on these Benches will bring forward amendments to adjust Britain’s structure of regulation to the growing domestic and foreign challenges we face.

My Lords, before we move on, I wanted to highlight the five-minute advisory time limit for Back-Bench contributions. I ask all noble Lords to stick closely to that guidance, as it will enable the House to rise at around 10 pm.

My Lords, I will focus my remarks on Parts 4 and 5 of the Bill, relating to election finance and to the work of the Electoral Commission. In 2021, the Committee on Standards in Public Life, of which I was then chair, issued a report on the regulation of election finance. The report recommended a number of necessary—albeit modest—changes to election regulation to simplify the rules, increase transparency and reduce the risk of bad actors gaining influence through financial donations. Regrettably, the then Government under Boris Johnson failed to respond to the report and failed to act on the recommendations. The report was effectively buried. One can only speculate as to why. I am therefore delighted that the current Government have revisited this important issue, and I was pleased to have the opportunity to discuss the process of review by Philip Rycroft which underpins many of the measures in the Bill as presented. The measures in Part 4 of the Bill go a considerable way towards meeting the recommendations that CSPL made in 2021. But if anything, as the Minister said, the need for change in this area is even more urgent now than it was five years ago. Public trust in our political system is under great pressure, the risk of foreign money infiltrating our election system remains, the risk of huge individual donations unbalancing the political process has grown, and hostile states, including, but by no means only, Russia, are energetically seeking to influence our public life and subvert our institutions. We must protect them for our national security and for the health of our democracy.