Absent Voting (Elections in Scotland and Wales) Act 2025

Commons bill Private Members' Bill (Ballot) 2025-26 Act of Parliament

A Private Members' Bill introduced through the annual ballot, which gives backbench MPs a chance to secure Friday debate time. Ballot bills are the only PMBs with a realistic prospect of becoming law without government support.

Sponsor

Tracy Gilbert

+ 1 co-sponsor

Lord Murphy of Torfaen (Labour)

Introduced

16 October 2024

Royal Assent

27 October 2025

Parliament

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About this bill

A Bill to make provision about absent voting in connection with local government elections in Scotland and Wales, elections to the Scottish Parliament and elections to Senedd Cymru; and for connected purposes.

Parliamentary stages

Stages shown in blue link to the debate transcript. Not sure what these stages mean? How Parliament makes laws →

Commons

✓ First reading 16 Oct 2024

✓ Second reading 17 Jan 2025↗

✓ Money resolution 4 Jun 2025

✓ Committee stage 11 Jun 2025↗

✓ Report stage 4 Jul 2025

✓ Third reading 4 Jul 2025

Lords

✓ First reading 7 Jul 2025

✓ Second reading 5 Sep 2025

✓ Order Of Commitment Discharged 15 Oct 2025

✓ Third reading 24 Oct 2025

Final stages

✓ Royal Assent 27 Oct 2025

Some stage debates occurred before our Hansard archive begins (May 2025). Links marked ↗ go to Parliament's own Hansard for that date.

Parliamentary information from bills.parliament.uk ↗, licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0. Explanatory Notes extracts are verbatim from Parliament's published documents.

What this bill is about

From the Explanatory Notes (July 2025):

1 This Bill makes new provision for and amends existing electoral law to make it easier and more convenient for voters in Scotland and Wales to apply for postal and proxy voting arrangements. 2 To achieve this, this Bill makes provisions in the following areas. 3 First, it will give the Scottish and Welsh Governments concurrent powers to bring forward regulations to enable applications for postal and proxy votes for devolved elections to be made online using the UK Digital Service ("UKDS"). 4 Second, it will provide powers to the Scottish and Welsh Governments which will later be used in se…

Read the full Explanatory Notes ↗