Contribution
Our democracy is precious but faces significant challenges, and if we want to protect our system, it must change with the times. The turnout for the 2024 general election was far too low, at below 50% in the poorest areas. Property ownership was still dictating representation, with renters voting at a rate of 38%, and owner-occupiers at a rate of 71%. The delta between younger and older voters is still too high. Expanding participation and trust in politics is an issue of equality, but also one of social, economic and generational fairness, and I am proud of the Government’s efforts to address that in the Bill.
No Member who has spoken today is under any illusion about the limited trust in our current political system, and the bandwidth of that system to enable meaningful democratic participation, especially among those who need it most. MPs elected with increasingly fractured minority votes, and a Parliament that is sometimes unrepresentative of the voting intentions of the country, repel the trust, participation and engagement that our elected representatives in government need. It is not a party political point to state that; this is about every person stepping up to participate and seeing their vote reflected in this place. When MPs and Governments are enabled with a low share and turnout of the vote, increasingly fewer people see their ballot as meaning anything in this place. If that is their first experience of voting, they are far less likely to vote again.
I believe that the Government can give us a route that starts from the first principles of enabling a system to become fairer and more representative and that sustains public confidence through an independent national commission. That is not something that the Government will do today, but they ought to do in the future so that the next Parliament does not start from scratch on long overdue reform to our electoral system.
New clause 68, in the name of my hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow West (Patricia Ferguson), to which I have added my signature, requires registration officers to accept postal and proxy vote applications that are received after the deadline when there is proof of timely posting. That is a meaningful effort and step to prevent people from losing their votes after having made reasonable steps to submit it. It is not reasonable for voters to lose their say in an election because of the potential—and quite common—unreliability of the postal system, and the new clause would empower returning officers to count the votes of people who have made an effort in good faith to vote.
Sadly, we see amendments from Opposition parties that would limit postal voting, such as Reform’s new clause 108, which would have created serious issues, especially in Scotland. For example, when the last general election was called, the last Tory Prime Minister called it for the first Thursday of the Scottish school holidays, and under new clause 108 thousands of people would have been made ineligible to vote through no fault of their own.
In the last wheeze of parliamentary effort, amendments have been proposed to stop votes for 16 and 17-year-olds. I have to thank Conservative Members, because their arguments have only compounded my belief that this is the right step for the Government to take. It is ludicrous that amendment 6 and subsequent amendments link the voting age to the age that people can buy alcohol as a way of getting around the Government’s manifesto commitment in the Bill to extend the franchise. Perhaps Members would have been persuaded to support the amendment if we were to allow 16 and 17-year-olds to vote if they then went to a licensed restaurant for a sit-down meal accompanied by an adult. Sadly, that seems to have been omitted in the amendment.
If there is a serious concern about where we draw the line on the age of capacity, I make the principled point that allowing 16-year-olds to vote so that they can have their democratic say in how the taxes that they contribute are spent and how the conditions of their labour are regulated is a far more rational place to tie that milestone than whether they would be able to have a pint at 8 o’clock while watching the Scottish premiership. The Government is right on this principle and I am glad that we will be able to achieve this milestone today.
Opposition Members have made a lot of references to vote rigging. I find that ludicrous, principally because when votes for 16 and 17-year-olds were passed in Scotland it was with cross-party support, including from the Scottish Conservatives, and because engagement has been increased among 16 and 17-year-olds ever since. I cast my first vote aged 16 in the 2016 Scottish Parliament elections. I was not grateful for the Government of the day. I went out and enthusiastically voted for the SNP—a ludicrous proposal considering how much time I spend in this place opposing SNP measures. I voted because it was the right thing to do and it was recognised by the Scottish Parliament. I am glad that we have that cross-party consensus today: even if it is a majority and not the unanimity that we had in 2016, it is going to get this over the line.
Sadly, the Conservative and Reform amendments have been about restricting political participation; comparatively, what we have heard from Government colleagues has been about expanding political participation. I hope the Government will go further and set up a national commission, but I look at this Bill as the first stage of our political reform agenda.