Baroness Leaman (LD)

My Lords, I add my congratulations to the noble Lord, Lord Macintosh of Eastwood, on his maiden speech, and I welcome him to his place. I also thank the Minister for opening this debate; I am glad to speak in support of the principles behind this Bill today. This is a significant piece of legislation and, on the whole, a very welcome one. Extending the franchise to 16 and 17 year-olds is a long-held Liberal Democrat ambition, and I am pleased to see it finally becoming law. Modernising our creaking registration system, tightening the rules around political donations and strengthening protections against intimidation for candidates and campaigners are all reforms that these Benches have long called for. I also welcome the Government’s decision to give up their power to direct the Electoral Commission through a strategy and policy statement. It is a small clause but an important signal that the referee of our elections should remain independent of the players. My own daughter is 13 years old. If this Parliament runs its full course, she will be old enough to vote at the next general election. I asked her what she made of the argument that she cannot be trusted with a ballot paper until she can be trusted with a beer. She said she had never needed a pint to form an opinion and does not see why anyone would think she would. More seriously, her enfranchisement brings home something I first learned working for Save the Children: how early young people grasp the stakes of decisions made or not made on their behalf. Giving 16 and 17 year-olds a vote is a recognition that young people already live with the consequences of what this Parliament decides, and it is right that they should have a say in it. My principal purpose today is to speak about who gets to stand for office, not only who gets to vote. In the House of Commons, my honourable friend Zöe Franklin has argued tirelessly for the reinstatement of the access to elected office fund for England, and I want to put on the record my strong support for that work; I hope that this House will help finish what she has started. The facts are stark. Around a quarter of the population is disabled yet fewer than 1 in 50 MPs declare a disability, and local government is estimated to be around 700 councillors short of fair representation. A fund of exactly this kind existed in England until it was scrapped in 2020, and equivalent schemes continue to operate today in both Wales and Scotland. We are not being asked to invent something new; we are being asked to restore something that worked and that England alone among the UK nations now lacks. In six years as chief of staff to Ed Davey, I met a great many people with real ability and commitment to public service who were held back from standing for elected office, not by lack of talent but by the practical costs of disability: transport, communication support and personal assistance, to name a few. Warm words about inclusion do not meet these costs; a statutory fund does. I hope the Minister will use this Bill to close that gap once and for all, rather than leaving disabled candidates to wait on a working group that has already run for well over a year now. The scale of the barriers facing disabled candidates was underlined again this morning when the Electoral Commission published its review of May’s mayoral and local elections and found abuse of candidates rising sharply. Some 40% of those who stood reported harassment, intimidation or threats—up from 34% last year—while disabled candidates were hit hardest of all, with almost half reporting personal abuse. A third of all candidates said it made them consider not standing again. The barrier to standing is not only financial; a second, uglier obstacle sits behind it, falling disproportionately on the people an access to elected office fund would bring in. It is also why bringing Section 106 of the Equality Act into force matters so much. At present we cannot say whether the people who put themselves forward for office reflect the country they seek to represent, less still whether that is improving. Requiring political parties to publish transparent, comparable data on the diversity of their candidates would let us see whether measures, including the ones in this Bill, are working. For today, I simply welcome this Bill and look forward to working with the Minister and colleagues across this place as the Bill moves through this House.