Over the summer, ministers published plans for extensive electoral reforms. The headline proposal is the reduction of the voting age to 16. A raft of other measures will affect voter registration, campaign finance, election administration, and the role of the Electoral Commission. In this post, Alan Renwick argues that much of what the government proposes is good. But the newly appointed set of ministers responsible for elections policy will need to make further progress on some crucial matters. 

Labour’s election manifesto last year made a series of pledges on electoral reform. Over the summer, the Ministry for Housing, Communities, and Local Government (MHCLG) set out its concrete plans.

Many of the proposals should prove uncontroversial. Both the Electoral Commission and the Association of Electoral Administrators (AEA) have welcomed various relatively technical measures, such as adjustments to the electoral timetable and to processes around postal voting, which are designed to ease pressures on election staff and reduce the danger that postal voters cannot return their ballots on time. A range of changes to campaign finance rules will strengthen enforcement and close loopholes that allow in money from outside the UK. Gaps in the requirements for ‘imprints’ indicating who is responsible for political advertisements will also be addressed.  

Two further measures will provoke debate, but appear to get the balance about right. One of these will extend the range of forms of ID that are eligible at polling stations. The Elections Act 2022 introduced a requirement for photographic ID for voters in Great Britain that most experts and campaigners viewed as disproportionate, given limited evidence of fraud. Ample evidence now shows this measure excludes some would-be voters from the ballot. The government’s proposals will allow digital forms of ID throughout the UK and, in Great Britain, one widely available form of non-photographic ID – namely, bank cards. Some campaigners would like ID requirements to be scrapped entirely. But both the Electoral Commission and the AEA have expressed concern that even allowing bank cards ‘has risks for security and voter trust’. 

The second area where a balance has been struck is in the move towards automated electoral registration (AER). The government has not promised full AER, but have rather said it ‘will actively test methods of automated registration’. Some will be concerned that this pledge leaves too much wiggle room. But the Electoral Commission has highlighted that AER does raise some challenges that would need to be worked through carefully before any permanent changes were made. So the cautious approach appears justified. 

Three remaining areas demand further attention. In two of these, the direction of travel is positive, but more is needed. In the third, the government is making a surprising and serious error of judgement.  

Votes at 16 

The first of these three areas is the reduction of the voting age to 16. This is the element in the reform package that has received most media attention, often focusing on which of the parties might gain or lose through the proposed change. Yet that is a tricky question to answer when voting behaviour is in such flux, and also not the criterion that ought to shape such an important constitutional choice. Likewise, some coverage has picked up longstanding debates over the age at which we might gain a moral right to vote – an interesting question for seminar rooms, but not one that will ever be conclusively resolved.  

The key point, rather, is how introducing votes at 16 would affect democracy and governance. As Dr Christine Huebner, a leading expert, said at a Unit event on votes at 16 earlier this year, experience in places that have already lowered the franchise – including Scotland and Wales – suggests that, at the least, the change would be very unlikely to cause significant harm.  

Beyond this, the main case for votes at 16 is that it should lead over time to higher electoral turnout. The argument – first developed in detail by the political scientist Mark Franklin – is that voting is habit forming: whether you do it the first time you are entitled to strongly affects your likelihood of doing it for the rest of your life. So enfranchising people at an age when they are more likely to use their vote is better. A franchise age of 18 is perhaps uniquely bad: many people are living away from home for the first time at that age, and may be outside education; so structures that might support them to vote are weak. At 16, by contrast, opportunities to enable voting are much stronger. The evidence tends to support this: provided it is implemented well, the lower voting age does appear to boost turnout. 

But this logic only works if effective education is provided to support young people’s understanding of and engagement with politics. The government’s paper recognises this, indicating that officials are working with a range of partners to ensure ‘effective and relevant democratic education in schools’. Yet the extent of that commitment remains unclear. The paper says that MHCLG ‘will consider the outcome of the independent Curriculum and Assessment Review, which will report later this year’. MHCLG should not be passively waiting, but rather actively seeking to shape that review, to ensure that fostering healthy democratic citizenship is at the heart of education policy. The paper also emphasises partnership with ‘youth and civil society groups’ – which could suggest a desire to lift citizenship education out of dusty textbooks, but could also reflect a mindset that sees such matters as add-ons to the core curriculum. The Association of Citizenship Teaching has emphasised in response to the paper that such matters should not be treated ‘as optional or enrichment’. The UK Democracy Fund has also recently published detailed proposals.  

Campaign finance 

The government’s proposals on campaign finance have generally been welcomed, so far as they go. For many, however, they do not go far enough. 

In particular, while the paper proposes to tighten rules on foreign donations, it continues to argue that anyone on the electoral register should be able to donate to political parties without limit. It says, ‘This is not about limiting or discouraging donations to campaigners – it is after all crucial to our democracy that they remain able to fund themselves.’ 

Yet how allowing the wealthiest members of society to donate unlimited sums can be reconciled with the principle of democratic equality is unclear. Multiple august bodies – not least, the Committee on Standards in Public Life (CSPL) – have concluded over the years in favour of caps. There is reasonable debate over the level at which any such cap should be set. Transparency International last year proposed a limit of £10,000. But there are legitimate concerns that such a low maximum would be feasible only with increased state funding for political parties, for which public support looks very unlikely. Dr Sam Power has instead recently advocated a cap of £1 million.  

A high cap such as this would hardly end the special privileges of the rich, but it would at least offer a credible compromise. The status quo is indefensible.  

Electoral Commission Strategy and Policy Statement 

The final area concerns the Strategy and Policy Statement (SPS) for the Electoral Commission, which was introduced by the Conservative government through the Elections Act 2022. The SPS – which is written by government, subject to parliamentary approval – sets out ministers’ ‘strategic and policy priorities’ relating to elections and ‘the role and responsibilities of the Commission’ in pursuit of these. The Commission ‘must have regard to the statement’ in doing its work.  

Most experts roundly condemned the concept of an SPS when it was proposed. Bodies that have criticised it include CSPL, the relevant House of Commons departmental select committee, and the Electoral Commission itself. Labour pushed against it while in opposition. After the current government entered office last year, the then MHCLG minister Lord (Wajid) Khan of Burnley said, ‘The existence of a strategy and policy statement for the Electoral Commission is inconsistent with the commission’s role as an independent regulator.’ 

Remarkably, however, the policy paper proposes not to abolish the SPS, but to replace it with a new version. This risks entrenching the idea in Whitehall that such a statement is appropriate.  

The government – like its predecessor – has proposed this move despite professing commitment to the principle of Electoral Commission independence. Yet – as Lord Khan rightly said – the existence of the SPS itself violates that independence.  

Such independence requires not only that the Commission should be operationally independent in fulfilling its remit, but also, crucially, that its remit should not be controlled by any single political party. Because the Commission, unlike bodies such as Ofgem, regulates the activities of politicians and political parties, its insulation from partisan pressure needs to be especially strong. Each element of its governance should therefore be cross-party and/or non-partisan. That principle is enshrined in all other aspects of current arrangements: the Commission itself has members from four political parties as well as lay members; the Speaker’s Committee on the Electoral Commission by convention does not have a government majority in its membership; further scrutiny is provided by other select committees. The Commission’s remit is set out in primary legislation – the Political Parties, Elections and Referendums Act 2000 – which followed a report by CSPL, extensive further consultations (including a 1997 briefing by the Constitution Unit), and full cross-party parliamentary scrutiny. In all these ways, protections against unilateral action by one party have been maintained.  

The SPS breaches those protections. Its defenders might point out that the Secretary of State must consult before producing a draft SPS, and such a draft can come into force only after approval in both the House of Commons and the House of Lords. But there is no obligation for ministers to take feedback seriously; and parliament cannot amend the draft. The idea that the government should be able to dictate to the Electoral Commission manifestly violates the principle of electoral impartiality. Current ministers may view their own intentions as benign. Even if they are right in that, however, retaining an SPS could facilitate a future government, perhaps of a very different stripe, in undermining the integrity of the electoral process. 

Conclusion 

The government’s electoral reform proposals are mostly welcome. But further work is needed for them to deliver the changes that are needed. It is very encouraging to see that some government backbenchers are already speaking out. It is to be hoped that more will press ministers on the points highlighted above when the legislation reaches parliament – and that the new set of ministers in MHCLG will themselves see the need for some revisions.

The Constitution Unit webinar series returns on 24 September after its usual summer break, with a panel including International Agreements Committee chair Lord Goldsmith KC discussing the topic, ‘How should the UK’s parliaments scrutinise international agreements?‘. Webinars are free and all attendees are able to submit questions to the panel during the event. Register for free on the UCL website.

About the author

Alan Renwick is Professor of Democratic Politics at UCL and Deputy Director of the Constitution Unit.

Featured image: UK Elections (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0) by European Parliament.