Paul Holmes MP: speeches

Speeches

• 18 Mar 2026 · Representation of the People Bill (Second sitting) · Hansard source

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  Q That would probably be my contention on the mainland—this needs to be given a chance to bed in. We have seen evidence that the percentage of people who think it is correct to require photograph ID to vote is increasing. Do you both agree that consistently changing the expectations of voters, in terms of what they need to take when they turn up to polling stations, does not make for an easy experience? Cahir Hughes : The list of forms of ID that are available to voters in Northern Ireland is significantly shorter than the list in Great Britain. Again, it is so well established here that people are familiar with it. Nevertheless, we need to move with the times; David touched on the impact of digital ID, and the veteran card is included in the Bill. It is right that it is kept under review, but if it was continually added to over and over again in Northern Ireland, that would risk further divergence from Great Britain and the confusion that we touched on previously. It is right that it is kept under review, but as I say, there are high levels of public awareness of the need for photographic ID. David will correct me if I am wrong, but I think most voters are very familiar with the fact that they need to bring their driving licence or passport with them, and if they cannot get that, they can get an electoral identity card from the Electoral Office.

• 18 Mar 2026 · Representation of the People Bill (Second sitting) · Hansard source

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  Q Thank you for that brilliant answer. You rightly brought up the last time this happened, when the age of majority and the age of voting were essentially the same. One thing I have been concerned about for a long time, since the Government first announced the election strategy before Christmas, is that in terms of public policy and the young people coming through, the age of majority seems horrendously confused—regarding voting, being an adult, serving and going to war, and being able to get on a sunbed. So my question to you, in connection to that point, is whether you believe there is a missed opportunity in the Bill, in that somebody can vote in elections at 16 but not participate as a candidate, or do the Government have the right balance? Andy Mycock: Again, I would go back to 1969. There has been very little policy learning about what happened there. It is interesting that the age of enfranchisement and the age of majority were brought together, but the age of candidature was not; in fact, it was not until 2006 that the Electoral Commission finally lowered it. At this point, there is no need to say that that is a barrier to or a support for lowering the voting age; it is an issue to think about. I do feel there is a need for this House to review the age of majority; that is not to change it, but the conditions of the 20th and 21st centuries are very different. In the law, adulthood is now shaped at the age of 18, which is the legal age of citizenship, and yet you can get a national insurance number or a passport or undertake elective surgery—you can do a huge number of things—under the age of 18. At the same time, those traditional indicators of adulthood, such as owning a house, getting married, having children and having a full-time job, are being realised much later in life. Our research indicates strongly that young people do not see 18 as a particularly significant once-in-a-lifetime moment when they become adults. Adulthood is much more complex, as is maturity and the sense of how young people fit into society. Our research indicates strongly that young people, if they are enfranchised universally across the UK at the age of 16, want to be treated as young people in the electorate and not to be seen as adults.

• 18 Mar 2026 · Representation of the People Bill (Second sitting) · Hansard source

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  Q Tom, don’t feel like you have to answer if you do not want to. I want your own parties to be able to scrutinise you and ask you questions as well. If you do want to answer, please do, but I want to allow your colleagues to ask you questions. Tom McAdam: I would just like to touch on the opportunity here. When we look at France, at the last legislative elections, it had a 37% turnout of overseas citizens. We can compare that with the turnout of British citizens overseas at the last general election, which was 5%. There is a huge opportunity. It is not one measure that will help that, but a package of measures. The apathy point is really important. Without a dedicated overseas Member of Parliament talking about the interests of overseas citizens, it is easy to feel that we do not have representation in Parliament. Given the problems with actual voting, people do not feel incentivised to attempt to vote. I do not think that any one measure will really move the needle but, if we take everything as a whole, we might be able to move towards the numbers seen in France.

• 18 Mar 2026 · Representation of the People Bill (Second sitting) · Hansard source

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  Q Thank you. Quickly and finally, I have tabled new clause 37, which concerns the language of campaign materials. As we have seen in a recent parliamentary by-election, some parties on both the harder left and the harder right have taken to campaigning using leaflets in the short campaign in languages that are not official languages of the United Kingdom. My new clause would essentially mean that, during the short campaign, election literature would have to be in an official language of England, Wales or Scotland—an official UK language. Do you think that is a good thing for democracy? Do you think it is needed, given some of the campaigning tactics we have seen? Or do you not think it would not make a difference in general to some of the problems we have seen in by-elections—but also in local and national elections—in the country? Harry Busz: As an organisation, we do not necessarily have a viewpoint on the issue you are referring to. As well as ballot secrecy and a lot of the other issues that we look at in polling stations, we are very aware of the accessibility of elections and understanding the campaigns going on being important to increasing turnout and getting more people involved in democracy. We do not have a specific policy towards the new clause. Councillor Golds: I have been an agent for many years. Many years ago, in Brent, I remember issuing leaflets in Gujarati. I think that this is something that needs balance. We need to understand—I sent this back to the regulators—that it is one thing to have a leaflet on both sides having, “Do come and vote for party X, my party. I am a great candidate and my party is wonderful”, if what is printed in another language that might be familiar to people also says, “Please vote for me. I am a great candidate. My party is wonderful.” However, if in English the leaflet says, “Please vote for me. I am a great candidate. My party is wonderful”, but we turn it over and the other language says, “The other people are”—lord knows what—or this, that and everything else, then that is when we get to the problem. In my view, this has to go back to the regulators. I am sorry to say that. In a country such as ours, with a multiplicity of languages, I want people to get involved. In my current borough, the big thing is Sylheti. If people understand Sylheti and we can put stuff out in Sylheti, all well and good, as long as when something is put in Sylheti, it says the same as for an English-speaking voter. If an English-speaking voter says, “I do not understand this”, and someone can turn around to say, “It is exactly the same”, all well and good, but if it is different, we have trouble. Richard Mawrey: It would be perfectly acceptable if there were some sort of insistence, as Peter Golds says, for the texts to be comparable, but that is unfortunately not the case—or certainly was not the case in Tower Hamlets, as I discovered. Quite anodyne stuff in English—“Vote for me. I am a good chap”—came out much longer in Sylheti, couched in really quite extreme religious terms. The two sides of the document did not match. It would clearly be desirable for the two sides of the document to match, so that, in a sense, you could monitor it, particularly if the one that was in a non-English language contained material that ought not to be there in the first place. That can occur, not simply with Asian languages, but with all other languages. You could say something that, you hope, no one outside your language group will understand. It is essential, I think, to monitor that so there is some equality between the obverse and reverse of the same coin.

• 18 Mar 2026 · Representation of the People Bill (Second sitting) · Hansard source

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  Q It is enforcement rather than legislation. Harry Busz: Yes. For example, the types of polling booths we use here in the UK are a sort of cross-section. The selling points of those polling booths are that they are easy to store and quick to put up, but there is no reference to ballot security, whereas lots of other countries have individual polling booths that can aid staff in preventing family voting before it has started. By the time it has started, it tends to be too late.

• 18 Mar 2026 · Representation of the People Bill (Second sitting) · Hansard source

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  Q Thank you. Mr Mawrey, do you have anything to say to that? Richard Mawrey: Yes. As a means of identification at polling stations, I am easy either way on bank cards. Clearly, anyone can obtain a bank card and create an account in a particular name, so fraud would be very easy. The reason why I am relaxed about it at polling stations is that personation at polling stations is a very rare bird indeed, these days. Most personation occurs with postal voting simply because personation at polling stations is difficult and extremely labour intensive. You have to find bodies prepared to go there and do the personating, and they are personally running the risk that somebody says, “You’re not Mr Jones”—and along comes a large constable and there is big trouble; normally, with personation, you are looking at a spell inside. It is an extremely risky business and you can do it only in penny packets: half a dozen here and half a dozen there. If you want to influence an election, even a local election, personation at a polling station is a waste of time and effort, so on that issue I am fine. However, I would counsel very strongly against using bank cards as a means of identification for registering voters or for postal votes, because the possibilities for fraud are obvious.

• 18 Mar 2026 · Representation of the People Bill (Second sitting) · Hansard source

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  Q 56 Good afternoon. Thank you for joining us this afternoon, Mr Hughes and Mr Marshall, and thank you for what you do in your professional roles. I have two general questions. You obviously have a unique set of experiences in running elections in Northern Ireland. In some ways, in Northern Ireland you have had, for a long time, some regulatory changes that the Government would say we are only just catching up with, and I think that is a fair assessment. Starting with Mr Hughes, given your experience of running elections with voter identification in Northern Ireland, what is your view of the proposal to add bank cards to the list of accepted identification in the rest of the United Kingdom? Are you concerned that it will create a divergence from the elections that you run and your current guidelines? Cahir Hughes : It is fair to say that the system of photographic ID at polling stations in Northern Ireland is very well established. It has been running for almost 25 years, and voters are very well aware of the need to bring photographic ID with them to the polling station. Research that we have done shows that the percentage of people who know they need to do so is in the high 90s, and they also know what form of ID—most commonly driving licence and passport. It is an established part of polling day at our elections that people know to bring ID with them. The bank card proposal has not been introduced in Northern Ireland. There is the issue that there is no date of birth on a bank card, which is what you need for photographic ID in Northern Ireland. With divergence there is always an element of risk. We experienced it in 2024 at the UK parliamentary election, when there were different forms of ID used in Great Britain and Northern Ireland. Through our public awareness campaigns and partnership work, we put a lot of focus on ensuring that the right messaging gets to voters in Northern Ireland. As I say, that did not materialise as an issue in 2024. It is something that we will consider as part of our campaigns at future elections from 2029, if the Bill follows the path it is set out to do. David Marshall: I will say at the start that I have a large enough job as returning officer and registration officer for elections in Northern Ireland before I try to comment on policy matters in Great Britain, but I will give just a wee bit of background. Northern Ireland has had official photo ID for well over 20 years. It came in after widespread public concern about the safety and challenges of running elections back in the 1980s and 1990s. Since then, as Cahir has said, it has by and large worked and been accepted, and there are high levels of public support and confidence in elections here. That is not to say that our system is perfect. We could absolutely include other forms of ID that are currently available in Great Britain. I know the Government are on record as saying the UK veteran card could be included, and there may well be other forms of ID as well. All of this needs to be future-proofed into what digital ID might bring. In conclusion, only time will tell whether the Government’s plans for bank cards in Great Britain will work. If I was asked in Northern Ireland, I would say, “Expand the list of photo ID rather than go to bank cards at this stage.”

• 18 Mar 2026 · Representation of the People Bill (Second sitting) · Hansard source

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  Q Good afternoon, both of you, and welcome to the Committee. I enjoyed reading both your submissions to the Committee. It really interested me that there is clearly a desire, from both your organisations, to reduce the amount of threats and harms to active participants in the political process, and to come up with tangible examples of where you want to try to tackle the electoral system, particularly where we are—a bit like with computers—speeding ahead in technological advancement but the system is creaking in trying to catch up with it. I want to explore two areas quickly and then hand over to the Minister. Clearly, in the election strategy announced before Christmas, the Government said that our “democracy is being threatened by misinformation”. Both your organisations have come up with fairly similar recommendations, including, in the Demos report on electoral online harms, the recommendation for a political digital repository. I think that is quite a good idea. Can you outline to the Committee, on behalf of your organisations, where you think that the Bill is deficient in tackling such threats, particularly those from digital communications? Azzurra Moores: I should clarify that our recommendations are so similar because Demos, Full Fact and other civil society partners have been working together.

• 18 Mar 2026 · Representation of the People Bill (Second sitting) · Hansard source

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  I agree. Richard Mawrey: The problem—which I have found in all the cases I have tried, and not simply those to do with family voting, but almost any electoral offence—is that there is no point in having rules or statutes, however good and however well drafted, if nobody is prepared to enforce them. That was particularly the case in Tower Hamlets, where there were multiple breaches of almost every prohibition in the Representation of the People Act 1983. I have never seen that many different offences, most of which were proved to the hilt. What happened there was that they were drawn to the attention of the Electoral Commission, which said, “No problem there; nothing to look at”, and to the police, who said, “Oh, we’re not interfering”, knowing the type of allegations that would be made against them if they did interfere. Exactly the same happened about 20 years before in Birmingham. The evidence of widespread postal fraud was put in the hands of West Midlands police, and they got a nice little folder, wrote on the outside “Operation Gripe”, put it in a bottom drawer and forgot about it. That was their own evidence in the matter; they were simply unwilling to act. It is not a question of resources. In many cases, the police were presented with what might be termed an oven-ready case, and they said, “Oh, no, we’re not touching this with a bargepole.” I am afraid that is the problem. Another problem, I am sorry to say, is that the Electoral Commission’s view is that electoral fraud is not happening. Indeed, that has been its view since I delivered Birmingham, hence my comment at the time about banana republics. Therefore, there is no impetus for the people who should be enforcing it actually to enforce the law. I would say that, on family voting, or indeed any of the matters that are proposed, the law at the moment is fine but, if you do not enforce it, you might just as well put the thing in a bottom drawer marked “Operation Gripe”.

• 18 Mar 2026 · Representation of the People Bill (Second sitting) · Hansard source

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  Q I would like to move on to family voting. The recent parliamentary by-election in Gorton and Denton highlighted alleged instances of family voting, which, according to some parties, could have affected the outcome of that election. Democracy Volunteers has raised concerns about the prevalence of family voting, which, for those in the Gallery who do not know, is the practice of accompanying voters into or near polling booths and influencing them to vote in a particular way. There is nothing in the Bill about family voting, but do you believe it should be amended in that regard? Do you or Democracy Volunteers perceive that family voting is a serious enough issue, and such a prevalent issue, that we need legislation to strengthen the security of that element, Harry? Harry Busz: Let me be clear about the data that we have collected. With family voting, we collect instances of somebody’s right to a secret ballot being denied to them because of oversight, direction or collusion inside polling booths. As an organisation, we have collected and published data on that for 10 years now. At the latest general election, we saw it in 116 of the 204 constituencies that we observed in. It is a widespread problem all across the country. Family voting can take different forms. When ballot secrecy is broken, we do not know the relationships between the people who are involved, or whether there is coercive control, so we very much believe that it should not be allowed in any democracy. Everybody’s vote should be theirs and theirs alone. The data that we collected led to the Ballot Secrecy Act 2023, which is an important piece of legislation that specifies that trying to influence somebody in the polling booth is an offence. We think that there are ways in which that could go even further. To clarify, oversight should not be allowed. A lot of the legislation is in place. One of the challenges is election administrators on the ground, with the infrastructure they have, being able to prevent that from taking place.

• 18 Mar 2026 · Representation of the People Bill (Second sitting) · Hansard source

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  Q You learn something new every day, don’t you, Mr Mundell? Thank you for that answer, Professor James. This may be slightly out of the scope of both of your expertise, but there is an amendment tabled to the Bill about a digital election leaflet repository for digital communications. It would introduce a duty for, after 72 hours, paid-for digital election campaigning materials to be stored in a central repository. It is not our amendment, but I think the argument is that people would then be able to see—and hold to account—the promises made by various parties in the United Kingdom. Do you have a view on whether that would be a good thing? Is that something that you support? Professor James: My areas of expertise are probably elsewhere in the Bill, but I would generally be in favour of greater transparency. Collecting in a central location information about the promises that are being made to the electorate by parties only enhances transparency. Professor Bernal: There is another side to it, which is whether such a requirement would mean that the electoral communications had to be in some kind of standardised form. For this sort of depository to be useful, it would have to be sortable, searchable and so on, and that would require some kind of standardised form. Would that be a good thing? I think it probably would, because we want as coherent a set of information as possible. Would parties like it, given that it would constrict which bits of information they gave and did not give? I am rather cynical about that possibility.

• 18 Mar 2026 · Representation of the People Bill (Second sitting) · Hansard source

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  Q Professor Bernal, do you have anything to add? Professor Bernal: I have one thing to add, and it is a very simple one: I would like the open register to be abolished—straightforwardly abolished. As a privacy expert, it seems to me that it creates more risks. In the age that we are in at the moment, we need to reduce the risks as much as possible.

• 18 Mar 2026 · Representation of the People Bill (Second sitting) · Hansard source

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  Thank you. Dr Power? Dr Power: We are short on time, so I will say yes, and you can refer to my evidence. The only thing I would add is that one of the concerns we have about crypto-currency generally is its ability to supercharge donations below £500, which is underneath the check for permissibility. If that is a particular concern with cryptocurrency, there is a case for not only banning it, but bringing down the level of the permissibility requirement. In my submission, I suggest £50, which aligns with the candidate regime, because that would create a further barrier to that particular concern.

• 18 Mar 2026 · Representation of the People Bill (Second sitting) · Hansard source

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  Q On the original question about the balance between overburdensome regulation and the ability to interact with the electoral process, Dr Hawley, in your evidence, at paragraph 9, “Campaign spending limits on an annual basis”, you state: “Parties are increasingly building up their war chests well before the run-up to elections and engaging in permanent campaigning. This can have an impact on subsequent elections; as the Committee for Standards on Public Life…noted in its 2021 report”. It is always going to be the case that political parties have to fundraise to communicate with the electorate. Where is the balance? What I could not quite work out from that submission is where you see the balance between restricting fundraising and keeping communications with the electorate going over that 18 months, rather than seeing it as campaigning? I might not be clear, but I am trying to see where you see that balance coming through. Dr Susan Hawley: This is not about stopping it; it is about having limits apply across the annual period. An amendment that relates to the digital campaigning side has already been tabled. That is a recognition that we are in an age of permanent campaigning and to make sure that the public know what is being spent to influence them. It is about transparency and fairness, because if some parties are able to keep a lot of money in those pre-regulated periods and others are not, an imbalance is created when it comes to the election. It is about transparency and fairness.

• 18 Mar 2026 · Representation of the People Bill (Second sitting) · Hansard source

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  I was just checking—I was not trying to catch you out. Richard Williams: Perhaps I can just add to that last point while it is top of mind. Something that came up in discussions among members of Labour International was what could be viable alternatives to the current system. Of course, we are not the first country to talk about electronic voting. Other European nations have successfully introduced electronic voting, with Estonia probably being the best example. In its last election, over 51% of votes were cast via an electronic system. A number of measures are built into that system to avoid things like voting coercion, whereby multiple votes can be cast and only the very last one is actually counted, and physical voting always takes precedence when both electronic votes and physical votes are received. Having said that, to come back to the original point on whether Britons abroad are adequately addressed as a voter group, I think the numbers that Colin rightly spoke about are telling. Of the 5 million Britons living abroad, only just under 200,000 are on the electoral register, which speaks for itself. There are really three main reasons for that. One, beyond looking at processes, is simply awareness: many Britons are not aware that they have the right to vote if they are not living in the country. There is no proactive communication on the side of the Government. It is very much left to the individual themselves to find out what their rights are and then to go through the process of contacting the local authority where they used to live in the UK—I did it in Ashford, Mr Joseph’s constituency. It is relatively easy, but there is then the additional process of having to register for a postal vote, which happens afterwards. Those things are all addressed in the Bill, and I think there are some improvements there, but the awareness is the first hurdle. Then there are the processes themselves. And the third point, in some cases, is probably apathy: if you do not have an MP representing your interests as somebody living abroad, you do not care about the potholes in the local high street as much.

• 18 Mar 2026 · Representation of the People Bill (Second sitting) · Hansard source

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  Q Harriet, does The Politics Project have a position on being able to participate in elections at 16 versus being able to vote at 16. What are your thoughts on it? Harriet Andrews: The main opportunity we see from votes at 16 is that it provides an opportunity to effectively support people to vote while they are still in education, or in work or training; 18 is actually a terrible time of your life to suddenly take on this new opportunity. It allows us to deal with things like inequalities caused by the way your parents vote and engage determining how you vote and engage. The opportunity for schools to play much more of a role, and for there to be a more systematic approach to supporting young people, is the real opportunity with votes at 16. Our main interest is also about what we are putting around votes at 16: where is the education, engagement and support for young people so that they can engage in democracy really effectively?

• 18 Mar 2026 · Points of Order · Hansard source

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  Further to that point of order, Mr Speaker. Notwithstanding the rulings that you have made from the Chair, which I think are always perfect and completely right, we are now entering a new period in which a Prime Minister answers a question about a subject that was not asked and then focuses on asking a question of the Opposition Front Bench. Notwithstanding the ruling that you have just made in response to my right hon. Friend the Member for New Forest East (Sir Julian Lewis), can you tell me what parliamentary mechanisms there are and who I can approach to see whether the Standing Orders need to be reformed to give you the power to determine what is an answer to a question and what is a completely pathetic response?

• 18 Mar 2026 · Representation of the People Bill (First sitting) · Hansard source

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  Q Thank you, Chair; that is very kind of you. Welcome, Ms Yule. The other witnesses would argue that the Government’s intention is to make voting easier and extend the franchise. I put to you the question I asked them earlier: do you consider that local authorities and chief executives have been consulted enough at this stage—notwithstanding the fact that the Bill has to go through its passage—about the proposals in the legislation? Are there burdens that you are not quite sure you can meet yet on behalf of your members? Emily Yule: On behalf of Solace, I have been involved in lots of conversations around the development of the strategy and the Bill. We have really appreciated that collaboration and that ability to influence the design of the provisions. I always say that the devil is in the detail, so implementation is going to be really important. Chief executives, returning officers and electoral registration officers need to have a clear understanding of the timelines for implementation and the guidance, so that we can ensure consistent application of those new provisions. In my view, consistency is what builds credibility and trust in the democratic process. At the moment, I do not think that there is huge concern among the sector that any of the items are undeliverable, but we would, of course, always ask for resourcing to be considered and any new burdens funded to put those implementation plans in place.

• 18 Mar 2026 · Representation of the People Bill (First sitting) · Hansard source

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  Q So that is a cumulative figure; it is not a figure from a major national poll, the 2024 general election. Dr Garland: No. It was 16,000 at the general election—although I would say that even one voter is one too many.

• 18 Mar 2026 · Representation of the People Bill (First sitting) · Hansard source

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  Thank you all for your answers.

• 18 Mar 2026 · Representation of the People Bill (First sitting) · Hansard source

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  Q One more question—

• 18 Mar 2026 · Representation of the People Bill (First sitting) · Hansard source

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  Q Thank you for that answer. A couple of amendments have been tabled. I do not expect you to be aware of every amendment, but one is on the idea of strengthening digital imprints— digital identity—and having a repository for digital campaign communications. That amendment, proposed by Emily Darlington, does not list an organisation that would be responsible for storing that data or an organisation that would have responsibility for where it goes afterwards. Could you give us your thoughts, if you have any, on the idea of a digital repository and whether there would be a role for the Electoral Commission, as the regulator, in ensuring that that information is passed on and the provisions are enforced? Vijay Rangarajan: I think that the digital imprints parts of the Bill are very helpful indeed. We would also like to add the party—saying on the digital imprint which party had actually financed that area. The transparency of the digital imprints regime has really helped. We run an imprints portal, and we had a lot of references to it, all of which were sorted out at the time. That was mostly small parties or candidates who just had not followed the guidance and not done what was required. I know that that comes as a real annoyance for other candidates and larger parties as well, but fast action through the imprints portal was actually more effective than a longer-running investigation or using criminal sanctions. We also think that having some kind of a repository, for both imprints and a lot of wider digital material—for example, political advertising—is a real help for voters to see what is being said across the political spectrum. We are seeing a segmentation of elements of the political debate into closed online groups, and that can be quite corrosive of trust.

• 18 Mar 2026 · Representation of the People Bill (First sitting) · Hansard source

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  I agree, but that is 0.1% of the total electorate. Briefly, Chair, may I ask about bank cards?

• 18 Mar 2026 · Representation of the People Bill (First sitting) · Hansard source

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  Q Good morning, all. I feel like I am at Eurovision—“This is London calling.” Thank you for being here today. I have two general questions. Karen, the Government are proposing changing the electoral registration system to a system of automatic registration. Having been through that activity in Wales for Welsh elections, can you give a brief overview of the lessons and the challenges that Wales experienced in implementing that? Do you have any advice for the UK Government on doing that seamlessly through the passage of this legislation? My second question is a general question on votes at 16. The Government made a manifesto commitment to reduce the voting age to 16. Can our Scottish colleagues give an overview of the experience of advertising that and making sure to get maximum efficiency and registration before the first crucial elections at 16? What advice would you give the UK Government to make sure we get maximum registration and participation from a section of voters that has not had the vote for many years in England? Malcolm and Robert, maybe you can divide that question between you. Karen Jones: Thank you very much for the question. As you say, we have had four pilots of automatic voter registration in Wales. Very recently—in December—the Electoral Commission produced a report setting out the evaluation of those four pilots. The main conclusion was that automatic registration should be rolled out in Wales; it added somewhere in the region of 14,500 names to the register, so it had a significant impact on its completeness. However, the report made some recommendations to the Welsh Government to consider before wider roll-out. A lot of those relate to making sure administrators have the time and resources to put the systems in place to support the new arrangements—for example, ensuring adequate data-matching expertise in councils to meet the task. There were also lessons around the optimal timings to undertake the various duties. In terms of the proposals in this Bill, our major concern is the implementation timetable. If we had two different timetables for rolling in the AVR arrangements, that would place a great deal of burden on electoral teams. We would need to give that careful consideration, as well as ensuring that we do not introduce voter confusion, particularly if there were any differences in the franchises. There are a number of things around the introduction of the UK Government’s proposals on AVR, set alongside what the Welsh Government intend to do, that we need to consider from an implementation point of view. I am sure this will be a theme throughout this evidence session, but we would welcome more alignment in policy terms between the UK Government and the devolved elections, because that makes it easier for voters and simpler for administrators, and probably also reduces the cost to the public purse. You will understand that I am not commenting on the policy position, but from the perspective of what is involved in implementing these changes.

• 18 Mar 2026 · Representation of the People Bill (First sitting) · Hansard source

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  Q Granted the numbers were small, but did I not read—it may not have been in your feedback; it could have been from the Electoral Reform Society—that, for accuracy, there were 17 voters removed in the pilots in Powys and 16 in another location, which I cannot pronounce? Karen Jones: That is right. It is a small number, but as I say, the evaluation report sets out a lot of the detail.