Housing, Communities and Local Government Committee
Oral evidence: Modernising Elections, HC 43
Wednesday 9 September 2026
Ordered by the House of Commons to be published on 9 September 2026.
Members present: Mr Gagan Mohindra (Chair); Andrew Cooper; Mr Lee Dillon; Mr Will Forster; Sarah Smith.
Questions 149 - 192
Witnesses
I: Robert Nicol, Vice Convenor, Electoral Management Board for Scotland; Sandra Matthews, Electoral Services Manager and Deputy Returning Officer, Powys County Council.
II: Leigh Middleton OBE, Chief Executive Officer, National Youth Agency; Dr Christine Huebner, University of Sheffield; Helen Blachford, Chair of ACT Trustees, Association for Citizenship Teaching.
Witnesses: Robert Nicol and Sandra Matthews.
Q149 Chair: Good morning and welcome to the Housing, Communities and Local Government Select Committee. Before I go on to the formal request to introduce the witnesses, can I first put on record my thanks to Florence Eshalomi, as the former chair of our Select Committee, who has now rightly been promoted to Minister? With the permission of the Committee, we will send a letter to congratulate her before we grill her at a future meeting. Can I ask the witnesses to introduce themselves, please?
Sandra Matthews: I am Sandra Matthews from Powys County Council.
Robert Nicol: I am Robert Nicol. I am ERO for the council areas of Inverclyde, East Renfrewshire and Renfrewshire and a depute convenor of the Electoral Management Board for Scotland.
Chair: Can I welcome you both to this morning’s Select Committee? Could I ask my colleagues to introduce themselves?
Mr Dillon: I am Lee Dillon, Member of Parliament for Newbury.
Mr Forster: I am Will Forster, MP for Woking.
Chair: I am Gagan Mohindra, Conservative Member of Parliament for South West Hertfordshire and acting Chair.
Sarah Smith: I am Sarah Smith, the Member of Parliament in Hyndburn.
Andrew Cooper: I am Andrew Cooper, the Member of Parliament for Mid Cheshire.
Q150 Chair: Votes at 16 have been in place for devolved elections in Scotland and Wales for some time. What are the key lessons from implementing this change that colleagues in England and Northern Ireland should know?
Sandra Matthews: We had quite a long lead-in in Wales. Registration went live for young people on 1 June 2020 and their first election was then the following year, for the Senedd on 1 May 2021. That allowed a good period of time for registration, raising awareness and general engagement activity.
This phased approach led to quite good success. We had a whole annual canvass in which to raise awareness that the franchise had changed and that 14 and 15-year-olds could now register to vote and anyone at the age of 16 or over could vote at the elections coming up the following year. While, unfortunately, a lot of the engagement activity was curtailed because of covid, we still managed to get that message across during the annual canvass.
There was a national leaflet that was developed and used across all of Wales. That was followed up the following spring with a household notification letter, which reinforced the messaging that the franchise had changed and a new, younger voter was in being. That second communication helped because we now know that, in recent years, voter registration has become more and more event-led. That messaging in January and February led into the May Senedd elections. That is something that certainly was useful.
Unfortunately, because of covid, all that engagement work was not as impactful as we would have liked. Further work was done that following canvass. There was really good practice. There was extra funding for an engagement officer in electoral services teams, which perhaps had not been the case the previous year. There was a network working group that was managed with Welsh Government support and involved civic societies as well. That proved to be invaluable.
We saw huge jumps in registration from the Senedd elections in 2021 to the local government elections in 2022. In some cases—the extremes—that was a 35% increase in somewhere like Ynys Môn. Swansea, I think, had a 75% jump in registrations. In Powys, we had 80%, so that was a huge impact in the second summer of engagement. It was not just about encouraging people to register; it was about raising awareness of the importance of their role, how they could use their voice, methods of voting and what to expect in the polling station. It was a much more comprehensive programme than just, “You can now register to vote.”
Robert Nicol: In Scotland, it started off with what was known as the young people’s register, which was used for the independence referendum in 2014. The registration landscape was vastly different at that point in time. We had not had the Elections Act, the extension of the franchise within Scotland for foreign nationals, canvass reform or IER, which came into force at midnight on the day of the referendum.
At that point in time, registration was very much paper-based. There were not the same identity checks as there are now. The Act that came into force allowed the registration officers to do a slightly delayed canvass from October of 2013, so 11 months before the referendum, through to March of 2014. That involved sending out what at that point in time was a normal annual canvass form, along with a young voter registration form, to each household.
Where no form was returned but the ERO did not believe that there was somebody living there, because the ERO also had education data to check against, that non-return was not a problem. It did not need to be pursued. Where there was a non-return but we believed there was an individual there, reminders would be sent out. Thereafter, from March of 2014 through to the final date for registration for the election, there were the normal monthly updates of that particular register.
One lesson was that a major electoral event focused the mind. It got a lot of publicity about, “This will be the first time that under-18s are able to vote.” There was a build-up within the media about it, which all helped. The Electoral Commission, along with the EMB and electoral registration officers, engaged with education authorities and created education programmes and suchlike. I went out to schools myself. I had a full head of hair at that point in time and I did not have a beard. We engaged with the young people at that point in time.
If you have not already done so, I would direct you to have a look at the EC report into the referendum. It says that, even given that period of time for the canvass, the Royal Assent to the Act was only two months before the start of the canvass. The EC report suggested that it should have been at least six months to allow registration officers to plan and direct. There was engagement beforehand with Government, so we were not starting from ground zero, and indeed that is happening just now with MHCLG.
The lesson out of that is that it needs time to embed. A big bang, in terms of saying that somebody is registered in one day so you can vote in the next immediate election, is going to be difficult. In many ways you miss the opportunity of saying, “Here is where this will start.” If you end up with a small local election somewhere being the first place with under-16s, you miss out on that natural free publicity that would happen in the lead-up to try to get voters engaged there.
Shortly after the referendum, there was a further Act to embed the franchise change for local government elections from 2015 onwards. While those regulations and that Act happened in 2015, I think it was from the elections from 2016 onwards that it was there. If there were by-elections during that period, under-16s were not able to vote. It was at that next big election event from there.
From a registration point of view, the lesson to be learned is that each elector is an individual. Each elector has their own lifestyle and quirks and we need to have a system that can take that into account. Also, it is important to ensure not only that they get registered, but that they are able to exercise their vote in the manner they want to, with a full range of options that are open to other electors such as postal and proxy.
Q151 Mr Dillon: Sandra, you were talking about what to expect when young people first go in to vote. What media and channels were used to push that out to young people?
Sandra Matthews: Quite a few local authorities filmed videos showing somebody walking into the polling station, approaching the voting desk and asking for their ballot papers. It took away the unknown for these young people. There is a little bit of apprehension as a young person going in to vote for the first time and not knowing what to expect. There are quite a few adults who feel like that as well. Certainly in the initial year, because it was covid, a lot of that was remote. It was just video and film.
In the following year, when there was a much more inclusive engagement programme with the engagement officers, there was a lot more outreach with youth groups. Civil society groups got involved and fixed that barrier between what they have been told or understand and actually going in and voting themselves, what it means for them to use their voice and the impact that that could have on their local and national communities.
Q152 Mr Dillon: Was any analysis done of the impact of that campaign to see whether young people were actually clicking on it?
Sandra Matthews: For a couple of projects that took place in Swansea, I know feedback from some of the young people who took part in a couple of the working groups or projects that they had was very positive. The young people’s feedback was that they felt far better informed about the process and what it actually meant.
Swansea also had a great project of vote ambassadors that it introduced. Two students from each of the high school areas in that local authority were designated as vote ambassadors. They helped engage and promoted registration and participation, so influenced their peers. From both perspectives, feedback from that project was very positive.
I know that a couple of other authorities in Wales have taken that on under different names, for example with democracy champions in Pembrokeshire. I always thought that it was a bit of a shame that there was not a national programme for those vote ambassadors, because it is something that could have given schools the support network that they needed to roll it out. For the ambassadors themselves, it gave them great life skills, influence and public speaking skills that they could take forward in future careers, maybe.
Q153 Chair: Sandra, on that last point, the Representation of the People Bill will introduce consistency of the voting age across all elections. Given your previous answer, presumably you welcome that consistency?
Sandra Matthews: Yes. My colleague Robert and I were just discussing that outside before the session. We think that it will have a very positive impact on registration rates and clarity of messaging. At the moment people do not always understand that you can vote in this particular election or this type of election, but not this level. I think it is going to have a positive impact on our ability to engage with young people and encourage them to register, because that message is not diluted. It is not, “We think you are okay to vote for this, but not that.” I think their understanding will be clearer of how different levels of government engage when knowing that they can vote in all elections.
Q154 Mr Dillon: I had some questions around lead-in time, but you covered off quite a lot of that in your initial response. More for clarity, Sandra, you spoke about an 11-month run-in time—I think June to May—in Wales. Robert, you mentioned the two months to six months. In your professional opinion, what would be the minimum lead-in period needed to implement the votes at 16 successfully for a UK parliamentary election?
Robert Nicol: On the two to six months, the two months was between Royal Assent and the actual registration window opening up. The first time that it was used within an election was around about a year later. The Electoral Commission suggested six months within its report.
I am slightly risk-averse in this kind of thing, in as much as, if this goes wrong, it goes wrong for the public and could potentially destroy confidence in the process. There were instances of things not going well in Scotland in the past. We had the Gould report and the Gould principle of, “Do not change the law within six months of the electoral event,” albeit there are caveats and exceptions to that. There is always a guiding principle in as much as, if you are going to move away from that, you need to know why you are moving away from that. You need to be certain. The first thing I think the Electoral Commission will ask you if things go wrong is, “Why did you ignore Gould?” As I say, there might well be good reasons for that, but that has to be a conscious decision rather than just sleepwalking into it.
Q155 Mr Dillon: You are saying six months is the minimum.
Robert Nicol: Certainly that would be the minimum that would cover your back. There may well be logistics reasons where you may want slightly longer, but that is an absolute minimum, yes.
Q156 Mr Dillon: Obviously without a fixed-term Parliament Act, for example, we have no gift of when a general election will be.
Robert Nicol: Yes, and that is where the tricky part falls. If you were to prescribe, say, a fixed date, so elections held on or after a particular date, that may prey on politicians’ minds.
Q157 Sarah Smith: Can you talk a little bit more about the barriers that young people have faced to voting at 16 in both Scotland and Wales?
Robert Nicol: The first barrier is obviously to get registered. Votes at 16, you need to remember, is actually registration from 14 onwards. For many 14-year-olds, their parents or guardians play quite a prominent role in gatekeeping their interactions with Government and suchlike. That is in many ways the role of a parent. Some of them can do it in a way that is positive in terms of registration and some people can do it in a way that is negative.
We sometimes come across the positions whereby, for example, a parent may say, “I do not think my child or my young person is mature enough to be on the register. They are still too young.” The information does not get to them via that kind of channel, which is where education and suchlike is important. The registration is voluntary, but it is important that everybody who is eligible has the opportunity to make that decision around registration. That is certainly one of the barriers.
Some young people themselves do not think that they are ready for it, and again that is where education and engagement comes in. In many ways, the solutions to these kinds of problems are not sitting this side of the desk. It is within our communities and within trusted voices who are giving accurate information. People want to be part of the process if they are given something that they feel is meaningful. We saw that with the likes of the independence referendum, where it was a binary choice but there was engagement. Then you look at some of the more recent council or local government elections, where turnout is a lot lower. It is about the whole process, not just the barriers within it, but actually getting engagement within it. I think that is the case.
Q158 Sarah Smith: Do you want to say anything about the potential impact of voter ID? It was not a factor, as I understand it, in the elections in Scotland and Wales, but now would be. How might that impact on younger voters in particular, Sandra, particularly building on what you said before about examples of where you have been able to overcome some of those barriers for young people, even if they are about their own belief and their ability to contribute to that process? Where might there be learning?
Sandra Matthews: With regards to voter ID, this reinforces the need for an even longer lead-in, because we need to engage with young people if they do not have readily available access to ID. We need that period to not just reinforce the message that they need to be registered, methods of voting as well as just attending the polling station, but also that, if they want to go to the polling station, they need to have an additional identification, whether that is a voter authority certificate or something else. It is joined up with their actual registration process.
Depending on what changes may happen with voter ID in the future, that may make it easier for them to have access to some suitable forms of ID. That may be something that you will want to consider: are there some forms of ID that young people have that might extend that list?
It reinforces that there is a lot of preparation. People do not just show up at the polling stations to vote because we tell them to and they have been registered. We took part in automatic voter registration pilots in Wales. While that was the easy part, possibly, of identifying people who were not registered and getting them on the register, it is still about getting them out to vote.
You all have been candidates at one time or another. It is important to build trust. People do not just show up and vote because we have told them to. You have to engage with them, whether it is your side of the desk or ours. They have to have an understanding of what is required of them, the importance of their voice and the impact it makes. Without giving us sufficient time to administer that process or for schools and civic societies to build that experience and knowledge for the young people, we might lose them completely. They will just turn off the whole process because of lack of trust.
Q159 Andrew Cooper: Building on this point around the lead-in time and registration, we know from data from the Electoral Commission that there is a huge differential between rates of registration among younger people and older people. For the lowest age group, it is around 60% and for the upper age group it is more like 95% or 96%, or something along those lines. What learnings can you share on getting 16 or 17-year-olds registered to vote ahead of their first election? Which groups of young people were the hardest to reach and what can you tell us about that?
Robert Nicol: Young people are not just a blob or a single grouping. You have young people of all nationalities, who speak different languages or who have disabilities, just like you have throughout the whole range. The way in which we currently register young people is that the ERO will get information from, within Scotland, the local council’s education records, which will be a name, address and date of birth. We will write out to them to request that they submit their application.
That data is reasonably good, but it varies throughout the time of the year. It is better at the start of the term, because during term time sometimes people move and do not necessarily tell the school. It is about using the information that you have and making sure that that information is both current and accurate to try to engage and contact them.
We also look at civic society groups. The Electoral Commission runs the excellent Welcome to Your Vote week, which mostly involves empowering educationalists, mainly in schools, to engage with their pupils for a particular week of the year, going through the process and trying to educate them around why it is important and what actual difference being registered can make.
I do not know if necessarily there are any particular groups that are harder than the general public, but we need to be wary about creating a system that works really well for, if you like, linear lifestyles. Where perhaps young people have more than one home, where they register can become a bone of contention between their parents and guardians. Even that kind of thing can cause problems and put people off registering. There is a wide variety of groups that can be difficult to engage with in general and young people are included within that grouping.
Q160 Andrew Cooper: You mentioned at the beginning that young people are not a homogenous blob. You talked about disabled people and people of different ethnic origins. Did you do any specific work with any of those groups to try to reach those groups directly through charities, community groups or churches?
Robert Nicol: A variety of different things happened around 2014 and 2015. Some of these are not necessarily as sustained as they would be. That is why you get the benefit of the big bang of, “This is the election that 16-year-olds are able to vote in.” That embeds within the psyche of society that this is there, rather than just a small aspect. There is ongoing work, but we need to be realistic that it is not something that is happening every single day within every single office there.
One of the premises that was put earlier on was, “What can we learn from Scotland and Wales?” I am viewing the extension of the franchise for the parliamentary register as an opportunity in Scotland to try to get better. It has been in place for 10 or 12 years. There have been a variety of different changes in the legislation since then. How can I benefit to help the electors within my area in this franchise? That is what I am looking to try and benefit from.
Sandra Matthews: As Robert said, one size does not fit all. We find that, where parents are already engaged, they do a lot of the legwork. They register their children or encourage them to register, so they make our job easier. Unfortunately, we then have other households that are not quite so engaged and are even disconnected from the issues. Young people feel that politics maybe does not have a particular impact on their lives. They cannot see that link. It can be quite difficult for us to get through that barrier.
Something we experienced last year with automatic registration pilots, where we identified up to 3,000 young people between the ages of 14 and 18 and wrote out to them, was that we did not hear from one young person with regards to that mailout. It was their parents who rang us to opt them out or discuss issues surrounding that process. It is sometimes quite difficult, unless you have an engagement officer and proper resources within your local authority, so reaching schools, youth groups or other groups within the communities, for us to get through those barriers.
Q161 Andrew Cooper: Could you tell us more about that? You worked on the automatic voter registration pilot in Wales.
Sandra Matthews: Yes, Powys was one of the three local authorities.
Q162 Andrew Cooper: In the evaluation with the Electoral Commission, it was noted that using education datasets was particularly valuable. Can you explain a bit more about how that process worked and how you did it?
Sandra Matthews: The automatic registration pilots allowed us to use local authority datasets to register people where we were convinced and assured that they were accurate. With regards to young people, education data was deemed of high value and with confidence it was secure. That allowed us to data mine our education records, identify anyone who was not registered and write out, so send them a notification of automatic registration. As I said, we sent just over 3,000 to that group.
On the feedback, there was a lot of concern from parents where they felt very strongly that they did not want their child showing up on the register or registering at such a young age, because we included the high 14-year-olds. Quite a number of parents phoned. They were concerned about their child’s name showing on a public register. Once we alleviated that concern, they were okay.
We received quite a few emails also regarding how the child was going to know how to vote when the time came, which showed to me that parents, even where they are engaged, registered and vote themselves, perhaps lack confidence in their ability to educate their child about that process. It was quite interesting for us to hear from the parents about their concerns about how they could involve, help and support their child.
I am not sure whether, with the pilot process, it was completely joined up with other wider engagement work. That was probably a weakness. The engagement work ahead of the Senedd was provided by the Senedd Commission, which visited high schools just ahead of Christmas, so there was a bit of a gap there. Turnout was not unduly affected during the Senedd, even though we managed to register quite a few—I think it was over 5,000—on top of an electorate of 106,000 in Powys.
It was effective. Timing may have had some impact on the numbers just because we did it before the normal annual canvass, but it was effective in identifying young people and taking the burden out of registering them and their need to do anything. It concerns me somewhat if they believe that that is always going to happen for them, so that is something we need to consider.
It almost reflects a lesson we learned back in the autumn of 2021, ahead of the local elections in 2022. One engagement project was to identify any young person who was not registered and directly send them an ITR—an invitation to register. During the autumn of 2021 into 2022, that direct mail, along with other outreach and engagement work by our engagement officers, really bore fruit. I gave you the stats of some of the increases in registration. That shows the impact that a joined-up approach can have and the time and resource that is necessary in electoral services teams, because we are quite small in most cases.
Q163 Andrew Cooper: Yes, I was just going to ask you about resource. Did you receive any additional resources to help with the pilot? Based on your experience of the workload to conduct automatic voter registration, do you have any concerns that you would have sufficient resources to do that on an ongoing basis?
Sandra Matthews: On resource, using local data was an interesting process. The amount of work to data cleanse, to check the quality and content of other data sources that we do not have responsibility for, took quite some time, so the preparation work that was needed was a lot more than I anticipated. Once we got into the data matching and mining, that was fairly similar to what we are used to with the canvass. However, it identified that, as a team, we probably need some better skills with regards to data cleansing and data. That is possibly a skill that needs developing further within electoral services teams.
With regards to the individuals that we identified and could automatically register, because we had found them on two, three or four different datasets within the council, we wrote out. We had a flurry of phone calls. There was a very low opt-out rate—only 0.5%, I think. I recall that it was 28 out of just over 5,000.
Where the work began was, because we had thrown quite a lot of data into our systems, we identified quite a few people who may not have been registered with one piece of information. The duty on the ERO is to then follow that up, write out and find out whether that data was accurate. That is where the work and the cost came, and that was not insignificant.
The term “automatic” might sound easy from the electors’ perspective, but I can certainly assure you that, from the administrators’ perspective, or even a cost perspective, it was not insignificant. Robert referred to the “big bang” of any sort of project. As a pilot area, I am hoping that the bulk of that work was done last year and that, once we go through that process again this year with much smaller datasets, because we will only take anything that has happened and changed since last year, and it perhaps embeds into a process, it becomes more business as usual.
Q164 Andrew Cooper: I see. There is a year-one cost, but not necessarily ongoing. I am curious. You are never going to get away from the need to have those data-cleansing skills within your team doing this. I wonder whether your experience of it, and perhaps your influence within the council, might drive other departments within the council to improve their data quality in the first place. If they know that it is going to be used for this important civic duty, might that encourage some of those skills to be built up in other teams within the council, so the data that you are receiving is better in the first place?
Sandra Matthews: It is funny you should mention that. Only a month ago we had a consultancy firm in our council where we were looking at corporate performance, where AI could possibly help us and actual corporate quality data. Unique property reference numbers was a big challenge for us. Our council tax does not contain that. Whenever you data mine, you want to be sure that, if you are looking for an elector, you are looking against the right property. Otherwise you could inadvertently create somebody who has never had a link to that property.
How all our council departments need to look at a corporate standard and improve was something that has come up quite recently. For example, we looked at Blue Badge data, but it did not actually have a full name or a full address, because they do not need it for their records. As you have said, a lot of other departments will help develop that.
Andrew Cooper: It might drive storing the UPRN and all those other datasets and help you join it all up at the end. I could talk about data cleansing all day.
Q165 Mr Forster: Have either of you seen evidence that allowing 16 and 17-year-olds to vote has changed an impact of an election?
Sandra Matthews: We are looking at each other. That is quite difficult. I am not sure with regards to our Senedd elections. I am not sure that it has had any distinct impact on turnout, for example. It is quite difficult to say whether it has changed any results, certainly at this current time. The political world has changed in recent years. I am not sure I am qualified to give a full view on that.
Robert Nicol: Likewise, I think that that is outside my wheelhouse. I am keen to ensure that everybody who is eligible to vote is registered and has that opportunity to cast their vote. There is more than enough in that sphere to keep me going. I am sure there are other experts who could give a better-qualified opinion.
Q166 Mr Forster: If you have not seen evidence that it has changed an outcome, it either has not or it is very difficult to pin it down. In a way, that is reassuring. Also, in a way, the change of allowing 16 and 17-year-olds is a radical decision, which is both positive and negative in terms of the potential change.
Sandra, when researchers described votes at 16 when they were brought in in Wales—because they were brought in in the 2021 elections—I think they used the words “false start”, because it was during the pandemic, which was a very difficult time. Is there evidence that it has become more successful in the post-pandemic Senedd elections in 2026?
Sandra Matthews: The false start was probably because—let’s be honest—everyone had other priorities during covid. Our engagement and registration rates were probably not as high as we would have liked them to have been going into that first Senedd election. I think that education has embedded the processes a little more, but, like anything, it is time and people’s understanding.
We still get people phoning us saying, “I did not realise that people could vote at 16 in Wales.” It is about a general awareness. I guess that, if you do not have young people in your household, it is perhaps not something that you generally concern yourself with. You get your poll card and show up and vote if you so wish.
Q167 Mr Forster: This is a question to both of you. Do you think lowering the voting age has reduced inequalities in participation to ensure that 16 and 17-year-olds do not feel disadvantaged, or has it mainly just enfranchised young people who are already quite politically switched on in the first place?
Robert Nicol: The most recent Electoral Commission report into the registers had around about 60% of 16 and 17-year-olds within Scotland on the register. That started off at the mid to high 60s and it has dropped down very slightly, hence the reason I am saying that I want to use this as an opportunity to expand.
I am not convinced necessarily that a direct percentage of those who are actively engaged within the process are active in terms of politics. I do not know whether you can necessarily link the two things directly. From the experience that I had going into schools, which is about 10 years old and was limited to the particular schools that I was in, more often than not you got good engagement with the people. There were a few who just did not want to be involved in any way at all. There were others who were hyper-involved, if I can put it that way.
Looking at what mattered to them at that point in time, it was political things. It was around, at that point in time obviously, independence, but also access to public transport and cost of car insurance for young people—all things within which the politics thing actually matters. You can see that they could make linkages within that.
Q168 Chair: Can I thank you both for attending this morning’s panel? Before I formally ask you to switch out, is there anything else you wish to raise following our discussion this morning?
Robert Nicol: Can I perhaps touch on something? Voter ID was mentioned. It is easy to think of voter ID as the polling station part, but there are so many different parts of ID checks within the process now, whether it is at registration or if somebody applies for a postal vote, for example. We also need to look at those areas to make sure that our young voters are being served in the same way as other electors are, in terms of the availability of IDs that they can utilise.
For example, to apply for a postal vote at the moment, if your ID check fails with DWP—and for around about 5% of electors it does—you are supplying either a passport or a driving licence. If you cannot supply that, it is two of a birth certificate, a firearm certificate and two or three others, or four from the next table down, which is things like utility bills. I am not certain that that is fit for purpose in terms of for those who fail, albeit they can then go down the attestation route.
Q169 Mr Dillon: On that, a council can provide a photo ID card as well if you do not have any forms of photo ID to be able to vote. What ID do you need to get for the council to issue you with that photo ID?
Robert Nicol: We can issue voter authority certificates, but that is different from the process for actually approving a postal vote application, which is unlike registration, where we can look at local data to match against somebody. For example, if a young person applies to register, I can check their education data and say, “Yes, that is that person,” and put them through registration. I cannot do that for a postal vote application. There is a prescribed list of documents that you need if you fail that ID check. Most pass the ID check, but there is a significant chunk who fail.
Q170 Chair: Sandra, is there anything that you wanted to add?
Sandra Matthews: To reinforce what Robert said, there is more to do in registration if we want those young people to be able to vote when the time comes. There is other work that needs to happen. Sometimes the existing processes might be a bit of a barrier for them in a way that they are not a barrier for those over 18.
I guess that the challenge and risk for a general election is sheer volume. We probably were both very lucky in Scotland and in Wales that the numbers were from a low starting point. A huge event such as a general election could break a very fragile new process within local authorities and electoral registration offices. That needs to be considered.
Equally, for young people, we are telling them, “Oh yes, you can vote at 16.” If they have not been able to be registered in time or if they have applied for a postal vote but we have not been able to approve that postal vote, they might not actually be able to vote. That would undermine any trust in the system that they may have. That needs to be considered in any roll-out. As I said, both Robert and I were lamenting the possibilities and positive impact in Wales and Scotland of having a whole franchise, but there are considerations of issues that we did not have.
Q171 Mr Forster: Sandra, the request is that 16 and 17-year-olds are allowed to vote, but we have a set of local elections in—hypothetically—2028, where local authorities work out what the challenges are and the capacity and young people start to understand the system a bit. Then it goes to the general election the year after. If 16 and 17-year-olds get the vote for the first time just before a general election, you worry that something will go wrong.
Sandra Matthews: If we knew when that general election was, that would help enormously, but it is not specifically about that election or what election it is. There needs to be proper time, not just to get people registered, but to give young people the knowledge to make that decision and choice when the time comes. Equally, there is quite a lot of administration with voter ID and applying for a postal vote that we did not necessarily experience to the same extent.
Q172 Mr Forster: The Committee met yesterday with a lot of young people and it became apparent that there needs to be an education or support programme. I am more interested in the practicalities from a returning officer management point of view. You think that there needs to be a time window for the legislation to pass and then for 16 and 17-year-olds to vote in an election. For the infrastructure to build up, how long do you think that could be, should be or needs to be?
Sandra Matthews: I think that Robert mentioned it earlier. It depends how risk-averse we all are. Gould has mentioned six months for any changes and for anything to embed. In an ideal world, we would like to have a canvass. I think that my colleagues in England would like to have an electoral registration canvass. Then any engagement work could be built on that, leading into elections the following May, potentially.
Time needs to be considered, so how our natural registration process happens and when the best time to identify these young people and get them on the register is. For the school system or engagement work, we know, as I mentioned earlier, that registration is event-led. As with any marketing campaign, if it is leading into a specific event it helps that engagement and knowledge building.
Mr Forster: That is helpful. Thank you.
Chair: Thank you both very much for today.
Witnesses: Leigh Middleton, Dr Christine Huebner and Helen Blachford.
Q173 Chair: Can I ask our panel to introduce themselves?
Dr Huebner: My name is Christine Huebner. I am a lecturer and a researcher of youth democratic engagement at the University of Sheffield.
Helen Blachford: Hello. I am Helen Blachford. I am the chair of trustees for the Association for Citizenship Teaching. Liz Moorse, our CEO, was unable to be here today. She is on annual leave and sends apologies. I am also director of personal development across the Bohunt Education Trust and head of citizenship at a school in Portsmouth.
Leigh Middleton: I am Leigh Middleton. I am chief executive of the National Youth Agency, the national body for youth work in England.
Q174 Chair: Can I first welcome you all this morning and thank you for attending? Polling shows that the majority of the public are unsupportive of lowering the voting age to 16. Do you think now is the right time to lower the age of voting?
Leigh Middleton: If not now, when? It has been a key topic for young people for a very long time. The UK Youth Parliament voted nearly 10 years in a row, I think, to place votes for 16 and 17-year-olds as its No. 1 campaign topic. I have worked with young people for 30-odd years. I have been talking to young people for 30-odd years, it feels, about this topic, since I was much younger.
Politics affects so much of our lives and so much of young people’s lives. Certainly with social media and the education young people have today, they are feeling that. They understand that politics has an impact. They do not necessarily understand all the details, but they understand that politics affects everything they do. The chairs we are sitting on are affected by politics, literally. If not now, when?
Helen Blachford: I would concur with that. I have worked with young people in the classroom for over 30 years now. Young people, over all that time, have been willing, able and wanting to take part in elections and have a say. The decisions that politicians are making are going to affect them for the longest time, so they ought to have that opportunity to take part in elections themselves and be able to express their voice and opinions through that. Absolutely, yes.
Dr Huebner: I agree. As a researcher, I can add that we do a lot of research on public opinion. Public opinion, particularly in terms of attitudes to what the right voting age is, can shift quite significantly in a short time. In Scotland, we have seen a major shift in public attitudes after the voting age was lowered and the population saw that actually nothing bad happens. Now we have a majority of voters in Scotland who are in favour of a lower voting age. I would assume that the same would happen in Wales, England and Northern Ireland too.
Q175 Chair: On public opinion, critics argue that 16 and 17-year-olds may lack the knowledge and maturity to vote. What are your views on that?
Dr Huebner: I can again add some empirical evidence to that. Colleagues in different countries where the voting age is already 16 or similar reforms are being debated have done quite a lot of research. There are multiple tests that you can give to 16 and 17-year-olds, as to the rest of the population, including how well they can select, for example, a political party that would represent their interests, how well they can select a candidate who would best represent their interests and how well their interests are matched to the political party they would vote for. On all these tests, we find no significant difference between 14, 15, 16 and 17-year-olds and the rest of the population. You can say that, empirically, young people are just as good or bad at selecting a political candidate who represents their views as the rest of the population.
Helen Blachford: I would say that it is about your own engagement activity with young people, the work that ACT does with young people and the Electoral Commission and the surveys that they have done with young people, and probably the young people that you met yesterday. If the general population were able to hear from those young people themselves, I think they would very much realise that our young people are mature enough to take part in the political system. I would absolutely concur with what you are saying and the evidence that you would raise.
Leigh Middleton: I would agree. No other part of the electorate is put to the same test. DVLA will say, “You are over a certain age. You cannot drive if your eyesight has failed.” We do not apply the same test to any other member of the electorate and that does not feel fair or appropriate.
The key here is to give young people the tools and the understanding to make good decisions and to understand what they are voting for. We hear consistently from young people that politics, political parties and manifestos are not aimed at or do not talk to young people. They are aimed at older generations typically, because they tend to vote more. That is the challenge. Get the narrative right, get the education and get the communication to young people correct, and they will make really smart decisions.
Q176 Chair: We heard from the previous panel of election officials in Wales and Scotland about their experience introducing votes at 16. In your opinion, what lesson should we draw from the Scottish and Welsh experiences?
Helen Blachford: For me, it is the education programme that is in place. Our young people need access to high-quality citizenship education. I am really encouraged by the CAR—the curriculum and assessment review—which brings in statutory education for citizenship from primary age. It should not, as we have heard this morning, start from pre-registration and getting our young people to register to vote. They should have that opportunity to have democratic education right through from primary schools and right through secondary.
If we have that high-quality citizenship education for all our young people, that supports them in developing their political literacy and enabling them to be ready to vote at 16. It is learning about democracy, but also through democracy and those practical activities. Even before the franchise and before they are able to vote, learning about that through practical activities and supporting their development of skills is really important for me. That is backed up by what we have heard from Wales and Scotland this morning, from my point of view.
Dr Huebner: I have led the evaluation of the lowering of the voting age in Wales and been involved in research in Scotland as well. I know that you have heard in the previous session that some of my colleagues call the implementation in Wales a false start, but even there we have not seen any headlines about significant decreases of trust in democracy or depressed turnout. The main conclusion that we can take from Scotland and Wales, but also from a number of other countries in Europe and around the world that already have 16 as the voting age, is that nothing bad happens.
On the contrary, there are real opportunities to increase trust in democracy and engagement, especially among the youngest cohorts, if the lowering of the voting age is implemented in conjunction with measures that really help young people engage with political representatives and political parties. Some of the things would be statutory and high-quality civic education, trustworthy information to build and grow political opinions, safe spaces for debates of political issues in schools and youth work settings, and engagement with young people from political candidates, political parties and the media.
Leigh Middleton: Talking to colleagues across borders, the key things seem to be that the support needs to be provided before, during and after. We might be used to thinking, “The election is out of the way. We do not worry about it anymore.” What were young people’s experiences? How do we improve citizenship education? How do we improve their experience for the next generation and going into their next election? If you have a bad experience the first time, you are not going to come back in a hurry. It is certainly one for us to get right.
For us, it is experience of the process and understanding what that process is and what you are going to go through. I remember being 18, going through that polling booth for the first time and being not quite clear what I do and where I put the thing in which box. Mock examples are really good. We run the UK Youth Parliament programme and millions of young people vote for their local Member of the Youth Parliament by going into a polling booth and putting it in the box and having done that we know that they are really confident they know what they are doing. They have been to hustings and seen what candidates are saying. They are making those positive choices. Giving young people the experience of it before they go and do it formally sets us up for success in that sense.
We also have to focus on access. Who will struggle to access? This is the same for adults as it is for young people. It is no different. Those with special needs or those with additional support needs may feel more excluded. How do we get those who do not feel politics talks to them effectively engaged? How do we keep them part of that process? Tackling access before, during and after is key.
Q177 Mr Dillon: This will touch a little on what we have just covered. I want to be specific around the national curriculum and the changes around citizenship. In your opinions, what would be your main asks to make that a success?
Helen Blachford: I could talk all day about that. The strengthening of citizenship in secondary schools, with that statutory requirement that it goes from primary right through, is really a key for us. Alongside that, we want investment in teacher training. We have evidence that, if we have discrete citizenship lessons taught by specialists, it is no surprise that outcomes are stronger. Young people are able to have access to that high-quality education. Real investment in teacher training is needed, not only for new teachers, so teachers coming into the profession and wanting to be citizenship teachers, so financial bursaries potentially for new teachers, but also for those teachers existing in schools about the changes to the curriculum and changes in things like pedagogies and new knowledge, potentially, from those additions to that national curriculum that we are going to be seeing from what we have seen in the CAR.
I should say that ACT is writing the new national curriculum, so it is under an NDA with the DfE, but we can talk to what the CAR recommendations are, knowing that they are accepted. It is about high-quality teacher training for existing teachers, but also for new teachers into the profession, and more citizenship teachers with expertise.
Alongside that are the new measures around Progress 8, which will have an impact in secondary schools. Moving citizenship into the humanities bucket with geography, history and RE will raise its status in secondary education. That would help with some of our schools being given an incentive to teach, and offer not only core citizenship but also GCSE citizenship, which has been deprioritised over perhaps the last 10 years or so. We are starting to see growth in that area, and that is a real opportunity within our secondary education as well.
Greater access to a qualification in citizenship for our secondary colleagues would be really helpful, as well as CPD for teachers and that strengthening of the curriculum, and also holding schools to account for teaching that curriculum through our Ofsted process. I know that Polly Haste, the Ofsted lead inspector for citizenship and PSHE, is doing a lot of work with inspectors about how we inspect citizenship, particularly as a national curriculum subject. Holding schools accountable would also be really important.
Q178 Mr Dillon: Yesterday we were talking to students, and there were teachers there as well. There was a bit of a pushback in terms of where in the timetable all of that fits. You talked about putting it in the same basket as humanities, but would it be your opinion that you could also embed it in maths and physics? When you are doing a maths question, it could start, “If 70% of the population vote...”, and so you are starting to get it embedded throughout the curriculum as live examples.
Helen Blachford: There are certainly areas for embedding in other subjects, but it is a discrete subject that I would want to see in schools. It becomes distilled if we see it across the curriculum, which takes away from the importance of our aims within citizenship education in its own right. I plan my school and my trust’s curriculum, and I do lean into other subjects, but that is in a very planned, co-ordinated way, because I have an opportunity to affect all of the nine secondary schools in my multi-academy trust. I write a core curriculum, and I do that in conjunction with directors of maths and history, where there are elements where there is crossover, but I would definitely be advocating for discrete provision as well.
Leigh Middleton: Schools are important, but young people spend 85% of their waking hours outside of school, which is where the youth sector is active and operating. We should also not forget that 18% to 27%, depending on age groups, are persistently absent from school, and so just focusing everything through schools misses a huge audience. I am going back to access and equality of access for young people, making sure that everyone has that right.
Q179 Mr Dillon: In fairness, Leigh, this particular question was about the national curriculum. I absolutely accept that you have a point, and we might come on to that, but, just on the national curriculum, what would you like to see?
Leigh Middleton: There is also a national curriculum for informal learning for the youth work sector. The two should join up and cross over. We cross over as national bodies and agencies, so we are doing that joining up of the dots. For me, it would be that it is consistent and practical. How can young people apply what they are learning and understand that application?
Whether it is the mock process, as I touched on earlier, it has to be relevant to their lives and what they are doing. When young people are learning things, even in the classroom, if they cannot see how they are going to use it in the real world, it will not stick as much. If they can say, “I can really understand how that lesson that you have brilliantly planned is going to make a difference to my life,” they will absolutely take it forward.
Q180 Mr Dillon: My daughter was standing for school council, and I said to her, “Did you vote for yourself?” She said, “Last year, we were not allowed to,” and I said, “But the rules might have changed this year, so make sure you check the rules for each election.” That is that lived example coming to life through a classroom.
Helen Blachford: It really is, absolutely. It is so important.
Dr Huebner: Helen made the point about teacher training, and there is a different way of looking at this as well from young people’s perspective. I believe that your report on work with schools and young people has shown that what they really lack and request are spaces for debate and being able to form political opinions in safe spaces in schools. That requires well-educated teachers, and teachers to have guidance on how to create those safe spaces. If I were to ask for one thing, it would be guidelines for teachers and a right to deliver civic education that is politically neutral and non-partisan but allows young people to form political opinions and discuss real-life issues.
There are international examples of this. Germany and Austria have guidelines for teachers in schools—not only for citizenship teachers, but for all teachers—on how to talk about political issues. That is a right that teachers can rely on and use to create those safe spaces. Estonia has a really difficult problem with lots of ethnic minorities, both Russian and Estonian-speaking. It had a fantastic process, where it worked with the Ministry of Justice and youth representatives, discussing and developing guidelines that are nationally binding. That can be used by students as a right to civic education, and by teachers as a way to guide their teaching.
Q181 Sarah Smith: From the research in Wales and some of the conversations that we had yesterday with young people, the connection between parental engagement and your likelihood to register to vote as a 16 or 17-year-old is quite high. Does this potentially pose a risk in terms of expanding the socioeconomic gap in terms of who is exercising that right? Are there ways to overcome that, particularly by engaging with more disadvantaged pupils and moving on to the role that youth workers can play in trying to tackle that? It would be great to hear more on that from any of you.
Leigh Middleton: Youth workers are the backbone of that 85% when young people are not in school. We are connected to young people outside of the home in that space with their peer groups, and we can have those debates and create those spaces for young people to have that learning, as well as to unpick their views and opinions.
The risk that you talk about is genuine and a real concern. We know that many generations do not engage with the state, and that could be perpetuated. We also know that the key to that is education. We know that the key to that is giving young people the experience of doing it differently and understanding what different can look like. That is where youth workers will run mock activities or set things up, such as workshops or conversations, to challenge that.
What youth workers are also brilliant at doing and often do not get recognised for is working intergenerationally. We work with mum and dad, and grandma and granddad, and try to change their views of these things up and down the line.
It goes back to the point that, as long as young people understand what difference voting would make, they will do it and lean in on it. If they are frustrated that their experience of school has not been great, but, by voting for different things or whatever, that might change in the future for the next generation, young people are motivated to see that change, just like every other adult is. We can create that space, but it has to be consistent and we have to give them the time to do so.
Dr Huebner: Britain is one of the most unequal electorates in a European context in terms of who participates in voting. Of course, I share that concern that enfranchising 16 and 17-year-olds just perpetuates that inequality that we already see in society. On the other hand, it also provides a huge opportunity to change that, because, at age 16 and 17, young people are still in educational institutions, and that is statutory in most parts of Britain, so we have a huge opportunity to reach young people at an age where lots of them are able to be reached. That is not the case at age 18 or 20, when you are voting for the first time.
In Scotland, for example, we have seen that, among 16 and 17-year-olds, the inequality between young people from different social backgrounds is lower. We see young people from marginalised backgrounds participate in higher numbers at age 16 and 17. We do not quite know why that is the case, but it is a real opportunity whereby, if joined-up work is happening and young people are reached at scale, some of those inequalities can be mitigated.
Helen Blachford: I was going to use that word, “opportunity”, as well. It is a risk but it is a massive opportunity. We are at a really historic moment, when we have votes at age 16 potentially coming in, alongside a new national curriculum with reinvigorated citizenship education. It should not be a postcode lottery in terms of where students go to school whether they get that high-quality citizenship education from primary school right through that is going to prepare them and give them those opportunities, working in conjunction with those outside of education settings as well.
We run parallel elections in my own trust, through resources that ACT has produced. When the general election happens, we use our local constituencies. All of our young people then get to look at manifestos and take part in hustings. We had podcasts of all the different political parties produced. There was a real buzz around the school. We produced our own parallel election results, and then compared them and did the statistical analysis alongside the real election results. Students really engaged with that; it was fantastic.
Eighty of my students took part in this Committee’s inquiry in terms of putting forward evidence. That is a real opportunity to have their voice heard. That was 80 students, from those who are disadvantaged to higher prior attainers, because my citizenship GCSE students are option students. They come from the whole gamut of ability range, and they all took part in the request for information and would have loved to be here today, sitting there, but unfortunately were not allowed. They are really keen to get engaged.
Those opportunities to have real decision-making are so important, regardless of age—so at key stages 3 and 4—leading up to that opportunity, when they do get that franchise, so that they have had real-life opportunities to discuss, take part and deliberate in those classrooms, in those safe spaces, and have those views sometimes challenged, but challenged respectfully in a classroom situation with skilled teachers who are doing that.
Sarah Smith: It is probably worth noting for the record that what is definitely recognisable is the number of young people who have come to listen today, which is not normally the group of people we see sat behind the panel—
Chair: I thought that it was to test my chairmanship skills.
Sarah Smith: —so full credit to all of you for coming in and getting engaged with this whole agenda. We really appreciate you coming in and being part of this as well.
Q182 Andrew Cooper: We have seen research by Ofcom and the Electoral Commission that shows that younger people are more likely to encounter political misinformation online. Separately, Internet Matters says that only around half of young people aged 13 to 17 feel confident in determining whether information that they see online is true or false. We have heard from young people that they would like to feel more confident navigating the online information environment. Does lowering the voting age to 16 increase the importance of media literacy education?
Dr Huebner: I should say that this is not my particular area of research expertise. It is important to note that misinformation and disinformation online is a whole-society problem. Young people see it more often, as you cite the evidence, but that is also probably because they are more often online and more savvy in recognising that kind of information as untrustworthy.
The situation that we need to contend with is that young people are probably most aware that the information that they come across is not entirely trustworthy. One thing that I would like to see is trustworthy information sources for young people that they know they can turn to in that kind of space.
Media literacy education is obviously important, but we also need to think about those 20 to 70-plus-year-olds who are not going to get that kind of education any more. They are just as affected by it.
Q183 Andrew Cooper: That is interesting. You are contending that it may not be the case that they are more likely to encounter political misinformation online. It is just that they are better able to recognise it as misinformation.
Dr Huebner: Yes.
Andrew Cooper: That is interesting.
Helen Blachford: First of all, I am really pleased to see that media literacy is going to be a core part of citizenship education in the national curriculum. I could talk all day about media literacy. It is one of my real passions with the young people who I teach, and it is a core part of our offer across the trust as well. All of our students take part in media literacy education throughout their five years of core citizenship education as part of the curriculum that I design.
Our young people need the knowledge, skills and resilience to be able to assess information and recognise trustworthy sources, and check whether it is reliable and accurate. Also, our teachers and parents need that to be able to work with those young people. ACT already supports teachers in this area. I would urge you all to go on to its website and maybe take part in the Media Matters course, where you will see me again, because I helped it to design and run that course, alongside another citizenship teacher. We already offer that wider programme of CPD for teachers, because we recognise how important it is.
In fact, with one of my year 11s this week, we were talking about some of the news stories over the summer. We talked about the Clacton by-election. She said, “I have read this information, but, before I tell you what I have read, Miss, I just want to let you know that I read it on Reddit, and I have not had a chance to go through and assess the information and check its reliability. I am just going to put it out there, and maybe we could have a look at whether it is reliable.” That is what I want to see my young people do.
My students regularly say to me, “Where did you get that from?” If I put up a news headline and I have not said where it is from, that is what I want my young people to do. It is sometimes a little annoying, because then I have to go back and say, “Look, it is from here,” but I absolutely want young people to be doing that and to have the skills and the confidence to be able to do that.
I know that my young people are getting their information from Instagram or TikTok. They are often not getting it from BBC News. Just reiterating that message, we use The Day, which is an online newspaper for young people. We reference a range of sources when I am teaching, so that we are giving students the opportunity to look at news stories from different viewpoints and recognise fact, opinion and bias across time. In media literacy, you cannot look at just one article and say, “This organisation or this news outlet is biased.” We need to look at that over time and think critically about that.
I could talk all day, and I apologise, but I am so passionate about citizenship, and particularly media literacy within that. It is a fundamental part of the work that we need to be doing in schools with our young people, with our teachers and, ultimately, with parents, to support them with that.
Q184 Andrew Cooper: On that theme, what change would you like to see in the revised citizenship curriculum to ensure that media literacy is given sufficient prominence?
Helen Blachford: It is in there now as part of the curriculum and assessment review recommendations. That definitely needs to be a strength within that curriculum. Again, we come back to ensuring that teachers have that training themselves to be able to deliver that high-quality education. It is really important for citizenship teachers to do that, but I also do training with all of the teachers in my trust.
It is really fundamental for all teachers to have high-quality media literacy education, because they are all dealing with information. They are likely to come into conversations with young people on a daily basis who have watched something in the news. They will have seen what has been happening in Portsmouth, so we are dealing with really high-profile national news at the moment, which is unusual for us in Portsmouth, but not unusual in terms of the same skills to be able to allow our teachers to have those sensitive, challenging conversations in a politically impartial way. I do that training with all of my teachers, and particularly our citizenship colleagues as well.
Q185 Andrew Cooper: You have recognised that your colleagues need that support to deliver that media literacy education.
Helen Blachford: Yes, absolutely.
Q186 Andrew Cooper: In your experience, is that widespread across other multi-academy trusts? Do you think that something more formal should be put in place to provide that support nationwide?
Helen Blachford: I would say that it is not widespread. I do know of other multi-academy trusts that I work with through ACT, which have requested for us to deliver some of that training. I do know that it is happening, but I would say that it is not consistent across multi-academy trusts, so it does need to be more formal and recognised. We would do safeguarding training every year with our teachers in schools, which I go through every September, and rightly so. This is also so important to enable our teachers to have those safe spaces that we are talking about with our young people.
Q187 Andrew Cooper: That is as part of their continuous professional development.
Helen Blachford: Yes, absolutely. I deliver to citizenship teachers at UCL. As part of their course, I go in and do media literacy training with them. That is something that could be embedded into initial teacher training, as well as for teachers in schools who are teaching these areas already.
Leigh Middleton: I would echo most of that. I would agree with the comment that young people are probably ahead of other generations. They are digital natives. They have grown up with iPads and digital screens pretty much their whole lives, so they have learnt to read and digest information quite quickly and then drop and dump what is not relevant and focus in.
To stretch your thinking for your wider review, though, there are broader challenges in this space. The Online Safety Act is not working for young people. They all have VPNs on their phones. My nephew’s phone is in the UK but is VPN-ed to America, so his social media feed is just filled up with American content, which is different from the UK’s, and the context is different. He comes to me all the time going, “What about this? What about that? What is going on? I do not understand this,” and I say, “That is rubbish, because that is New York,” or wherever.
The other part of this is the rise of the use of AI bots and chat functions, where young people are asking them questions: “Who should I vote for? What do you think of this policy?” They are having a conversation with a bot that is filled in by Grok or other companies. That information is presented as so factual and accurate, but it is not accurate. It is presented in a way that makes them think, “That is truth,” but it is not. The problem is that the technology is moving at such a pace that teachers, youth workers, the system and the state cannot keep up with it.
It is a real challenge to our society and democracy, because there are big organisations investing and undermining the narrative that our young people are getting. The scale of this is colossal. Please do not think that this is just a few young people. The majority of young people’s social media feeds are full of nonsense.
The social media ban is another factor, which, when that comes in—or whatever version of that comes in, and how that is applied—could also restrict young people’s access to certain information and may open up others, or they will all use VPNs, we will never know about it and we are pushing them in a further direction. We do not favour the social media ban for that very reason. It will push young people into darker parts of the internet, or other parts of it that are not public or available. That is a challenge to our democracy as we go forward.
The point of media literacy is that it is so important, because it is about equipping young people with the tools to analyse and understand what they are being presented with and to ask questions. The fact that my nephew comes to me and asks those questions is amazing. Does every young person have an adult with whom they can go and do that? We know that the answer to that is no.
Q188 Andrew Cooper: You broaden that out beyond media, but also considering AI chatbots as media. I do not know, Christine, whether you know the answer to this, but what data is there around the use of AI chatbots to answer questions such as who I should vote for and the extent to which the companies behind the biases within the large language models are directing people towards sites where they can answer those kinds of questions for themselves, or whether it is steering them in a particular direction? I am just wondering what the evidence is on that, if, indeed, it is part of your area of research.
Dr Huebner: I am not aware of any evidence on this. Part of the problem, as Leigh has mentioned, is that this technology is moving very quickly, and research is often on the back foot when it comes to monitoring these kinds of things.
The other thing that I should add is that it is incredibly difficult to do empirically rigorous research with these kinds of small groups of 16 and 17-year-olds to get valid results. That holds for political attitudes, but also for how they use AI chatbots. It is a wider society issue that we need to address.
Mr Forster: There are two final questions from me to conclude. What can political parties do to engage young people in the electoral process? Do you have any really good examples? Do you have any really bad examples? I think that votes for 16 and 17-year-olds are good, but we certainly need some education support around that.
Chair: That is not a unified view of the Committee.
Q189 Mr Forster: I did slightly look at the Chair when I said that. We clearly need an education programme around this. Do you think that teachers are equipped to do this? Do you think that teachers have the confidence to do it? Do you think that the public would accept teachers talking about politics? Talking to young people yesterday when we had our Committee inquiry, they feel that they learn about government and about how law is made, but not about the party politics side. If we are going to correct this, we need to put politics in the classroom in an appropriate way.
Leigh Middleton: You have asked about teachers, but, if I could talk about youth workers first, we can then move on to teachers. Youth workers are very well placed to have these conversations with young people. They are trusted within the community to have those conversations. I would say that confidence around party politics is an area that needs proper guidelines and structure to make sure that we are not imposing youth workers’ bias on young people, and that young people are given critical thinking skills and the opportunity to ask those questions and to go and investigate, learn and bring all that back. We can create that.
We are about to publish new guidance to the youth sector around all of this. It will be democratic education guidance to youth workers in the youth sector to give them that framework in which they can operate effectively and safely, and also, if challenged, to be able to say, “I am using this framework. I am not just a rogue operative. I am doing it in this way.” That is really important.
There are good examples of how good political education participation can be done. Local youth councils are an amazing opportunity for young people to get involved in. I mentioned the UK Youth Parliament, which is fundamental, because it is how young people get their first experience of the electoral system in a practical application, not just in terms of standing but also voting and electing, and going to hustings, as well as interrogating candidates’ manifestos in a really safe and more enjoyable way than in big-scale politics.
There are real challenges for parties. I see very little from the parties’ comms machinery that is aiming messaging at young people and putting it into language that young people use.
Going back to the previous question, we see the use of influencers quite a lot to influence young people. Those influences may be positive; they may not be positive. It depends on your politics and your view of the topic, or whatever is going on. We see that party machineries are not using the channels or the communication methods to get those messages to young people, who do not know what parties typically stand for. They do not know what your policies are and what you are aiming for. Therefore, they are not convinced of or do not understand what they would be voting for in that sense, so they might choose not to.
If I was advising parties, it is an open door to engage young people, invite them in, educate them and explain what you are doing, but you have to be on their level, which is a horrible phrase, but on the platforms that they are on, when they are on them, and communicating in the visuals and the language, with more video content. All those sorts of things are really needed.
Two weeks ago, I ran three days at the UK Youth Parliament conference. 250 young people were together for three days, and we were talking about these topics. They were like, “I do not know what the different parties stand for. I do not know what their manifestos are. I do not know what they are trying to achieve. I see them fight at the Dispatch Box at PMQs,” but we all know that that is not how politics works. There is a lot more cohesiveness and engagement behind the scenes. There is a job there for MPs and parties to connect and engage with young people, and you are not doing it well.
Dr Huebner: On the politicians’ side, before I give Helen the floor for teachers, I absolutely concur with what Leigh said. Political parties, candidates and representatives must do a better job and must be held to account to address young voters with relevant information, in ways that are relevant to young people. There are multiple ways of how that can happen.
One important guideline is that it should be continuous, not just ahead of elections. It should be with specific measures around election time, such as manifestos in understandable language. I do not like the words “youth manifesto”, but young people in your own inquiry have complained that the language is impenetrable. These kinds of measures help not just young people. They make your programmes and political issues more accessible to all of the population, as well as to young people.
Young people often like to feel listened to. Your own inquiry has shown that, and certainly a lot of my and colleagues’ research has shown that. The key barrier is that they do not feel that it is worth engaging with politics because no one listens anyway. Key measures would be to listen and to then report back on what kinds of measures have been taken, based on what has been told.
There are ways of doing that. It is important to think about scale. You can think a little bit about candidates or representatives going into schools. If every MP engaged with a school group every other week, that would engage almost half of 16 and 17-year-olds in an average constituency over just one academic year. You can really do a lot of work there.
You can think about engaging young people in the way that messaging is constructed. We have run pilots in Germany, where young people were placed in parliamentary offices and were helping make the reels on Instagram and the communication that goes out to young people.
Closing the feedback loop, one of the most effective ways for politicians to raise the quality of interactions is to take action and then report back on what has been happening. Again, that could be in an asynchronous way with online sources, but it is really important that young people hear what has happened with what they have told politicians.
Helen Blachford: If I pick up on politicians first and then look at education, I am very fortunate that my local MP is highly engaged with my school. He is an ex-student, which does help. Stephen Morgan, Portsmouth South’s MP, is regularly in school. He works with my citizenship students. They go down to his office and talk to him about their concerns and things that they are taking action on or would like action on. He comes in twice a year to do assemblies, but also then comes in at other points during the year. Meeting with students, listening and engaging with them, and hearing what they have to say is really important, so I would urge you to get into schools and go meet those young people, and meet them where they are at.
We also engage online. We do things such as Learn with the Lords with our young people. We can engage online, which means that we have access to those opportunities even if we cannot get up to Parliament, or politicians cannot get in. We have done online meetings with them and had the opportunity to do a Q&A with those peers, as well as with politicians from the House of Commons.
Also, you have lots of young people working in local youth council groups and the Youth Parliament. We have the Council of Portsmouth Students. You could meet with students from across the city who will bring views from those individual schools as well. Those opportunities are really important.
In terms of education, you asked whether teachers are equipped. In my multi-academy trust and among the teachers who I work with, I would say yes, because they have me. I am in there doing the training. I work with the teachers. I help and support them, and answer their queries. I deliver training around controversial issues, how to run deliberation in their classrooms and political impartiality. I would deliver that CPD on all of those with them.
I would say that teachers who I work with are well prepared, confident and engaged. They want to be involved in it. I do not think that that is the same in every school and every multi-academy trust, and that is probably something that we need to look at as part of your work leading up to those votes at 16 to ensure that it is part of the training for all of our teachers.
It is also about working with and talking to parents, and opening up opportunities for conversations with parents who may be concerned about teachers delivering political education. We have political impartiality guidelines, quite rightly, to keep ourselves and our young people safe, but we absolutely should be talking and teaching about political parties’ role in democracy. That is something that we recognise, but we would also value ACT maybe leading the way in delivering that political impartiality training for everybody as well.
Q190 Andrew Cooper: If I could ask you to keep your answer really tight, because we are running short on time, can votes at 16 succeed if it is not accompanied by automatic voter registration?
Chair: Short answers are preferable.
Dr Huebner: Yes.
Helen Blachford: Yes.
Leigh Middleton: Yes.
Q191 Andrew Cooper: If you were to recommend one practical reform to maximise participation among newly enfranchised young people, what would it be?
Leigh Middleton: It would be running mock processes so that they know what they are going through and what they are going to experience.
Helen Blachford: It would be access to high-quality citizenship education, which includes those opportunities, and training teachers as well.
Q192 Andrew Cooper: Can you recommend somebody who might be able to help?
Helen Blachford: I think I could help, alongside ACT.
Dr Huebner: It would be assisted voter registration while we wait for AVR.
Chair: Thank you all for attending today.