Democracy demands more than half-measures

Earlier this year, the government introduced the Representation of the People Bill (the Bill) into Parliament. Speaking for the government during the second reading debate in the House of Commons, Secretary of State Steve Reed MP argued that the Bill would safeguard the UK’s democracy by ‘legislating for the future’ in an unstable and fast-changing world.[1]

In reality, the Bill falls significantly short of such a claim. It does little to respond to those threats to the UK’s democracy which have become increasingly apparent since Labour’s general election win. Major challenges of low turnout, disproportionate (financial) influence and a polluted information environment remain largely ignored, with concerning implications for public debate and future elections.

There are two main reasons for the Bill’s lack of ambition. The first reason is the government’s apparent reliance for its proposals on previous recommendations made by the electoral reform community: this has created a backward-looking set of proposals, whose foci and intended impacts seem poorly targeted for our current age of democratic backsliding. The second reason is related: because it has focused on bringing together existing, piecemeal recommendations, the government has failed to develop a holistic understanding of how democracy in the UK currently operates, or to articulate a convincing case for how it could function better.

The result is that the current draft Bill represents an unsatisfactory and rather random patchwork of proposals, which lack a common ideological thread tying them together. This piece analyses the substance of the Bill’s proposals across three areas – voting, money, and information – before considering what a more holistic approach to protecting democracy could look like.

Voting

The Representation of the People Bill proposes two major changes to voting processes in the UK, both seemingly motivated by a desire to improve turnout at elections.

The first is the lowering of the voting age at reserved (including general) elections from eighteen to sixteen, in line with the franchise for devolved elections in Scotland and Wales. The government’s intention here vis à vis turnout is clear: ‘by engaging voters early…we will build the foundations for their lifelong participation in our electoral processes.’[2] It is welcome that this ambition is linked to civic education efforts, which aim to equip young voters with the necessary information and skills to participate fully in our democracy.

The second major reform to voting is about improving voter registration. The large numbers of eligible voters across the UK who are not on the electoral register has rightly been cited as one cause of low turnout.[3] To combat this, organisations such as the Electoral Commission, the Association of Electoral Administrators, and the Electoral Reform Society have previously called for reforms to the current system of individual registration, in which voters must actively (re-)register with their local authority.[4]

Although the Bill does not propose moving to a fully automated system of voter registration, in which voters are directly enrolled onto the electoral register without having to apply, it sets out the initial steps that would help the UK move towards such a system, by helping Electoral Registration Officers to access relevant local authority data, and by providing for automatic voter registration pilots.[5]

While extending the franchise to informed younger voters and introducing more effective voter registration are positive changes, they are likely to do little on their own to tackle the UK’s concerningly low levels of turnout at elections. Extending the franchise to those in their final years of school or college may boost their turnout rates compared to their slightly older peers, but is unlikely to meaningfully close the turnout gap between younger and older generations.[6] It is also unclear whether improving voter registration is an effective response to the problem of low turnout: the Electoral Commission’s post-general election survey found that, of those who did not vote at the 2024 election, only 3% of respondents cited not being registered to vote as their reason for abstaining.[7]

It is thus disappointing that more ambitious ideas were not considered. Interventions with a greater effect on turnout – such as compulsory voting – seem as distant now as they did when Labour was in opposition. [8] Moreover, the Bill expresses no enthusiasm for the idea that voters could and should be active citizens outside of election periods – the government’s emphasis on putting in place ‘the foundations for their [young voters’] lifelong participation in our electoral process’ is instructive in this regard.[9]  

Taken together, the most likely result of the Bill’s limitations is that the UK’s democracy will remain characterised by low turnout and infrequent citizen engagement. This should matter to social democrats: such a scenario will harm the function of elections as a legitimating force for new governments, make politics less responsive to citizens’ policy preferences, and limit the effectiveness of elections as a form of collective action.

Money

The government has proposed a number of reforms to the controls on political donations, some of which appeared in the Bill as introduced, and others which have followed the publication of the Report of the Independent Review into Countering Foreign Financial Influence and Interference in UK Politics (Rycroft Review), authored by former civil servant Philip Rycroft.[10]

The motivation for these reforms, encapsulated by the Review’s title, is clear: to limit foreign financial interference in UK politics. Introducing the Representation of the People Bill, the Secretary of State Steve Reed announced that the legislation would ‘protect our democracy against foreign interference…[w]e won’t let hostile foreign states use dirty money to buy our elections. We are keeping British democracy safe for British people.’[11]

The reforms to donation controls originally had three principal parts. Firstly, donations over £11,180 will have to be subject to a risk assessment, ‘to judge the likelihood of foreign or illicit sources of funding’ before the transaction is accepted or rejected.[12] This risk assessment will form the basis of a new ‘Know Your Donor’ culture, whose aims are defined as ‘helping both organisations and individuals to protect themselves from foreign interference and making it harder for malign actors to subvert the rules and interfere in our democratic processes.’[13]

Secondly, companies and limited liability partnerships seeking to make political donations must now ‘demonstrate a genuine and substantive connection to the UK or Ireland’ and have generated sufficient revenue to fund their donation. Finally, there will be greater transparency about how unincorporated associations – a catch-all term for various, largely informal organisations – are funded, with limits on whether they can donate money from foreign sources.[14]

The government has also announced its intention to retrospectively implement two recommendations contained within the Rycroft Review. These would limit the amount that an overseas voter can donate in a calendar year to £100,000 and introduce a moratorium on cryptocurrency donations.[15] As a fuller government response to the Review’s other recommendations is expected in the coming weeks, the piece will focus on those proposals which are currently official policy.

Taken together, these reforms go some way to protecting the UK’s democracy from foreign money. They align with a number of long-standing recommendations from those involved in this field, notably the Committee on Standards in Public Life, the Electoral Commission, and civil society organisations such as Spotlight on Corruption.[16] (It should be noted that concerns have been raised about the ability of some of the Bill’s measures, particularly regarding company donations, to properly mitigate the risks of foreign interference.[17])

However, in its focus on foreign interference, the Bill elides the broader and more fundamental question of how influence is currently exerted across the democratic system. Concluding for the government in the second reading debate, Elections Minister Samantha Dixon summed up this approach, noting that ‘[t]he proposed changes to our political finance framework will safeguard against foreign interference, while ensuring that legitimate donors can continue to fund electoral campaigns.’[18]

This framework of ‘foreign money bad, domestic money good’ is evidently limiting. By eschewing the question of the domestic funding, the Bill does nothing to tackle the disproportionate influence of wealthy donors, with the concomitant effects that this has on policy decisions and on low levels of public confidence in the integrity of politicians.

Recent evidence suggests that these domestic financial threats to the health of the UK’s democracy are becoming more severe. Transparency International UK has evidenced how political parties are increasingly sustained by funding from wealthy individuals, whose ability to contribute is little affected by this Bill.[19] A cap on donations or a lowering of spending limits would help to reduce the reliance of parties on individual donors and their policy preferences.[20]

Indeed, in accepting the Rycroft Review’s recommendation of a cap on donations from overseas voters – albeit primarily justified with reference to the risks of foreign interference – the government has acknowledged the principle that the political and financial influence of certain individuals should be limited. The introduction of an explicit limit on donations from a specific source is a novel development in British politics, and the concession of this principle should encourage those engaged in democratic reform.

In keeping with its non-engagement with the broader question of political influence, the Bill also leaves untouched the sector most openly directed towards shaping politicians’ positions: think tanks. The opaque funding of right-leaning think tanks has long been a concern for transparency campaigners.[21] However, this challenge should have a new urgency in light of the Trump administration’s publicly declared policy of funding those European organisations with which it has an ideological affinity.[22]

Yet think tanks remain a relatively unregulated part of the political influence ecosystem, with many providing little-to-no transparency about the sources of their funding.[23] While in opposition, Labour pledged to consult on the definition of these organisations, in order to ensure that think tanks’ funders are publicly disclosed.[24] The Rycroft Review has provided the government with an opportunity to re-examine this area, recommending that the Ethics and Integrity Commission consider how foreign money can influence the political eco-system through think tanks.[25] Rather than waiting for the results of any future report, Labour would do well to pick up their original proposal again.

However, in solely focusing on foreign financial interference, the government has indicated that it either does not have an interest in, or an understanding about, the way in which unequal influence is exercised presently over politics. Similarly to the proposed changes to voting, these reforms to the funding of political actors are unlikely to prevent further public disengagement from the exercise of politics, furthering our democratic malaise.  

Information

The Bill is almost entirely silent on the information environment around elections and political campaigning. This is surprising: while public evidence of systematic and effective foreign financial interference in the UK’s democracy is limited – the redacted Intelligence and Security Committee’s 2020 report into Russia did not provide the Committee’s determination of the extent of political influence – the information environment is significantly more prone to manipulation by foreign and hostile actors.[26]

The risks to what some have termed ‘epistemic security’ come in a growing variety of forms.[27] The right has embarked on a major programme of capturing broadcast, newspaper and social media organisations, emulating a phenomenon already pronounced in the United States.[28] Misinformation and disinformation continue to proliferate on social media platforms which are cutting back their fact-checking programs. Advances in generative artificial intelligence will help to create increasingly convincing and potentially damaging political deepfakes. Polarising algorithms and rampant bots provide a misleading perception of the public’s views, furthering invidious feedback loops and preventing the considered deliberation on which liberal and social democracies rely.

Many of these concerning trends have accelerated during the second presidency of Donald Trump. The UK’s existing legislative framework – including the Online Safety Act – appears to be unable to mitigate these threats.[29] The Bill’s failure to engage with this area is the strongest evidence that it is a piece of legislation designed to fight the battles of an increasingly distant political age.

Conclusion

As introduced, the Representation of the People Bill is a missed opportunity to tackle the fundamental challenges faced by the UK’s democracy. A more ambitious approach is required, one which acknowledges and responds to the precarity of liberal democracy in the early 21^st century.

Such an approach should place the meaningful engagement of citizens with democracy at its core. Improving turnout is an essential component of this: ambitious ideas such as compulsory voting or making polling day a bank holiday (which may require the re-introduction of a new Fixed-term Parliaments Act) should be considered, alongside an intensification of current efforts to make voting more accessible.

However, a distant citizenry that is only heard at general elections is not necessarily healthy. More consistent and deeper forms of democratic engagement, such as deliberative processes, could begin to recast the fractious relationship between both citizens and the state, and between citizens themselves. We should also begin to think more seriously about the shape of our public sphere, and the ways in which the information environment could be made subject to (cautious, reasonable) democratic oversight.

Finally, we should also look to promote not only greater citizen involvement, but also more equal political influence between citizens. Exposing and reducing financial interference in our politics would support this goal, with the clearest path to this being the introduction of a cap on donations from all donors – not just those from overseas. Parliamentarians should take this once-in-a-generation opportunity to better protect the UK from the threats to come.  

Guy Furlong is a researcher and writer with an interest in democratic reform.

[1] Steve Reed, Representation of the People Bill: Second Reading, Hansard, 2 March 2026.

[2] UK Government, ‘Policy Paper: Votes at 16’, www.gov.uk, 2 March 2026.

[3] Toby James, Oliver Sidorczuk, Kenny Imafidon, D. McGrath, ‘Getting the Missing Millions on the Electoral Register: A vision for voter registration reform in the UK’, All-Party Parliamentary Group on Democratic Participation, 2016; Levelling Up, Housing and Communities Committee, Electoral Registration: Fourth Report of Session 2023-24, House of Commons, 2024.

[4] Electoral Commission, ‘A modern electoral register’, www.electoralcommission.org.uk, 2021; Association of Electoral Administrators, ‘AEA New Blueprint for a Modern Electoral Landscape’, www.aea-elections.co.uk, 2025; Electoral Reform Society, ‘Automatic Voter Registration’, electoral-reform.org.uk, 2025.  

[5] UK Government, ‘Policy Paper: Improving voter registration’, www.gov.uk, 2 March 2026.

[6] Parth Patel, Viktor Valgarðsson, ‘Half of us: turnout patterns at the 2024 general election’, Institute of Public Policy Research, 2024, p8.

[7] Electoral Commission, ‘Report on the 2024 UK Parliamentary general election and the May 2024 elections’, www.electoralcommission.org.uk, 2024.

[8] D. Klemperer, ‘Universal Suffrage? The problem of low and unequal turnout and the case for compulsory voting’, Constitution Society, 2025.

[9] UK Government, ‘Policy Paper: Votes at 16’, www.gov.uk, 2 March 2026.

[10] Philip Rycroft, ‘The Rycroft Review: Report of the independent review into countering foreign financial influence and interference in UK politics’, www.gov.uk, 25 March 2026

[11] UK Government, ‘Tougher new measures on political finance through the Representation of the People Bill’, mhclgmedia.blog.gov.uk, 12 February 2026.

[12] UK Government, ‘Policy Paper: Political finance’, www.gov.uk, 2 March 2026.

[13] UK Government, ‘Restoring trust in our democracy: Our strategy for modern and secure elections’, www.gov.uk, 17 July 2025.

[14] UK Government, ‘Policy Paper: Political finance’, www.gov.uk, 2 March 2026.

[15] UK Government, ‘Caps on donations from overseas electors and ban on crypto donations to protect democracy’, www.gov.uk, 25 March 2026

[16] Committee on Standards in Public Life, Regulating Election Finance, Committee on Standards in Public Life, 2021, p11-17; Electoral Commission, ‘Report: Digital campaigning – increasing transparency for voters’, www.electoralcommission.org.uk, 2018; Various, ‘Protecting the UK’s Democracy: Key Electoral Reforms Recommended by Independent Experts’, Spotlight on Corruption, 2024.

[17] Arun Advani, Josh Flew, Sebastian Gazmuri Barker, Johnathan Inkley, Andy Summers, ‘The Regulation of Political Donations: Transparency, Foreign Interference and Tax Benefits’, Cen Tax, 2026; Ben Stanford, ‘The Government’s Electoral Reform Proposals: Good Intentions, Unrealised Potential’, ukconstitutionallaw.org, 23 February 2026; Alan Renwick, ‘The Representation of the People Bill: contours of the debate to come’, constitution-unit.com, 26 February 2026

[18] Samantha Dixon, Representation of the People Bill: Second Reading, Hansard, 2 March 2026.

[19] Steve Goodrich, Rose Whifften, ‘Taking Big Money Out of Politics’, Transparency International UK, 2026.

[20] Sam Power, ‘Bold ideas for democratic reform: A ‘democracy backstop’ to protect elections’, Spotlight on Corruption, 2025.

[21] Adam Ramsay, Peter Geoghegan, ‘Revealed: how the UK’s powerful right-wing think tanks and Conservative MPs work together’, opendemocracy.net, 31 July 2018.

[22] Anna Gross, Lucy Fisher, David Sheppard, Amy Mackinnon, ‘US government to fund Maga-aligned think-tanks and charities in Europe’, ft.com, 5 February 2026.

[23] Anita Mureithi, ‘Revealed: UK’s most secretive think tanks took £14.3m from mystery donors’, opendemocracy.net, 17 November 2022.

[24] Jack Fenwick, ’55 Tufton Street: The other black door shaping British politics’, www.bbc.co.uk, 26 September 2022.

[25] Philip Rycroft, ‘The Rycroft Review: Report of the independent review into countering foreign financial influence and interference in UK politics’, www.gov.uk, 25 March 2026

[26] Intelligence and Security Committee of Parliament, ‘Russia’, House of Commons, 2020, p16.

[27] Elizabeth Seger, Sam Stockwell, Tyreese Calnan, Henry Adjer, Jamie Hancock, Hannah Perry, ‘Epistemic Security for Crisis Resilience’, Demos, 2026

[28] Alan Rushbridger, ‘How GB News became Reform TV’, www.thenewworld.co.uk, 18 March 2026

[29] Alexandros Antoniou, Lorna Woods, Maeve Walsh, ‘Disinformation and disorder: the limits of the Online Safety Act’, www.onlinesafetyact.net, 10 August 2024