Plans for electoral reform mark a major step forward in reforming our democracy

Today's announcement from the Prime Minister includes major reforms to the conduct of elections in the UK.

The main headline-grabber is the introduction of votes at 16 – already in place for devolved elections in Scotland and Wales, but now to be extended throughout the UK. Debate about what the most appropriate voting age is in principle will swirl around endlessly. But the strongest case for making the change the government is proposing is that, over the long term, it should increase turnout at elections. The argument is that voting is habit-forming: if you do it the first time you are entitled to vote, you are likely to keep on doing it later in life; otherwise, you won’t. So whether you cast a ballot first time you can matters. And 16- and 17-year-olds – who are mostly still at school and still living at home – are easier to nudge towards the polling station than are 18- or 19-year olds, who are more likely to be living outside such structured environments for the first time.

Evidence from Scotland and elsewhere backs this argument up. But it depends on new voters having support to understand what their vote is for, what the options before them are, and how the system works. So combining votes at 16 with serious investment in citizenship education is vital. There are hints in today’s government announcement that ministers recognise this. But crucial questions remain as to whether ministers do indeed intend to give citizenship education the boost – in both resourcing and prominence – that is needed.

Meanwhile, the government proposes also to make voting easier by extending the range of eligible ID, ‘move towards’ automated electoral registration, toughen up penalties for abuse of candidates, campaigners, and electoral staff, and close loopholes in campaign finance rules.

All of these are welcome measures that will strengthen our democratic processes. The question is whether they go far enough.

Many campaigners want ID requirements to be scrapped entirely. But that was never going to happen. The Electoral Commission and international observers long saw the absence of ID requirements in the UK before 2022 as a vulnerability in the system, and Labour’s manifesto gestured only towards reform, not abolition. The government’s proposals do go a considerable way, allowing the use of bank cards, and introducing digital ID for the first time.

The proposals on automated electoral registration look less developed at present. Ministers seemingly plan to follow their Welsh and Scottish counterparts in piloting options ahead of full assessment of the best way forward further down the line. The aspiration of making voter registration easier is widely shared, but the technical details do take some working out.

The various proposals that ministers are putting forward to address harassment, abuse, and intimidation in politics are very welcome. Such behaviours blight our democratic processes, putting good people off taking part as candidates or campaigners and making it harder for MPs and councillors to engage openly with the communities they represent.

Yet these measures will not begin to address the wider challenge of how to foster respectful discourse in our politics. The highest-profile political exchange of the week – Prime Minister’s Questions – routinely sees the Prime Minister and Leader of the Opposition hurl hyperbolic accusations of incompetence and bad faith at each other. Nothing in this excuses the outright abusive, threatening, or intimidatory behaviour that many MPs now face in their daily lives. But it does normalise the idea that politics is a game of hurling insults. Such discourse would itself be deemed wholly unacceptable in just about any other walk of life. And it feeds most people’s low trust in politics and politicians, which is severely undermining the health of our democracy and the capacity of government to deliver.

Finally, ministers plan to close loopholes that allow foreign money to finance political activity in the UK, and increase fines for those who breach the rules. These steps are desperately needed: the scope under current rules for rich individuals to play with politics on our soil should worry us all.

Yet here too, ministers’ ambition appears to fall short of the scale of the democratic challenges we face. Rich foreigners should not be able to buy huge political influence. But nor should rich Britons. There is no credible reason for allowing anyone to make uncapped donations to political parties, and serious-minded reviews – not least by the Committee on Standards in Public Life – have again and again pressed the case for fundamental reform. It is high time our politicians listened to those calls.

All in all, then, the government’s announcements today are very welcome, marking an important step forward in democratic reform. But they do not in themselves go far enough. They should be the start of an ongoing process of fundamental democratic renewal. And on some of the matters requiring further change, the need for action is urgent.

Professor Alan Renwick is Professor of Democratic Politics in the UCL Department of Political Science, and Deputy Director of the UCL Constitution Unit.