Make voting compulsory to prevent ‘distorted’ results, Kinnock urges Burnham

Former Labour leader Lord Neil Kinnock has urged Andy Burnham to introduce compulsory voting to prevent “distorted” election results as senior peers back proposed legislation that would make casting ballots a civic duty.

Lord Kinnock and former home secretary Lord David Blunkett, both key mentors to the Prime Minister, are expected to support the law change in Parliament.

The Labour grandee said the move was “increasingly justified and necessary” to strengthen democracy in the UK, warning that dwindling turnouts can lead to diminished accountability and wider disengagement.

Lord Kinnock is a long-time mentor to the Prime Minister (Yui Mok/PA)

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He pointed to the mandatory systems in Belgium and Australia, which he said had reinforced his belief that “democracy and citizenship in the UK would benefit greatly from a comparable system of legal obligation.”

“I lived for 10 years in Belgium and saw compulsory voting in practice. The high turnouts and extent of engagement in the democratic process strongly assists democracy in a country with complex ethnic and political arrangements,” he said.

“When turnouts have fallen for various negative reasons, election results are consequently distorted, accountability can be diminished and disengagement from community obligations becomes habitual.

“Compulsion to use, or even to attend and abstain, is now increasingly justified and necessary.”

Lord Blunkett is also expected to back the legislation (Yui Mok/PA)

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Turnout in Australia’s 2025 federal election was around 91%, compared with 60% in the 2024 UK general election, which was the lowest since 2001.

Baroness Jan Royall said this week she would table the compulsory voting amendment, which is expected to include a £10 fine for failure to cast a ballot, to the Government’s Representation of the People Bill.

The rule would apply to every eligible citizen with certain exemptions for people who may have difficulty participating, such as those with disabilities, illness or absent from the UK.

The amendment was previously put forward by Labour MP Antonia Bance in the Commons, where it was backed by 10 MPs. A similar amendment by Labour MP Bell Ribeiro-Addy was supported by 18.

Former minister Lord George Foulkes said the law change would be backed by himself, Lord Kinnock and Lord Blunkett, who hired Mr Burnham as an aide in 2004 and has since been one of his major political influences.

While he was serving on Labour’s front bench in 2012, Mr Burnham said he would not “rule out” compulsory voting due to turnout “getting too low to ignore”.

Speaking in the Lords earlier this month, minister Baroness Taylor said the Government’s immediate priority was to remove barriers to participation, including through automated voter registration.

Pointing to the example of Australia, she said the path towards increased turnout following the 1924 change to a mandatory system had involved “a number of steps, including the registration steps that we are looking at now.”

“It is an iterative process and we need to move ahead with it carefully. We make different choices in different countries about the way we move this forward,” she said.

Alongside the parliamentary efforts, academics from the US, Australia, South America, the UK and Europe are poised to send a letter to No 10 urging the Prime Minister to act.

The letter says: “Inequalities in turnout mean those who do vote do not reflect the wider population, but are richer, older, whiter, and more economically secure than the UK public at large.

“This has warped British politics, and risks a crisis of democratic legitimacy.”

Critics have previously argued that higher turnout in a compulsory system would not necessarily mean voters are more politically informed or engaged, and that people should be free not to participate in elections if they so choose.

But Charles White from the Campaign for Compulsory Voting said the proposed law, which would allow for abstentions to be recorded at the polls by returning a blank or spoiled ballot, was a “common sense reform.”

“When public apathy threatens the health of our democracy, waiting for turnout to fix itself is no longer an option,” he said.

“Today, leading thinkers and giants of the Labour movement  are uniting behind a simple truth: compulsory voting is a common-sense reform we need. It is simple, popular, and the only guaranteed way to make participation a universal civic duty.”

A Government spokesperson said: “Different democracies make different choices about how they encourage electoral participation. Our focus is on removing barriers to participation and making it easier for eligible electors to register and vote.

“Through our Representation of the People Bill, we’re taking steps to boost participation in our democracy, including giving 16 year olds the vote and moving towards an automated voting registration system so more people can make their voices heard.”

The Representation of the People Bill will next be debated in the Lords at committee stage on a date to be announced.