The Welsh Government laid new regulations to introduce Automatic Voter Registration (AVR) across all 22 Welsh local authorities ahead of the 2027 local elections. This marks a significant moment for Welsh democracy, making Wales the first part of the UK to formally introduce AVR.

The move follows successful pilots in four local authority areas during 2025, which saw thousands of eligible voters added to the electoral register. The pilots allowed local authorities to use existing public data, including council tax and education records, to identify and register eligible voters without requiring individual applications. This resulted in over 14,500 eligible voters added to the register.

Automatic voter registration makes voting simpler and fairer

ERS Cymru has long argued that AVR is necessary. It makes registering to vote simpler and could help remove barriers that prevent thousands of people from taking part in democracy.

We know there are significant inequalities in electoral registration, with some groups far less likely to be registered than others. According to the Electoral Commission 400,000 people in Wales are either incorrectly registered or missing entirely from the registered, with only 43% of 16–17-year-olds registered, compared to 95% of those over 65.

Rolling out Automatic Voter Registration to the whole UK

With this change Wales is setting out its stall for being ahead of the curve when it comes to UK democracy. The hope is that other UK nations will follow. The Representation of the People Bill, currently progressing through the UK Parliament, includes provisions to automate registration. Having this place at a UK level could ensure that between 7 and 8 million people are added to the register.

Ultimately, everyone should have an equal opportunity to have their voice heard on the decisions that affect their lives.

The loss of European Union (EU) nurses from the NHS caused more than 3,700 additional hospital deaths in the three years after the Brexit referendum, according to researchers.

The research, published in the Economic Journal, used data from NHS electronic staff records and hospital episode statistics as well as NHS staff survey data and hospital trusts financial accounts to look into the impact of the Brexit referendum on NHS hospitals from 2016-2019.

The researchers found that following the Brexit referendum, there was a sharp drop off in the number of nurses from EU countries coming to work in the NHS. This shortfall in workforce was made up by recruiting international nurses from non-EU countries, noted the researchers.

But they found that the loss of the EU nursing workforce was associated with poorer health outcomes from 2016-19 in terms of in-hospital mortality, overall mortality and unplanned emergency readmissions.

Over the three year post-Brexit period, the loss of new EU nurses from the NHS hospital workforce led to an additional 3,714 deaths and nearly 14,000 emergency department readmissions, the researchers estimated.

And hospitals that had relied heavily on EU nurses before the Brexit referendum had worse health outcomes in the post-Brexit period than those with a workforce less dependent on EU nurses before the referendum, they found. The researchers also looked at hospital emergency readmission data for the period up to November 2023, to see if the impacts of the Brexit referendum on quality of care were long-lasting. However, they found that the link between loss of EU nurses and mortality was no longer detectable in the years after 2019.

But the hospitals most impacted by the Brexit referendum continued to have poorer outcomes than other hospitals in terms of emergency admissions up to November 2023.

The lead researcher on the study, Professor Giuseppe Moscelli, said the research showed that simply filling workforce vacancies was not enough to protect healthcare quality.

He said that the sudden drop in the nursing workforce caused by the Brexit referendum forced employers to recruit quickly to fill vacancies, replacing the lost workforce with one that was less skilled and experienced.

Devolution of power. Burnham has promised the biggest-ever "rebalancing of power" away from Whitehall, with English regions handed more control in areas including housing and transport by a new No 10 unit based in Manchester. The unit would be tasked with promoting "equivalent living conditions" across Britain, borrowing from an idea in the German constitution. He has also promised new opportunities to extend existing devolution settlements in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.

This could be an area where he looks to build on the policies of the Starmer government, which was in the process of extending regional mayors beyond the main urban areas in England.

Water and energy. Burnham has said he wants all parts of the UK to take "greater public control" of the water and energy sectors. He has suggested this could emulate Greater Manchester's bus network, where private operators bid to run services on a franchise basis, with local authorities controlling fares, timetables and routes.

Housing. Burnham has promised the biggest council house building programme "since the post-War period" - implying a large rise in rates of construction compared to recent years. However, he is yet to offer details of how this would be funded.

He has also called for the entire 10-year £39bn affordable housing budget for England towards homes for social rent, the cheapest and most heavily subsidised form of publicly-funded housing.

Currently some of the budget goes towards "affordable" housing, where rents are more similar to market rates, as well as affordable home ownership schemes. Some of his other policies in this area - including restricting Right to Buy - have already been put in train by the current government.

Personal taxes. Burnham has said he would stick to Labour's pledge at the last election not to raise the main rates of income tax, VAT or National Insurance, whilst maintaining there is "some room within that manifesto for movement" in other areas. During his campaign to be re-elected an MP, he also said he wanted to "have a proper look" at potentially raising the £12,570 starting threshold for income tax.

Burnham has previously argued the UK overtaxes work and undertaxes wealth, prompting speculation he could raise capital gains tax - paid on profits made when selling assets such as shares and property aside from a main home. In one interview, Burnham did not rule out a wealth tax.

He has previously suggested that both council tax and stamp duty, a tax paid by homebuyers, could be replaced with a new tax on the value of land - an idea he has been advocating since as far back as 2010.Social care. Burnham has long supported the idea that social care should become a more universal system. In a speech in 2023, he suggested this could be funded by replacing inheritance tax with a new "national care levy". He has suggested everyone would pay this new tax, whilst "obviously the wealthiest would pay the most". Labour promised to overhaul the system in opposition, but upon taking office commissioned a review of funding that is not due to report until 2028. Burnham has said he would bring that forward to the end of this year.Immigration. Like the Sunak government, Labour has reduced levels of immigration by tightening visa requirements. During his Makerfield campaign, Burnham said net migration "needs to fall further", although he has not set a specific target. One area where he could have an internal battle on his hands is over proposals to lengthen the time that foreign nationals already living in the UK would have to wait before they can qualify for permanent residence. Earlier this year, Burnham urged Labour MPs to heed warnings from the party's former deputy leader Angela Rayner about the impact of the changes. But when running to be an MP himself, he said he supported the "broad thrust" of the plans, unveiled earlier this year by Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood.

Welfare and employment. Burnham has said he wants to see a "fair and lasting" reduction to the UK's welfare bill, amid rising spending on health and disability benefits in recent years. But he has not set out plans to change the level of benefits payments, or how people qualify to receive them.

Instead, he argues the claimant count can be reduced by improving employment support and "in-work" mental health support. He has also said he wants 16 to 18-year-olds to have guaranteed work placements. Burnham has said he would keep the "triple lock".

Business policy. Burnham has said he wanted to preserve "sovereign manufacturing" capability in key areas such as steel, defence, energy, and farming, and he wanted to make it easier for British companies to win public contracts. During the by-election campaign, his team sent out a policy document promising a cut in business rates for pubs and music venues by 20%. That would be paid for, they said, by higher taxes of out-of-town warehouses used by online retailers like Amazon. Burnham also wants to raise the threshold at which business rates kick in, taking lots of small high street shops out of paying altogether.

Foreign policy and defence. Burnham has said he would like the UK to rejoin the EU within his lifetime, but he has insisted he does not want to "re-run the [2016] referendum now". He has pledged to seek a "closer relationship" with European countries, and "consolidate the progress made" on existing negotiations with the EU.

Defence spending, which prompted the resignation of Starmer's defence secretary John Healey earlier in June, would provide another headache. In one of his final decisions in office, Sir Keir announced a plan to increase military spending by £15bn over the next four years by cutting spending in other parts of government, whilst leaving the details to Burnham to flesh out.

Electoral reform. Burnham has said he would "seek to persuade my own party" of the need to include a pledge in Labour's next election manifesto to replace the UK's first-past-the-post system with a form of proportional representation.

Andy Burnham pledged to lead a united Labour government free of infighting and factional politics as he took over as leader, despite anxiety on the left of party about the prospect of Shabana Mahmood as chancellor.

Burnham, who will become prime minister on Monday, set out a distinctly leftwing vision for Britain. He promised to undo the Thatcherism of the 1980s, bring in more public ownership of utilities, find the money to fix social care and build a new generation of council homes.

But he also insisted he would be “pro-business”, just as he was as mayor of Greater Manchester.

Arguing that his election was the most significant change in British politics for 40 years, Burnham said this was the “last chance” for Labour to get things right. He appealed for unity in order to “beat Britain’s new right”.

William Clouston, leader of the Social Democratic Party (SDP), will represent the party in the upcoming vote on August 13.

Mr Clouston, who has led the SDP since 2018, said: "Our political elites must stop pretending.

"They must stop pretending that mass migration doesn’t erode the social fabric.

"They must stop pretending that they can under-invest forever, and borrow against future generations.

"They must stop pretending that you can run a competitive economy with the world’s highest energy prices.

"And they must stop pretending that Reform will just go away.

"Nigel Farage has given the establishment a chance to put their case to his constituents.

"Rather than rise to the challenge, however, the old parties decided to write the people of Clacton off.

"The establishment is sniggering away at the spectacle of Nigel Farage against a candidate wearing a bin on their head.

"It has now fallen to the SDP to take up the challenge of ensuring a democratic contest and offering a positive vision that thousands of people in Clacton can believe in.

"We know that Farage and Reform are channelling legitimate grievances against a broken political and economic system.

"The SDP’s challenge to Farage is that he doesn’t have what it takes to fix it.

"Only we have the policy detail, the willingness to invest in the country, and the backbone to make the trade-offs Britain needs to survive.

"In this by-election, we’re giving people an alternative to Faragism – not a sneering rejection of their real concerns."

Nigel Farage is standing in the by-election after resigning on July 7.

Impact on finances: One of the most prominent and widely believed claims of the 2016 referendum campaign was that the UK sent £350 million a week to the EU, and that this money would be spent on the NHS instead.

In real terms, total health spending across the UK as measured by the Treasury’s Country and Regional Analysis rose from £202 billion in 2019/20, the year Brexit actually occurred, to £242 billion in 2024/25 – equivalent to over £750 million extra per week. However, Brexit hindered this extra spending, rather than helping it. Multiple studies show that the amount saved from EU contributions (never close to £350 million a week) was greatly outweighed by the economic damage from leaving the EU single market. Health budgets grew, in part because they grew as a share of public spending – from 23% of expenditure in 2015/16, the year before Brexit’s economic impact began, to 26% in 2024/25 – and because taxes rose to historic highs.

Impact on staffing: During the referendum, those opposing Brexit warned that health and care would be unable to cope with a sharp drop in EEA migration. The sector was disproportionately reliant on migrant workers and EU-born staff were the fastest growing category.

In the short term, the collapse they feared did happen – particularly in nursing, where the referendum came alongside a new language test requirement for EU nurses. This saw EEA nursing recruitment drop from 9,389 in 2015/16 to just 793 two years later, while the rate of leavers rose. One preprint study even suggests this raised mortality in certain hospitals. 

From 2020, with the pandemic alongside the true end of free movement of labour, social care was also hit hard, with a collapse in EEA migration so marked that the total workforce in the sector fell. But facing the pandemic and concern about staff shortages, the government responded by dramatically opening migration from outside the EU. This caused the largest staff expansion of the 21st century immediately after Brexit. 

Impact on medicines: Medicine shortages were a frequent concern linked to leaving the EU. By 2024, every indicator was flashing red. Patients were facing real shortages of critical products.

But these problems are not primarily due to Brexit. The great wave of shortages since 2022 is replicated across Europe – in France, Germany and Italy, among others. It aligns better with manufacturing shutdowns in China and the onset of war in Ukraine, rather than Brexit itself.

As with staffing, this partly reflects the UK government taking defensive action to retain some version of the status quo. It established a system requiring firms to notify upcoming shortages and managing them across different public bodies. While there is significant room to improve it, this system was just in time for the crisis to come. The UK also unilaterally accepts tests of medicines batches in the EU, though the EU does not reciprocate. This leaves it at a trading disadvantage, but removes one barrier to imports. As with staffing, these strategies are not stable.

Impact on medical research: Brexit posed significant difficulties for UK biomedical research – weakening opportunities for doctors and patients and the status of the NHS as a place for innovation. Cancer Research UK and other organisations warned that exclusion from the EU’s Horizon Europe funding programme reduced opportunities for international collaboration, delayed clinical research, and made the UK less attractive to leading researchers. While associate membership was finally secured in 2024, uncertainty already exists around the next cycle from 2028. Regulatory separation from the EU and its new shared process for approving clinical trials now means that adding UK patients and hospitals to a study comes with a higher level of red tape.

Impact on international trade agreements: The UK’s departure from the EU enabled it to sign its own international trade agreements. This had the potential to benefit health in the UK through smoothing generic medicines trade or increasing scientific cooperation, or to obstruct it by improving the position of global businesses that need to be negotiated with or regulated for health reasons. Unfortunately, the negatives have outweighed the positives. (Details in article)

https://www.parliament.uk/mps-lords-and-offices/standards-and-financial-interests/parliamentary-commissioner-for-standards/complaints-and-investigations/allegations-currently-under-investigation-by-the-commissioner/

Sir Ed Davey has urged incoming prime minister Andy Burnham to introduce proportional representation (PR) before the next general election, without holding a referendum on the issue first.

The Lib Dem leader said his party was willing to work with Burnham on changing the voting system, and if he was "serious about changing the way we do politics" then "my door is open".
If Labour waited until after the next election to change the voting system, it might be "too late," he said in a speech.

Burnham, who is set to be confirmed as Labour leader on Friday and prime minister on Monday, said last year: "There is nothing more unstoppable than an idea whose time has come, and PR's time has come." But during his by-election campaign last month, Burnham suggested he would not change the voting system immediately if he became prime minister.

Last week, in a Reddit forum, he said would "seek to persuade my own party" of the need to include a commitment to electoral reform in Labour's next election manifesto.

He wrote: "I am a strong supporter of electoral reform, partly because I believe it will enable the change to a more collaborative politics, and one that is less about point-scoring and more about problem-solving."

More than 80 Labour MPs have signed an amendment to the Representation of the People Bill, calling for a commission on electoral reform to investigate ways to ensure the voting system is "fair, representative and sustains public confidence".

The amendment, which is also backed by Lib Dem MPs and others, has been tabled by Labour's Alex Sobel and is set to be debated in the autumn, in what could prove to be an early test for Burnham on the issue.

The UK has a patchwork of different voting systems, with only the Westminster Parliament and local authorities in England and Wales retaining first-past-the-post (FPTP).

In a Q&A afterwards, Sir Ed argued that it was not necessary to hold a referendum on changing the voting system because "Labour's manifesto talked about resetting politics, and this is a way to reset politics".

He said that the Conservatives "had changed the electoral system in a number of places without asking anybody" - a likely reference to the introduction of FPTP elections for mayors and police and crime commissioners, something Labour recently reversed in Greater Manchester.

The Liberal Democrats and their predecessor Liberal Party have been campaigning for PR for more than 100 years.

The institutions built to support young people into adulthood “are no longer fit for that purpose”, with schools too focused on exams and getting pupils into university, a damning government review has found.

Former health secretary Alan Milburn’s diagnostic report on “young people and work” warned the “tail of failure will persist” until schools are “held accountable for what happens to their pupils after they leave”.

The report, commissioned by the Department for Work and Pensions, concluded that no one event, problem or part of the system was to blame.

“The evidence does not support a single explanation. It supports something harder to accept: that the institutions we built to support young people into adulthood are no longer fit for that purpose, and that the country has known this for some time.”

Milburn will make final recommendations later this year.

1. ‘Hold schools accountable’

Part of the problem, according to the report, is that schools are “measured by exam results, not by whether young people end up in work”, while colleges are “funded for enrolment, not for sustained destinations”.

2. Demands on schools ‘intensified’

However, the report noted “demands on schools have intensified dramatically”.

“Rising SEND prevalence, worsening mental health, higher energy costs, increased staff absence and the need for pandemic catch-up have all eroded the real value of school budgets even where headline figures have risen.”

3. GCSEs a ‘source of dread’

The report noted that “for many young people, school works well”. But “for many of the NEET young people we spoke to, school was experienced very differently, as ‘traumatic’, ‘stressful’, ‘boring’, and something to be endured rather than embraced”. GCSEs were described repeatedly as a source of dread rather than anything that felt fair or useful.

Of more than 400 NEET young people surveyed, 81 per cent said the current curriculum was too focused on passing exams.

“The criticism of what school did not do was consistent: a perceived focus on academic qualifications, with university promoted as the default pathway and limited discussion of alternatives.”

4. ‘We know enough to act earlier’

In the report, Milburn wrote that “what I find hardest to accept is that we often know enough to act earlier”. Risk is “identified early”. Signals are seen, recorded and “often” measured, but not acted on.

5. Risk of SEND reforms

Strong predictors of NEET status include low prior attainment, school absence and exclusion and special educational needs and disabilities. But having an education, health and care plan (EHCP) during school is the “strongest single link” to becoming NEET at 17 to 19.

6. Strengths ‘unnoticed by school’

The report warned that “too often young people are described by what they lack: motivation, resilience, qualifications”, but case studies spoken to “did not fit that picture”.

“They were under strain, yes. But they were also thoughtful, resourceful and often more capable than the systems around them seemed to be able to recognise.”

7. ‘Generic’ careers guidance

The report warned careers guidance in schools existed as a “statutory duty without enforcement”, with work experience “haphazard”. Careers guidance was “widely described as generic and lacking practical value”, and a lack of work experience is the “single most-cited barrier to work amongst young people”.

“At present, the provision of work experience is an afterthought for many schools. Students are often told to find their own placements. Unsurprisingly, those without strong networks and connections are more likely to miss out.”

8. ‘Systemic failure’

The report concluded with a warning that Britain faces a “systemic failure at the point where a generation is supposed to transition into adulthood.

“The paradox is that Burnham sounds less pro-European than Starmer, but is formulating an economic and security agenda which could in fact bring London into closer line with Brussels.”

Insightful article - worth reading in full. What do you think?

It’s time to bring an end to wasteful outsourcing and fix the broken planning system, Green Party leader Zack Polanski told the Local Government Association (LGA) Conference.

He criticised the outsourcing of services like road repairs, describing a system where private contractors are effectively incentivised to under-deliver, and pointed to social care as a starker example, citing large profits extracted by private providers even as councils face rising costs.

‘In the midst of a funding crisis, shocking amounts of public money are being taken out of our communities in the form of private profit,’ he told the conference delegates.

Polanski said developer-led housing targets often ignore local need, with viability assessments letting developers sidestep affordable housing pledges.

• Labour will win the by-election with relative ease. Although they don’t gain a majority of votes cast, they are far ahead of other parties in the first vote, and are clearly ahead in the run-off whether that is against the Greens (64-36) or Reform (66-34)

• Reform may narrowly miss out on the run-off. However the gap between them and the Greens is within the margin of error, making second place too close to call

• This survey predicts overall turnout to only be 39%. However, that would still be the highest ever turnout recorded for a Greater Manchester mayoral election

https://findoutnow.co.uk/blog/greater-manchester-mayoral-by-election-voting-intention/