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Each debate is chaired by an MP from the Panel of Chairs, rather than the Speaker or Deputy Speaker. A Government Minister will give the final speech, and no votes may be called on the debate topic.
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The Parliamentary Secretary, Cabinet Office (John Penrose)
It is a pleasure to have you in charge of our proceedings this afternoon, Mr Turner. As others have, I start by congratulating the hon. Member for Islington South and Finsbury (Emily Thornberry) on securing this debate on a very important topic. It is a cross-party issue; every democrat surely must believe that it is vital that we maintain the integrity, balance and transparent fairness of our electoral system, to make sure that this place and other elected assemblies have the credibility that is essential for the continuing health of our democracy.
The hon. Lady’s local area has a proud tradition for her to follow. She mentioned the Chartists, who were crucial democrats, and Thomas Paine, a particularly important and well known radical. I was not quite with her on Lenin, but I appreciate that he has played an important part in the past. She also mentioned important initiatives being undertaken by her local electoral registration officer and others around the country.
The hon. Member for Sheffield Central (Paul Blomfield) spoke about some of the things that are happening in Sheffield in relation to university students. It is worth while pausing to note the different and, on occasion, radically divergent ways of encouraging registration around the country. There are excellent examples of tailored practices that are designed to address particular local issues. Some of those practices may have a much wider national application, despite having started out as local solutions to local problems, and could profitably and promisingly be shared more widely to drive up registration around the rest of the country. There is a great opportunity to share best practice and copy the examples of Sheffield and Islington.
I thank the shadow Minister, the hon. Member for Liverpool, West Derby (Stephen Twigg), for his welcome and I look forward to debating with him, unless he is spirited away from us by the House’s decisions on Select Committee Chairmen. As he said, the Electoral Commission is shortly due to publish a report, which will be tremendously important for all of us in this room, because it will provide us with an authoritative analysis of what has been going on in registration over the course of the past year or so. It will show which parts of the country are ahead and which are behind. It will provide a fresh update on the hard-to-reach groups that we have heard about during this debate, some of which are particularly low registrants and some of which are particularly high. Importantly, it will shed light on whether the situation is changing and will tell us which groups are getting better and which are falling back, either because they are in different parts of the country or due to demographic trends. It will therefore equip us with vital facts on which we can base our decisions on how to go forward.
Most of us—although perhaps not the hon. Member for Islington South and Finsbury—agree that individual electoral registration has been a success and has made it easier for people to register to vote online. It has become much simpler as a result of IER to register to vote. The hon. Member for Newport West (Paul Flynn) quoted some impressive figures—I have my own suite of figures, but it broadly overlaps with his—on the truly impressive rate of online registration that was achieved through IER in the run-up to the general election. The system held, and it worked. Although some may have been re-registrations or duplications, that showed that it is possible to reduce the barriers to registration and to make it simpler, particularly for younger folk, who are used to living their entire lives online, but also for the rest of the population. Registration is made a great deal more accessible by allowing us to do it online, and we are all becoming used to doing things online in other walks of life. It would be bizarre and perverse if we did not allow or encourage that to continue. The facts are emerging—we hope they will be confirmed in the Electoral Commission’s report—but it looks as though this has made a major improvement to registration and has got rid of some of the barriers in people’s way.
Emily Thornberry
The Minister may have misunderstood me. I have no problem with making it easier for people to register to vote, and I acknowledge that online voter registration has made it easier for a lot of people. I started from a different standpoint. It is not that we should encourage people to reach out and grasp their right to vote, but that we should ensure that they simply have the right to vote in as accurate a way as possible. It is then for them to decide whether they want to vote or not. They should not need to take two steps, although they may need to sometimes. As a general rule, we should try to have automatic registration, so that we are all going for the goal of 100% registration.
John Penrose
I was about to come to examples of where that has been achieved already with some success. In the case of IER, about 87% of those who were already enrolled were seamlessly moved across, without their having to do anything. They were automatically verified, and their registration was moved across straightforwardly and simply.
There is a great deal that can be done, which brings me on seamlessly to the points made by the hon. Member for Sheffield Central about other opportunities to prompt people. He used the example of students, but there are many other examples. The shadow Minister mentioned private letting agents, which provide an obvious gateway or portal. There is a prompting moment when people move house. The hon. Member for Sheffield Central talked about universities, and the example of Northern Ireland was mentioned, where work has also been done in schools and colleges.
Paul Blomfield
My point was that it is not simply about the opportunity to prompt—that is what we had at Sheffield Hallam, where it produced a 15% student uptake—but the opportunity to integrate systems in which data are already being collected to verify voters. There should be a seamless process of automatic registration. That is what we did in the other university, where we got 64% registration. That applies more widely than to institutions of higher education.
John Penrose
I agree with most, but not all, of what the hon. Gentleman says. There are huge opportunities to make it easier to verify people’s identity, to prompt them and to confirm them as legitimate voters. There are many opportunities, at points at which people intersect with other parts of Government data, when we can do that very effectively indeed.
The hon. Gentleman said that if students were asked to provide their national insurance number and did not happen to have it to hand, they would be discouraged, but there are alternatives, which were exploited in Sheffield. There are other trusted data sources, such as university enrolment data, which the hon. Gentleman mentioned. Providing the university has the right information—he said that there was an opportunity for software improvement—it could be used to provide the automatic confirmation of people’s eligibility to vote.
Where I gently but fundamentally part company with the hon. Gentleman—although I stay in contact with the shadow Minister—is on the notion of IER being part of a conscious choice for people to enrol. Moving away from the old system of household enrolment is a major step forward. I am sure that I am preaching to the choir when I say that the old system of household enrolment was a little patriarchal, if I can put it that way. Expecting people who want to vote to register is not a great thing to ask.
John Penrose
I am spoiled for choice. I will give way to the hon. Lady, as it is her debate. I am conscious of time, so I need to be quick.
Emily Thornberry
It would be patriarchal for a man to register his whole family and to vote on their behalf, but it is not patriarchal for someone to ensure that their whole family has the choice to vote.
John Penrose
I find that I am unexpectedly more sensitive to patriarchy than the hon. Lady. That is a phrase I never thought I would utter.
Paul Blomfield
I do not think we are really at odds. What we are saying is that the system we developed at Sheffield requires people to make a decision, but it does not direct them to what that decision is; that is the critical thing. It is about more active engagement.
John Penrose
We are as one on the idea that there is a great deal more that can be done. With any luck, the Electoral Commission’s report will equip us with more facts that show us which avenues it will be most profitable for us to pursue first. It will allow us to prioritise them and make progress.
The hon. Member for Islington South and Finsbury was extremely organised and asked a series of questions. I do not have time to get through them all, but I will endeavour to. Before I move on, I want to mention the comments of the hon. Members for Glasgow East (Natalie McGarry) and for Lanark and Hamilton East (Angela Crawley). I am probably misquoting the hon. Member for Glasgow East, but she said—this was a vital comment—that there should be no division between representatives of the people and the people themselves. I am sure that everybody here would echo and agree with that statement.
On the issue of whether the bands around boundaries should be 5%, 8% or 10%, the point is that constituency size must be based on registration to ensure we have genuinely equal representation in this place. The wider the bands, the less fairness there is, in terms of the power of an individual’s vote. If there was a 10% band, there could be a 20% difference between the number of people it takes to elect me and the number of people it takes to elect the shadow Minister. That would be getting too wide for comfort.
John Penrose
I am down to my last 27 seconds, so I really cannot.
That is not an acceptable approach. It would not provide the kind of connection with our voters and the transparent fairness that we are all aiming to achieve in this vital area of our democratic life.
Question put and agreed to.
Resolved,
That this House has considered voter engagement and the franchise.