Electoral Registration
Gary Streeter Excerpts(9 years, 10 months ago)
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Sadiq Khan
Absolutely. Having fewer and fewer people taking part in elections is a bad thing for all of us. The Government’s justification for getting rid of the voluntary phase was that it would save money, but it is right to remind the House that we warned that speeding up the process and stripping out the key safeguards was gambling with the completeness of the electoral register. We were not alone. Similar warnings were voiced by experts, academics, the Electoral Reform Society and the Select Committee on Political and Constitutional Reform, chaired by my hon. Friend the Member for Nottingham North (Mr Allen), who is in his place. We take no satisfaction in saying, “We told you so.”
Mr Gary Streeter (South West Devon) (Con)
Does the shadow Secretary of State not accept that anyone who was on the household register in July 2014 who is still in the same house remains on the new register today? Is that not a serious safeguard?
Sadiq Khan
I shall come to the data-matching shortly, but we have considered those on the register in December 2013 and those on the register in December 2014, after the data-matching. An estimated 1 million voters have dropped off the electoral register. For 1 million to be missing in a year is bad enough, but the trends in the groups that are unregistered is also worrying. Data coming in from local authorities are showing serious drops among students and those turning 18. In the patch of my hon. Friend the Member for North Durham (Mr Jones), the number registering fell from 630 to 114 in just 12 months. As has been said, the figure for attainers registering in Liverpool has slumped from 2,300 to just 76. Three areas with large number of students —Cardiff, Newcastle and Brighton—have seen drops of between 9% and 10.5% in the numbers registered.
Mr Gary Streeter (South West Devon) (Con)
It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Nottingham North (Mr Allen), who speaks with great expertise on this subject. He makes the case that we need to do all we can to get people to register to vote in this country, and I completely agree, but I believe we are doing that by all methods possible, as I shall come on to demonstrate. However, I completely agree with his wider point about engagement; we need to find new ways forward. I will read his report tomorrow with great interest.
Sadly, there always are and always have been a substantial number of people who do not register to vote—whatever the system, and in every democratic country—no matter what their persuasion. Different figures are bandied about because it is an imprecise science: we can count the people on the register, but we cannot count those who do not register. As of July 2014, before the shift to individual voter registration started, at least 6 million people were not on the register.
Mr Streeter
Goodbye.
The figure the hon. Gentleman gives is the snapshot of the number of unregistered people as of 1 December. I have to say that he ruins my weekends. He tables at least 400 written questions every week, and I have to spend my weekends reading through the answers. Of course, it is great fun. My wife is convinced that I am having some kind of illicit relationship with him. [Interruption.] Not a pleasant thought.
Chris Ruane
On a point of order, Mr Deputy Speaker. Will the hon. Gentleman clarify what he has just said?
Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)
I do not think anybody needs to clarify the relationship between you and Mr Streeter.
Mr Streeter
As I said, Mr Deputy Speaker, it is not a pleasant thought from my point of view.
The truth is that a vast amount of work is being done around the United Kingdom to get people to register before the general election, but it is important to remember that anyone who is already on the household register and is residing at that address has not been removed as a result of the shift to IER. The Electoral Commission is running a national campaign across the UK to encourage people to register to vote ahead of the 20 April deadline. It will reach all adults, with a focus on groups—already mentioned in this debate—that research has identified are less likely to be registered to vote, such as people who have recently moved home, those who rent their home, young people, and people from black and minority ethnic communities.
Some of this work is being undertaken with the support of organisations and private companies that represent these communities or have a special reach into them. For example—this is very good news—the Electoral Commission and Facebook have today announced that on national voter registration day, which is tomorrow, every person on Facebook in the UK who is eligible to vote will see a voter registration reminder message in their newsfeed. Some 35 million people use Facebook in the UK every month, which is more than the number who voted at the last general election. This is using innovative methods to reach people and encourage them to vote. We must keep returning to the point that people can now register to vote online. It takes 30 seconds, and the only thing they need is their name—[Interruption.] Yes, I have seen it done. [Interruption.] I was already registered; I was data-matched. People need their name, address, date of birth—most of us know those things—and national insurance number; ring your mum and find out what it is. If people have those four things, they can register; it takes 30 seconds. This is good news.
Mr Streeter
I do that every week. I don’t know what the hon. Lady is on about.
This builds on the important work the Electoral Commission is doing to get the message across that everyone should register to vote. I am also pleased that the commission is strongly supporting national voter registration day—an excellent initiative launched by Bite the Ballot last year—in a number of ways, including by re-launching the “Ballot Box Man” YouTube advert aimed at encouraging young people to register to vote. If you have not seen it, Mr Deputy Speaker, it is very entertaining and makes the point extremely well. A wide range of social media activity is being undertaken, including on Twitter and Facebook. A range of resources is being sent out to electoral administrators and the commission’s partners from across the voluntary, public and private sectors to help them get people registered. The commission is also supporting the launch of Operation Black Vote’s bus tour across Great Britain—that also begins on national voter registration day—to get more BME people on the electoral register.
Adam Afriyie (Windsor) (Con)
My hon. Friend is making a powerful speech, and we must all celebrate national voter registration day and get involved in it. It seems to me that many of the Opposition’s arguments are not against individual voter registration and that they are about encouraging people to register under the new scheme. Does my hon. Friend agree with that?
Mr Streeter
I do agree with that. We have not focused enough on the responsibility not only of individuals to register to vote but of electoral registration officers, whose job it is to encourage people to register. They are sending out letters, and they should be going door to door. They are being given extra resources to enable that to happen. I believe that a very substantial number of people will join the register between 1 December and 20 April. We would not be having this debate in three months’ time.
Mr Streeter
I will not give way again if that is okay, as I have a lot to say in the next two minutes.
This week, on Monday 2 February, the commission’s new national advertising campaign launched a series of online display adverts to highlight the fact that anyone who is not registered will be unable to vote in the general election on 7 May. The adverts provide a direct click-through link to the gov.uk/registertovote page. On the same day, the commission also launched an online campaign across the 20 countries in which UK expatriates are most likely to live, to make expats aware that they might be able to vote and to encourage them to register to do so. The important point has been made several times by Government Members that everyone who is eligible to vote should be encouraged to register, and not simply those in certain groups.
The commission’s main national public awareness campaign for the UK parliamentary general election will begin on 16 March 2015 in Great Britain and will include television, catch-up TV and online advertising. The commission has set the ambitious target of 1 million additions to the register in Great Britain between 16 March and 20 April, with a further 10,000 in Northern Ireland.
Mr Streeter
Yes, we have, and the right hon. Gentleman will be pleased to learn that the Electoral Commission hit its target in the run-up to the last general election. I am pretty confident that it will do so again.
Mr Streeter
I cannot give way again; I have only 29 seconds left.
I hope that the House will recognise that there is a great deal of activity already under way or about to happen that is likely to increase voter registration dramatically. We also have a responsibility ourselves to take our great communication skills to our constituencies and to get the message across to everyone out there: register to vote—don’t lose your voice!
Helen Goodman (Bishop Auckland) (Lab)
I am pleased to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield Central (Paul Blomfield). I want to pick up where he left off—on young people.
One of the worst things about the big fall in the number of people on the register is the massive reduction in the number of young people. As my right hon. Friend the Member for Tooting (Sadiq Khan) said, if young people do not get the habit of voting when they first can, they are highly unlikely to take it up later in life. In a written parliamentary question, I asked the Minister, who is not quite in his place,
“how many people have been informed that their application for inclusion on the…register was not valid because their national insurance number was not provided”.
He replied:
“Failure to provide a National Insurance number does not result in an application being declared invalid.”
He does not know what is going on. I have a letter from an ERO in response to a young person’s application to register to vote. It read, “Thank you for your recent application to register. Unfortunately, I am unable to process your application because it was incomplete. The following information is required and was incorrect or missing: national insurance number.”
There are 440,000 young people still at school who turned 18 between 1 September and 1 May. The person that letter was sent to could not register because she did not have her national insurance number. I do not know how many hon. Members spend a lot of time with teenagers, but a letter with a young person’s national insurance number arrives before they are 16, and we are suggesting that two years later teenagers will know where that letter is and have kept it in a safe place. I cannot think of anything more naïve. How many young people will have lost it?
Helen Goodman
Yes, the hon. Gentleman mentioned the “ring mum” solution before. How outrageous. What about young people in care? What about young people estranged from their families? What a disgraceful attitude to large numbers of young people.
We rang the council to find out what to do. It suggested that the person bring their passport, which costs £72. It suggested a driving licence, which costs £34. These are all things that young people do not have.
Helen Goodman
I tabled a PQ to the man who is commenting from a sedentary position now asking how young people were supposed to know what their national insurance number was. His answer was: payslips and correspondence with HMRC and the Department for Work and Pensions. The truth is that 18-year-olds who are still at school do not have payslips or correspondence with HMRC or DWP. The Government have not thought this through.
The other thing the council asked for was a council tax bill. No 18-year-old gets a council tax bill. This is completely incompetent. Ministers have not thought this through. I went to the website to find out what to do. Nobody can get their national insurance number on the website. That is not how it works. They can, however, ring a very nice man on: 0300 200 3500. They will get a very nice man with a lovely Lancashire accident, and he will put their national insurance number in the post.
The suggestion that we have heard from Ministers that this information is readily available is totally naïve. The DWP Ministers who are responsible for giving people their national insurance numbers and informing them cannot even be bothered to turn up and sit on the Bench for this debate. They have a central role. The truth is that it displays all the attitudes of DWP Ministers to young people: they want to take the housing benefit off 18 to 21-year-olds; now they want to take the vote from those very same young people. It is a total disgrace. [Interruption.]
Whitchurch Playing Fields
Gary Streeter Excerpts(10 years, 9 months ago)
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The Minister for Schools (Mr David Laws)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Streeter. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Harrow East (Bob Blackman) on securing the debate on behalf of his constituents, and thank him for the support he has consistently given to the Avanti House free school, which, as he knows, is one of the largest free schools in England. I have carefully noted the comments he has made about the consortium and the concerns that he and many of his constituents have. We discussed those concerns in the meeting we held at the end of last year. The debate provides us with an opportunity to consider the possibility of building a new school on Whitchurch playing fields in this suburban area of Harrow, and to touch on a number of the other associated issues and concerns that he raised during his speech.
I know how concerned my hon. Friend is about the possible development of the site. It was just over three months ago, in December last year, that I met him and a number of his constituents to discuss those concerns. In that meeting, we looked at the possible development by a consortium and what that would mean for other users of the site, especially the local schools. I understand why he is concerned about some of the potential implications.
Today, we are talking about the site being considered for building a new school. Harrow is one of the many local authorities in London and beyond with pressure on school places, as my hon. Friend well knows. The population of the area is growing and we need to meet the potential future shortage of places in both primary and secondary schools. Harrow predicts that in 2021, it will have a shortfall of 700 places for 11-year-olds, so a large expansion programme of school places is already under way in the area. Avanti House will help significantly in meeting that potential deficit in school places, with 180 places created in each academic year within the school.
As my hon. Friend knows, the school only opened in 2012, but it is already extremely popular with local parents. When it reaches capacity in 2018, it will be providing almost 1,700 much needed new places. Indeed, it will most likely be the second largest free school in England at that point. The local authority supports the school, and its sister school, Krishna Avanti, is very popular, too—so much so that it is doubling in size to provide places to meet the local demand. Naturally, parents wish to send their parents to schools with a strong history of providing a good quality education.
Avanti House school is unique in Harrow, as it is the only secondary school with a Hindu ethos. That borough obviously has a large Asian population, and the arrival of a Hindu school will mean increased choice for the residents and reflect the borough’s existing diversity.
As my hon. Friend knows, it has been hugely challenging to find a suitable site large enough to accommodate the entire school. I know that he has been very constructively engaged in trying to find a solution on behalf of his constituents. The problem is faced by a number of new schools, especially those opening in areas such as Harrow and, indeed, right across London. Buildings and land in our capital city are scarce and, in a growing economy, are being sold for increasing sums of money, so they are also expensive to procure.
Avanti House opened in temporary accommodation, spread over two sites, and the secondary phase has already had to relocate once since opening. The search for a site for Avanti House has been a long one. It started in 2011, and many sites both in Harrow and in neighbouring local authority areas have been considered and surveyed. All have so far proven unworkable, for a variety of reasons. We look at a wide range of land and building options for free schools, from office blocks to jobcentres to warehouses, as well as reusing any spare education facilities. A permanent site has now been secured for the primary phase, but a permanent site for the secondary phase has up until now not been secured.
Naturally, and as my hon. Friend knows, we were encouraged when late last year the leader of Harrow council put forward Whitchurch playing fields as a possible option for the Education Funding Agency to consider. I must stress that the project is currently in the feasibility stage. We are carrying out surveys to see whether it is possible and practicable to locate the school on the site. That work will identify any critical issues that may affect development. Obviously, issues such as the floodplain on part of the site will need to be very carefully considered. The review is not due to be completed until next month, and only then can we be sure whether the site is appropriate, so I must emphasise again that the site is currently under consideration. It is not yet secured or confirmed, as my hon. Friend knows. What I can say, as he has said, is that its location is very well placed for the communities that it would serve and for the school’s sister primary school, Krishna Avanti.
It is acknowledged by the local authority and community users that the Whitchurch site is currently not in the best condition. That was made worse by the pavilion burning down a number of years ago and by the loss of changing facilities. It is poorly lit and needs levelling and better drainage, so that it is of a good standard to play on and safe. Not surprisingly, because of that, the playing fields are used at the moment on a much reduced basis, but there are still users. Local schools make regular use of the area and have done so for a number of years, as my hon. Friend has said.
When we met last time, I was able to explain to my hon. Friend that, because the site had been used in that way, the land had a designation as school playing fields, affording it a level of protection from disposal. He will recall that school playing fields are protected from unjustified disposal by section 77 of the School Standards and Framework Act 1998. The consent of the Secretary of State is required for any disposal or change of use of school playing field land. The application to dispose to a consortium would have been considered by the School Playing Fields Advisory Panel. However, the new free school proposal, if it goes forward, would not be considered by the advisory panel, because in effect we would be changing the use of playing field land for educational purposes by placing school buildings on part of it, rather than disposing of it altogether. As I understand it, the current proposal is essentially that the whole site would potentially be put in the hands of the Avanti Schools trust. I can also say to him that, in relation to one of the questions he asked at the end of his speech, we are not currently aware of any other applications being submitted for change of use of the site.
Sites such as Whitchurch playing fields are to be valued, cherished and made the most of. Increasing the use of scarce resources must be a priority. Therefore all school facilities should be community facilities, used out of hours by the wider community, too. This is a very significantly sized site, as my hon. Friend will know better than anyone. It is 10.5 hectares, which is possibly easier to visualise if described as 400 tennis courts or 14 football pitches. That gives plenty of scope for any school site—for the redevelopment of buildings on the site and for the ongoing use of land for sports, both for the school and for other schools in the area.
Should the site prove suitable, discussions will be progressed with the local authority, and consultation with the local community will take place. Thanks to the safeguards that we put in place in the Academies Act 2010, academy trusts must consult on the free school proposal and the Secretary of State must consider the impact that the proposal will have on schools and other institutions. All that is of course without considering the statutory consultation that would be required in relation to planning for such a project.
In relation to one of the other questions asked by my hon. Friend, we are acutely aware that a number of other schools, as he said very clearly, have been using these playing fields for sporting purposes over the years. We would want to ensure that that use continued in the future and that those protections and that availability was there for academy schools as well as the maintained schools in the area.
I am pleased that the desire to set up free schools across the country continues apace and that many more young people will have increased opportunities for high-quality education. However, we are also very aware of the challenge of finding sites for development. That is a challenge right across London and across many key parts of the country where we have basic need pressures. Those difficulties have been particularly evident in Harrow.
I again thank my hon. Friend for his tireless work helping with the site search for Avanti House school, and I congratulate and thank the local authority for its very proactive support in searching for a site. I am also grateful to him for raising the concerns of the other local schools and for making clear how much they value the use of Whitchurch playing fields. If this site does prove viable for Avanti House, that will continue to be the case in the future.
Mr Gary Streeter (in the Chair)
Order. Both protagonists for the next debate are with us. We are a few minutes early, which is fine. We will move on to the next debate.
Strengthening Couple Relationships
Gary Streeter Excerpts(10 years, 11 months ago)
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Mr Gary Streeter (in the Chair)
Order. Colleagues, about five people have caught my eye and we have about 50 minutes remaining. If we self-regulate at about nine minutes each, we should all get there, but I will let you know how we get on.
Steve McCabe
I think that I can speak for my side of the House, Mr Streeter. When it comes to strengthening couple relationships, the hon. Member for Aldershot has been clear. He is talking about heterosexual couples. We learned about his views on this issue during the debate on same-sex marriage. He has repeated them honestly today in this debate and in his ePolitix article, in which he states that marriage
“for the majority of Conservative MPs can only be between a man and a woman”.
I do not think that in this day and age it is possible to make such a narrow distinction, because whatever the views of individuals, the law and society are clear: “couple relationships” can mean married, cohabiting, heterosexual and homosexual relationships, however difficult that is for some people to accept. I acknowledge that many people put great store by traditional marriage, but that does not mean that we can deny the reality of what we see around us.
Self-Employment
Gary Streeter Excerpts(12 years, 10 months ago)
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Mr Gary Streeter (in the Chair)
Let me remind colleagues that wind-ups begin at 12.10. Let us try to get in three more colleagues.
Mr Gary Streeter (in the Chair)
George Hollingbery followed by Marcus Jones. Mr Jones will be the last speaker.
George Hollingbery (Meon Valley) (Con)
I am very grateful to you, Mr Streeter, and I shall be very brief.
I shall mention two things that the Government have put in place. The first is universal credit, which is coming through as part of the Welfare Reform Bill. The 65% taper takes away the 16-hour-a-week cliff edge, which is incredibly important. Those who are unemployed and who are looking to start their own business from their own homes now have an incentive to look forward to the future. I am talking about them having not just a limited income but a proper business run for the long term. They can now go through that 16-hour barrier and not see some of their benefits disappear. That has a beneficial effect for those bosses who would employ such people in, say, restaurants, bars or whatever. They can invest in the training of such employees and expect them to remain full-term employees for the long term. That has to be a good thing both for the employer, who is generally self-employed, and the employees.
The second area is planning. Hon. Members who know me well will not be surprised to hear that I am going to bore them slightly on planning. They may ask, “How can that possibly relate to self-employed businesses?” Let me say very straightforwardly that I chaired a conference on that matter last Thursday. We talked about neighbourhood planning. It is now entirely within the remit of small businesses, especially rural ones, to petition for the go-ahead of neighbourhood development plans that take a real account of what local businesses need, particularly in regard to converting farm buildings and using redundant rural buildings for accommodation. I urge all hon. Members to make it plain to their constituents that there is a real opportunity for small businesses here. Small businesses can shape their communities around them and take full account of affordable housing all the way through to the conversion of redundant buildings for their business for the long term. It is a huge opportunity, and one that they should all take.
Speech Therapy Services (Children)
Gary Streeter Excerpts(14 years, 1 month ago)
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Pat Glass
I absolutely agree, and I can go on from that.
The National Autistic Society has identified that 70% of young people with autism, the vast majority of whom have an underlying language and/or communication disorder even if that is restricted to higher-order language difficulties, also have a mental health difficulty. Shelter tells us that a significant proportion of people classified as homeless have an underlying language and communication disorder. I could go on and on.
However, those issues are not limited to language and communication disorders; they are seen across many areas of children’s health, such as physiotherapy, occupational health and, one of the huge ones for me, child and adolescent mental health services. Review after review has identified that, to address the issues, diagnosis needs to be timely and carefully carried out by specialists—speech and language therapists—and services need to be appropriate to need and easily accessible, a point made by the hon. Member for Blackpool North and Cleveleys. Specialists in education and health need to work in partnership with the child and the family at the centre, not separately, and not, in the case of health, in a clinic far removed from the day-to-day life of the child in the classroom.
Unlike, I suspect, many other Members here, I do not see more and more speech and language therapists as the only answer. Although I want to add my thanks to specialist speech therapists for the incredible work that they do, and although I consider them part of the way forward, they are not the only answer. In my view and experience, early intervention and appropriate provision include four fundamental necessities. The first is better training for all early years education staff—teachers and support staff. Given that we know that in some cases there will be up to five children with a significant speech, language and communication disorder in an early years classroom, it seems reasonable that every such classroom should have within it one adult—a teacher or a specialist support assistant—who has additional experience or qualifications in this area. I was an assistant director of education in the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for Washington and Sunderland West (Mrs Hodgson) a number of years ago, and we made that a requirement of our accessibility strategy. As a result, we saw a shift in the language-into-literacy issues—in the communication difficulties that were preventing children from learning to read and to progress in other areas.
Secondly, language development needs to be an integral part of the whole curriculum. The hon. Member for Blackpool North and Cleveleys talked about pulling children out of lessons and classrooms for one-to-one speech therapy sessions. Such sessions are isolated from what is going on in the child’s classroom, lessons and life, and are much less valuable than ensuring that the child is surrounded by a rich and appropriate vocabulary each and every day, and that lessons are planned and delivered to include language development as key steps.
Thirdly, specialist speech and language therapists need to be actively involved in curriculum design and delivery and in-service training for staff in schools. Finally, we need an accountability framework that understands the importance of language development in learning, and holds not only head teachers and governors, but those who commission children’s health services, to account for the training of staff and the outcomes of children with speech and language difficulties. By not intervening in an appropriate, timely and systemic manner we stand aside and allow generations of children to be labelled behaviourally disordered, conduct-disordered or odd and difficult, or as having learning difficulties. That is wrong and unnecessary, and too often it blights the lives of those children and their families.
As the Minister is here, I want to make a further plea to her to consider transferring the funding for children’s heath services to local authorities alongside funding for public health. It will not be sufficient funding, but at least it and the bulk of the responsibility will be in the same place, which will give parents a little more to hang their hats on when arguing for services.
Again, I congratulate the hon. Member for Blackpool North and Cleveleys on securing this important debate. I will work positively with anyone, on either side of the Chamber, who highlights these matters and is prepared to work with me to address them.
Mr Gary Streeter (in the Chair)
We have 14 minutes until wind-ups begin, and six colleagues are trying to catch my eye, so contributions of around seven or eight minutes would be most welcome.