(2 years, 3 months ago)
Commons ChamberI thank the hon. Lady for asking that question. This is not about any one individual. The Opposition are seeking it to be about one individual who cannot answer for himself in this House, which is wrong. The Government are seeking to protect the system, so even if Lord Lebedev has said that he does not mind, it is not, with the greatest respect, only about him; this is about protecting the system, because the House of Lords Appointments Commission would not be able to function.
The Leader of the Opposition wrote to the commission earlier this month and received a reply a week or two ago, which I believe is in the public domain, in which it outlined the process and did not highlight any problems. The reality is that the Government are seeking to protect a system that has worked well for 22 years, so I ask the House to bear that in mind.
The Minister has said that the House of Lords Appointments Commission takes a variety of information from a variety of sources and organisations. That is perfectly reasonable. Is he suggesting, however, that the opinions or information of the intelligence services should somehow be of less importance than information from another body?
No, I am not suggesting anything of the sort. In fact, I have no personal knowledge of those from whom the commission obtains its information. It is for the commission, which has Labour, Conservative and Liberal Democrat and independent members, to make its own judgments, and we heard from the commission in the letter I mentioned, which I think was from Lord Bew.
(2 years, 7 months ago)
Commons ChamberSNP Members are fair-weather friends to democracy, which, clearly, they support only when it goes their way.
Will the Minister give way?
I will give way, but perhaps the right hon. Gentleman will say why the SNP did not choose to debate the vital topic of education in Scotland.
The Minister is speaking dutifully and gushingly about the Prime Minister; he is painting a picture that nobody in the country recognises. For the sake of completeness, perhaps he will explain, if things are going so swimmingly, why Conservative Back Benchers have sent letters of no confidence to the 1922 committee?
The right hon. Member’s statement is obviously disproven by the fact that the Prime Minister won an 80-seat majority—the biggest Conservative Government majority since the early 1980s.
The fact of the matter is that the Prime Minister is taking care of the people’s priorities, not focusing on the polemics of the SNP. He is looking at what the people care about most—
(2 years, 9 months ago)
Commons ChamberI am very grateful to the hon. Lady for her repeated question, but she well knows that successive Governments, from both sides of the House, do not publish legal advice, and there is a good reason for that. But she can be assured that this Government are very focused on protecting the human rights of all, and that includes those who have been subject to personation, where their votes have been taken by someone else. That is also a human right that we seek to protect, and we will continue to do so.
Some 90% of the public think that polling station voting is safe from fraud and abuse, and they are right to think that. Personation, which is the only problem the voter ID provisions of the Elections Bill are designed to address, resulted in a single conviction in 2016, 2017 and 2019, and zero convictions in 2018. Given that up to 3.5 million people may not have suitable ID and that the Government’s pilots confirmed that up to 324,000 people would be denied a vote in a Great Britain election, let me ask the simple question: why are this Government prepared to embark on voter suppression on an industrial scale?
I am surprised by the right hon. Gentleman, because it is not just a question of convictions: attempts to commit crimes are also wrongs. We have to focus on reducing the criminality in this area. It is also about voters having confidence that they are not going to be subject to personation and confidence to go and vote because they know there is no interference in the voting system. Some 66%—two thirds and more—of those questioned said that they would like to see increased security around voting. In this day and age, that is increasingly important, and the right hon. Gentleman ought to recognise that, too.
On the matter of confidence, the House of Commons Library has rather helpfully told us that half the public think there is inadequate regulation of political party spending and that only 14% think there is transparency around it. The Paymaster General knows perfectly well that there have been concerns about the influence of dark money in the UK electoral system for many years. Why could it be that this Government are planning to suppress the right of ordinary people to vote rather than tackle the real problem of dark money buying influence in the democratic process?
These bold assertions have no basis in evidence or reality and have a tendency to do exactly what the right hon. Gentleman claims to seek to avoid, which is to suppress votes. He wishes to focus on a lack of regulation in respect of voting confidence. We seek—our manifesto commitment on this has been, and will continue to be, followed through on—to protect the voting system, and we do that in the same way as has happened in all the countries I have mentioned: by increasing confidence in the system.