Covid-19: Winter Plan

Wendy Chamberlain Excerpts

Monday 23rd November 2020 Commons Chamber

[Matt Hancock]

Yes, golf is back. Outdoor sport will be available under all the tiers, and we will publish all the details for each tier imminently.

[Wendy Chamberlain (North East Fife) (LD)]

I welcome the plans in place to test students, enabling them to travel home for Christmas, and I commend the work of the University of St Andrews, in my constituency, which has stepped in to facilitate that, but a gap remains in terms of the new year. We need to ensure that where students must return to university they can do so safely, as well as give reassurance to the communities in which they are situated. I understand from the covid winter plan that guidance will follow suit, but will the Secretary of State, on behalf of the Government, advise me as to what engagement is being had with devolved nations about the return and testing of students in January, including discussions on default online teaching?

[Matt Hancock]

Yes, this is a really important subject to get right. The use of testing will make it easier for students safely to go home and then safely to return to university. I have discussed that with my colleagues from across the four nations, not least because so many students go to university in different parts of the UK. I hope we have a good regime in place for the return of students, just as we have a good regime in place for students to be able safely to go home, using the new lateral flow tests that we now have available thanks to the huge investment and the work we did over the summer.

Point of Order

Wendy Chamberlain Excerpts

Wednesday 23rd September 2020 Commons Chamber

[Wendy Chamberlain (North East Fife) (LD)]

On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. We were informed yesterday that the Paymaster General’s calls are set to resume. Members will remember that those calls were used earlier this year, while the House was not sitting due to the coronavirus pandemic. Many Members were very concerned by the lack of opportunity for scrutiny during that period, and that concern is ongoing. I am still struggling, as I know other hon. Members are, to get a response from Ministers from many Departments, including the Treasury, and I am concerned about what the resumption of these calls implies. I am sure that Members from across the House will agree that any resumption of the calls must be in addition to existing scrutiny, rather than a substitute that allows Ministers to be required to come before the House less frequently.

Madam Deputy Speaker, I should be grateful if you would offer guidance on how best to seek assurances from the Government that they are committed to parliamentary scrutiny, and that the resumption of these calls does not herald new limitations on the mechanisms available to Members of the House to hold Governments to account.

[The Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster and Minister for the Cabinet Office (Michael Gove)]

Further to that point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. I am grateful to the hon. Lady for raising that point of order. The Paymaster General, who of course is a Cabinet Office Minister and does an excellent job in keeping Members from all parties updated, and has done throughout the difficult time of the coronavirus pandemic, is resuming the calls to augment the scrutiny that, quite rightly, Ministers will be exposed to at this Dispatch Box, as we all seek to ensure that we do the right thing by all our constituents at this inevitably testing time.

Parliamentary Constituencies Bill

Wendy Chamberlain Excerpts

Report stage & 3rd reading & 3rd reading: House of Commons & Report stage: House of Commons
Tuesday 14th July 2020 Commons Chamber

[Gareth Johnson]

This is perhaps one of the arguments behind keeping to 650 so the actual sizes of constituencies do not change. I have one of the few constituencies in the country that would actually have lost voters, even under the 600 formula, so there are a lot of differences between hon. Members’ constituencies.

I would ask that the Labour party supports this Bill as it goes through Parliament. The only thing in the Labour party’s manifesto about boundary changes was changing from 600 to 650. It has got what it asked for, and therefore should be supportive of the Government on this particular Bill.

[Wendy Chamberlain (North East Fife) (LD)]

I shall speak to new clause 3, tabled in my name and those of my other Liberal Democrat colleagues, and the hon. Member for Brighton, Pavilion (Caroline Lucas).

The Government’s rationale for this Bill is that they want to make every vote count equally, and we have heard that. I pointed out on Second Reading that an electoral system in which a Government can win a majority of seats in this House without a majority of votes is one in which votes can never count equally. What the Government really mean is that they want to ensure that constituencies are more or less equally sized. I think there is broad agreement across the House that, within our current electoral system, there are good reasons to do this, although there is clearly disagreement about just how strict that equality should be.

While we have spent much time discussing how much equality there should be between constituencies, we have not really addressed what I believe is a fundamental question: equality of what? That is why I have tabled my amendment. The legislation, as it currently stands, says that there should be equality between the electorates of different constituencies, and that equality should be determined as a proportion of the electorate of the country.

That is not the only option available. New Zealand, for example, uses the census to determine constituency sizes, and I am sympathetic to this. We provide public services to everyone in our constituency, regardless of whether they are eligible to vote or indeed registered to vote. However, my new clause does something else: it redefines what “electorate” means for the purposes of this Bill. Currently, the electorate within the scope of the Bill means all those people on the electoral roll. I would expand this definition. My amendment would include all those who are eligible to vote, not just those who happen to be on the electoral roll at the time of the review.

According to the Electoral Commission, over 9 million people who are eligible to vote are not currently on the electoral roll. I would suggest to the hon. Member for Heywood and Middleton (Chris Clarkson) that these are not necessarily people who choose not to vote. Our electoral register is incomplete by a large amount. That is a huge problem for our democracy, and it is a problem for this Bill and for what the Government hope to achieve by it, for how can we say that this Bill makes constituencies equal sized when it is based on an incomplete register that misses out nearly 20% of eligible voters? It is easy to think up examples. Two parts of this country may well have an identical number of eligible voters, but one local register may be more complete than the other, and as a result one part of the country counts for more than the other when it comes to the boundary review. That will be the reality when this review takes place.

This also raises questions about the value some Members are placing on this 5%. We must also remember that, by the time of the 2024 election, voters who have lived overseas for more than 15 years will, according to this Government’s manifesto, also be eligible to vote. This is a move that I and my party welcome, but it is another reason why the boundaries that this review will create will never be truly equal. They are out of date before they are even used for the first time.

The most concerning thing, however, is that the 9 million who are eligible to vote but not on the register are not just a random collection of individuals. The groups who are disproportionately likely to be eligible to vote but not on the roll include young people, renters, those for whom English is not their first language, and black, Asian and minority ethnic communities. As far as I am concerned, this is a total failure of public policy. Since the murder of George Floyd back in May, we have collectively reflected across this House on the fact that the structures and institutions that make up our society too frequently produce inferior outcomes for those people who are not white. Every Member of this House should be incredibly concerned about the fact that if someone is black, they are disproportionately unlikely to appear on the electoral roll. We are about to carry out a boundary review that will disproportionately exclude BAME people from being counted. That surely is not right.

That is the problem my new clause seeks to address. It would mean that the fact that our register is incomplete does not make a difference because the Boundary Commission would consider these potential electors too. It is entirely possible to treat 100% enrolment as an achievable goal.

Within this country, in Northern Ireland, there is a far more concerted effort to ensure that those in sixth forms and colleges are put on to the electoral register just as they turn 18. I welcome such assisted registration measures, which should be considered throughout the UK. The Government should accept that the annual canvass fails to register a huge number of people. Automatic voter registration is used in many countries, and it is an issue that the hon. Member for Bradford South (Judith Cummins) raised in her ten-minute rule Bill recently. Just last week, the Lords Select Committee on the Electoral Registration and Administration Act 2013 found the same thing. It said that completeness of the register had not improved, and it proposed automatic and assisted registration as well as ways to reduce duplicate applications. We have to be doing more on this issue, and I hope that the Minister will offer assurances during her winding-up speech that the Government are willing to engage with this issue.

EU Exit: End of Transition Period

Wendy Chamberlain Excerpts

Monday 13th July 2020 Commons Chamber

[Wendy Chamberlain (North East Fife) (LD)]

In today’s statement, the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster has acknowledged some of the costs and attempted to highlight the opportunities of Brexit, but opportunities in financial terms currently equate to zero. Those who said leaving the EU would mean additional costs and bureaucracy were right, and some of these costs are now becoming clear: more money, on top the £100 million previously spent, on comms, and now £705 million on border infrastructure—no frictionless trade after all. When will the Government be in a position to respond to the 50 questions raised today by the Food and Drink Federation, particularly the how?

[Michael Gove]

I am grateful to the hon. Lady. I and my colleague the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs will respond to the Food and Drink Federation’s helpful questions. The FDF has been a valued partner in our preparation for our departure from the European Union and I would like to pay tribute to Ian Wright and all those who work for the FDF for making sure that they work with us in order to provide every part of the supply chain with the information it needs.

Civil Service Appointments

Wendy Chamberlain Excerpts

Tuesday 30th June 2020 Commons Chamber

[Michael Gove]

My hon. Friend makes an important point. We have a superb civil service, but it is also important that we make sure it serves the people of this country even better. The Prime Minister in his speech in Dudley today announced that part of the doubling down on levelling up was making sure that more important policy-making roles in our civil service were carried out closer to people, including on Teesside.

[Wendy Chamberlain (North East Fife) (LD)]

In his Ditchley lecture at the weekend, the Minister said:

“How can we in Government be less southern, less middle class, less reliant on those with social science qualifications and more welcoming to those with physical science and mathematical qualifications”?

I am pleased the Government now think that experts are important, but can he set out how his Ditchley commitments were taken into account in the political appointment of a non-expert and arguably initially part-time new National Security Adviser?

[Michael Gove]

There is no question but that David Frost is an expert. Someone who spent decades in diplomatic service, is currently conducting a complex international negotiation and was head of policy and planning at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office is hardly an ingénue in the world of foreign affairs, but I am grateful to the hon. Lady for pointing out that we need to be a little less southern. Voices from Lancashire and Scotland are always important in the national conversation.

Electoral Reform

Wendy Chamberlain Excerpts

Monday 8th June 2020 Commons Chamber

[Wendy Chamberlain (North East Fife) (LD)]

It seems that debates on potential electoral reform are a bit like buses: wait a long time for a chance to discuss it, and then, with the Parliamentary Constituencies Bill last week, two opportunities come along at once. I welcome the opportunity to engage with the Minister on this topic, as I indicated on Second Reading of the Bill last week. I believe that this is the first debate on positive reform to our electoral system in this Chamber since 2016. As we reflect on last year’s general election and the challenges that the UK faces in relation to the covid-19 pandemic, I believe that revisiting this topic and the impact that the current first-past-the-post system has on democracy is valid.

During that Second Reading debate last week, I mentioned a statistic: for every one vote it took to elect an SNP MP at the last election, it took 33 votes to elect a Green one. The Green party polled over 800,000 votes and ended up with only one Member of Parliament: the hon. Member for Brighton, Pavilion (Caroline Lucas). The Brexit Party, polling over 600,000 votes, got no MP at all. Its biggest impact as a party was in standing down in seats, effectively preventing those who wish to vote for it in those seats from being able to do so.

I do not want to drown Members in statistics—I know that the Government have been in trouble with the Office for National Statistics recently—but I do want to highlight the following. The Government have an 80-seat majority in this House, but they did not receive the majority of votes—far from it, in fact. They got 43.6% of the votes, but due to first past the post, they now hold 56% of the seats. I do not know what is more remarkable: the fact that the Government have a majority in Parliament, despite not having a majority of votes from this country, or the fact that we have grown so used to this disproportionality that we rarely comment on how remarkable it is.

If Government Members—were they here—to say, “Well, at least the largest party in the Commons is the one with the most votes,” I would agree. After all, in 1951 and 1974, the party with the most votes did not end up with the most seats. The electoral maths is very clear. First past the post does not do a good job at all of representing voters’ preferences or the will of the people, as some like to call it.

One of the arguments in support of first past the post is—to quote a previous Conservative general election slogan—that it provides strong and stable governance. The last 10 years have demonstrated that this is far from the case. We have a broken system. It is unfair, unrepresentative, and undermines the legitimacy of our democracy and, indeed, the UK itself. We often take pride in the fact that this Parliament is the mother of Parliaments, but we should not let our pride in our heritage blind us to the areas in which it needs improvements. We should not uphold tradition at all costs, particularly when it prevents us from making the progressive changes that will have a positive impact on people’s lives, or prevents Members from properly representing their constituents. Every election that we hold under first past the post runs the risk that we end up with a Government who did not win a majority of votes, impacting on the legitimacy of our whole democratic process. This is a scenario that should worry anyone and which we should be acting pre-emptively to avoid.

Although I take pride in our heritage, the reality is that the vast majority of democratic countries have chosen not to follow our system. Exactly the scenario that I have been talking about—the party with the most votes not becoming the Government—happened in New Zealand in 1978 and again in 1981, and it set that country on the road to changing first past the post in 1997. It was abandoned in Ireland, Australia, Malta, South Africa and Cyprus. Across Europe, 40 out of 43 countries carry out elections using some form of proportional representation.

The Scottish and Welsh Parliaments, and the Northern Ireland Assembly, use forms of proportional representation in their elections to those bodies. When we have the chance to start from scratch, first past the post is never anyone’s first choice. Surely now, following two divisive referendums in the past decade—again resulting in winner takes all—and with the challenges facing us going forward, we require a different kind of politics from the adversarial two-party politics that is the natural result of first past the post. Last week, the Prime Minister criticised the Leader of the Opposition for not working in a constructive way, but this is exactly the way in which our system forces politicians to operate—across the Dispatch Box, two sword lengths apart.

As the Scottish National party’s vote is concentrated in the 59 Scottish seats, the situation that first past the post creates there is even more serious. In December, 45% of the vote for the SNP equated to 80% of the seats. The adversarial nature of things becomes even more stark when two parties each claim to be the voice of their people, and I am pleased that the SNP is in agreement with me that we need a more proportional system and we need it to be found soon.

As we seek to recover from the impact of covid-19, other challenges—most crucially, our response to the climate emergency—remain. Such challenges will not be solved by one side or way of thinking. They require co-operation, mutual trust, welcoming a diversity of thinking, and an ability to set aside our differences and work together for the common good.

Some commentators have observed that states with the perceived best response to coronavirus so far are those with women leaders. The underlying factor is that these are countries with proportional systems and a focus on pluralistic decision making, such as New Zealand and Germany. Every single country with more than 40% of female representatives in its legislature has a proportional system. The current system is inhibiting the progress that both the Government and the official Opposition say they want to make.

It is not only our governance that is weakened by first past the post. Our voting system results in the permanent disenfranchisement of millions of voters, creating persistent minorities, and a real and legitimate sense of anger alongside the harm to the regions and the devolved nations. How depressing is it that, for a great number of people in this country, being represented here in this place by someone they actually voted for feels like a treat?

In last week’s debate, many MPs spoke about how much they love their constituencies and the pride that they take in representing them. I have personally enjoyed the tradition of the maiden speech, referring to my constituency and its attractions as well as acknowledging the work of my predecessor. But as Members of Parliament, we do not actually represent our constituencies; we represent the people in it. In my constituency of North East Fife, the majority of people did not vote for me in December. Tactical voting probably played a part in the result, but my job now is to represent everyone in my constituency, and we must acknowledge that many feel unrepresented as a result of our system.

Surely we should all like to be elected on the basis of a positive voter choice, as opposed to being the least worst option on the ballot paper, as is often the case. Surely the proliferation of tactical voting websites and electoral pacts at the last general election suggests there is something fundamentally wrong with the way we elect people to this place. We talk about the collapse of Labour’s red wall without critically asking whether it is right for any party to believe it has the right to any seat or its electorate. We do however comment on the extra attention that these seats and their new Conservative representatives expect to get from the Government. That suggests that, as previously safe Labour seats, where the same party had won every election, people’s votes there were worth very little and the parties could therefore ignore them. Only when a seat becomes marginal does it seem to matter.

As I pointed out last week, it is strange that the Conservative manifesto recognised that votes mattering equally is a “cornerstone of democracy”, yet is blind to the huge disparities in our current system. It was pointed out to me by the right hon. Member for Basingstoke (Mrs Miller) that she has more than 20,000 more electors in her constituency than I have in mine, but this unfairness is because our system is based on defining boundaries and areas for a single Member to represent under first past the post. Some of the criteria being set out in relation to boundary changes undermine the arguments for single-Member constituencies by diluting the identified community links that many argue are the main benefit of first past the post and risking further disenfranchisement in an already broken system.

One other promise in the Conservative manifesto was to have a constitution, democracy and rights commission in the first year of the Government. Will the Minister update us on the plans for that commission, including its scope and potential membership? Fair votes are just one spoke on the wheel of reforming our broken politics and there is lots more to be done; I have not touched on the House of Lords or the fact that England needs to follow the reforms of the other devolved nations, including Wales, where, from last week, 16 and 17-year-olds are now eligible to vote. I find it strange that only in England are 16 and 17-year-olds felt to be incapable of exercising their democratic rights.

[Layla Moran (Oxford West and Abingdon) (LD)]

My hon. Friend is giving an incredibly powerful speech, at an important time in our democracy. I used to be a teacher and I can say from experience that 16 and 17-year-olds are just as capable of understanding the complexities of the political landscape as anyone else and quite often ask very insightful questions. From her experience as a Scottish MP, does she agree that it is time England followed suit and gave 16 and 17-year-olds the vote?

[Wendy Chamberlain]

I thank my hon. Friend for her intervention and entirely agree with her. As I say, only one of our four nations seems to feel that its young people do not have that insight, and we should absolutely be giving them that opportunity.

Countries around the world are moving forward beyond fair votes, with democratic innovations such as citizens’ assemblies or participatory budgeting programmes. We need to look at participatory democracy better empowering local communities and groups. We have seen multiple marches and demonstrations in the past few years, including, most recently, this weekend. People protest when they feel they have no other option in terms of making their voices heard to demand change. It is tempting to be comfortable with the current system—after all, every Member here has benefited from first past the post—and I understand the reverence in which Members hold this place, but we best revere it when we acknowledge that its practices are letting down the very people who elected us to represent them. We should not let warm feelings get in the way of cold, hard reality.

[Wera Hobhouse (Bath) (LD)]

Does my hon. Friend agree that we are creating a very divisive politics in this country, where we are persistently looking for argument, rather than consensus, and that that completely overshadows our political culture and we need to change it?

[Wendy Chamberlain]

Again, I entirely agree with what my hon. Friend says; this has created our two-party politics and divisiveness, and, as a result, there is not the opportunity to work in consensus.

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

In my political career, I have been a councillor on Ards Borough Council, elected under a proportional representation system; I was also in the Northern Ireland Assembly, to which I was again elected under a PR system; and I was fortunate to have the opportunity to come here in 2010, under a straight first-past-the-post system. I understand the benefits of both systems, and why in Northern Ireland we needed an Assembly that could bring the parties together. There is a reason for using the proportional system where it is used, but does the hon. Lady agree that the first-past-the-post system sits here as well?

[Wendy Chamberlain]

I cannot agree that first past the post has a place, because I believe that we can use other ways and methodologies to represent constituencies, such as the single transferrable vote, which would give us the same result but would be more representative of the way people voted. I thank the hon. Gentleman for his intervention.

We should not let warm feelings get in the way of cold hard reality. I urge Members and the Government to reflect on whether there is an unfairness here. Will a change benefit people’s lives across the UK and the devolved nations? Indeed, would what we are talking about actually work better across the four nations, when three of our four nations, as the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) said, actually have some form of proportional representation in how they elect Members to their Parliaments and Assemblies? I believe there is only one answer. Now really is time that we should consider electoral reform.

Parliamentary Constituencies Bill

Wendy Chamberlain Excerpts

2nd reading & 2nd reading: House of Commons & Money resolution & Money resolution: House of Commons & Programme motion & Programme motion: House of Commons
Tuesday 2nd June 2020 Commons Chamber

[Wendy Chamberlain (North East Fife) (LD)]

The Government’s general election manifesto made the following commitment:

“making sure that every vote counts the same – a cornerstone of democracy.”

The Government are right. Our votes do not count the same. In December, it took 33 times as many votes to elect a Green MP as to elect an SNP MP—33 to one. That is a staggering inequality right at the heart of our electoral system, so I am very much in favour of making each vote carry the same weight. It seems that Members across the House agree that democratic equality is a matter of importance. To combat that properly, the only response is electoral reform, but I will leave that debate until my time with the Minister next week.

What the Government really mean by making every vote count the same is tightening the boundaries so that each constituency has the same number of potential voters. In principle, that sounds like it makes sense, but the Government’s plans do not achieve that. They propose to base the boundaries on the number of people on the electoral roll. That is not the same as the number of potential electors. Indeed, the Electoral Commission estimates that up to 9 million potential electors are not currently on the electoral roll. As we know, that marginalises groups for whom there are structural difficulties in getting on to the electoral roll. I am hopeful that the Government will consider using the December 2019 electoral roll. We should take advantage of the fact that the upcoming electoral event encouraged people to register and be enfranchised. We should promote that engagement with our process. An obvious solution to all this is automatic voter registration. I do not see why the Government refuse to pursue it. Perhaps they are following their instincts.

The single most important argument for first past the post—I think this is why many Members fail to look at electoral reform in the way that I do—is that Members represent identifiable local communities. I think that Members would agree that if we cannot achieve a sense of local representation, the idea of a one-Member constituency is undermined.

As someone who advocates a proportional voting system, were I to design a flaw in first past the post, it would be this: creating rules so stringent that MPs represent random chunks of the country and so delicately responsive that a tiny change in one part of the country will lead to a ripple effect spreading from constituency to constituency, with completely new boundaries every eight years. I agree that basing the building blocks of seats on wards leads to shotgun constituencies. My own constituency boundary splits the high street in Leven in North East Fife, but at least it is all under Fife Council. During the covid pandemic, I have hugely valued engagement with NHS Fife and Fife Council, as have my constituents.

One of the Government’s manifesto promises is to abolish the 15-year rule on the eligibility of overseas electors, and presumably legislation will be brought forward over the coming Session. They will be able to vote in the next general election, but whether the date of the electoral register used for the boundary review is this year or last, they will not be on it. My colleague, Lord Wallace of Saltaire, has tabled written questions asking the Government to estimate the number of overseas electors, and there is no estimate. We are walking blind into this. We are putting restrictive percentages in place now and then adding in an unknown number of voters at a later point, completely undermining what the Government are trying to achieve. As I touched upon earlier, the incredibly sensitive flexibility conditions will create further upheaval.

I return to where I started: the “Protect our democracy” section of the Conservative manifesto. There are a number of commitments in that section. The Bill represents the first brick in the wall, but clearly, as the issue with overseas voters illustrates, there are foreseeable problems in terms of what comes after. This may be the first brick, but the wall will end up being unstable.

Northern Ireland Protocol: UK Approach

Wendy Chamberlain Excerpts

Wednesday 20th May 2020 Commons Chamber

[Michael Gove]

Yes, we will apply a principle that I know my hon. Friend will recognise, which is KISS—keep it simple, sonny.

[Wendy Chamberlain (North East Fife) (LD) [V]]

Twice this year, I have come to Northern Ireland oral questions and asked both the Minister and the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland the same question: will there be checks? Twice I was told no, but now the Minister today is saying, yes, there will be checks in some form. Will his colleagues come to the House to correct the record and also to detail their assessment of the financial impact such checks are likely to have on the Northern Ireland economy?

[Michael Gove]

There will not be any customs infrastructure and there will not, save in the specific example of agrifoods and products of animal origin, be the requirement for physical checks of the kind about which I believe the hon. Member has expressed concern. It will be the case that we will implement these principles in a way that has the lightest possible touch, so that Northern Ireland’s businesses—wrestling with covid-19—have the brightest possible future.

Census

Wendy Chamberlain Excerpts

Wednesday 6th May 2020 Commons Chamber

[Wendy Chamberlain (North East Fife) (LD) [V]]

We live in a multicultural society that is full of self-expression, and a census provides a snapshot of that diversity. The questions in a census, therefore, are themselves important; if we do not ask the right ones, the picture of our country is distorted. Making sure that all people count is important.

On census night 1911, Emily Wilding Davison hid illegally in a broom cupboard in the Palace of Westminster, to ensure that a woman would be recorded as being in the House of Commons that night. Clearly, the contents of a census take on their own intrinsic value, which is another reason to ensure that we take care how the questions are worded and what responses they enable people to give. That is one of the reasons why the addition of questions about sexuality and gender identity are so important: it demonstrates that we regard sexual and gender identity as a core part of people’s lives. For LGBTQ people, who often suffer so much discrimination, recognition in itself can mean a great deal.

Such care must also carry over to how members of the Government express themselves. I know that many Members were very concerned by the excluding comments of the Minister for Women and Equalities when she appeared before the Women and Equalities Committee. How politicians, as representatives of their constituents, use their language matters to the people they represent.

We should take care in how we word our questions. If different groups and people are not carefully consulted, we risk generating questions that people do not want to answer. For some communities, their religion is also how they express their ethnicity, and in order to be truly inclusive we must work to ensure that the census reflects that. If a large number of individuals from a particular community, such as the Sikh community, feel that filling in a free-text box is the only way to express their identity, then we have failed to be truly inclusive.

These questions of identity also matter practically. The census directly informs how Government go about delivering public services. One of the great benefits of the new questions on sexuality, gender identity and veterans is that, over the next decade, hopefully, we can ensure that those groups of people who have historically lacked support and provision can get the services they need. Having previously worked in military resettlement, I am pleased that the Government are recognising that community’s contribution. The census will help to ensure that the public services we provide meet the duties under the Equality Act 2010, one of which is to eliminate discrimination. I wholeheartedly support that.

However, it seems strange to me that, while public service delivery is determined by the number of people in the census, for constituency boundaries we seem interested only in the number of people on the electoral roll. MPs provide a public service too—I think that is very obvious at this time. We are often the people our constituents turn to when all other public services have failed. It is electors who determine boundaries, but it should be the number of people who require services.

It is not just about the questions on the census; it is also about who answers them. Looking forward to the next steps in the process, it will be the census regulations that will deal with the operational practicalities. Although 2021 will be the first time that the vast majority of responses will be made online, the census has to capture everyone in our society. We must ensure that the most vulnerable in particular are represented. I would welcome representations from the Minister on how the census will reach deprived and disadvantages communities and individuals, such as the homeless and rough sleepers.

It is good that the Office for National Statistics is considering British Sign Language support, alongside Braille, large-print and easy-read versions of the census. I would like to see such measures in the UK Government’s daily covid briefings too.

According to the White Paper on the census regulations, at least 17,000 census field officers are being recruited to support those who cannot complete the census online. Of course, with the census taking place in March 2021, the covid-19 outbreak might continue to pose a particular challenge. It is certainly not unforeseeable that we will still be in this state of social distancing by next March. Can the Government confirm what steps they and the ONS are taking now to ensure that, if social distancing is still in place, the census can still reach people who are not able to take part in it online?

This census represents a huge commitment of resources. We must take every opportunity to ensure that the results returned are truly reflective of all corners of British society.

Public Services

Wendy Chamberlain Excerpts

Tuesday 28th April 2020 Commons Chamber

[Michael Gove]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend. Brian Kirkland’s suggestion is a noble one and I will pass it on to the Prime Minister. Of course, honours are a matter for the Crown, but I am sure that the sentiment my hon. Friend expresses will be well understood across the country.

[Wendy Chamberlain (North East Fife) (LD) [V]]

Recent reports have stated that the contract for the NHS tracking app, which will handle huge amounts of personal and confidential data, is going to be given to the brother of a No.10 data scientist and former vote leave employee and a friend of Dominic Cummings. If this app is to be effective, we need the buy-in from the overwhelming majority of the public. What measures are the Government taking to ensure that trust in this app can be established and maintained?

[Michael Gove]

I am grateful to the hon. Lady for her question. It seems to me that whether someone voted leave or remain is irrelevant to the question of their participation in helping us to resolve this crisis. It is my understanding that the app is being developed by NHSX, which is the arm of the NHS responsible for technological innovation under the leadership of the inspirational public servant, Matthew Gould.