Oral Answers to Questions

Andrew Griffiths Excerpts

Tuesday 30th November 2010 Commons Chamber

[The Deputy Prime Minister]

Since the right hon. and learned Lady does not want to discuss her policy or policy in general, let me illustrate what this means in real terms. A care worker who has graduated from university, starting on £21,000 and earning more over time—[Interruption.] No, what people are interested in is what is going to happen to them in practice. Under our proposals, they will pay back £7 a month on average, compared with £81 a month on average under the scheme we have inherited from Labour, and £36 a month on average under the system of graduate taxes her right hon. Friend the leader of the Labour party wants to advocate. I hope that we will now be able to have a reasonable and reasoned discussion about what our proposal actually means for graduates in this country in future.

[Andrew Griffiths (Burton) (Con)]

2. What recent assessment he has made of the accuracy of the electoral register.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Parliamentary Secretary, Cabinet Office (Mr Mark Harper)]

The Government have not made such an assessment, but the Electoral Commission found in its March 2010 report “The completeness and accuracy of electoral registers in Great Britain” that

“it is likely that the accuracy of the registers remains broadly similar to past decades”.

It is clear, however, that more can be done to support accuracy. To that end, I have announced that the Government will speed up the implementation of individual voter registration from 2014, which will ensure that only those entitled to vote get on the register, bringing greater protection against electoral fraud.

[Andrew Griffiths]

I thank the Minister for that answer. We hear a great deal from Labour Members about the missing 3.5 million people. Can he explain what was done over the past 13 years to help them? What are our Government going to do to ensure that people entitled to vote can do so?

[Mr Harper]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for that, and I congratulate him on being elected to the Select Committee on Political and Constitutional Reform, where he can pursue his interest in these matters. He will know that when in government the Labour party did, to be fair, try a number of things, but the things it tried were not successful. We are going to introduce individual electoral registration and we are going to trial data-matching next year, so that we can see whether there are more effective ways of allowing electoral administrators to get people on the register when they are entitled to be on it.