Voter Engagement

Charles Walker Excerpts

Thursday 5th February 2015 Westminster Hall

[Mr Gyimah]

I am sorry; I can take no further interventions.

We also recognise that a number of national organisations do great work in getting people to register to vote. Bite the Ballot has been mentioned, but the British Youth Council also does good work, as do UK Youth, Mencap, Operation Black Vote, Homeless Link, Citizens UK and Citizens Advice.

The work of those organisations and of the local authorities will help us to reach the very groups that the Opposition have identified as being at risk of falling off the register. If some grand conspiracy were going on, we would not be investing money with those groups and with the National Union of Students to get people on the register. There is nothing cynical going on and no conspiracy. Whenever we introduced IER, at some point we would need a cut-off date and an effort to maximise the register. We cannot get away from that fact.

Of the points made in the report, the first I will deal with is the one about electronic voting, which comes up over and over again. I am sure that some time in my lifetime we will have electronic voting, but it took us long enough to deal with registration. We have to recognise some of the practical difficulties, however. Furthermore, the introduction of increasing process into the electoral system, whether electronic and weekend voting or same-day registration, does not address why people are disillusioned with politics.

Scotland had a huge turnout in the referendum without electronic voting. The reason was that people were motivated, excited and engaged with the issues. Introducing more electoral innovation might make voters’ lives easier, but it is not a substitute for us politicians doing our work to connect properly with people, to engage with them and, after all, to get them to turn out to vote for us.

Countries where electronic voting has been introduced—France has it for overseas voting, for example—do not necessarily achieve an increase in turnout, but, rather, an increase in turnout among certain groups of people. Overall, electronic voting does not drive an increase in turnout. That is not to say that it is not a good thing to explore—it is—but, practically speaking, in the UK we would need a system of authentication. When people turned up to vote, we would have to be able to identify them and instantly verify that so that they could vote. We do not have identity cards in this country. Some countries that have introduced electronic voting have ID cards, which is why they have been able to implement it. There are big practical challenges.

Votes at 16 also came up over and over again. There is significant scope for debate about that, especially given what happened in Scotland. Among the reasons why there is scope for debate is that 16-year-olds can join the armed forces. However, they cannot fight without parental support, and nor can they get married—there is a lot that they cannot do. If we were to give 16-year-olds the right to vote, we would have to ensure that, for example, they did not have to ask their parents which way to vote; only with parental permission can a 16-year-old serve in the forces.

I made this point in the debate yesterday, but it is striking that the very party that wants to give 16-year-olds the vote is the one that does not trust them to navigate the vagaries of individual electoral registration and says that somehow they would not have their national insurance numbers or—[Interruption.] It is a serious point. If the Labour party believes that 16-year-olds are old enough to vote, it has to believe that they are old enough to register themselves to vote in the first place.

[Mr Charles Walker in the Chair]

That brings me on to some of the registration techniques suggested in the report, such as block registration. The Government’s guidance to universities strikes the right balance between giving EROs the information that they need—that is, enrolment data, so that they can go after students, because they know who they are and can chase them, write to them, knock on doors and get them on to the register—and preserving the fundamental tenet of individual electoral registration, which is that individuals have to register themselves.

If we cross the line where people end up on the register, but they have not been engaged in the process—that is, they do not even know that they are on the register, because the warden of the college put them on it—we breach the principle of individual registration. If we breach it for first-year students, what about ethnic minorities, or—

[Mr Charles Walker (in the Chair)]

Order. I am sorry to interrupt, but will the Minister finish in about a minute, to allow Mr Allen to wind up the debate?

[Mr Gyimah]

Thank you for prompting me to sum up, Mr Walker.

What about ethnic minorities—those who do not speak English or those who have not worked and so do not have a national insurance number? We could make so many exceptions. That is why, whatever we do, we should not breach the fundamental principle.

The work of the Political and Constitutional Reform Committee is excellent and welcome. I also welcome the fact that the Committee continues to look forward to ways in which we can renew our democracy.