Chloe Smith
Main Page: Chloe Smith (Conservative - Norwich North)Department Debates - View all Chloe Smith's debates with the Cabinet Office
Oral Answers to Questions
Chloe Smith Excerpts(10 years, 1 month ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Mr Gyimah
The Government are conscious that as part of the move to IER we must make efforts to maximise the register. To do that, we have allocated £4.2 million to 363 local authorities and partnered with five national organisations. We will obviously take a look at what is happening in Wales, but we are already taking steps to maximise the register.
Chloe Smith (Norwich North) (Con)
10. Having stood in his shoes, I support my hon. Friend’s work on registration. Does he agree that the time has come to consider updating our voting methods to include online and mobile options, in line with the way in which an entire generation lives its life in other spheres?
Mr Gyimah
That is a good point. It is worth noting that the move to online registration, which the Government introduced, represents the biggest modernisation of our electoral registration system in more than 100 years. However, registering to vote is very different from actually casting a vote online. Currently, if there is an error, we can check it, but if someone voted online and there was an error there would be no mechanism for checking it. So that is a step we will not be taking at this moment.