Voting Age

Debate between Chloe Smith and Barry Gardiner

Thursday 24th January 2013 Commons Chamber

[The Parliamentary Secretary, Cabinet Office (Miss Chloe Smith)]

I am happy to take part in this debate, and I begin by congratulating the hon. Member for Bristol West (Stephen Williams) on securing it, and all hon. Members who attended the Backbench Business Committee. This important and interesting issue often captures the public’s imagination, and particularly that of young people. I add my support and respect for the UK Youth Parliament which also uses this Chamber and does such important work.

[Barry Gardiner]

I am glad that the hon. Lady has acknowledged the contribution of the UK Youth Parliament and its debates in this Chamber, and I wonder whether she would care to pay tribute to my constituent, Chante Joseph, who spoke in one of those debates and is in the Public Gallery today.

[Miss Smith]

I am pleased to know that such people are in the Gallery and engaged with this debate, and no doubt watching us on television. While I am at it, I will pay tribute to the Norfolk Members of the Youth Parliament who also came to this place for that debate.

Whether the voting age should be lowered to 16 is a question on which many Members of this House have passionate and strongly held views—indeed, often opposing views—and those have been expressed again during this debate. Some were pro lowering the voting age and some were against, but Members from all sides of the House interacted strongly and respectfully with each other—in particular let me single out the hon. Member for Huddersfield (Mr Sheerman) and his powerful comments about much of the work he does for the protection of children outside of today’s narrow topic.

My right hon. Friend the Deputy Prime Minister has made clear on numerous occasions his personal view that there is merit in lowering the voting age, and his views are shared by many in the House. My party tends not to agree, although I am happy to concede that if my hon. Friend the Member for Worthing West (Sir Peter Bottomley) were in his place, he would show that there is never complete unanimity along party lines on this issue. My political interest began at age 16, when from my comprehensive school in Norfolk I tried to set up a youth forum for Norfolk—I suspect I might have been unusual in that degree of engagement. I accept that there are good arguments from all sides about this issue, although I am not persuaded of the merits of a change to the voting age.

Let me respond to the comments made by the Opposition Front-Bench speakers. I was interested to hear their arguments—as I was to hear those of other hon. Members —and to read comments by the right hon. Member for Tooting (Sadiq Khan) on the internet. I note, however, that neither the right hon. Gentleman nor the hon. Member for Caerphilly (Wayne David) voted on the 2005 ten-minute rule Bill sponsored by my hon. Friend the Member for Bristol West, and nor did the Leader of the Opposition or a single member of today’s shadow Cabinet. Although I hear that the Opposition’s views are growing stronger, I wonder what they did during 13 years of government if they did not find time to make that passion felt. A clear case for change is needed—

Small Charitable Donations Bill

Debate between Chloe Smith and Barry Gardiner

Tuesday 4th September 2012 Commons Chamber

[Miss Smith]

I should make it clear that I am in no way refusing to have such a meeting. I would be happy to take up that point. The scheme will be complementary to the gift aid scheme. Some charities have struggled to claim gift aid on certain types of donation—for example, cash donations whose donors it might be hard to persuade to stop and fill out a form. However, that is a different type of problem from the one to which my hon. Friend has just referred. I shall be happy to take up his point in greater detail.

I shall explain why we have had to put in place the three-year matching rule. There is an understandable reason behind it, and I think that charities will find it reasonable to work with. I am keen to avoid a situation in which the new scheme might become vulnerable to exploitation. None of us would wish to see funds that have been directed towards charities and the good causes they support being diverted or lost to fraud. I certainly hope that all Members cleave to that principle.

As I have said, HMRC pays around £1 billion a year in gift aid to charities, and such large sums inevitably attract fraudsters. Fraudsters scrutinise any payment system for weaknesses, and we have to be aware of that in designing any new scheme. As the new scheme is based on cash donations, records of the donor will, by their very nature, be limited. It could be said that this makes it even more attractive to fraudsters, so the very qualities of the scheme that are designed to make it work for charities—in other words, the ease of putting some money in a bucket—also help fraudsters. We have needed to find ways to protect the scheme from abuse, without adding to the paperwork that it might be feared would sit along small donations. One way we have tried to do this is by retaining the link to the gift aid scheme, which has tried-and-tested methods to protect against fraud. This also fits in with the desire, as I have said, for this scheme to be complementary to gift aid, not to replace it.

You will be able to appreciate, Mr Speaker, the idea I am developing of the need for charities to have a compliance record that will give HMRC a little more reassurance that the scheme is well protected against fraud. I am confident that every Member supports that. Charities with a good compliance record will be able to access the quite generous top-up payments available. Linking the scheme to claims made through gift aid gives not only HMRC, but all of us in this House, vital reassurance that checks and balances are in place.

[Barry Gardiner (Brent North) (Lab)]

We all appreciate the need to ensure that the scheme is not open to fraud. That will be agreed across the House. What assessment, however, has the Department made of the number, the size and the scope of the charities that the Minister believes will be able to access the benefits of the scheme, with these conditions attached? The industry seems to think that the number, size and scope of such charities will be severely curtailed.

[Miss Smith]

We hope that this scheme will be well used, and I have already set out that aspiration. I have set out the aspiration, too, that the scheme will get £100 million to charities. The hon. Gentleman will be aware of the numbers set out in the impact assessment, which has certainly been made available to him. The key point is that the scheme needs to be open and, as we have said, worth while for charities to access, which I think it will be. Equally, we need to be able to keep track of the possible costs of the scheme, which I am coming on to deal with. I can reassure the hon. Gentleman that a pool of around 100,000 charities have claimed gift aid in the past four years. It might be possible to take that number as an estimate of the number of charities that could be eligible to apply to the scheme. We hope that take-up will be high, but by its nature, it is somewhat hard to predict at this point, but I am not suggesting that all those 100,000 charities will put in claims.