Oral Answers to Questions
Debate between Chloe Smith and Christine Jardine(2 years, 5 months ago)
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Christine Jardine (Edinburgh West) (LD)
The Minister of State, Department for Work and Pensions (Chloe Smith)
We will spend more than £64 billion this year on benefits to support disabled people and people with health conditions. Claimants will also get one-off support worth up to £1,200 this year, including the new £650 cost of living payment for people on means-tested benefits and £150 for people on disability benefits, to help with additional costs.
Christine Jardine
The cost of living crisis is disproportionately affecting disabled people. More than half of those living in poverty in this country are either disabled themselves, or in a household where there is a disabled person. My constituents in that situation regularly come to me and say that the help they are receiving from the Government is not enough, even with that welcome increase. Will the Government consider specifically targeted further help to help alleviate the pressures they face?
Chloe Smith
I share the hon. Lady’s passion for this issue and her concern on behalf of her constituents. That is exactly why the Government have already acted: we have provided generous support in seeking to level up opportunity and improve the everyday experience for people with disabilities. What we have just been discussing comes on top of the package already announced, worth more than £22 billion, from the spring statement. We are clear that delivering this important additional support is an absolute priority; the DWP disability cost of living payments will accordingly be made by September, and other payments sooner than that, because we recognise the need here. However, I would take a step back and look at the overall approach, noting for example the agreement from the Resolution Foundation that this approach is the right one.
Electoral Reform
Debate between Chloe Smith and Christine Jardine(4 years, 5 months ago)
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The Minister of State, Cabinet Office (Chloe Smith)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Madam Deputy Speaker, and to welcome the hon. Member for North East Fife (Wendy Chamberlain) to her place as her party’s spokesperson on these issues. I look forward to working with her in that role, and as such, I thank her for raising these important issues in this Adjournment debate. I will take the time available to me to address as many of the issues she raised as I can. She clearly spent most of her time focusing on the method of counting votes in the first-past-the-post system, so that is what I will focus on in my remarks.
If I may, I will just set the scene with a few additional things that we are also focusing on in this Parliament that we think are important in stewarding our electoral system and our democracy. I certainly think that how people cast their vote goes to the heart of our democracy, and it is from that that the Government made an absolute priority in our manifesto, and through much of the action I take when I have the privilege to speak from this Dispatch Box, of protecting and upholding our democracy and our elections by means of electoral integrity. We are taking forward a programme of work that seeks to make our elections secure but also fit for the modern age. Importantly, one of those points is the need to bring our electoral laws up to date for the digital age, which I think the hon. Lady and I both agree is a necessary move. I want to help citizens to make informed decisions by increasing transparency in online political campaigning, and with that I also seek to make sure that rules on campaign donations and spending are effective.
I really look forward to working with the hon. Lady on the forthcoming policy of putting imprints on digital electoral material, which I think will help to strengthen trust and will help people to be informed about who is behind a campaign, so that they can choose and decide. She will be aware of my intention to introduce further measures to reduce fraud in elections, including by introducing identification requirements to vote and by tackling postal vote harvesting and potential proxy fraud.
The hon. Lady already mentioned updated and equal parliamentary boundaries, so I will not dwell on that—we will have plenty of time to do that in Committee sessions in the next while—but it is linked to tonight’s subject matter. It is important, because every voter needs to know that their vote carries equal weight, no matter where it is cast in the UK. I start at this point, because it came up in the debate last week on Second Reading. There is simply a difference of view here. She would say that, for example, an STV system or a PR system would be better than a fixed-term—[Interruption.] I have too many acronyms with F, T and P in them; I meant to say first past the post. She will support one; I will support the other. However, that said, it is possible for us both to agree that, whichever system is used, voters’ voices ought to have the greatest possible equality within that system. From the perspective of first past the post I argue that, within that system, we should ensure that every vote has a chance for its voice to carry equal weight wherever it is cast.
Let me turn more specifically to the first-past-the-post electoral system. I understand the points raised by the hon. Member for North East Fife. She gave a good run down of the principal arguments that are often given against the first-past-the-post system, and I suspect that underlines the point for other hon. Members—we are kept company tonight by a few, including, no less, the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) who attends every Adjournment debate. As he, and others, will know, this debate is not perhaps new, so I will run through some of the principal arguments in favour of first past the post, to balance the discussion.
For me, the first point is always the constituency link. There is something important to be said about the politics of place, and it is harder to achieve that in some designs for a proportional representation system. The politics of place are important. For example, the hon. Member for North East Fife speaks for Fife; I speak for Norwich. The hon. Member for Strangford speaks for Strangford, and my hon. Friend the Member for Walsall North (Eddie Hughes) speaks for parts of Walsall. All those places have different needs that can be well represented by a Member who speaks when grounded in those communities.
Christine Jardine (Edinburgh West) (LD)
As a Scottish MP, like the hon. Member for North East Fife (Wendy Chamberlain), I have experience of both systems. We both share constituencies with MSPs who are connected to the constituency. We have a separate top-up list. I do not think it fair always to depict proportional representation as removing the connection with the constituency. Sometimes, it is just as strong.
Chloe Smith
The hon. Lady is right. From the facts I cannot argue with that point, and I would not seek to. My point about the politics of place is part of a set of points that, in my view, fit together. My second point, which I think gives voters a better result than the one just described is—
Christine Jardine
One of the acknowledged problems we have in modern democracy is the lack of engagement, particularly of young people. One of the things many of us hear on the doorstep is, “Why would I bother? My vote doesn’t count.” The beauty of proportional representation is that every vote counts, in the sense that people sometimes feel in a seat where there is a large majority for one party that there is no point in them voting as it will not count and they will not be represented. Would the hon. Lady accept that point—that PR gives everyone’s vote some weight?
Chloe Smith
I do understand that point. I personally would use a similar argument to apply to one’s vote getting rather lost in a national system that did not give accountability directly to a representative.
Allow me to pause in responding to the arguments about the voting system and turn to a couple of the other points that the hon. Member for North East Fife made. I will cover three manifesto commitments. First, in the Conservative manifesto, which was chosen and has been given the privilege of being turned into action, we committed to retain the first-past-the-post system. That concludes that section of my remarks.
Turning to votes at 16, and if I may, combining this with the points made by the hon. Member for Edinburgh West (Christine Jardine) about how very many young people want to be involved in politics, I am passionately in favour of young people being involved in politics. However, I do think there are many ways to do that—there is not only the question of the voting age; there are lots of ways to engage people in politics. As I have mentioned, the manifesto commitment from this Government was to retain the franchise at 18 years old. That is because of an argument of consistency within the other services and aspects of public citizenship. A person below the age of 18 is treated as a minor, for example, in both the foster care system and the criminal justice system. They cannot attend jury service, buy alcohol or be sent into action in the armed forces, and they cannot own property, gamble and so on. There is a wide range of life decisions for which Parliament has judged that 18 is the right age across the nation.
Leaving the EU: Negotiations
Debate between Chloe Smith and Christine Jardine(6 years, 4 months ago)
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Chloe Smith
Before I give way to anyone else, I just want to take the opportunity, given that it has been rather handed to me on a plate, to remind the House that it is the Labour party that is all over the shop on the result of the EU referendum. Labour party politicians and supporters have suggested more than 60 times, I think, that the party is going to support a divisive second referendum. Whether that is or is not its party policy at this precise moment in time is anybody’s guess.
Let me move on to the final point I wanted to make about the Liberal Democrats before drawing my remarks to a close. I want to reflect on what I think is the right thing to say at this moment. It is this:
“The public have voted and I do think it’s seriously disrespectful and politically utterly counterproductive to say ‘Sorry guys, you’ve got it wrong, we’re going to try again’.”
Chloe Smith
I entirely agree with that, and I wonder if the hon. Lady might do too, because we all know who said it: the right hon. Member for Twickenham (Sir Vince Cable). It is a great shame that he cannot stick to those words. Could the hon. Lady explain why?
Christine Jardine
I wonder whether the hon. Lady can explain to me why, if it is so important to stick to one’s principles, the Scottish Conservatives, all of whom represent constituencies that voted remain, have now flipped and are voting for Brexit and paying no attention whatever to what the people of Scotland are asking for.
Chloe Smith
It would be preferable if those of us who are Unionists, and who feel very strongly that our United Kingdom has made a decision together and should be able to look forward to a good result of that decision together, could unite around that argument. It is really important that we secure a deal that works for the entire United Kingdom. I am very pleased that the motion refers to the “people of the UK”. The hon. Lady and her colleagues are right to put that phrase in the motion, because we are committed to securing a deal that works for the people of the UK.