Chris Ruane
Main Page: Chris Ruane (Labour - Vale of Clwyd)Department Debates - View all Chris Ruane's debates with the Cabinet Office
(13 years, 1 month ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
The Deputy Prime Minister
The plans for 2012 are just as they are for this year; there will be no change at all.
Chris Ruane (Vale of Clwyd) (Lab)
My hon. Friend the Member for Cardiff West (Kevin Brennan) mentioned the issue of Rhyl West. I put down a parliamentary question asking the Minister to look at the specifics of that case. To go from 2,500 to 3,500 registered voters in one year in the poorest ward in Wales, which has 900 houses in multiple occupation, is a fantastic achievement. If the Minister is serious about registration, he needs to look at best practice, so will he look at the issue of Rhyl West?
The Deputy Prime Minister
The Parliamentary Secretary, Cabinet Office, my hon. Friend the Member for Forest of Dean (Mr Harper), and I are more than happy to look at that example. The Select Committee on Political and Constitutional Reform has recommended that a new offence should be created and of course we will look at that—it is always right to look at suggestions from such a distinguished Committee. Under the current offences, only 144 people were prosecuted out of the millions of people on the electoral register last year. That suggests that some of the other things we are doing, such as data matching and making sure that everybody is approached in 2014 to get them on to the register, might be a higher priority than once again creating more new criminal offences on the statute book.