Draft Representation of the People (Electronic Communications and Amendment) (Northern Ireland) Regulations 2016

David Anderson Excerpts

Monday 5th December 2016 General Committees

[Mr David Anderson (Blaydon) (Lab)]

It is a great honour to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Flello; I had not realised you had risen up the ranks, but well done.

I welcome the Minister’s statement, and particularly that digital registration will be a choice, rather than compulsory, which is really good. There would be worries about people’s access if this were made compulsory, but he put my mind at ease on that straight away. More choice in the way that people can sign up is really good. I acknowledge what he said about the number of people—young people in particular—who have been added to the list over the last couple of years. It is a shame that those 2.4 million people have been excluded from the Boundary Commission review that is under way at the minute, but that is a debate for another day.

It is very welcome that fraud prevention is a key part of this. Given the discussions had about digital registration, will the Minister assure the Committee that he will keep this under review and report back to the House about whether it is working? If there are problems, we need to work together to ensure we put them right. I welcome what he said about the security within the system—clearly none of us wants to do anything that will create opportunity for fraud—but I want to ask him a more basic question: is he confident that the system will be effective? Will it work? Is it exactly the same system as the one working in the rest of the United Kingdom? If so, has that system been shown to be effective? If not, what assurance can he give us that the system will work?

I do not have much more to say. At the moment, there are five electoral offices in Northern Ireland, and people working in those offices have expressed concerns to me about whether these measures will ultimately have an impact on their jobs. I know that the Minister shares my concern about the loss we have seen in recent months of a huge number of private sector jobs in the north. Really good, high-level, strong jobs in manufacturing have basically disappeared. Despite the Government’s attempts to rebalance the economy, outside forces have put that beyond the Minister’s and my control. Will he assure us that there will be no impact on either individual staff working in electoral offices or the towns in which those offices are based?

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[Kris Hopkins]

On jobs and the future, the economy in Northern Ireland is strong and continues to grow. I hope we can all make a positive contribution.

[Mr Anderson]

I might have missed it in thinking about the shoot in Northern Ireland, but are the jobs at the five offices secure? Are there going to be any issues for them?

[Kris Hopkins]

It is for the chief electoral officer to make that choice, and they will make the choice as a consequence of the consultation. I cannot make a commitment now because we are talking about the specific issue of digital registration.