European Union Referendum Bill

Debate between John McDonnell and Kelvin Hopkins

Thursday 18th June 2015 Commons Chamber

[John McDonnell]

Given the limited time available, I will be brief. I know that other hon. Members wish to speak on the other amendments. I just want to warn the Committee that on subsequent occasions I will bore Members by going on about electronic voting as often as I can. We have been waging a campaign for 15 years to see whether we can update our electoral methods and bring them into the 21st century. For brevity’s sake, I will circulate the notes prepared by the Library for those Members who are interested. I want to thank Isobel White, the researcher, for preparing the notes, which go through the history of electronic voting, including the various pilots that we have undertaken since 2000.

We started the adventure way back in 2000, when we established the first pilots, and we had more in 2002, 2003, 2006 and 2007. At each stage we had reports back on the enhancements that electronic voting would bring to our procedures. The background to the attempt to introduce electronic voting is the declining turnout in elections, although the key issue is whether the subject of an election excites the general public, such as in the Scottish referendum. If people feel the issue is important enough, they will turn out and vote, but unfortunately they do not have the same incentive in some elections. Part of the issue, therefore, is ensuring that voting is as easy as it can be, and we have been piloting electronic voting for a long time.

The Speaker’s Commission on Digital Democracy has explored the issue in the last two years and made several recommendations. The remaining issue to be confronted is the security of online voting, but I do not believe it to be an insuperable problem. The reason for raising the issue in the debate on the Bill—as I will for every other Bill that we consider, including the trade union Bill we are expecting—is to ensure that we force the Government to resolve the issue of security, which seems to be the only thing holding this back.

[Kelvin Hopkins (Luton North) (Lab)]

This is possibly the first time in 18 years that I have had a slight disagreement with one of my hon. Friends, but my hon. Friend suggests that changing the way we vote will increase turnout. We introduced postal ballots for that reason and we have still seen a big decline in turnout. People do not vote if they see less difference between the parties: if there is a real difference and they have a real choice, they turn out to vote.

[John McDonnell]

Thank goodness, we are not disagreeing. That is the point that I tried to make earlier, but in a more complicated fashion. The issue about turnout is how people are incentivised to vote, but the minimum we can do is increase the access to voting procedures. We have done that through postal voting, as my hon. Friend says, and we have just introduced electronic registration, to assist in the registration process. It was argued that once we had introduced electronic registration we would revisit online voting, but unfortunately that is not the case in this legislation. I hope that the tabling of the amendment will make the Government go back to the Electoral Commission and ask it to make detailed proposals. Even if we have to pilot electronic voting in some areas in this referendum, we may be able to overcome some of the problems that have been identified.

European Union Referendum Bill

Debate between John McDonnell and Kelvin Hopkins

Tuesday 16th June 2015 Commons Chamber

[Kelvin Hopkins (Luton North) (Lab)]

My hon. Friend is making an excellent speech and bringing TTIP into the argument. Does he agree that if the EU is seen as a vehicle for imposing TTIP on us, that would have a significant bearing on the outcome of the vote? Millions of trade unionists will be fearful of voting in favour of the EU because they may get TTIP with it.

[John McDonnell]

I thank my hon. Friend for bringing me back into order. That is exactly my point. If we are to have any chance to shape the Prime Minister’s negotiations with other European leaders, this is our opportunity. I want to place on the agenda what is happening with TTIP. I want the Prime Minister to address that in his discussions, and when he reports back to the House and the country about the way forward, I want him to detail the achievements he has made, to open up the transparency and openness of those negotiations.