John Penrose
Main Page: John Penrose (Conservative - Weston-super-Mare)Department Debates - View all John Penrose's debates with the Cabinet Office
(8 years, 6 months ago)
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Christopher Pincher (Tamworth) (Con)
10. What progress is being made on completing the electoral register.
The Parliamentary Secretary, Cabinet Office (John Penrose)
Since June 2014, more than 11 million people have applied to register to vote, three quarters of whom used the ultra-convenient online system, which takes less time than boiling an egg. At the general election, there were 400,000 more entries on the register than before, and thanks to individual electoral registration, 96 out of every 100 have been confirmed as genuine. We are now focusing on the remaining four in every 100 and, by December, electoral registration officers will have attempted to contact each of them nine times over 18 months. Any who are genuine voters will be confirmed on the register, and the remaining inaccurate entries—people who have moved away, died or registered fraudulently—will be removed.
Alec Shelbrooke
Does my hon. Friend agree that it is vital to tackle electoral fraud to prevent further events such as those in Tower Hamlets, and that individual voter registration will play an integral part in that?
John Penrose
I agree strongly with my hon. Friend. The underlying point behind individual electoral registration is that it requires genuine proof of identity, which the old system did not. The need to provide information such as date of birth and national insurance number ensures that the opportunity for fraudulent registration is greatly reduced.
Christopher Pincher
I am reassured to hear that 96 out of every 100 voters have been proved to be genuine since the roll-out of individual electoral registration, but will the Minister tell me what further action is being taken to target the four in every 100 who appear not to be genuine?
John Penrose
This is an important issue. We have made up to £3 million available to local authorities to pursue the remaining four in every 100. By the end of this year, all those people will have been contacted up to nine times, either by phone, email or letter, or by someone knocking on their door, in order to confirm that they are genuine voters with a pulse, in which case they will have been confirmed on the register. We want to ensure that we do not inadvertently disfranchise them. Anyone who is left over will almost certainly be a ghost voter—a ghost in the machine; a data error—and can therefore be safely removed.
Dr Rupa Huq (Ealing Central and Acton) (Lab)
13. Would the Minister acknowledge that a disproportionately high number of those falling off the electoral roll are young people such as the students attending the Ealing, Hammersmith and West London College and the University of West London in my constituency? Can he not see that this is the biggest electoral disfranchisement in our history?
John Penrose
No, I would not acknowledge that, because if they are genuine people on the register, we will find them and confirm them as genuine. No genuine voters will be disfranchised by this move. The hon. Lady is absolutely right, however, to say that there are significant groups of under-represented people who are not on the register at all and therefore cannot be disfranchised by being removed from it. This is a fundamental issue for the health of our democracy, and we must go out and find those people. We need to have proper registration drives to get them on to the register in the first place.
Tom Elliott (Fermanagh and South Tyrone) (UUP)
Will the Minister tell us whether there is a requirement for people to produce photographic ID as well as a utility bill when they register to vote?
John Penrose
At the moment, the proof of ID when registering includes information such as a date of birth and a national insurance number. Photographic ID is not required, although I believe that the situation in Northern Ireland might be slightly stricter and that there are tighter rules there, given the history of the Province. Of course, individual electoral registration was introduced in Northern Ireland many years ago and it has been extremely successful. There was no transitional period at all there; it all happened in one day and the system moved across to IER very swiftly.
Gloria De Piero (Ashfield) (Lab)
The Electoral Commission’s advice is clear: do not bring forward the full transition to individual electoral registration. What is the point of Parliament setting up this body if Ministers are simply going to ignore its advice?
John Penrose
May I put right an inadvertent omission from a debate in Westminster Hall yesterday? I omitted to welcome the hon. Lady to her new position and I would like to do that now. She is absolutely right to say that the Electoral Commission made that recommendation. However, it is not impossible to disagree with its reasoning. Indeed, others including the Association of Electoral Administrators—the people who actually run the elections in our democracy—believe that this is the right thing to do.
Paula Sherriff (Dewsbury) (Lab)
2. What steps his Department has taken to improve transparency in government.
Mims Davies (Eastleigh) (Con)
7. What steps his Department is taking to remove the prohibition on UK citizens voting in UK elections after they have been abroad for 15 years.
The Parliamentary Secretary, Cabinet Office (John Penrose)
As my hon. Friend’s question suggests, British citizens living abroad lose the right to vote after 15 years. As British expatriates include people who have fought in our armed forces as well as people drawing British pensions or working for international companies around the world, we think that this limit is arbitrary and wrong. Removing it was in our election manifesto and I hope to lay proposals to make it happen before the House in due course.
Mims Davies
Many of my Eastleigh constituents have taken the time and trouble to write to me on this issue and support our manifesto commitment to restore full voting rights to UK citizens abroad, no matter how long they have lived outside the UK. What progress has the Minister made towards making this manifesto commitment a reality?
John Penrose
The measure was in the Queen’s Speech for this Session. I can inform my hon. Friend that we are in detailed discussions on the substance of the policy and I hope to make concrete proposals shortly.
Mark Menzies (Fylde) (Con)
T1. If he will make a statement on his departmental responsibilities.
Simon Danczuk (Rochdale) (Lab)
T6. A council candidate who is also a parliamentary candidate on the same day has an unfair financial advantage over their council opponents because they have additional candidate spending in that ward. What is the Minister going to do about it?
The Parliamentary Secretary, Cabinet Office (John Penrose)
This is the first time the issue has been raised with me. If the hon. Gentleman would like to write to me, I would be delighted to address it.
Chris White (Warwick and Leamington) (Con)
T3. The Public Services (Social Value) Act has been in place since 2012. Many organisations and communities have benefited from its principles. Will the Minister outline the further steps that the Cabinet Office is taking to encourage a greater number of local authorities and Government Departments to adopt the Act?