Article 50: Parliamentary Approval

John Penrose Excerpts

Monday 11th July 2016 Commons Chamber

[Helen Goodman (Bishop Auckland) (Lab)]

(Urgent Question): To ask the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster to make a statement on whether the Government will seek parliamentary approval before triggering article 50.

[The Parliamentary Secretary, Cabinet Office (John Penrose)]

The question of how to invoke parliamentary discussion around triggering article 50 has two distinct facets, one legal and the other democratic. Taking the legal considerations first, I am sure that everyone will be aware of the debate about whether invoking article 50 can be done through the royal prerogative, which would not legally require parliamentary approval, or would require an Act of Parliament because it leads ultimately to repeal or amendment of the European Communities Act 1972. I will leave the lawyers to their doubtless very enjoyable and highly paid disputes. Apart from observing that there are court cases already planned or under way on this issue, so the judges may reach a different view, I simply remark that Government lawyers believe that it is a royal prerogative issue.

Nevertheless, I hope that everyone here will agree that democratic principles should out rank legal formalities. The Prime Minister has already said that Parliament will have a role, and it is clearly right that a decision as momentous as this one must be fully debated and discussed in Parliament. Clearly, the precise format and timing of those debates and discussions will need to be agreed through the usual channels. As everyone will understand, I cannot offer any more details today because those discussions have not yet happened. However, I will venture this modest prediction: I strongly doubt that they will be confined to a single debate or a single occasion. There will be many important issues about the timing and the substance of different facets of the negotiations that the Government, the Opposition, the Backbench Business Committee, and I dare say, perhaps even you, Mr Speaker, will feel it is important to discuss, but on the details of which topics, on what dates, and the specific wording of the motions, we shall have to wait and see.

[Helen Goodman]

I thank the Minister for that reply. If the royal prerogative is used to trigger article 50, would that not be a clear breach of the promises made to the public by the Brexiters during the referendum campaign that they would “take back control” and “restore parliamentary sovereignty”? How could it be right to initiate negotiations with important and far-reaching significance for citizenship rights, immigration rules, employment and social rights, agriculture, trading relations with the EU and third countries, and Scotland and Northern Ireland, without seeking Parliament’s approval for the aims, objectives and red lines?

The issues at stake are the culmination of 40 years of legislation. Is it not extraordinary to suggest that changes to these areas should not now come back to this House? The priorities and trade-offs are extremely important to everyone living in the UK. Surely the Minister is not suggesting that they should be decided behind closed doors in Whitehall while Parliament is presented with a done deal. Is not his inability to say how Brexit will be negotiated a clear indication of the Government’s failure to do any contingency planning? Why is the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster wasting taxpayers’ money fighting a court case to keep the Government’s approach to Brexit secret? We know that the Minister cannot say today what the red lines will be, but why cannot he at least be clear that Parliament’s approval will be sought before the negotiations begin? When will he be able to say what the process will be? He says that these are matters for a new Government. Has the right hon. Member for Maidenhead (Mrs May) been consulted, and can the Minister tell the House when we will have a new Government?

[John Penrose]

Mr Speaker—[Interruption.]

[Mr Speaker]

A considerable burden has been placed by the hon. Lady on Minister Penrose’s shoulders. It is a burden that he seems to bear stoically and with fortitude, but it would be good if we could actually hear his response.

[John Penrose]

Thank you, Mr Speaker. I shall try to bear up under the pressure. First, I gently say to the hon. Member for Bishop Auckland (Helen Goodman) that it is difficult to argue that the Government’s approach is secret if it is in court. It is not a secret court; it will all be argued out in public. I have just said that the issues will be revealed as we go forward with the new Prime Minister. The point on which I hope I can reassure the hon. Lady is very straightforward: my right hon. Friend the Member for Maidenhead (Mrs May)—it looks like she is going to be the new Prime Minister—has been very clear in saying that Brexit means Brexit. What that means is that the destination to which we are travelling is not in doubt. The means used to get there will have to be explained, but I think it only fair to wait until she is Prime Minister and has a chance to lay out her programme, the process and, therefore, when Parliament will have a chance to discuss and debate the issues. At that point I am sure that all will be revealed.

[John Redwood (Wokingham) (Con)]

Does the Minister agree that the way to take back control and seek parliamentary approval is to proceed quickly to repeal the European Communities Act 1972 while transferring all European law relevant to the single market into British law and at the same time protecting our borders and keeping our contributions? That is what we voted for. Will the new Government deliver that promptly?

[John Penrose]

As I just said, the important thing—I hope this reassures my right hon. Friend—is that my right hon. Friend the Member for Maidenhead has been clear that Brexit means Brexit. That means that the destination, on which he and I both agree, is not in doubt. There are questions on how we get there, precisely how to run the negotiations and the precise timing of what gets addressed and when, and I hope that both he and I will allow our soon-to-be-installed new Prime Minister time to lay that out. I am sure that she will do so at the first opportunity.

[Louise Haigh (Sheffield, Heeley) (Lab)]

I thank you, Mr Speaker, for granting this urgent question and my hon. Friend the Member for Bishop Auckland (Helen Goodman) for asking it.

The outcome of the EU referendum represents the most momentous constitutional change that our country has faced in the post-war era. Now is the time to take a considered view on the future of the negotiations and for the new Government to lay out the timetable, including when they anticipate that article 50 will be triggered. It should not be triggered, however, until there is a clear plan in place about what the UK will be negotiating for and how it will be achieved.

The Government have already indicated that they will consult the devolved Administrations and the Mayor of London, and they must do the same with Her Majesty’s official Opposition. That is the only way we can develop a consensus about what the country’s negotiating plan should be, and that should be put to a vote in this House.

The priority must be to ensure that the Government’s negotiating team, undertaking the most substantial set of negotiations on our behalf in modern history, are fully equipped, fully resourced and fully prepared to extract the best deal possible for Britain in the Brexit negotiations. There are 170 trade agreements that now need to be renegotiated, but it is suggested that only 20 people across the whole of Whitehall have the requisite experience to negotiate.

We have deep concerns that the autumn statement, which outlined drastic cuts for Whitehall long before Brexit materialised as a realistic possibility, is no longer fit for purpose. That is why Labour is saying to the Government that, while discussions about article 50 are vital, it is clear that what comes next matters even more. It would be an abdication of responsibility if our civil service negotiating team does not have the resources it needs and is instead forced to spend vital time implementing brutal budget cuts at home when it should be batting for Britain abroad. Let us properly resource our civil service and together develop a consensus for the future of Britain.

[John Penrose]

I am pleased to hear the hon. Lady say that there is an opportunity for cross-party consensus. It will be much more powerful for this country in any negotiations that it undertakes, not only with other EU member states, but with other countries around the world, if they know that the political parties and the people of Britain are speaking with one voice and that we are anxious to be an outward-looking, international country that is aiming to establish new links around the world. I welcome the hon. Lady’s comments on that.

I also agree with the hon. Lady that it is important that we have a clear timetable as soon as our new Prime Minister is in place, if only because—she is right to point this out—the details of the timetable have to be geared to maximising our negotiating leverage. We know where we are going; the question is how we get there. Clearly, the order of play—the order in which issues are addressed—and the timing have to be planned out incredibly carefully, to make sure, as she said, that we get the best deal possible.

The final point on which I agree with the hon. Lady is that about devolved Government. She is absolutely right to say that we need to make sure that the devolved Administrations are involved as well, so that this is not merely a question of cross-party consensus in Westminster. It has to be a question of consensus, as far as it is possible to achieve it, right across the UK.

[Dr Liam Fox (North Somerset) (Con)]

The Prime Minister originally said that he would trigger article 50 immediately, so presumably he felt that he had the full legal authority to do so. Does my hon. Friend accept that those who want to have a vote before article 50 is triggered are concerned not with parliamentary sovereignty but at making a clear attempt to thwart the democratic will of the British people? Does he agree that they must be completely resisted by any real democrat? The referendum was not a consultation with the British people; it was an instruction from the British people that we have a duty to obey.

[John Penrose]

I strongly agree with my right hon. Friend and parliamentary neighbour that the question here is not about the legal power, which clearly, as the Prime Minister has previously mentioned, is available. The question is: what is politically and democratically right to reflect the decision that has been made in the referendum? Therefore, although the Prime Minister is, very sensibly, saying that the timing and method of triggering article 50 needs to be a decision taken by his successor—we now know who that will be—his successor is also right to say very clearly that the British people have spoken and that Brexit means Brexit.

[Pete Wishart (Perth and North Perthshire) (SNP)]

We are grateful to the Minister for confirming that this will be done through royal prerogative. Given the events of today, perhaps that is the way we could determine the leadership of the Conservative party. However, I remind the Minister of the soon to be departed Prime Minister’s remarks that the Scottish Government will be fully consulted on any Brexit proposals. Can the Minister therefore confirm that, before any process is started on article 50, the Scottish Government will be fully consulted and able to give their consent for any move forward? I also remind the Minister that Scotland did not vote for this Tory-inspired Brexit, and for us it is the Scottish people who are sovereign. We have yet to hear any Minister say that they respect the Scottish result and are prepared to make sure that the Scottish people also secure what they voted for. This Government might be charged with taking the UK out of the EU, but those of us on the SNP Benches are charged with ensuring that the Scottish people always get what they voted for too.

[John Penrose]

I am delighted to confirm that the Scottish Government will be involved. In fact, I believe that some early discussions are already under way. I hope and expect that those will continue, as they will with the other devolved Governments. I would, however, gently remind the hon. Gentleman that this is a commitment to consult, which is not quite the same thing as seeking an outright consent. As his own party has accepted very recently, this is not a devolved issue and is to be dealt with by this Parliament and the UK as a whole. It is a decision that we have taken as a country collectively.

[Crispin Blunt (Reigate) (Con)]

I am grateful to the Minister for that last clarification. We may be seeking consensus, but it will almost certainly not be forthcoming from those on the Scottish National Benches. Will the Minister confirm that there is no escape from doing this via article 50, to which we are bound by treaty, and whatever other parliamentary processes then come behind it? We have to meet our treaty obligations through invoking article 50, which is the instruction of the British people. Will he ensure that that is put in place as soon as we have our negotiating hand in place?

[John Penrose]

I agree with my hon. Friend on both those points: consensus is always desirable and to be sought wherever possible, and article 50 is the route for achieving Brexit. He is also right to point out that it is only the tip of a much larger iceberg; there are a whole series of other things that have to wrap around it. We have heard some of those mentioned already during this urgent question, and I suspect that we will hear more of them in due course.

[Mr Ben Bradshaw (Exeter) (Lab)]

Is it not the case that referendums are advisory and that this Parliament is sovereign? Is it not a constitutional outrage and supreme irony that those on the Conservative Benches who based their argument for Brexit on parliamentary sovereignty now want to deny this House a vote and are suggesting that an unelected Prime Minister, with no mandate, agrees to such a fundamental decision for this country? That is a disgrace, and they must not be allowed to get away with it.

[John Penrose]

With the greatest possible respect to the right hon. Gentleman, who is extremely experienced, he may be right on strict constitutional legalities but democratically he is fundamentally wrong. We have had a referendum, the people have spoken and it would be unconscionable—it would be impossible—for us collectively to turn around and thumb our noses at the British people and ignore that democratic verdict.

[Mr Bernard Jenkin (Harwich and North Essex) (Con)]

May I point out that it would be extremely odd, for the first time in this Parliament’s history, to start taking instructions on how to conduct our decision making from the administrative court, as seems to be implied by the case before it? Were legislative consent actually required for the exercise of article 50, that legislative consent was effectively given when we passed the European Union Referendum Act 2015, which established the referendum and put the question before the British people.

[John Penrose]

I will endeavour to tread carefully because, as I have mentioned, there are cases either in train or planned. I think that the fundamental political and democratic point must be this: the people have spoken, and whichever side of the argument Members of this House or those out in the rest of the country were on, it is now up to all of us to come together, to unite as a country and to make sure that we respect the democratic decision and the democratic will that have been clearly expressed.

[Tom Brake (Carshalton and Wallington) (LD)]

The Minister is an honest man, and therefore when he says, “Brexit means Brexit”, he knows that there are as many versions of Brexit as there are Members on the Government Benches. He needs to reaffirm parliamentary sovereignty and ensure that Parliament can vote on the Government’s negotiating stance, for instance on the vexed and dangerous question of what happens at the Irish border.

--- Later in debate ---

[John Penrose]

As I said in my opening response to the urgent question, I am sure that there will be many opportunities, on many different occasions, for Members in this Chamber to discuss and debate all sorts of different issues, including the one that the right hon. Gentleman has just mentioned and many others. This negotiation will be an ongoing process, not a single event, and therefore he is absolutely right that there will be many opportunities where specific issues will become salient, where people in this Chamber will have very strong views and where people in devolved Governments will have very strong views. Those views need to be heard and aired throughout the process.

[Sir Edward Garnier (Harborough) (Con)]

Does my hon. Friend agree that there is just the slightest chance that over the next few weeks we may be capable of generating more heat than light on this subject? It is not Parliament that will be negotiating with the European Union as we come out of it; it is the Government. Will he ask our right hon. Friend the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster to ensure that, while Parliament must be kept informed and may express its view, it will be for Ministers and for the Prime Minister, essentially, to carry out these negotiations once article 50 has been triggered? Parliament should not hamper the negotiating stance—[Hon. Members: “Hamper?”] I think somebody wants their lunch. Parliament should not constrain the negotiating tactics of any Minister.

[John Penrose]

My right hon. and learned Friend gets the parliamentary award for optimism for saying that there is only the “slightest chance” that we might generate more heat than light on the matter over the next few weeks. He is absolutely right to say that this is something that Ministers need to take forward but, as I said earlier, I am absolutely certain that the Government, the Opposition, the Backbench Business Committee and others will take many different opportunities to make sure that Parliament’s views are forcefully expressed and the issues are debated as we go.

[Keith Vaz (Leicester East) (Lab)]

The Minister will know that the triggering of article 50 will have profound consequences for the 3 million EU citizens who are living in the United Kingdom. Has the Minister for Europe, who is sitting next to him on the Treasury Bench, had any representations from other EU countries about the position of their nationals here? If not, will we be able to have clarity on whether they have the right to remain? At the moment, Ministers are saying different things about these rights, and we need that certainty before any triggering of article 50.

[John Penrose]

The point, of course, is that there will be ongoing discussions about this and many other issues. The question of when those discussions might bear fruit, particularly given the fact that there have been some concerns about informal negotiations being inappropriate, is something that will have to be resolved.



At this stage, I give the right hon. Gentleman the same reply that I have given to others: we must ensure that we have a programme, which will be laid out by the new Prime Minister as soon as she is in place. I hope she will be able to give him more detail and clarity on that point as well as many others that will be involved in the negotiations.

[Mr Jacob Rees-Mogg (North East Somerset) (Con)]

In terms of the doctrine of the sovereignty of Parliament, is it not true that that sovereignty is delegated by the British people, not given to us by divine right? It is absurd to think of the sovereignty of Parliament as being by divine right as it is the divine right of kings. The British people have spoken and given us a mandate, and that mandate must be fulfilled, but the details of that mandate will no doubt be implemented by legislation.

[John Penrose]

I defer to my hon. Friend and parliamentary neighbour on the legality of where sovereignty begins and ends, and where it is delegated from and to. The fundamental point that is clear from his remarks—and, I hope, from my previous remarks—is that the people have spoken, we are now honour bound to deliver on that democratic decision, and we should not try to resile or step back from it in any way.

[Mr Speaker]

I expect that the Minister also defers to his hon. Friend on the matter of knowledge of kings.

[Caroline Lucas (Brighton, Pavilion) (Green)]

Will the Minister consider the proposal put forward today by 1,000 lawyers of establishing of a royal commission or independent body to receive evidence from a wide range of groups, particularly about the risks and benefits of triggering article 50 at various times? Will he ensure that such a body will be able to report before Parliament votes?

[John Penrose]

I think that I am not being over-cynical if I wonder whether a proposal by 1,000 lawyers for a commission to deliberate at length might be a delaying tactic. The concern will be not to tie the hands of the incoming Prime Minister or her negotiating team in how we approach this matter. As the hon. Member for Sheffield, Heeley (Louise Haigh) rightly pointed out, we must ensure that whatever we do and however we handle this, we aim to get the best deal possible for this country with not just other European member states, but other countries in the world.

[Mr Andrew Tyrie (Chichester) (Con)]

Quite a bit of controversy is already breaking out and we have scarcely started this debate. The Minister has been doing a great job with his outpouring of common sense on a heap of these questions. Will he confirm that all common sense points to not triggering article 50 until it is in the UK’s national interest to do so, as the Treasury Committee has reported, and as the Governor of the Bank of England and many people who have been closely involved with these issues have concluded?

[John Penrose]

I am happy to confirm that this is not a question of “if” we leave the EU but “how”, so the calculation that we—particularly the new Prime Minister and her team—need to make is about the best way to structure and time negotiations to maximise our leverage. I am sure that the incoming Prime Minister will have read the Committee’s report with great care, as have we all, and will take those factors into consideration.

[Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)]

At the beginning of his first answer, the Minister said that this was not just a legal matter, but a political matter, so I cannot understand for the life of me why the Government are challenging the legal case. Surely sending in lawyers is just a complete waste of money—whether it is 10 lawyers or 1,000, it does not matter. Why are the Government wasting money on trying to assert that this is just a matter of royal prerogative, rather than accepting the political fact that while, yes, Brexit is Brexit—that may be the case—the Minister is far more likely to get a good deal from other European countries if he has managed to bind both sides of this House and both Houses of Parliament into a strong negotiating position?

[John Penrose]

I had thought, and hoped, that the hon. Member for Sheffield, Heeley was speaking for more Labour Members and that we would be able to achieve a degree of cross-party consensus. It would be helpful to have country-wide unanimity on this issue, so I am sad that there does not seem to be such unanimity on the Opposition Benches. The Attorney General, who is sitting next to me, is convinced that the Government’s case is strongly arguable, and that is why we are taking this case to court.

[Philip Davies (Shipley) (Con)]

We are in the strange situation that last week the result of the referendum was so catastrophic for Labour that its Members passed a motion of no confidence in their leader, but today that result is neither here nor there, as we can just proceed and keep ourselves in the EU because of parliamentary democracy. Perhaps Labour Members will make their minds up soon. Does not what we have heard today emphasise the point made by my right hon. Friend the Member for North Somerset (Dr Fox)—[Interruption.]

[Philip Davies]

Does not what we have heard today show that what my right hon. Friend said was true and that the purpose of these devices is not to help the Government to implement the will of the public, but to ask for the right to try to prevent it from being implemented? If the Government do not implement it because Labour frustrates the process, Labour will be wiped out in the north of England in a future general election. Labour Members might be hellbent on self-destruction, but may I ask the Minister to save the Labour party and implement Brexit in full?

[John Penrose]

There are many reasons to implement Brexit in full, but that is the first time anyone has urged me to do it to save the Labour party. I am particularly delighted to hear that coming from my hon. Friend. I agree that there will be a nagging concern in some people’s minds—unworthy though it might be—that some of these proposals to delay the decision or subject it to intricate parliamentary procedures might be aimed at frustrating the democratically expressed will of the people, which of course would be democratically entirely wrong.

[Mr David Winnick (Walsall North) (Lab)]

I supported remain—I have no regrets and make no apology—but is it not absolutely essential that the majority decision, taken rightly or wrongly, is respected, because otherwise it makes a complete mockery of democracy?

--- Later in debate ---

[John Penrose]

That was beautifully and eloquently expressed. We are all, I hope, democrats first and foremost, and whichever side of the referendum debate we were on, we in this House and those more broadly across the country have to respect the democratically expressed will of the British people.

[Robert Neill (Bromley and Chislehurst) (Con)]

I am glad to see the Attorney General in his place on the Treasury Bench. Does the Minister agree with these propositions put forward by Sir Paul Jenkins, QC, the former head of the Government Legal Service, and many others: first, that article 50 is the only lawful route for exiting the EU; secondly, that that is a matter for the royal prerogative; and, thirdly, that the European Union Referendum Act 2015 is not, of itself, adequate in law to constitute notice under article 50? Finally, does he agree that to repeal unilaterally the European Communities Act 1972 other than through the article 50 process would be a breach of a treaty obligation, which is something that no Government have committed in 300 years and would be wholly unconscionable?

[John Penrose]

My hon. Friend asks four questions, and the answer to the first three is a straightforward yes. The only gloss I would add to his fourth question about how we might either amend or repeal not just the European Communities Act, but any other measures that need to be amended as a result of Brexit, is that that will inevitably require primary legislation, which of course will be brought forward when the time is right.

[Ms Margaret Ritchie (South Down) (SDLP)]

The Minister referred to discussions with the devolved regions. Will he outline what discussions have taken place with the Northern Ireland Executive, the Northern Ireland Assembly and the Irish Government, given issues around the need there for free movement of goods, services and people, the loss of which would be detrimental to the whole economy of the island of Ireland?

[John Penrose]

The hon. Lady is absolutely right. These are extremely ticklish and difficult discussions. I can confirm that discussions have begun, but I cannot, I am afraid, go into huge detail about how far they have got or what the future plans are. If she has any concerns or doubts about how those discussions might be progressing, I would encourage her to talk to me or the Northern Ireland Office because I am sure that we could set her mind at rest.

[Mr David Jones (Clwyd West) (Con)]

Does my hon. Friend agree that it would be positively contemptuous of the clearly expressed will of the British people were the Government to refuse to trigger article 50? What does he feel would be the response of the British people at the next general election to anyone who encouraged showing such contempt for their views?

[John Penrose]

My right hon. Friend makes a very important point: it is essential for the health of democracy, as much as for the future direction of this country, that voters understand and believe that we here hold their opinions in high regard and feel morally bound to deliver on them. If we ignore their democratically expressed consent, we will face a much bigger problem than at present, because that would undermine the very foundations of the democratic consent that underpins this place. I cannot think of a more dangerous route for us to go down.

[Mr David Lammy (Tottenham) (Lab)]

Is not the situation a bit more than ticklish? This is the biggest constitutional change for our country for half a century. Last week, Chilcot criticised the legal processes that led to the Iraq war, criticised the way in which prerogative power worked in the run-up to that war and, most importantly, criticised the fact that there was not a sufficient plan for after the invasion had been completed. On that basis, is the Minister really saying that we should not come back to Parliament so that individual Members can reach a view on whether we should trigger article 50?

[John Penrose]

I would draw a distinction in my reply between “whether” and “how”. We have been very clear, as has my right hon. Friend the Member for Maidenhead, that the destination is not in doubt: Brexit means Brexit, as I have said several times already. How we get there, however, is a matter for discussion. It is a matter for my right hon. Friend to lay out and I am sure that, once she is behind the door of No. 10, she will do so. At that stage, I hope that the right hon. Gentleman will have more detail about how those discussions and announcements might be made.

[Mr Jonathan Djanogly (Huntingdon) (Con)]

Switzerland had a referendum that showed it was determined to cap immigration, but because of protracted negotiations with the EU, the EU decided to start retaliatory measures, including the country’s removal from the Erasmus scheme. How long, therefore, does the Minister think we have after activating article 50 before the EU starts retaliatory measures on us?

[John Penrose]

My hon. Friend asks an extremely pertinent question. That will be one of the matters that the incoming Prime Minister and her negotiating team will factor into their decisions about the timing and order of play of the negotiations. I am afraid that I cannot offer my hon. Friend much more than that now, but the point he raises must be an important case study that will be front and centre of people’s consideration as the decisions are made.

[Ann Clwyd (Cynon Valley) (Lab)]

The majority of my constituents still feel very angry. They feel that they were misinformed—that is putting it mildly—and therefore think that they need to know the facts. One of the facts pointed out to the Foreign Affairs Committee was that the Foreign Office will need to be doubled in size. Given that the autumn statement said that there would be drastic cuts in Whitehall, should we not have a new autumn statement to spell out the implications of Brexit to the British people?

[John Penrose]

It is clear that many things will change in the new world that we now face. The country’s trade orientation, foreign policy and so forth will all have to be readdressed and amended, just as many of our businesses will have to reassess how they do business. The right hon. Lady is absolutely right that some consequential changes might be needed, but I say again that I cannot prefigure anything that the incoming Prime Minister may be considering. Like me, the right hon. Lady will have to wait until announcements are made. I will take what she said as a potential submission to the new prime ministerial team, and perhaps it will consider her remarks in that light.

[Paul Scully (Sutton and Cheam) (Con)]

The Opposition spokesman talked about 170 free trade agreements that will need to be renegotiated, but my understanding is that there are about 167 independently recognised countries outside the EU. The hon. Member for Bishop Auckland (Helen Goodman) suggested that the Government might be something other than inclusive when discussing Brexit, yet about 34 million participants to date have given us a clear message. Does my hon. Friend agree that rather than spending our time on whether we invoke article 50 and whether we adhere to the mandate of the people, we should focus our efforts on securing a looser, collaborative relationship with our European neighbours and grabbing the opportunities from the rest of the world?

[John Penrose]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right—the focus now must be on how we get this done in the best and most constructive way possible for our nation. There will be opportunities and great new horizons as a result of the decision. We need to make sure we are clear about them and that we are set up in the right way to grab those opportunities as they present themselves.

[Wayne David (Caerphilly) (Lab)]

As things stand, Britain will have two years to withdraw from the European Union once it invokes article 50, but most analysts say that it will take much longer than two years for Britain successfully to extricate itself and have a new relationship. Have the Government therefore considered approaching member states about a possible extension to that period?

[John Penrose]

As I understand it, I think that any alteration to the article 50 process requires unanimity from other EU member states, which represents a pretty high bar for any Government. I am sure that that factor will be considered by the incoming Prime Minister and her negotiating team. I am also sure that they will want to consider many other options to maximise our negotiating leverage. As I have said, the hon. Gentleman and I will have to wait until the new Prime Minister is ready to announce precisely how she and her team wish to approach these issues.

[Stephen Kinnock (Aberavon) (Lab)]

The referendum has been a deeply divisive process that has divided city against town, community against community and nation against nation. Does the Minister agree that we now need a cross-party approach to deal with when to invoke article 50 and the basic negotiating position around that, and how we hold the negotiating team to account? Will he consider setting up a special parliamentary Committee to do both those jobs?

[John Penrose]

The current Prime Minister has said that he believes it is very important not just for the UK Government to contribute, but for the devolved Governments—and, wherever possible, other parties on a cross-party basis—to contribute so that we can, whenever possible, speak as a nation with one voice. The hon. Gentleman is right to say the referendum was a pretty divisive affair. It is not just political parties that need to knit together again; society needs to knit together again. I am not sure that I would necessarily share the hon. Gentleman’s enthusiasm for a parliamentary Committee as the solution to achieve that, but I share his conviction that a degree of healing is required, and that all of us on both sides of the House have a duty to ensure that our respective parties and the communities that we represent are able to come together for the good of the country.

[Andrew Gwynne (Denton and Reddish) (Lab)]

More than 60% of my electorate voted to leave the European Union and I very much honour and respect their views. It is clear that the triggering of article 50 is unchartered waters for both this Government and the EU, so would it not make sense for the Government to be in open negotiation with their European counterparts to set out the parameters, process and areas of commonality, and then to come back to the House to announce the likely procedure so that we ensure that we have the very best deal for the people of Denton and Reddish and of the United Kingdom as we take forward the referendum result into reality?

[John Penrose]

The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right that article 50 is uncharted waters. No one has done this before and we are, of necessity, having to address brand-new problems. I will take the rest of his remarks as a submission to the incoming Prime Minister and her negotiating team. He is absolutely right that whatever decisions they make, and whatever process and timetable they lay out, those will have to be founded on one central principle that I hope we can all sign up to: we need to maximise the negotiating position and negotiating strength of this country as a whole to get the best deal possible.

[Catherine McKinnell (Newcastle upon Tyne North) (Lab)]

The Minister cannot say what “Brexit means Brexit” really means, so is it not vital that, given we have no idea what the terms of exit will be, this is properly scrutinised and voted on by democratically elected Members of this House?

[John Penrose]

I think I addressed that in my initial remarks, but I am sure that there will be plenty of opportunities over a long period for Parliament to discuss many facets of the negotiations, and that the hon. Lady and many others will have a chance to make their views known. As for any decisions that might be made, I, like everyone else, will have to wait for the new Prime Minister to lay out her programme and timetable. I am sure that all will be clear at that point, and that we shall be able to address any decision points that may be offered.

[Stephen Doughty (Cardiff South and Penarth) (Lab/Co-op)]

Most of my constituents in both Cardiff and the Vale of Glamorgan voted to remain. Although they are concerned about the result, they would be even more concerned to think that Parliament would have anything less than a full say in this process, not least because many Executive and legislative competences are also devolved to the National Assembly. Will the Minister explain what specific role he expects Welsh Government Ministers and the Assembly itself to have in deciding the final proposal that is put before us?

--- Later in debate ---

[John Penrose]

As I said earlier to the hon. Member for Perth and North Perthshire (Pete Wishart) and, I think, to the hon. Member for South Down (Ms Ritchie), discussions are already under way. We are endeavouring to involve everyone and to seek consensus whenever possible but, ultimately, foreign policy is reserved to the United Kingdom Parliament. While we want to ensure that everyone has a chance to contribute, and that, as far as possible, there is a collective view so that we understand what are the best opportunities for the constituent parts of the United Kingdom, at the end of the day the matter must come back to the United Kingdom Government and Parliament.

[Chi Onwurah (Newcastle upon Tyne Central) (Lab)]

Brexit means Brexit, but there is no agreed definition of what “Brexit” means, apart from the fact that it involves parliamentary sovereignty. Is the Minister seriously proposing that we should undergo such a momentous seismic change as Brexit without its having been defined to the British people before the referendum, or decided on by Parliament after it?

[John Penrose]

The hon. Lady is right: the details will become a great deal clearer as the negotiation goes through. We will all discover more about the various facets of how Brexit will affect different parts of our lives as the negotiations near completion. However, I must repeat what I have said several times already: we shall not be able to say how Parliament will engage with that until the new Prime Minister has had a chance to lay out her timetable for the negotiations, whereupon it will be possible to assess when opportunities for debate and discussion will occur.

[Kerry McCarthy (Bristol East) (Lab)]

This was not the question that I was going to ask, but given the Minister’s response to my hon. Friend the Member for Cardiff South and Penarth (Stephen Doughty), I want to press him on the extent to which devolved institutions will be consulted. Much of the work of some Departments is devolved—food and farming, for example—yet in terms of the European Union, this will be a UK Government negotiating position, and that really does need to be resolved.

[John Penrose]

The hon. Lady gives a good illustration of instances in which it will be important to ensure that the constituent parts of the United Kingdom are closely involved so that their views can be factored in, whether the issue in question is devolved or non-devolved. There will be plenty of occasions when views will need to be fed back very carefully to inform the discussions and the negotiating team that is undertaking them.

Draft Electoral Registration Pilot Scheme (England) Order 2016

John Penrose Excerpts

Monday 4th July 2016 General Committees

[The Parliamentary Secretary, Cabinet Office (John Penrose)]

I beg to move,

That the Committee has considered the draft Electoral Registration Pilot Scheme (England) Order 2016.

It is a pleasure to have you in the Chair looking after us, Mr Percy, as always. The draft order establishes a pilot scheme in Birmingham, Ryedale and South Lakeland. The electoral registration officer in each of the specified areas will test new and innovative approaches to canvassing. The Electoral Commission will report on the pilot scheme and provide a copy of its evaluation to the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster and the EROs by the end of June, and the order will cease to have effect in July 2017.

As some members of the Committee might already be aware, the process for household canvass is micromanaged in excruciating detail under the Representation of the People (England and Wales) Regulations 2001. Electoral registration officers are required to send an annual canvass form—household enquiry form or HEF—to every property in their area. The HEF asks residents to set out whether there has been any change in the composition of households since the previous year’s canvass, to identify whether any residents should be added to or removed from the register. When no response is received, as is more often than not the case, EROs have to issue up to two further forms and to carry out at least one home visit.

The aim of the canvass is obviously sensible, but many EROs and electors find the procedure frustrating and confusing. Electors who know themselves to be registered do not understand why, none the less, they might receive three letters and a visit from the local ERO. It is particularly baffling when it happens a matter of weeks after an election. This year, for example, many citizens will have voted in local, devolved, or police and crime commissioner elections in May, the European Union referendum in June, and perhaps even a by-election as well. When the annual canvass takes place between July and December, however, they will solemnly be sent fresh inquiries about their registration status. Only 20% of households will have changed over the course of a year, so the majority of canvass activity is entirely fruitless; 80% of the population will be “no change” on the electoral register.

That heavily bureaucratic process stifles innovation and throttles new and more digital approaches at birth. From knowing the local area or from having access to other local council data, EROs might already know that Mrs Smith, who has been living at Acacia Avenue in Little Dribbling for the past 50 years, has not pulled up sticks since the previous month’s election. Yet if Mrs Smith fails to respond to her first HEF, she will receive two more letters and a visit, because they are legally required. I think we can all agree that that is simply not a good use of EROs’ resources or taxpayers’ money.

In passing, given recent innovations in online registration, electoral events such as the recent EU referendum may drive registration sharply upwards to new heights. Electoral registration officers are therefore telling me that the existing system of canvassing in advance of a poll, or immediately after one in the summer, may not be the best approach for the modern world.

We clearly need to move from an old-fashioned, paper-based, process-driven system to one that is flexible and digital, makes use of local data, and is focused on outcomes rather than outputs. The solution proposed, the impetus for which has come from EROs themselves, is to test alternative methods for conducting the annual canvass that are digital, cost-effective, modern and capable of securing the same or higher results than the existing process.

The pilots will take place in Birmingham, Ryedale and South Lakeland, as I said. In each area the EROs will be operating control groups and pilot groups, so that the results of the approaches may be rigorously evaluated. In Ryedale, which can be characterised as a predominantly rural area with a largely static population, pilot groups will receive household notification letters, rather than the usual household enquiry form. The HNL, sent by post, will list the details of everyone registered to vote in that household and will advise residents to take action only when the details shown are no longer up to date. They may take action to correct them, if necessary, by informing the ERO of changes over the internet or by phone. New residents will be asked to register online or invited to register by their ERO. The issuing of HNLs will be supported by awareness-raising activities in the media, on the council website and on social media.

In Birmingham and South Lakeland, electors’ registration details will first be compared against local data resources. Council data will be checked and when the details are found to match, households will be sent a household notification letter—by email where possible—to which electors will be required to respond only if changes are needed. The same process as in Ryedale will be gone through after that.

We have of course consulted the Electoral Commission on the pilot proposals. It has been very supportive of the plans and has been involved in the early stages of their development. Consultation has also taken place with the Association of Electoral Administrators and Solace—the Society of Local Authority Chief Executives and Senior Managers. That is in addition to the work we have been doing directly with interested councils, which have proposed many of the ideas being trialled in the pilots.

As we have discussed with the Electoral Commission, subject to the outcome of these pilots the Government’s intention is to make permanent legislative changes to the annual canvass. It is likely that we will look to launch a second round of canvass pilots in 2017 to trial other ideas too. Although the purpose of the pilots is to give EROs the space to innovate and test alternative, more effective approaches, I underline that the integrity of the register will be maintained throughout the pilots. Electoral registration officers have always had, and will continue to have, a duty under the Representation of the People Act 1983 to maintain the registers, and nothing in the order changes that. With that in mind, the Government believe that this statutory instrument is a crucial step towards improving the annual canvass and wider registration process, and I therefore commend it to the Committee.

--- Later in debate ---

[John Penrose]

I will endeavour to respond to the points raised by the hon. Member for Lancaster and Fleetwood. I start by saying that I completely agree that the so-called missing millions—people who have never been on the electoral register—is indeed a national scandal. There are some groups that are woefully under-registered and therefore woefully under-represented in our democracy. I hope that we can all agree, on a cross-party basis, that that needs to be put right. In fact, I think it is stronger and better if we can agree on that on a cross-party basis, because it will reassure people, whichever under-represented group they may be in, that this is not something in which one particular party has a party political axe to grind for its electoral advantage; it is something that is right for democracy, no matter what. If we can make common cause—I am pleased to hear that we are—we can make progress.

The hon. Lady is absolutely right to point out that some BME groups are woefully under-represented. She mentioned young black males in particular, but there are other groups as well. It is interesting to note that in some areas some BME groups are over-represented—not in terms of there being too many of them, but because their representation is above the national average. That is to be welcomed. There is nothing necessarily linked to being part of the BME community that means they must be under-represented or that they are necessarily hard to reach. Different approaches need to apply to different communities within the BME classification. A tailored approach is needed for each, because the problems are clearly not the same in every case.

The hon. Lady also mentioned other groups. Students are frequently cited, but they are actually an example of a much broader category of people who live in short-term rented accommodation, for which levels of registration are a great deal lower. That is not necessarily because people do not want to register, but because, as a practical matter, it is relatively difficult for the local electoral registration officer to keep up with people who move quite regularly. They may therefore lose track of those people, who will drop off the register at that point.

There is one other group that is by far the largest, in terms of numbers, and also the least well-represented on the register in terms of percentage registration: expatriate voters. We currently have a couple million ex-pats who have been living abroad for less than 15 years. They are legally entitled to vote but only something like 5% of them are currently registered. That is a huge scandal. It is actually far worse than any of the other groups we have been talking about, and in some cases worse than several of them put together. We need to ensure that they are included in any of our calculations.

The hon. Lady specifically asked how we will evaluate the success or failure of some of those canvass pilots. Clearly not all of them will be successful. I mentioned that local authorities will be running control groups as well as pilot groups, so these will be properly controlled experiments that can be used to compare those groups within the same area or within neighbouring areas where the new process has been applied. The outcomes and results will be independently evaluated by the Electoral Commission to ensure that an independent view is taken. It will want to be as rigorous and scientific in its approach as possible, and we will therefore learn a great deal about what does and does not work.

Another idea that we are considering is effectively to set up an online academy where the results of these pilots and others will be published in a transparent fashion, so that everyone can see which bits worked and which did not. That will be of interest not only to us as elected parliamentarians, but to electoral registration officers elsewhere in the country. They will be able to look at what has happened in Birmingham, Ryedale or wherever and see which techniques might be useful and they might want to copy. They will be able to see the detail, the methodology applied and the outcomes, and they will publish their results when they try it, too, therefore creating a virtuous circle of learning.

[Jim Fitzpatrick (Poplar and Limehouse) (Lab)]

The Minister and I have debated the anomalies in Tower Hamlets before, where there have been accusations of electoral fraud and so on. How will the Electoral Commission accommodate those anomalies into the overall scheme of things to make sure that the results are not skewed and that they provide a result that is of benefit to local authorities in understanding the best way to go forward?

[John Penrose]

The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right. We have debated this in the past, and the only point on which I disagree with his comments is that we are now talking not just about accusations of electoral fraud, but about actual convictions. The situation is a great deal worse than people might otherwise think.

[Jim Fitzpatrick]

I was not defending them.

[John Penrose]

I appreciate that the hon. Gentleman was not defending them at all; he is pursuing the need to improve things. The answer to his question is that, because we are trialling these different ideas with control groups—it is not quite a randomised control trial, but it is the closest we can get to a genuinely scientific method in these situations—we should be able to compare places in which they have and have not been tried. The differences will be readily apparent and will be auditable and accessible to those elsewhere in the country, if we go ahead with the idea of an online academy.

The hon. Member for Lancaster and Fleetwood asked what would happen if somebody’s email address was out of date, and whether they would get no contact from the local electoral registration officer as a result. I mentioned in my opening remarks that the initial household notification letter in these trials will be sent by post and will land on the doormat at a physical address. Follow-ups can then be done online or in some other way, but the initial contact will still happen by post.

In the two areas where the trials will be backed up by local council data, if there is no follow-up contact and the local electoral registration officer knows, for example, that someone is on the council tax database but is not responding in a particular area, they can then focus their resources and efforts on that address because there is likely to be somebody there who is not responding and is not registered. Incidentally, it may be that somebody is not responding because they are not a legitimate voter—they might be a foreign national and therefore ineligible to vote—but it is important for the electoral registration officer to pursue that point to a satisfactory resolution if they know from other records that somebody is there.

I hope that has answered the points we have been dealing with and reassured everybody, and that we can therefore approve the draft order forthwith.

Question put and agreed to.

Automatic Registration: UK Elections

John Penrose Excerpts

Wednesday 29th June 2016 Westminster Hall

[The Parliamentary Secretary, Cabinet Office (John Penrose)]

It is a pleasure to have you looking after us this afternoon and to serve under your sure guidance, Mr Howarth. I congratulate the hon. Member for Midlothian (Owen Thompson) on bringing forward this extremely important issue. It is tempting in such moments, when the entire world is running around with its hair on fire, worrying about all sorts of other admittedly incredibly urgent, big problems, to forget that there are some important critical pieces of democratic plumbing that need to be attended to, no matter what else is going on. I congratulate the hon. Gentleman on not losing sight of that essential, fundamental truth. I will try to make sure I leave him with a couple of minutes at the end to respond or sum up if he wishes.

A number of important points have been made. I have always promised myself that if I ever start quoting my own speeches, I will know that it is time to leave. I promise not to do that, but hon. Members might want to have a look at a speech I made at Policy Exchange about a year ago. What I said was very much along the lines of some of the criticisms that have been levelled at the voter registration system. What we have is a system that is, to put it charitably, in transition. Some good work has been done. The system of online registration is new and, by any account, an awful lot better than what went before, even though it was so popular that it fell over rather embarrassingly just before the registration deadline. There have been changes, but we are still battling with the problem that a vast proportion of our registration process is designed for an analogue age. It is based on an old-fashioned approach that is paper-based and process-driven, rather than focused on outcomes and anything that is remotely digital. Clearly, as we have heard from right across the political spectrum, a huge amount needs to be done to update it.

I am delighted that the hon. Member for Edinburgh East (Tommy Sheppard), who speaks for the Scottish National party, pointed out that there is clearly a substantial cross-party backing for progress here. He is absolutely right. As a number of people have said, for this to work well, it will be best of all if it can be done on a cross-party, non-partisan basis. Voter registration is something that we all, as democrats, ought to be in favour of and ought to try to push forward. It works better, in combating voter disillusionment, which all hon. Members mentioned, if people can see that not just one party or the other is pushing this; otherwise, they will assume that that one party has a particular axe to grind. It is far more powerful if everybody says the same thing and sings from the same hymn sheet. I am particularly pleased that we are all on the same page.

I would like to talk a little about what we are already doing. I am delighted to tell the hon. Member for Midlothian that I think we are heading in a very similar direction. There are some definitional questions and important points of detail that we need to bottom out, but we are heading to a very similar destination. Last month, I introduced a statutory instrument in this place that began the very early steps in that process. It contained a couple of very modest proposals, which are actually quite significant, to begin to digitise our process. One of them was simply to make it possible to use emails, rather than having to send a snail-mail, old-fashioned paper letter, when confirming whether someone is being registered. That might sound like a really basic change, but it required a legal change in this place. We had to pilot an SI, which contained a number of other measures, to take it through. It will make a very significant alteration to the speed, efficiency and cost-effectiveness of registration. I hope that it gives everybody here an idea of where we are starting from and how much further we have to travel.

I can also confirm to the hon. Gentleman that a further SI is due to come to this place on Monday that will take us a couple more steps down the road. I am not going to over-claim on this, but it is moving in the direction in which everybody has said they want to move. On Monday, we will talk about changes that will be piloted, to begin with, in three local authorities: Ryedale, Birmingham and South Lakeland. Following up on the idea that localism and devolution are important sources of ideas, many of these ideas have been proposed by local authority electoral registration officers, who are on the frontline and understand which bits of the process still work and which are, frankly, a waste of time and cause them to chew their arms off in frustration because they are so slow and inefficient. They are the ones coming up with many of the most creative and practical proposals. We are encouraging them to submit ideas and are trying to take those forward. We will look at the issue in more detail in Monday’s statutory instrument debate. They are talking about changing from a household inquiry form arriving on the doorstep to check who should be registered to vote to something called a household notification letter that says, “We think the following people are in this place and should be registered; please tell us if not.” That change in the process would be far more efficient, would not require the same degree of response and could be done much more electronically.

In two of the three local authority pilot areas, we will be matching data using local data sources, so that we can focus effort and not require local officers to knock on doors when they already know who lives behind those doors, which is clearly a massive waste of effort and resources. Those resources could be better targeted on places where we do not know who lives there. If we know that somebody has been living somewhere for the past 20 years, there is no point going and knocking on the door to confirm it—why not take that time and effort and go and spend it in the block of flats at the other end of the road, where there are huge gaps in the register and there is much more of a problem? That is a step in the right direction—but it is only a step. We are still only in the foothills of the transition that hon. Members have been talking about, which I completely endorse.

We do need to be careful, because the idea of automatic registration is used, understandably, quite widely and loosely. We all mean slightly different things when we talk about it. Some of those things are crashingly obvious and desirable, and we should get on and do them tomorrow. Other things are potentially quite dangerous. Most people would agree that it is sensible to use more local data, as we are doing in a couple of the local pilots, to inform what we are doing on registration. Not only does that say an awful lot more about who is behind the door, because they are paying council tax or have a car-parking permit or a library card—there are many different forms of local data—but it allows us to focus efforts elsewhere, where we do not have data or there are significant question marks over their quality or veracity and we know there is further work to do to fill in the gaps.

The hon. Member for Edinburgh East anticipated my likely objections to automatic registration, or to data-driven registration, if I can be a bit more specific about what we might collectively mean here. I am happy to say that I am not going to raise any of the issues he suggested. He ran through a sort of checklist of standard Whitehall excuses about why we cannot do things. It usually starts with, “It is too expensive.” If that is not true, people say that we are doing it already. The third is that the IT will not handle it—that is a common one. It is the equivalent, for Star Trek fans, of Scotty saying, “I cannae give you any more, Captain; the engines are going flat out already.” But those excuses will not work. The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right: we can and jolly well should do more here.

Using local data is essential, but it is difficult to work out which bits are reliable. The principle is widely accepted, I think, but it is difficult to find out which specific fields in which database give a robust data set that confirms that we know this person lives here and is eligible to vote. The hon. Member for Sheffield, Heeley (Louise Haigh) and the hon. Member for Edinburgh East noted that we need to be careful not to end up registering people who are certainly living in a residence, but may not be eligible to vote, either because they are foreign nationals and are not eligible to vote in the UK, or for some other reason. That would end up switching from a problem of missing millions—false negatives in the jargon—to a problem of false positives, where we are enrolling people who should not be on the roll at all. We must be confident that we are using reliable local data. There is an awful lot of crashingly detailed but absolutely essential work to do to make that happen.

When we have reached the point where we all agree that data-driven enrolment is sensible, we come to the question of the degree of data-driven automaticity that we are willing to accept. At the moment, we have an opt-in system, where people have to exercise their right to register to vote. A fundamental principle about individual electoral registration that I think all parties sign up to is that it is essential in a democracy that people say, “I want to use my right to vote,” but if they have said it once, we do not necessarily have to ask them year in, year out for the rest of their lives. They are democratically entitled to change their minds, but if they have said, “I want to exercise my right to register to vote,” it should just be a question of tracking when they move house and ensuring that we have got the address changes correct. That is easy to say and extremely difficult to do, but there should not be a permission issue thereafter. We need to address that piece as well.

There is a difference between an opt-in system, where we say, “We know you’re living there, but do you want to register?” and an opt-out system, which is one possibility, or a “we’re not even going to ask you” system, which is a bit more dangerous. Whether that is really acceptable in a free society is a bit more questionable; it is tricky in some respects from a civil liberties point of view.

Those are the sorts of questions that I would be delighted if we were sophisticated enough and had updated our system enough to start worrying about. At the moment, we can make huge progress just by doing the data. The 80:20 rule applies: we will get 80% of the benefit from getting the data stuff done as fast as we can. That will not be easy, because it is so detailed. I will be delighted when we have got to the point where we can say, “Well, how much of an opt-in or an opt-out system do we want to have?” because we will have made huge progress, and as has rightly been pointed out, there are so many groups in our society where the picture of registration is uneven—in many cases, from a social justice point of view, unjustly uneven.

Interestingly, the group that is both biggest and least well registered has not been mentioned by anyone: expatriates. Several million expat voters are currently legally eligible to vote. Their registration rate is something like 5%, and there are therefore several million expatriates who are legally enfranchised but are unregistered. That is the biggest single democratic outrage—in the words of the hon. Member for Edinburgh East—that we have, but there are many others. Some BME groups have very high registration rates, but others do not. Some disabled groups have very low registration rates, but others have better rates. Many people who live in short-term rental accommodation, including students, have problems, too.

There is a huge amount that we can do. I hope that I have both reassured the hon. Member for Midlothian and perhaps tempted him a little as I have shown a little bit of ankle about where we are trying to get to and where we would like to take this issue. I think that we have a degree of cross-party unanimity on the direction of travel and the amount of work that we can do. I hope that that is reassuring. I will not go into the parallel but separate problem of individual electoral registration, on which I disagree with almost everything that has been said—that is a different conversation and a much longer debate—but on this issue we can and should make common cause, and with any luck, with a degree of cross-party unanimity, we will be able to make progress.

Draft Representation of the People (England and Wales)(Amendment) Regulations 2016

John Penrose Excerpts

Tuesday 7th June 2016 General Committees

[The Parliamentary Secretary, Cabinet Office (John Penrose)]

I beg to move,

That the Committee has considered the draft Representation of the People (England and Wales) (Amendment) Regulations 2016.

I was going to start off, Sir Roger, by saying, “My, Madeleine, how you’ve changed,” but I thought better of it. It is a pleasure to see you in the Chair until Mrs Moon arrives. We look forward to making good progress under your firm and well-judged hand.

This instrument contains the first small steps towards the Government’s vision for a quicker, cheaper, more accurate, more complete and more digital system of electoral registration. The current system was designed in a pre-digital era and specifies analogue processes in huge detail rather than outcomes, which local councils could achieve far more effectively if they were allowed to use basic modern technologies such as email, or data that they already hold on local residents about everything from council tax to parking permits and library cards.

The result is the so-called missing millions, who are not registered to vote. Everyone will, I hope, have seen the huge efforts that are being made to get people to register to vote in the run-up to the EU referendum later this month, but we need to redesign the underlying system and processes if we are to prevent the same problems from recurring in future after the referendum. The instrument contains the first step towards that new world.

[Mr Gareth Thomas (Harrow West) (Lab/Co-op)]

The Minister has set out his grand vision and how this instrument fits into it, but what resources will be made available to electoral registration officers to take advantage of the new processes? Without those resources, all his great efforts may come to nothing.

[John Penrose]

I plan to come to some of the cost savings that will be made by doing some things more efficiently. These changes should be pretty much self-funding. In future, when other developments are announced, we may have to have that conversation and answer that question case by case. However, these changes, at least, should be self-funding. There are substantial savings to be made by being more efficient in these cases. I will try to give the hon. Gentleman some more detail so that he can see what I mean.

First, the redesign will be achieved by amending the individual electoral registration—IER—application forms to allow applicants to identify that they are the only person aged 16 or over resident at the address, and to provide discretion to electoral registration officers—EROs—as to when canvass forms must be sent where such information has been given. That means that they will not waste time and effort—returning to the question asked by the hon. Member for Harrow West—in following up people who no longer live at a particular address.

Secondly, the regulations will modernise the system of registration by enabling EROs to send invitations to register—ITRs—and ITR reminders by electronic means if they so wish. I apologise, Sir Roger, for all the three-letter acronyms we are dealing with. The provisions aim to reduce the potential for confusion for members of the public by cutting down on unnecessary ERO correspondence and contact, and to reduce the overall cost of registration and the administrative burden on councils. It is estimated that the single occupancy provision will reduce the overall cost of individual electoral registration by about £1.1 million, and the provision regarding email invitations to register by about £7 million per year.

[Jim McMahon (Oldham West and Royton) (Lab)]

I understand the argument about efficiency, but surely it would make sense to tie in with existing administration. For instance, surely a catch-all registration when people register for a council tax discount or housing benefit payments would be far more efficient than chasing people after the fact.

[John Penrose]

I will not trespass on your good nature, Sir Roger, by venturing too far beyond the remit of the measure before us, but the hon. Gentleman is absolutely right that there are further steps that we can, and hope to, take in due course, many of which will revolve around better use of data that are already held, as I mentioned in my opening remarks. There are steps that we plan to take. They are not in the regulations at the moment, but if the hon. Gentleman volunteers to come back for future debates on similar statutory instruments, I hope to make announcements about further improvements to the process.

The instrument will also allow an attester to an applicant’s identity to be registered in any local authority area in England and Wales. At present, both the attester and the applicant must be registered in the same local authority. The provision will assist applicants whose identity cannot be verified using the usual Department for Work and Pensions matching process, local data matching or documentary evidence and who must provide an attestation from a suitable reputable individual. The change will result in more eligible applicants becoming registered to vote.

[Mrs Madeleine Moon in the Chair]

In addition, the regulations make a number of minor amendments. Regulation 9 corrects an error in the existing regulations concerning the requirement to provide fresh signatures following rejection of a postal voting statement. Regulation 10 makes a technical amendment to a regulation concerning the rejected postal vote provisions at Greater London Authority elections. Regulation 11 corrects an oversight in the current regulations and adds the Local Government Boundary Commission for England to the list of organisations entitled to receive a free copy of the full electoral register. The regulations make a consequential amendment that changes the name of the Local Government Boundary Commission for Wales, which is entitled to a copy of the register from Welsh EROs, to the Local Democracy and Boundary Commission for Wales.

Finally, on the topic of technical amendments, Mrs Moon —good to see you—I draw the Committee’s attention to a minor error in the draft regulations as laid. The reference in regulation 8(c) to paragraph 3(aa)(ii) should be to paragraph (3)(za)(ii)—a tiny but apparently important amendment. We have consulted with the counsels to the Joint Committee on Statutory Instruments in relation to that and, owing to the minor nature of the error, they are content for it to be corrected when the instrument is made.

The Electoral Commission has been consulted about the instrument. It was given details of the timing of the electoral registration officers’ ability to elect to suppress one canvass for single occupancy households. Generally, the maximum period for a property not receiving a canvass form will be 18 months, and the EROs will have discretion to contact properties more frequently if they feel it relevant. For example, many electoral registration officers have discretion to contact properties before an election to ensure their register is as complete as possible. The Scottish Government also asked for similar clarification.

The Information Commissioner’s Office was also consulted, and it asked about the type of information to be provided by the applicant about other individuals at a particular address. We have provided reassurance that the applicant will not have to provide any personal details about any other person resident at a property. The ICO also noted that the single occupancy information is not mandatory and that it expects the statement to that effect to be clear and prominent in order that applicants are fully aware that the information is not required. The Information Commissioner’s advice was passed on to the Electoral Commission, to be taken into account during the form design process.

The Cabinet Office expert panel of electoral administrators was involved in the development of the cost optimisation measures and was supportive. The Scottish Government suggested that the attestation provision should be extended to allow an electoral registration officer in England and Wales to seek assurances from EROs in Scotland and Northern Ireland. We responded that, rather than placing a burden on Scottish and Northern Irish officials from which those officials could not currently benefit, we would develop joint policy on cross-border attestations with the relevant Governments in due course. I can confirm that I have had correspondence recently with Mr FitzPatrick in the Scottish Government.

In conclusion, the Government believe that the Statutory Instrument before the Committee today makes some useful, largely technical changes as a result of realising the Government’s vision for future electoral registration. It is the start of a process rather than the completion of it and there is further to go, but I hope that the Committee will support this on the basis that it is a sensible beginning of an important journey.

--- Later in debate ---

[John Penrose]

I will endeavour to respond to each of the points that the shadow Minister has made. First, though, I welcome her support and her party’s support for these measures as they stand. It is particularly important when we are talking about electoral registration that we have a cross-party attempt to persuade and encourage people, no matter how they plan to vote and whichever side of the fence they may be on, whether in the EU referendum or in a party political general election, to register to vote and to use their democratic voice. In fact, so keen am I on cross-party support that I even retweeted one of the hon. Lady’s tweets encouraging voter registration a week or two ago—I am endeavouring to practise what I preach.

The shadow Minister asked some specific questions. She asked whether paper copies of the forms would still be available, and the straightforward answer is yes, they will. We are aiming to ensure that the process is media-neutral, if I can put it that way, depending on how people can best be approached. Some people prefer email—many do—but many still prefer paper, so we need to provide the flexibility for electoral registration officers to use either method, to suit the local demography and unregistered electorate.

The hon. Lady also asked about alternatives to national insurance numbers on the registration website. I can set her mind at rest: we are already doing precisely as she rightly suggests. In general, national insurance numbers are for many the simplest, quickest and most convenient way of proving their identity, but they are far from the only acceptable method. For those who do not have a national insurance number readily to hand and have to look it up—they may not be in a convenient place to do that—other forms of ID are available, should they be required.

[Gloria De Piero]

Clarity on the form is absolutely essential. Some do not realise—I know that it is possible—that in some cases, student numbers are acceptable. Other councils accept other forms of identification. What is important is that there are universally acceptable forms of identification, and that it is clear that they are universally acceptable on that online form.

[John Penrose]

The hon. Member for Ashfield is absolutely right. Some of those alternatives are prompted for later on in the website user journey, to use the jargon. If someone cannot provide their national insurance number, other alternatives are listed. For example, documentary evidence can include passports and driving licences. It can involve attestation. That is usually the most time-consuming for all concerned, but if someone runs out of all other alternatives, they can get someone of reputable standing to say that they are who they say. Local data can also be used, because many councils have some information that they can use. She is absolutely right that clarity is helpful, but for most people—not all—national insurance numbers are usually a very good place to start.

[Margaret Beckett (Derby South) (Lab)]

I do not want to detain the Committee, but national insurance numbers are not necessarily a terribly reliable guide. I understand exactly the point he is making, but in my case, I have been fortunate enough to have been the Member of Parliament for my constituency for 33 years and to have lived in the same house throughout, but when the process was first started I was asked whether I could prove my identity on the grounds that the Department for Work and Pensions said it had never heard of me and so far as it was concerned, I did not exist. It had been paying my pension for a few years, too.

[John Penrose]

That means there is little hope for any of us. I assure the right hon. Lady that I think we got to well over nine out of 10 electors in the transition from the old system to the new individual electoral registration. They were able to be confirmed through checks with the DWP, but she is absolutely right that there are some cases where that cannot be done. In some cases, a partial match comes back, and the level and weight of evidence that can be provided is not satisfactory. In those situations, electoral registration officers will come back and ask for further evidence. I am sorry that she was put through that, particularly since she should be one of the more recognisable local residents in her area, if I can put it politely.

The hon. Member for Ashfield also asked what we were doing to promote and encourage registration among young people. She and I have corresponded several times on that already. There are a number of things that we could do—she came up with a couple of examples in her remarks—to do with some of the schools proposals. Some are being used in Northern Ireland, although there are equivalents that are not quite the same in the mainland UK. There are also things to do with students. Many of those ideas are helpful and useful, and we are considering them in the broader programme which I alluded to, but they are far from the only things that can be done.

We are all aware of some under-represented groups because they are people who knock on our doors regularly, or we encounter them when we are out canvassing or they have a particularly vocal lobbying group, but we need to be careful to be aware that other under-represented groups are perhaps not as politically visible, and we should not forget them. Clearly, we need to be as even-handed as we can if we are to ensure that our democracy is firmly based.

One group that people tend to forget has the worst level of registration of all, and that is overseas electors. Those who have been overseas for less than 15 years are legally entitled to vote under the current franchise, and at the last election only 5% of them were registered to vote. Looking at some of the figures for some of the other groups, the hon. Member for Ashfield is absolutely right. In the case of students, for example, 28% are not registered to vote; 71% or 72% are. However, 95% of British citizens living abroad who are legally entitled to vote are not registered. We need to make sure that we are even-handed and that we are giving everybody the best possible opportunity to join in. I can promise everybody here that we are looking at a range of options, including some of the ones that the hon. Lady has mentioned, and we are trying to rank them by how much impact they are going to have and how fast, and to get through as many of them as we can in due course.

The hon. Member for Ashfield’s final question was about the boundary review and the data. One of the things which the last piece of primary legislation on the boundary review did was reduce the frequency or length of time between boundary reviews. It used to be every 10 years and sometimes even longer. That is now going to be reduced to five years. That will mean that a process which was always based on a snapshot and was always therefore to a degree out of date will be much less so in future. It is still not perfect, but it is a great deal better than it used to be.

Furthermore, we are talking about a register which, as a result of individual electoral registration, will now be more accurate than it has ever been, although it could still be more accurate. It is still 84% or 85% complete, and still needs to be made a great deal more complete, along the lines of some of the things we are now doing. I hope we are on a trend of improving accuracy for the data which inform not only our polling day get-out-and-vote operations and eligibility to vote but also the accuracy of the constituency boundaries on which we all depend. I hope that answers the hon. Lady’s questions.

Question put and agreed to.

Indemnity for Petition Officers (Recall Petitions)

John Penrose Excerpts

Thursday 26th May 2016 Written Statements

[The Parliamentary Secretary, Cabinet Office (John Penrose)]

It is normal practice, when a Government Department proposes to undertake a contingent liability in excess of £300,000 for which there is no specific statutory authority, for the Department concerned to present to Parliament a minute giving particulars of the liability created and explaining the circumstances; and to refrain from incurring the liability until 14 parliamentary sitting days after the issue of the minute, except in cases of special urgency.

Insurance for specific elections has historically provided extremely poor value for money, with claims made under such cover being smaller than the cost of the insurance premium. An indemnity therefore provides better value for money and this approach has been taken for elections since 2009.

On this basis, I have today laid a minute setting out the Cabinet Office’s proposal to indemnify petition officers for claims that arise out of the conduct of their duties in relation to the Recall of MPs Act 2015. This Act requires a recall petition to be held if one of the provisions under section 1 of the Act is met in relation to an MP. The responsibility for the conduct of the petition will rest with the petition officer for the constituency in which the petition is to be held. Section 6 of the Recall of MPs Act 2015 provides that every constituency is to have a petition officer for a recall petition and identifies who the petition officer is for each constituency: in England and Wales, it is the person who is the acting returning officer for UK Parliamentary elections for the relevant constituency; in Scotland it is the returning officer for UK parliamentary elections for the relevant constituency. The petition officer is an independent entity, separate from both central and local government.

We will also provide a certificate confirming that we will bear any employee liabilities of the returning officer which would otherwise be covered by insurance procured under the Employers’ Liability (Compulsory Insurance) Act 1969. An indemnity was previously provided by the Home Office to returning officers for the 2012 Police and Crime Commissioner elections and Cabinet Office regularly provides indemnities for UK parliamentary and European parliamentary elections. HM Treasury has approved the indemnity in principle.

Attachments can be viewed online at:

http://www.parliament.uk/business/publications/written-questions-answers-statements/written-statement/Commons/2016-05-26/HCWS35/

[HCWS35]

Cabinet Office

John Penrose Excerpts

Thursday 12th May 2016 Ministerial Corrections

The following is an extract from the Adjournment debate on 18 April 2016.

[John Penrose]

I hope the hon. Gentleman will appreciate that I cannot comment on specific details of ongoing investigations. As an experienced parliamentarian and former Minister, he will understand the constraints of what I can and cannot say. He is, however, doing entirely the right thing. He mentioned that he was about to have discussions and meetings with Commissioner Hogan-Howe and perhaps others. I hope that they can provide him with further reassurances about what is going on with the investigations. I understand that there are still investigations into grant fraud, for example, in parallel with the ongoing investigations into electoral fraud. They perhaps cannot be made public, but he might be able to get further reassurances.

[Official Report, 18 April 2016, Vol. 608, c. 756.]

Letter of correction from John Penrose:

An error has been identified in the response I gave to the hon. Member for Poplar and Limehouse (Jim Fitzpatrick).

The correct response should have been:

[John Penrose]

I hope the hon. Gentleman will appreciate that I cannot comment on specific details of ongoing investigations. As an experienced parliamentarian and former Minister, he will understand the constraints of what I can and cannot say. He is, however, doing entirely the right thing. He mentioned that he was about to have discussions and meetings with Commissioner Hogan-Howe and perhaps others. I hope that they can provide him with further reassurances about what is going on with the investigations. I understand that there are still investigations into grant fraud, for example, in parallel with the closed investigations into electoral fraud. They perhaps cannot be made public, but he might be able to get further reassurances.

Anti-corruption Summit

John Penrose Excerpts

Tuesday 3rd May 2016 Westminster Hall

[Nigel Mills (Amber Valley) (Con)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered the Anti-Corruption Summit.

Hon. Members, members of the public and people watching this debate will not be surprised to learn that tackling corruption is one of the biggest items on the agenda this year. Barely a day goes by without it hitting the news. As co-chair of the all-party group on anti-corruption, I was keen to hold this debate so we can air the issues that the Government hope to tackle in the important summit next week and subject the summit to parliamentary scrutiny.

I thank the Backbench Business Committee for awarding me this debate. Unusually for a Back-Bench debate, we are not here to criticise the Government. We may have some suggestions about how they can be a bit stronger, but we are here to congratulate the Prime Minister and the Government for holding the summit, for placing this issue at the top of the agenda and for consistently championing transparency and accountability as enablers of good governance. We want real actions and agreements from the summit next week, so that those important things can be taken forward and enforced. I will set the scene and explain how I see the agenda, and then I will ask the Minister some questions about how the summit will work, who will be there, what the key Government aims are and how we can enforce the actions that are agreed.

In next Thursday’s summit, international partners will, we hope, agree a package of practical steps to expose corruption, punish the perpetrators, support the victims and drive out the culture of corruption. That is clearly timely, given what we have seen in recent weeks and months. It is difficult to measure the impact of corruption, but the scale has never been more obvious: the FIFA scandal, the Unaoil leaks and the recent Panama papers gave us a glimpse of the far-reaching and egregious damage that bribery, fraud, grand corruption and tax evasion can cause. As the Prime Minister said last July,

“Corruption is one of the greatest enemies of progress in our time.”

Bribes, tax evasion and grand corruption destabilise development, keep the vulnerable in poverty, add significantly to the cost of doing business and fund terrorism. We all agree that we need to find a way of fixing those things.

Next week’s extraordinary summit is outside the usual gamut of United Nations, G20, G7 or even OECD processes. It is a one-off, stand-alone, unique summit, and we are all keen to understand how any actions that are agreed can be enforced. We do not want just warm words next week; real action must result from them.

It is right that the UK takes the lead on this issue, because we are uniquely exposed to corruption. Our status as a pre-eminent global financial centre and the unfortunate financial secrecy touted by our overseas territories and Crown dependencies make the UK seem a safe haven for the proceeds of corruption and the individuals and organisations that facilitate and benefit from financial crime and tax evasion. We ought to recognise that.

When MPs go around the world and look at the issues that developing countries face, we often think, “Isn’t it great that we’re not suffering from that level of day-to-day corruption? We don’t have to bribe public officials to get the service we want. We are not at risk of being stopped by the police and being asked for a charge to keep driving.” But the UK is not completely corruption-free. As a big financial centre, we are very exposed to corruption, and we are used as a way to launder money and hide the proceeds of corruption and crime elsewhere in the world.

It is right that we praise what the Government have done in that regard. We will soon be one of the first countries in the world, and the first in the European Union, to have a public register of beneficial ownership. That is a real step forward, which will allow us all to see who owns the companies that operate in the UK. I am sure that it will give us some extremely useful and interesting information. We all welcome the recent consultation on extending that transparency to property ownership. We also welcome the new anti-money laundering action plan, which, if fully implemented, will bolster the regulators’ enforcement powers and their ability to identify and freeze suspicious transactions.

Of course, we have issues with our overseas territories, and if we cannot convince them to get on board with this agenda, our reputation for being a truly anti-corruption jurisdiction will not be intact. As the Panama papers show, secret company ownership makes most cases of large-scale corruption, money laundering and terrorist financing possible. Without secrecy, much of that could not be done.

A World Bank review of more than 200 of the biggest corruption cases between 1980 and 2010 found that more than 70% relied on shadow entities that hide ownership. Sadly, company service providers in the UK and the Crown dependencies are second on the list of providing the shell entities that facilitate those awful crimes. This summit and our international reputation will prevail only if we secure commitments from all our overseas territories and dependencies to introduce public registers of beneficial ownership and strip companies of the secrecy that allows them to hide the proceeds of crime, corruption and tax evasion.

Success will depend on whether we tackle the risks that are somewhat closer to home. Trillions of pounds flow through the UK’s financial system every year, and sadly some of those transactions are less than clean. The National Crime Agency recently estimated that tens to hundreds of billions of pounds-worth of corrupt and illicit funds are laundered through the UK each year. Last week, the acting chief executive of the Financial Conduct Authority appeared before the Treasury Committee, and when asked whether the UK system is suitably hostile to money launderers, she could only reply, “We could do better.” Clearly, we could and must do better. The laundered funds that are used to buy property here get into the system through the secrecy that our overseas territories allow. It is harder to spot and stop such funds once they are in the system, so we need to prevent them from getting there in the first place.

We must tackle money laundering in the UK. We welcome the action plan, but having 27 different institutions to supervise the anti-money laundering rules in the bodies that they regulate is far too many. They cannot have a real picture of what is going on, what action is needed, the trends and who is not complying. Will the Minister say whether the Government plan to find a way to reduce the number of supervisors, so that we can be confident that the new rules and those that are already in place will be enforced?

Law enforcement authorities identify three sectors that do not adequately report suspicious activity: the legal sector, accountancy and estate agency. Property ownership is a topical issue, and the fact that only 0.05% of all suspicious activity reports came from estate agents in 2013-14 suggests that action is needed to make that sector transparent. Recent research from Transparency International and investigations from Global Witness show how London’s property market is used for corrupt ends. More than 36,000 properties in London are owned by companies registered in offshore jurisdictions, and almost 10% of the properties in Westminster are owned by anonymous companies. We clearly cannot allow that situation to continue.

Anonymity has a clear link to corruption. More than 75% of corruption cases involving property investigated by the Metropolitan police’s proceeds of corruption unit involved anonymous companies registered in secrecy jurisdictions, 78% of which were registered in the UK’s overseas territories or Crown dependencies. This huge problem is sadly centred in territories over which we have some influence, so it is imperative that we produce some action from them.

Senior figures at the National Crime Agency have reported that corrupt investment in London’s most expensive properties is driving up house prices across the board. So money laundering not only is a problem for the rich and powerful, but has an impact on everyday life here in London. The longer we allow London to be a kleptocrats’ playground, the worse off we are making ordinary people.

We have all those statistics to recount, and an APG inquiry is ongoing at which we have heard many anecdotes about how British firms working overseas are losing out on contracts to unscrupulous firms based in countries that do not have the same regulations and rules, and do not play fair, as we do. We are losing jobs and income here, because other countries around the world are not following the rules that they ought to be. It is right for us to make a stand. We do not want businesses bribing their way into contracts around the world. Where we find that happening, businesses and their executives will be punished, and serious action will be taken. We will not turn a blind eye to it. Recently, Ernst and Young’s 2016 global fraud survey of senior executives found that 98% of UK respondents believed that it was important to know who ultimately owns and controls the entities with which they do business. So this is not a minority interest; the business world agrees that we should all know about such things.

Turning to the summit next week, will the Minister confirm exactly which countries are attending and the level of their representation? How many of the overseas territories and Crown dependencies will be present? Perhaps he will list which ones will not be. According to the recent statement, the two territories that had not agreed to have even a closed register of official ownership were Guernsey, which had some excuse to do with having elections and so could not agree—has any progress been made?—and Anguilla. Has some sense prevailed in that small part of the world? Has it seen the light?

[The Parliamentary Secretary, Cabinet Office (John Penrose)]

I will try to answer the broader questions at the end, but I can confirm that Anguilla has signed up. Guernsey’s election was last week, so we expect discussions to begin in earnest very promptly.

[Nigel Mills]

At least we have all the territories over that first hurdle.

Next week, the important thing will be to get real commitments on beneficial ownership and a timeframe for the register to be transparent and public, so everyone can see who owns every company established in a jurisdiction. For law-enforcement providers to be able to find such information in a timely way may be of some use, but we also want everyone to be able to search the register—for example, campaign groups could trace right through the system and see who owns properties. I suspect that law enforcement does not have the resources, sadly, to do that proactively, whereas sunlight and transparency will give us far more progress than a closed register ever could.

Will the Minister confirm whether the summit agenda includes discussion of a certain time by which all those territories will have a publicly accessible register of who owns companies and, preferably, of trusts in the jurisdiction? I accept that trusts are more complicated, but we need to see some progress on them as well.

Last autumn, I attended a meeting at which the Government’s anti-corruption champion, my right hon. Friend the Member for Brentwood and Ongar (Sir Eric Pickles)—sadly, he cannot be present today—confirmed that the Prime Minister was pretty determined to get overseas territories on board with a public register. The words the anti-corruption champion used were

“through legislation, guidance or naked pressure”.

I am not sure whether the summit counts as guidance or naked pressure, but if those do not work, what other options do the Government have? My right hon. Friend said “legislation”—his word—so will the Government put that on the table? At some point, will they take action if the territories will not go as far as we want them to, or is that completely off the table?

What other major countries are turning up? Are the Americans sending anyone next week, because they clearly have an important role to play in sorting out the world financial system? Those of us who would like to see greater action on global tax avoidance realise that the Americans have a real and vital role in that situation, so are they turning up next week?

If some actions are agreed next week and, as we hope, they are specific and have a real timeframe, how will they be enforced? Presumably, there will be no binding global agreement, but are the Government conscious of that? We do not want to hear warm words and promises that have been made before, followed by years of drift; we want real, concrete actions that are reviewed, with a timescale and ways to enforce progress.

If there is an agreement next week and some territories subsequently resile from it, what actions will the Government propose taking to convince the territories otherwise? It is not encouraging to see the Government announce that everyone has agreed to a closed register, and then senior people from some of our overseas territories glory in being able to say, “We’ve won. We’ve got everything we wanted out of this,” implying that it will be business as usual—presumably, not what we were aiming for. We want any agreement next week to be meaningful and strong, not just hot air.

With those thoughts, I wish the Government and the Minister well at the summit next week. We hope that they will come out with a strong and binding agreement, which can take the agenda forward towards finding ways of materially reducing the amount of corrupt money that flows around the world, especially into the UK. Nations around the world should, rightly, keep the money that they earn and have the tax revenues necessary to grow their economies. Everyone throughout the world should be able to see our financial system moving in the direction of being open, transparent and honest, rather than corrupt.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Parliamentary Secretary, Cabinet Office (John Penrose)]

Sir Edward, it is always a pleasure to have you in charge, ensuring that we behave ourselves during our debates. I join the chorus of plaudits for my hon. Friend the Member for Amber Valley (Nigel Mills) and the hon. Member for Newcastle upon Tyne North (Catherine McKinnell), who have done so much to raise the issue as co-chairs of the all-party group on anti-corruption. I particularly thank my hon. Friend the Member for Amber Valley for organising this debate.

We have had a series of extremely carefully considered and very wide-ranging speeches, not only from a former Chair of the Select Committee on Public Accounts—you are one yourself, Sir Edward—but from members of the Select Committee on Culture, Media and Sport and many others. The debate shows the breadth of concern and the issues into which the tentacles of corruption can spread—everything from sport to international aid to public contracts and property ownership in Baker Street, among other places in this country and elsewhere.

I think that there is cross-party agreement that it is important for us all to remember—although I am pleased by and welcome everybody’s recognition that the Prime Minister and others have been instrumental in taking forward the agenda—that there is a great deal more to do. The effects of corruption are not felt only in other countries. My hon. Friend the Member for Amber Valley was right to say that, although we may be blessedly free of some of the more commonplace and in-your-face forms of petty corruption, such as people demanding bribes for everyday public services, that does not mean that any society, ours included, is safe.

The effects are widespread and pernicious. Corruption raises the costs of doing business, through bribes and friction costs. That is true not only in the UK but for our exporters trying to get contracts and trying to win jobs for our workers in exporting overseas, and consumers must put up with poorer quality goods, because if goods are purchased through a corrupt process, the chances are that they will be second best, either in quality or in value for money. Again, everybody suffers. Corruption drives up prices, not just in the UK—we heard the example of property prices here—but around the world as well. Most importantly, it is a fundamentally unjust way to run not only a country but global society in general. People cannot be sure that what they see on their TV screens and hear from their leaders or, indeed, their bosses is correct or fair. We are talking about a piece of social justice, so there is a huge amount to do.

In the limited time left, I will try to respond to some of the points raised, although I want to leave a couple of moments for my hon. Friend the Member for Amber Valley to sum up. He asked specifically what would be on the agenda for the summit and precisely who would be there. I can give him some guidance on that, but obviously, these matters are still under discussion, so I cannot give him a running commentary. He rightly pointed out that the summit’s overall aims are to expose corruption, punish those who perpetrate it and drive out the culture of corruption.

We have had a number of submissions from Members about how, for example, asset recovery could be improved; the right hon. Member for Barking (Dame Margaret Hodge) suggested confiscation, but other suggestions were made for other kinds of asset recovery as well. Suggestions were also made about better opportunities for whistleblowing and better governance in sport, which has been a potential channel for distributing ill-gotten gains around the world. All those things need to be discussed and will, I am sure, be on the agenda, but its precise details will be released nearer the time.

I can give my hon. Friend the Member for Amber Valley a little detail about who is invited. Again, the final guest list will be released nearer the time, but I can confirm that we have invited the G20 countries, leading international organisations in the field, including the UN, the World Bank, the OECD and the International Monetary Fund, and a wide range of other countries—I think this is where he was going; we will have more details, I am sure, as we get closer to the day—that are leading the fight against global corruption or have a pivotal role to play. I understand that John Kerry from the US will be there as well.

I should mention that there will be an event the day before with a broader invitation list, which will be run by the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills, for example. We will invite a number of companies and other non-governmental organisations, because there are many NGOs, companies and sectoral organisations that understand the reputational damage that corruption can cause. We must harness those who are willing to take a lead on the issue to set the right tone and take part in the three aims that I spoke of, particularly driving out corruption. Their co-operation and help will be essential in setting a tone for others to follow, not just in political leadership but in commercial and, potentially, third sector leadership as well. I hope that I have given my hon. Friend some extra detail. I am sure that more will come, and that he will want to hear more about it.

The right hon. Member for Barking asked whether we would be willing to use last resort powers. To summarise, they are a last resort. We do not want to have to use them; we want to ensure that people come as far as possible without any need for them. However, it is clear from all the submissions, suggestions and speeches that we have heard that there is a huge thirst and desire for the agenda to be taken further. We in this country are not unique in wanting to do so. We have taken some important leading steps, but we are far from the only ones who need to be involved, and far from the only ones who are. The issue needs to be taken forward on an international scale. The UK absolutely needs to play its part, and we have heard the reasons why we, particularly given our overseas and dependent territories, need to be a leading member of that international coalition.

This is clearly a developing agenda. The proposals and the progress made in the wake of the FIFA scandal, for example, show how much further international opinion has moved and still needs to move. The revelations in the wake of the Panama papers show how much further we can go and how much further public opinion, although it has moved, still needs to move. I am sure that this topic will continue to develop and that the rules and regulations and, most importantly, the ethos and culture of international business, investment and ownership, will continue to change and tighten. I am sure that everybody in this room and more broadly will welcome that on a cross-party basis, with open arms. I will leave a few seconds for my hon. Friend to respond to the debate.

Electoral Participation (Media)

John Penrose Excerpts

Wednesday 27th April 2016 Westminster Hall

[The Parliamentary Secretary, Cabinet Office (John Penrose)]

It is good to have you looking after us this afternoon, Mr Crausby, and making sure we all behave ourselves and have a productive debate. I add my congratulations to the hon. Member for Midlothian (Owen Thompson) on securing it. As he said, he is involved in the all-party group on democratic participation, which does incredibly important work. We need to develop a better cross-party approach in this area, particularly on such things as voter registration; we do better together than we do separately. Political parties no doubt have a place in getting their normal demographic supporter base to get registered and to get out, take part and use their vote on polling day. More than that, however, if we can co-operate on a cross-party basis, it is often reassuring for voters because they can see that it is being done from purer democratic motives, rather than just for party advantage. That can make a difference, so the all-party group’s work is in that proud tradition and is hugely to be supported and applauded.

The hon. Gentleman mentioned various surveys of democratic engagement and democratic involvement. Interestingly, the results that he quoted pretty closely match—directionally at least—what we see if we start to compare levels of voter registration. Voter registration is not a perfect proxy for democratic involvement, because someone can be registered to vote and then not use their vote on polling day, but it is not a bad one. It was very interesting to hear him mention that some BME community groups are under-represented and less likely to be registered. Incidentally, others are extremely well represented—there are some parts of the Asian community in this country whose registration rates are well above average—but as he rightly mentions, some are below average.

Equally, we have problems with people who live in short-term rented accommodation and perhaps move regularly. There is some debate about whether their reason for not registering is that they are disaffected and do not believe in the idea of democracy being relevant to them, or whether it is just inconvenient because the registration folk do not keep up with them as they move around—it may be a bit of both. There are some queries about that. Students can be a problem in terms of levels of registration, although interestingly, a degree of evidence now shows that quite a lot of students are registered at their parental home address as opposed to their university address, so we need to be careful about how that set of figures are taken.

The single worst group for registration is one that we often forget about—expatriates. There are between 1.5 million and 2 million Brits currently living abroad who are legally entitled to vote. At present, they lose the right to vote after 15 years, and we aim to change that in due course. However, as the law stands, there are perhaps 1.5 million people, or even more—estimates vary, but there could be up to 2 million—living abroad who are legally enfranchised, but the level of registration among that group was just over 100,000 at the last general election. Therefore, only between 5% and 10% of them are registered, at most. They are by far the least well-registered group and are therefore the least well-represented group among all the different ones that we need to get involved and bring into the fold.

As the hon. Gentleman said, the role of media is incredibly important. He pointed out that the way in which social media has changed democratic debate is important not only for us as practising politicians, but for the overall body politic—for the state and how our democratic consensus is forged, and how democratic debate takes place—and I particularly liked that. He is absolutely right that more of that is now peer to peer, which I think was the phrase he used. I venture to suggest that in the past, peer-to-peer debate was basically what people said to their mates down the pub, but the advent of social media means that Facebook groups, Twitter streams and, I dare say, even Snapchat groups of one kind or another, are now all over the place. They mean that people with very disparate interests and opinions can come together much more easily and share their points of view.

That is relevant for campaigning groups: people who have a particular interest in anything from saving hedgehogs through to democracy in Burma, and everything in between—the sorts of things that, actually, are frequently covered by all-party groups in this building. It allows them to organise nationally much more effectively, much faster and much more cheaply than they ever used to. However, we need to be careful: if someone is always surrounded by like-minded people online, or physically in the offline world, they risk finding themselves purely in an echo chamber where everybody always agrees with them. I am sure the hon. Gentleman agrees that nothing is more dangerous for a politician than to hear the opinions only of people who always agree with them. That can lead to dangerous waters, including the belief that they are always right and, if not careful, they may become impatient with people who have the temerity to hold a different point of view. Part of the weft and warp of good democratic debate is that someone can disagree honestly, fervently and strongly without being a bad person. They may just be incredibly principled and happen to hold different views.

One danger of the echo chamber effect is that people become more likely to be short-tempered with one another if they hear competing views. None the less, digital media and the vastly extended scope of peer-to-peer debate is incredibly important to the way our democracy functions—not just our democracy, but every democracy.

The hon. Gentleman mentioned the effect of broadcast media and we should include TV, national radio and local radio. I thank him for introducing me to Gary of “Gary: Tank Commander”, who does not make it quite as far down in the south-west as where I live in Weston-super-Mare. I am resolved to try to find him because I am told that he is very funny and has done some interesting stuff as a comedian interviewing politicians in Scotland, which is an interesting cross-over that has not been done commonly, certainly not in this country or much more widely. If it has, it has been done more along the lines of taking the mickey out of unsuspecting politicians, rather like Sacha Baron Cohen, which is different. It is potentially very interesting, but there are other areas where the broadcast media have historically done great things.

--- Later in debate ---

On resuming—

[John Penrose]

The temptation to restart by just saying “‘Gary: Tank Commander’ and” is very strong. However, I remind everybody that we had just finished talking about the effect of social media and the way it has changed our democratic discourse mostly for the better, but with some caveats. I was moving on to talk about broadcast media—national TV and radio, and local radio—and the arts. The hon. Member for Midlothian was rightly taking pains to emphasise their contribution.

I think we are all familiar with the national contribution of broadcasters in current affairs and news programmes, but there are many other aspects. The hon. Gentleman mentioned soap operas. Voter registration and political involvement have played into the plotlines of “Hollyoaks”, “River City” and various other programmes. Those are examples of drama portraying what should be normal life—normal political involvement, whether that is, for example, someone standing for the local council or getting involved in a campaign to save their local theatre.

Those examples bring home to people that political involvement is part of the normal way in which the world works—what ordinary, normal people do—and reduces the distance between politics and people. As the hon. Gentleman rightly pointed out, the two should be synonymous. The roots of the words are the same. Such examples stop politicians being seen, necessarily, as a slightly weird class of other people who have different interests and motivations from everybody else, and remind us all that politicians should be the same as everybody else. We should be the same as our next-door neighbours and live in the same world as everybody else. Drama can do that in a very powerful way.

Broadcast drama obviously has huge reach and theatre can also make a difference, as can other arts such as the visual arts. For example, Weston-super-Mare recently played host to a world-class, world-famous exhibition organised by the street artist Banksy at the Tropicana lido on the sea front. It was fascinating because much of the art produced by Banksy and some other artists featured had a political message. It was mainly the politics of protest, interestingly; none the less, it will have driven political involvement.

I was asked by a number of journalists whether I was comfortable with those politics of protest—in many cases, they were slightly left-wing political statements—as part of the art in the middle of Weston-super-Mare, to which my unhesitating answer was, “Yes. I’m very happy indeed, if only because it makes people think.” One of the things that art is supposed to do, of course, is to make people think. If it made people think and made them realise that such issues affect us all, not just politicians and a class of other people, it is all to the good.

Comedians can do the same. We have mentioned “Gary: Tank Commander”, and political comedy and satire has a long and respectable history, although it is probably wrong to call satire respectable. As politicians, we need to be careful because satire is partly, by its very nature, a distancing thing. It creates the distance that we need to collapse, so some forms of comedy can add to the problem, as well as subtract from it. We must acknowledge that comedy can be a double-edged sword.

Going back to national TV and radio, and local radio, we are all comfortable and familiar with news and current affairs programmes. More recently—this has been a huge adornment and improvement to our national political discussions—the leaders’ debates have made a great deal of difference. Although we are used to those, there is a broader approach in drama and things other than current affairs, which the broadcast media should use.

More broadly, there are other media, particularly the material used in schools. The hon. Gentleman mentioned, for example, the Rock Enrol! school materials, which are produced in the Cabinet Office by people in my team and used widely in schools across the country to teach pupils about democratic engagement as part of a broader programme of citizenship. All those materials and media are important for making democracy part of what everyone is brought up with. If people are brought up with democracy, and if it is explained to them even before they are of voting age, and certainly when they have just achieved voting age, it becomes part of their normal life in the same way as owning a tablet PC or phone might be nowadays. Like breathing, it becomes part of their life, which makes a huge difference.

There are two final groups. Civil society groups can make a huge difference, and many of them produce their own media, either written or, in many cases, online. Many civil society groups are tightly focused and deeply engaged with specific groups of voters, many of them the hard-to-reach, under-registered groups that the hon. Gentleman mentioned. Operation Black Vote, Bite the Ballot and many others, for example, are incredibly effective, and if they are not incredibly effective, they are more effective than anybody else. They are leaders in their field at persuading people in those groups that it is worth while getting involved in the democratic process.

As we were saying earlier, part of the difficulty is that some groups are under-represented or under-registered because registration is inconvenient. For example, the system may not keep up with people who move house frequently and ensure that their registration moves from one house to the next. There are also groups where that inconvenience or bureaucratic friction is not the whole story. In some cases there is a high degree of distrust in democracy, in the democratic process, in politics and in politicians of all kinds and of all political persuasions. All of us, as politicians and in these various groups, therefore need to develop a poetry of politics to persuade people that politics is something that can be effective in improving their lives, rather than something for other people.

Finally, no debate on the media would be complete without mentioning the print media. It is noticeable that the hon. Gentleman barely touched on the print media, perhaps partly because it is no secret that although many newspapers are still immensely powerful and widely read, many are suffering from declining circulations. Although it will always be a huge mistake to write off the newspaper industry, it has broader problems, even though it still carries an enormous amount of weight and heft. All our comments on the broadcast media, although with some differences due to the nature of the medium itself, also apply to the print media.

[Jonathan Lord]

The much maligned council newspaper or magazine can also help. We have an excellent council newspaper in Woking, and it always encourages registration and participation. It explains, in a grounded, proper way, how the electoral process works and when the elections are.

[John Penrose]

I could not put it better myself. Those final words are a good way to finish our debate.

Question put and agreed to.

Police and Crime Commissioner Elections: Indemnity for Returning Officers

John Penrose Excerpts

Thursday 21st April 2016 Written Statements

[The Parliamentary Secretary, Cabinet Office (John Penrose)]

I have laid a minute setting out the Cabinet Office’s proposal to indemnify returning officers for the police and crime commissioner elections on 5 May 2016 against uninsured claims that arise out of the conduct of their duties. We will also provide a certificate confirming that we will bear any employee liabilities of the returning officer which would otherwise be covered by insurance procured under the Employers’ Liability (Compulsory Insurance) Act 1969. An indemnity was previously provided by the Home Office to returning officers for the 2012 police and crime commissioner elections and the Cabinet Office regularly provides indemnities for UK parliamentary and European parliamentary elections. HM Treasury has approved the indemnity in principle.

It is normal practice, when a Government Department proposes to undertake a contingent liability in excess of £300,000 for which there is no specific statutory authority, for the Department concerned to present to Parliament a minute giving particulars of the liability created and explaining the circumstances; and to refrain from incurring the liability until 14 parliamentary sitting days after the issue of the minute, except in cases of special urgency.

Cabinet Office officials have been in discussion with HM Treasury officials and lawyers on the scope of indemnities of this kind and to ensure consistency between indemnities provided in respect of these and other polls. Thus it has not been possible to lay this minute before now. As a consequence, there is now a special urgency as the elections will take place shortly.

[HCWS685]

Police and Crime Commissioner Elections

John Penrose Excerpts

Wednesday 20th April 2016 Written Statements

[The Parliamentary Secretary, Cabinet Office (John Penrose)]

The Cabinet Office wishes to report the entry into force of the Police and Crime Commissioner Elections (Local Returning Officers’ and Police Area Returning Officers’ Charges) Order 2016. The order sets the maximum recoverable amounts for the services and expenses of police area returning officers and local returning officers. The order is the final piece of legislation which, taken together, confirm the arrangements for the police and crime commissioner elections on 5 May 2016.

[HCWS683]