Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between John Penrose and Gloria De Piero

Wednesday 15th June 2016 Commons Chamber

[John Penrose]

My hon. Friend is right: it is vital that people are aware of the consultation period. It is being advertised on the Boundary Commission website and will be advertised further to make sure that everybody can comment, but it is up to political parties from all parts of the House to make sure that their supporters and organisations are galvanised and submissions can be made.

[Gloria De Piero (Ashfield) (Lab)]

The number of registered voters has gone up massively since December 2015—in some constituencies, the equivalent of two extra wards have been added. Will the Minister therefore reassure us that he cannot possibly use the December figures to redraw the boundaries—or will his Government go back to using voter registration for their own political gain once this referendum is over?

[John Penrose]

I am intrigued that the hon. Lady thinks she knows what has happened to individual constituencies’ electoral rolls, because the final versions will not be published for another week or 10 days. Whatever the outcome of that publication, it cannot be right that we carry on with the existing political constituency boundaries, which are based on the electoral rolls from 2001 or, in some parts of the country, from 2000. They are shockingly out of date and we absolutely need to update them. I can, however, reassure her that there will be updates every five years, rather than every 10, and that constituency boundaries will be more up to date and accurate than they have been in the past.

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

Debate between John Penrose and Gloria De Piero

Tuesday 7th June 2016 General Committees

[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.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between John Penrose and Gloria De Piero

Wednesday 27th January 2016 Commons Chamber

[John Penrose]

Since the general election, we have debated this particular question four or five times—perhaps more—and collectively decided against it, with healthy majorities, on every single occasion. We can go over this again, and I am happy to have further debates with the hon. Lady as needed, but the House has made its collective decision plain.

[Gloria De Piero (Ashfield) (Lab)]

The Labour party’s initial analysis shows big drops in registered voters in many university towns. The figure for Canterbury is down 13%, while those for Cambridge and Dundee West are both down 11% on last year. Those universities that have enabled students to register to vote when they enrol have all seen high levels of student registration. Will the Government issue guidance to all vice-chancellors immediately to suggest that they adopt such a system in September?

[John Penrose]

It is not quite that simple, but I sympathise with the hon. Lady, in that several new approaches that are being trialled in universities throughout the country are extremely promising. We want to pursue those, so perhaps the hon. Lady and I can discuss that further at our meeting later today.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between John Penrose and Gloria De Piero

Wednesday 21st October 2015 Commons Chamber

[John Penrose]

At the moment, the proof of ID when registering includes information such as a date of birth and a national insurance number. Photographic ID is not required, although I believe that the situation in Northern Ireland might be slightly stricter and that there are tighter rules there, given the history of the Province. Of course, individual electoral registration was introduced in Northern Ireland many years ago and it has been extremely successful. There was no transitional period at all there; it all happened in one day and the system moved across to IER very swiftly.

[Gloria De Piero (Ashfield) (Lab)]

The Electoral Commission’s advice is clear: do not bring forward the full transition to individual electoral registration. What is the point of Parliament setting up this body if Ministers are simply going to ignore its advice?

[John Penrose]

May I put right an inadvertent omission from a debate in Westminster Hall yesterday? I omitted to welcome the hon. Lady to her new position and I would like to do that now. She is absolutely right to say that the Electoral Commission made that recommendation. However, it is not impossible to disagree with its reasoning. Indeed, others including the Association of Electoral Administrators—the people who actually run the elections in our democracy—believe that this is the right thing to do.

Individual Electoral Registration

Debate between John Penrose and Gloria De Piero

Tuesday 20th October 2015 Westminster Hall

[John Penrose]

I invite the hon. Gentleman to come along and hear my speech on Thursday at Policy Exchange, where we will talk about not just that but other initiatives, which I will mention briefly in a minute. Even if we were able to extend what has been done successfully the University of Sheffield and Sheffield Hallam to many other universities, given that the people we are talking about are not on the register, either before or after individual electoral registration, the date at which we end the transition to IER would make no difference to whether they are registered. This is something worth doing, regardless of whether we are doing IER and the transition. It is worth doing at all times, in all places, in any case. The transition date will make no difference to those people.

I completely agree that it is important that we roll out some of the exciting innovations that are being tried in places such as the University of Sheffield and Sheffield Hallam for students. There are all sorts of other things we could do with the online registration process. It is now possible to register to vote online in less than three minutes—less time than it takes to boil an egg. It is an incredibly convenient and simple process.

However, we make it more difficult for people to renew their registration after they have been registered for a year. The hon. Member for Edinburgh East said, and I am sure we all agree, that there is a natural seasonality to electoral registration: registration rates tend to dip after a major electoral event, such as a general election or the Scottish referendum, because people are less interested and registration is less relevant to them if there is no poll in which they can vote in the next 12 months. Some of those people re-register nearer the time, but we should ask ourselves why we ask all those people to re-register every single year once they have made their individual decision to register to vote. We do not ask them to re-register for their tax credits, their TV licence or their benefit claims every single year.

Everybody in this room, except perhaps the hon. Member for Dwyfor Meirionnydd (Liz Saville Roberts)—I am not sure whether she is in favour of this principle as a fundamental—accepts the noble cause of individual electoral registration and ensuring that people make an individual decision to register to vote. However, we need to ask ourselves whether it is necessary to ask people to renew that vow every year. Are we still being true to individual electoral registration if we relax it and make a decision on it every couple of years? That would allow us to deal with some of the natural electoral seasonality that the hon. Member for Edinburgh East mentioned.

There is a huge amount we can do, and there is a huge amount that I believe should be done. I hope, based on hon. Members’ comments today, that there can be some sort of cross-party agreement on some of these things, which could then be introduced. There may not be cross-party agreement on everything. The hon. Member for Ashfield (Gloria De Piero) gave a couple of examples, and we do not necessarily agree on all the detail.

[Gloria De Piero]

Can the Minister give me examples of any measures that will be introduced in the next six weeks?

[John Penrose]

I cannot, partly because I have not given the speech yet, and partly because, as I said to the hon. Member for Liverpool, West Derby (Stephen Twigg), registering people who are not on the register needs to happen, regardless of when the transition from the old system to individual electoral registration ends, because the transition will not affect people who are not already on the register. It is a parallel process that needs to be done anyway.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between John Penrose and Gloria De Piero

Thursday 8th September 2011 Commons Chamber

[Gloria De Piero (Ashfield) (Lab)]

I have asked the United Kingdom national lottery operator, Camelot, to give me a constituency breakdown showing where lottery tickets are purchased, but it has refused to do so. Does the Minister agree that, for reasons of transparency, it is important for such information to be in the public domain, and will he help me to put it there?

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Culture, Olympics, Media and Sport (John Penrose)]

It is not quite clear why this information is so important, but I am very happy to try to understand why. The destination of lottery funding has long been readily and transparently available, and can be found in the Library. However, I do not see why there should be a direct correlation between potentially richer constituencies where a large number of lottery tickets are bought, and constituencies that are in more need and receive a large amount of lottery funding. If the hon. Lady can explain why that direct connection is important, I shall of course be delighted to help if I can.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between John Penrose and Gloria De Piero

Monday 29th November 2010 Commons Chamber

[John Penrose]

I am afraid that the hon. Lady will have to wait for Friday to see who wants to speak for how long during the debate, but I can assure her that I have already engaged in substantial discussions with my colleagues in BIS on this. My earlier answer to my hon. Friend the Member for Maldon (Mr Whittingdale), from the Culture, Media and Sport Committee, stands: this proposal could be tremendously valuable to the tourism industry as a whole, but that is not the only factor to be considered. There are issues for people who live north of border that need to be taken into account as well.

[Gloria De Piero (Ashfield) (Lab)]

Has the Minister made any impact assessment on increasing VAT to 20% on the tourism industry in Wells and elsewhere in Britain?

[John Penrose]

As I am sure everybody here knows, taxation matters are for the Treasury not for the Department for Culture, Media and Sport. However, I am sure that the hon. Lady realises that any attempt to try to reduce VAT in any one sector will need to come with a fully costed proposal about the impact on this country’s large deficit, which we are trying to bring down. Given the impact of deficits in other countries in Europe, it will be very difficult for anybody, in the short to medium term at least, to advance plans of that kind—without a fully costed proposal—without seeming to be extremely fiscally dangerous to this country’s economy.