Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between John Penrose and Lindsay Hoyle

Wednesday 5th January 2022 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

You want more? You won’t get more at this rate, will you? Mr Penrose has been waiting patiently. Why do you not want to hear him? I do.

[John Penrose (Weston-super-Mare) (Con)]

2. The biggest factor driving up our fuel bills and cost of living is the sky-rocketing international price of gas, which is currently dancing to a tune set in Moscow. Does the Prime Minister agree that Labour’s short-term proposals to shift the burden from bill payers to taxpayers will not address the fundamental underlying problem at all, and that the crisis demands structural reforms to the energy price cap, rather than just resetting it to later this year, as well as energy self-sufficiency to uncouple us from Russian gas?

Overseas Voters Bill

Debate between John Penrose and Lindsay Hoyle

Friday 26th February 2016 Commons Chamber

[Oliver Colvile]

Does my hon. Friend also recognise that “The Archers”, and not just “Hollyoaks”, has a significant part to play? It is a very good soap opera, and would it not be wonderful were it to start talking about people abroad?

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)]

I think it is time I joined in. Whatever we do, we are not going around the soaps. We are talking about overseas registration, not plots about registration in the UK.

[John Penrose]

You are absolutely right, Mr Deputy Speaker, although I would observe that many of these soaps are also watched by overseas and expatriate voters living abroad, but I shall move on before I try your patience any further.

The Bill also deals with internet voting, which is potentially a very important area. It is interesting that we all increasingly take for granted the use of the internet for more and more things. If someone said 10 years ago that a large proportion of us—if not yet a majority—would be using internet banking or shopping, people would have been very surprised, yet here we are, and it is increasingly a part of normal life in this country. If online voting is not already happening—some, like my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch, are already asking the question—it will certainly start to happen in due course. People will start to ask, “Why can we not vote online?” The trade union movement has already asked the question, while other organisations are starting to use internet voting for some issues.

That said, my hon. Friend the Member for Plymouth, Sutton and Devonport (Oliver Colvile) rightly asked about the fraud issue, and my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch has built this into clause 3. There is an important point here about fraud prevention. While we are increasingly used to online banking and shopping, and those sorts of things, if, in those cases, something goes wrong, broadly speaking, the bank or credit or debit card company—or whoever it might be—will usually stand behind the transaction and take the risk from the consumer. That is perfectly acceptable for commercial transactions. The difficulty is that it is extremely hard to work out whether a vote has been intercepted and potentially subverted—switched from a vote for Labour to a vote for the Conservative party, or from an aye to a no in a referendum—especially given that we have secret ballots, which are an essential part of our democracy. At the same time, the stakes could not be higher. Clearly, stealing the government of a country is an incredibly serious issue, and one that it would be extremely hard to unpick afterwards, in the way we can unpick a faulty commercial transaction, make good the money and undertake a forensic analysis.

I am not saying we do not expect online voting to happen in due course, but I believe that the fraud issues are not yet resolved. I am sure that the technology will continue to advance and be ready at some point, and that we will have a robust and transparently solid political and democratic process that will allow this to happen, but we are not yet there. However, given the way the world is moving—it is happening in more and more areas of our lives—it would be a brave man who said it will never happen, even if, like my hon. Friend, they are not that familiar with Skype. I suspect it is a question of when, not if, but I am afraid that, at the moment at least, the answer is, “Not yet.”

I compliment my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch on introducing the Bill, and I reassure him that we are working extremely hard and hope to bring forward a Bill that will do many of the things that his proposes, including getting rid of the 15-year rule and enfranchising British citizens living abroad. In parallel to but separately from the Bill, we are trying to drive up registration among under-represented groups, including expatriates.

Scotland Bill

Debate between John Penrose and Lindsay Hoyle

Monday 15th June 2015 Commons Chamber

[Pete Wishart]

I am grateful for that explanation. The key issue we face in the next year is the prospect of an EU referendum being held on the same day as the Scottish parliamentary elections. Would he like to take the opportunity to say what he thinks about that and to rule it out? We cannot have 16 and 17-year-olds coming into the polling booth to vote in the Scottish Parliament election, possibly being ID-ed, and then being turned out as they cannot vote in the EU referendum.

[The Chairman of Ways and Means (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)]

Order. We need to watch out so that we do not go outside the scope of what we are discussing. That is the danger. As much as the hon. Gentleman wants to tempt the Minister, I want him to try to stay within the scope of the Bill and to try to answer along those lines.

[John Penrose]

I shall endeavour to be as helpful as I can when I reach amendment 43, which is closely adjacent to the points made by the hon. Member for Perth and North Perthshire (Pete Wishart), without, I hope, trying your patience in the process, Mr Hoyle.

Clauses 3 and 5 fulfil the Smith commission agreement devolving significant electoral powers to the Scottish Parliament while ensuring that polls for Scottish parliamentary ordinary general elections will not be held on the same day as UK parliamentary general elections, European general elections or ordinary government elections, as we just discussed. The UK Government consider the timing and combination of polls to be intrinsically linked. I think that we might have covered that point, but I want to make sure that it is clear. That is why the combination of polls involving a reserved poll with a poll at a Scottish parliamentary election or local government election in Scotland continues to be reserved, as does the combination of a poll at a Scottish parliamentary ordinary general election with a poll at an ordinary local government election in Scotland. I urge Members to withdraw their amendments for the reasons that I have just given.

Amendment 43 seeks to ensure that it would not be possible for a Scottish parliamentary general election to be held on the same day as a referendum called under reserved powers. The hon. Member for Caerphilly gets top marks for ingenuity for trying to shoehorn into the Bill before us today a measure which affects tomorrow’s business. I understand that there are strong views on the issue and I promise him that we are considering them carefully. He will know that an amendment has been tabled for the business tomorrow which is very similar to this one and will allow the issue to be debated in some depth. I therefore encourage my right hon. and hon. Friends to resist the opportunity to support the amendment, if only because it would not be fair to Members of other devolved Parliaments and Assemblies, which may have elections on the same day as the Scottish elections next year, for such a measure to be dealt with in a Scottish Bill when we have the opportunity to deal with it properly tomorrow.