EU Parliament Elections: Denial of Votes Debate
Full Debate: Read Full DebateDepartment: Cabinet Office
Kate Green
Main Page: Kate Green (Labour - Stretford and Urmston)Department Debates - View all Kate Green's debates with the Cabinet Office
(5 years, 6 months ago)
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Kevin Foster
To be clear, the Electoral Commission website had guidance on registering to vote; the UC1 form was available; and there were links to the Your Vote Matters website, where the form could be downloaded and returned. It was available online. There were some issues with those who mistakenly used unofficial registration sites, and perhaps the Electoral Commission will consider how we can make clearer the differences between unofficial websites purporting to be for electoral registration and Your Vote Matters, the official Electoral Commission site.
Kate Green (Stretford and Urmston) (Lab)
My constituent, a Spanish national, had a similar experience: he believed he had returned his UC1 form digitally, but the local authority said it could find no trace of it, and advising him on 3 May on a website that he should have downloaded it, printed it out and posted it back is not reasonable when he had an expectation that his digital form was acceptable. Is it not time there was a proper Government-sponsored inquiry into every stage of the process, so that we can understand exactly what went wrong with both the system and the information available to voters?
Kevin Foster
I think it right that the Electoral Commission independently looks at the process for the European parliamentary elections and draws its conclusions independent of Government. That seems to me to be a process that builds more confidence in the recommendations that emerge.