EU Parliament Elections: Denial of Votes
Debate between Kevin Foster and Angela Eagle(5 years, 5 months ago)
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Kevin Foster
The Electoral Commission will do a report and present its conclusions—as it does with all major electoral events in this country—and it will do so independently, not under the direction of a Minister. We will then consider its conclusions carefully. To resolve the issue completely, we will look to implement the 2016 referendum result, as we have pledged to do.
Ms Angela Eagle (Wallasey) (Lab)
I think the Minister has misunderstood his job. He seems to think it is about disenfranchising people who are going to vote the wrong way. After the 2014 European elections, the Electoral Commission warned that the current practice of requiring citizens to complete an additional form needed to be more streamlined, moving to a near automatic system of inclusion as is the case in most other European countries, yet the Minister and his Department did precisely nothing about it. [Interruption.] Perhaps he could get the smirk off his face. We are actually talking about democratic involvement; even though the Minister does not seem to rate it, Labour Members think that it is an important principle.
Kevin Foster
This is a process that has been used before in elections that actually happened under a Labour Government as well—let us be clear about that. It is a process where we followed the law. We had to comply with the European Council directive in how we held these elections, and that means having a declaration that we send over. If we wanted to talk about disenfranchising people, we could talk about what happened when an arbitrary limit of 15 years was imposed on overseas elections.