Voter Identification

Debate between Lee Rowley and Geraint Davies

Tuesday 21st February 2023 Commons Chamber

[Lee Rowley]

There is no requirement for a person to be computer literate or to go through online processes to acquire a voter authority certificate. Alternative processes are available and have been used, and I have data on them. We want to make sure that those who do not have computer can still have a voter authority certificate should they want to have one.

[Geraint Davies (Swansea West) (Lab/Co-op)]

The Minister knows that many council seats are currently decided by a handful of votes. Does he accept that, inevitably, there will be a change in how a number of seats are won or lost and that, in turn, the control of particular councils will be determined by a handful of votes in a number of seats? Does he anticipate that the Government will have to go to court charged with voter suppression and an intentional corruption of our democracy, because people will simply forget to bring their voter ID—it is not that they do not have it—and that will change the outcome? Those people will say that they had forgotten their ID, that they would have voted for X or Y, but they did not, and that will be the margin that determines the future of that council, which is a disgrace.

[Lee Rowley]

Many council seats have been decided on a very small number of votes in Northern Ireland for 20 years. The change brought in by the Labour party in 2003 requiring voter identification in that country is now being applied elsewhere in the United Kingdom. I gently ask the hon. Gentleman, when there are next elections in his area, to encourage his constituents to recognise that voter ID is here, and it is here in order to protect the sanctity of the ballot box.

Brexit Deal: Referendum

Debate between Lee Rowley and Geraint Davies

Monday 11th December 2017 Westminster Hall

[Geraint Davies]

What I said stands. Obviously, scenario plans were done in terms of the aggregate impact, and no forecast is perfect, but what we do know about the impact of Brexit was that, overnight, the hon. Gentleman’s salary and assets were devalued by something like 15%, because the financial markets took their own view that this was crazy. We are all worse off for it. People living in Britain have not really seen it, but gradually the impact of that devaluation is coming through in inflation, on top of low wages. People were told, and sadly it has happened: the poor have been made poorer. The leave campaigners said, “The reason you are poor is foreign people from the EU,” when in fact the average person from the EU contributes 35% more in tax than they consume in public services. The poor—and all of us—will become even poorer without them, and we have seen this awful devaluation.

The evaluations were not good enough, but there were dire predictions. Let us take as an example a Japanese car company. I know there have been lots of under the table, secret negotiations with car companies, but the reason they are here is that we are a stable democracy and economy, and provide an English-speaking platform to the biggest market in the world. Once we are not in that market, they and other investors will move. The economic impact on Britain, from an intuitive, a priori point of view, is wholly predictable.

[Lee Rowley (North East Derbyshire) (Con)]

Will the hon. Gentleman explain what is dire, catastrophic and crazy about five consecutive quarters of economic growth?

[Geraint Davies]

The hon. Gentleman will know that we have got the lowest growth in the G7—it is absolutely appalling.