Oral Answers to Questions

Martin Horwood Excerpts

Tuesday 20th December 2011 Commons Chamber

[The Deputy Prime Minister]

I made it clear to the House on a previous occasion that we accept the arguments against providing an opt-out, and we will reflect that in the final legislation. On the quite tangled issue of what is, and what is not, an offence, the right hon. Gentleman is quite right that at the moment the offence applies not to registration, but to the provision of information on behalf of a household—in other words, to the obligation to provide information about other people in the household. It is not an offence at the moment not to register. He makes a valid point that is a valid subject for debate, and it was raised by the Political and Constitutional Reform Committee: under individual electoral registration, the obligation clearly falls more squarely on the individual, rather than on the so-called head of the household. We think that we need to proceed very carefully when it comes to creating new offences in this area, but we are, of course, prepared to listen, and will continue to do so.

[Martin Horwood (Cheltenham) (LD)]

Will the Deputy Prime Minister welcome the remarks made by our fellow member of the European Liberal Democrats, Herr Westerwelle, who said that Britain would still be welcome at the very heart of European economic decision making, and that some of the concerns that we raised at the Brussels summit could still be addressed?

[The Deputy Prime Minister]

I strongly agree that the decisions taken at last week’s summit were, at the end of the day, all about the fiscal and budgetary rules that accompany a country’s membership of a currency union, but that does not, and will not, exclude our country from having the ability to continue not only to participate in, but to play a leading role in shaping policy and debates on the wider economic reform of the European Union as a whole. That is what we intend to show in the weeks and months ahead.