Oral Answers to Questions

Meg Munn Excerpts

Tuesday 7th February 2012 Commons Chamber

[The Deputy Prime Minister]

For a start, it would be a good thing if Members of Parliament from Yorkshire and Humber—I am a Yorkshire MP—were to give evidence where we have strong views on how the procedures of this House should be changed to reflect devolution. The commission has been established and its membership has been selected precisely to reflect the expertise we need on how this House works and how its procedures might need to be reformed.

[Meg Munn (Sheffield, Heeley) (Lab/Co-op)]

T1. If he will make a statement on his departmental responsibilities.

[The Deputy Prime Minister (Mr Nick Clegg)]

As Deputy Prime Minister, I support the Prime Minister on a full range of Government policy and initiatives, and within government I take special responsibility for this Government’s programme of political and constitutional reform.

[Meg Munn]

The Deputy Prime Minister will be aware of increasing calls to change the law on the close of polls and that in Scotland it has indeed been changed. Although I welcome operational changes, does he accept that it is important that there can be circumstances where a lot of people turn up to vote towards the end of the poll and that to guarantee their right to cast their vote the law should now be changed?

[The Deputy Prime Minister]

The hon. Lady has raised this issue before and I understand that she feels strongly about it, but much of the evidence suggests that with proper organisation and administration the problems should not have arisen in the first place. She knows as well as I do the areas in Sheffield where a number of people, particularly young people, were disfranchised and were not able to vote, which was an absolute scandal. However, I think we need to be a little cautious about immediately resorting to the statute book to fix a problem that could be fixed by improved organisation and better performance from electoral officers.