Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Nick Clegg and Greg Hands

Tuesday 30th November 2010 Commons Chamber

[The Deputy Prime Minister]

I think we need reform of the funding arrangements for political parties, and we are keen to work on a cross-party basis with all parties in the House to restore public confidence in the way political parties are funded, while at the same time proceeding with reform of the other place, as I described earlier, by publishing a Bill on House of Lords reform early in the new year.

[Greg Hands (Chelsea and Fulham) (Con)]

T7. The Deputy Prime Minister will recall that last month I asked him about electoral registration fraud in Tower Hamlets. Will he agree to have a look at postal voter fraud, too? In Halifax in May, an astonishing 763 postal votes failed to match voter registration records. Does he agree that evidence is building of systematic electoral fraud in this country, which needs to be investigated?

[The Deputy Prime Minister]

As the hon. Gentleman knows, electoral registration officers already have the power to look into allegations of abuse, which are in some cases, as he has highlighted, very serious indeed, and where necessary and justified, refer them to the police. That is exactly what I would expect should happen.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Nick Clegg and Greg Hands

Tuesday 26th October 2010 Commons Chamber

[The Deputy Prime Minister]

By allowing rents for new tenants, but not existing tenants, to be set closer to market rates—and by the way, rents for existing—[Interruption.] Rents for existing tenants went up by about 15% under the Labour Government. We are saying that we need to give registered social landlords an incentive to build new affordable homes—the building of which was at lamentably low levels under the previous Government—while all the time, of course, compensating those tenants through the housing benefit system. As I said earlier, we also think it is right for the Government to say that there needs to be some kind of limit for those people who are on housing benefit, and it seems fair for that limit to be set roughly at the level at which people who are going out to work would be looking for rented property in the private sector.

[Greg Hands (Chelsea and Fulham) (Con)]

T10. The Deputy Prime Minister will be aware of Labour’s catastrophic defeat in Tower Hamlets last week at the hands of the Ken Livingstone-backed independent candidate, but will he examine the issue of electoral fraud, because serious allegations of it were made at the local elections in May and again last week? Some 18 postal votes came from one four-bedroom house and eight postal votes came from a maisonette above a shop, and more than 5,000 new names were added to the roll just before the deadline. Will—

[Mr Speaker]

Order. I say to the hon. Gentleman that that is quite enough and we need an answer.

Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill

Debate between Nick Clegg and Greg Hands

Monday 6th September 2010 Commons Chamber

[The Deputy Prime Minister]

I will make a little more progress.

The commissions will continue to use the electoral register as the basis for their reviews. That has been a feature of the system for decades, under Governments of all shades. With registration in Great Britain at well over 90% and in line with comparable countries, the register remains the best basis for reviews. That is not to say that where people are not on the register, we should do nothing. That has been the attitude for far too long. Under-registration exists in coastal areas and the inner cities, among younger people, including students, and minority ethnic groups. There is no silver-bullet solution. We are investigating a number of solutions, including freeing up local authorities to use existing public sector databases to identify people who are not registered, and then actively encouraging them to register. We are also acting to tackle registration fraud, accelerating the shift to a system of individual, rather than household, registration—a process started by Labour Members.

[Greg Hands (Chelsea and Fulham) (Con)]

Does the Deputy Prime Minister share my consternation that, for the first time in 50 years, under the previous Labour Government, the total UK electorate registered in this country declined when the UK population was rising—between 2001 and 2005? If Labour was serious about getting people on to the electoral register, it did a pretty poor job of doing so in government.

[The Deputy Prime Minister]

It is a distinguishing feature of this debate, and previous debates, that Labour Members are now very animated about matters that they did absolutely nothing about in government.

I now turn to the referendum on the alternative vote. Fewer, more equally sized and more up-to-date constituencies will help to bolster the legitimacy of parliamentary elections. However, in parallel with that step, we must address the question of reform of our voting system. Some believe that we are better served by sticking with the current system, which, they say, benefits from its familiarity and strong constituency link. Others believe that it leads to too many safe seats, giving many MPs jobs for life with only minority support from their constituents. Advocates of AV note that it would retain the current constituency link, but that it would give people more say over their vote by allowing them to rank candidates in order of preference. As a general rule, therefore, MPs would come to Westminster with the support of the majority of their voters.