Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Nick Clegg and Simon Burns

Tuesday 11th February 2014 Commons Chamber

[The Deputy Prime Minister]

Yes, I can. The £4.5 million that I mentioned earlier was allocated only a few days ago to all local authorities and to a number of organisations. Their work will be tested against the objective of helping black and minority ethnic groups, students and others who are under-represented on the register be more fully represented on it. That is what that money and that work is for, and I hope that it will be successful.

[Mr Simon Burns (Chelmsford) (Con)]

What specific measures, rather than general ones, have been put in place to make it easier, quicker and cheaper to remove people from the electoral register who legally should not be on it?

[The Deputy Prime Minister]

I think that awareness of the integrity of the register has increased significantly. The work that I have already alluded to, and indeed the introduction of individual voter registration, is all about improving the integrity of the register to ensure that those who should not be on it are not on it. Ultimately, that is what individual voter registration is all about—bearing down on fraud and improving the integrity of the register.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Nick Clegg and Simon Burns

Tuesday 19th November 2013 Commons Chamber

[The Deputy Prime Minister]

I know that the hon. Lady’s party advocated no upper limit to fees, because it was the Labour Government who commissioned the Lord Brown review—never mind £9,000, it said there should be no upper limit. We have no plans to change the upper limit at the present time.

[Mr Simon Burns (Chelmsford) (Con)]

May I press the Deputy Prime Minister on the answer I got from the Minister of State, Cabinet Office, my right hon. Friend the Member for Tunbridge Wells (Greg Clark)? What precisely are the Government planning to do to make it easier, cheaper and quicker to remove from the electoral register those who put themselves on it either inadvertently or illegally?

[The Deputy Prime Minister]

The whole design of individual voter registration—which, let us remember, was first mooted and launched by the previous Government—was precisely to stamp out levels of fraud and wrongdoing on the electoral register. Our view is that as we move towards individual voter registration on the timetable that we have set out—doing so carefully and providing a great deal of information to those who might otherwise not be aware that they need to make the change and comparing different datasets to make sure that those who are legitimately on the electoral register and are on other databases are transferred automatically—we will be able to weed out fraudulent entries on the electoral register within two or three years.