EU Exit: Negotiations and the Joint Committee
Nick Smith Excerpts(3 years, 7 months ago)
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Michael Gove
I am very grateful to my right hon. Friend for the three important points he makes. First, I am sure that the French President and others are increasingly aware of the point he makes about the consequence of no deal. Secondly, the automotive sector is vital not just to the economy of the west midlands but to the whole UK, and we need to make sure that we invest in it for the future. And his third point is right: we need to have our own state aid regime, not the European one, but we also need to make sure that it is consistent with our market principles.
Nick Smith (Blaenau Gwent) (Lab)
The Road Haulage Association is afraid that trade will grind to a halt if there are insufficient customs agents to help goods to cross the border in January. Some 50,000 customs agents are needed. On paper, the Government have allocated £84 million to the task of training the necessary people. I know the Minister has good attention to detail, so will he tell me how many customs agents have been trained from the allocated money?
Oral Answers to Questions
Nick Smith Excerpts(3 years, 7 months ago)
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Chloe Smith
My hon. Friend makes the point extremely well. We have confronted the recent pandemic as one United Kingdom and have achieved more together than we could have done as individual nations. That unity has been reaffirmed through the joint statements of 25 September. As I said, we have taken significant steps to protect the economy, providing billions of pounds to protect lives and livelihoods in all parts of the UK. As I mentioned in my earlier answer, the way in which we are taking our intergovernmental relations forward will show how committed we are to those relationships and to making sure that they are positive today and tomorrow.
Nick Smith (Blaenau Gwent) (Lab)
The Minister for the Constitution and Devolution (Chloe Smith)
We will be working safely with the Electoral Commission to support its voter registration and public information campaigns ahead of the next elections next May, as we do for every election. Together, we will be able to ensure that people can participate in the polls safely and confidently and in a way of their choice, whether by post or proxy or in person.
Nick Smith
It is a great pity that this spring’s elections were postponed because of covid. To reduce uncertainty about the management of our democracy next May, how seriously are the Government considering all-postal voting, which could be a good way to boost safe participation in the coming elections?
Chloe Smith
I thank the hon. Gentleman for his question. He and I both know that he is an experienced hand at election matters. I welcome his scrutiny of this question because it is important. We want the elections in May next year to go ahead, because it is extremely important that we are able to continue with our normal way of life as a country, rather than seeing any further postponement of important elections.
I do not take the view that all-postal elections would be a wise move, however, for the following reason. It is principally that we have already seen around the world that elections can be run in person safely during this pandemic. We are confident that that can be the case here as well, and I am doing all the work necessary with the electoral community to make sure that is so. Indeed, I published evidence of that only recently, which I am sure the hon. Gentleman has already seen.
Furthermore, it is an important part of our elections that people can actually choose the way in which they vote—as I have already said, by post, by proxy or in person. We think that it is important to maintain that and that there is not a good enough reason to do otherwise.
Oral Answers to Questions
Nick Smith Excerpts(3 years, 8 months ago)
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Elizabeth Truss
On Sunday, I was pleased to speak at a United Nations General Assembly event on investing in Africa’s female future. Nimco Ali’s Five Foundation was also represented. It is doing great work to tackle female genital mutilation and bring more economic opportunity for women. In the Department for International Trade, we are currently working on trade continuity agreements with countries such as Kenya to help to build trade and help women in those countries to succeed.
Nick Smith (Blaenau Gwent) (Lab)
The Minister for Digital and Culture (Caroline Dinenage)
There has been a worrying rise in the amount of abuse, harassment and intimidation online, and women are often disproportionately targeted by such abuse. It is completely unacceptable and, in fact, impacts individuals’ rights to participate online. We set out robust measures to deal with this in the online harms White Paper and will be publishing a full Government response to this later in the year.
Nick Smith
I am glad that the Minister recognises this point. Almost one in two women report experiencing online abuse since the start of covid-19. However, the Government have delayed the draft of the online harms Bill until, I understand, the end of 2021. Legislation is clearly needed now, so when will the Government bring the Bill forward?
Caroline Dinenage
I am afraid that the hon. Gentleman is misinformed. We are absolutely committed to making the UK the safest place to go online. The online harms White Paper will set out how we are going to make world-leading legislation. We intend to publish that before the end of the year and the legislation to follow at the very beginning of next year.
EU Exit: End of Transition Period
Nick Smith Excerpts(3 years, 10 months ago)
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Michael Gove
My hon. Friend makes an important point. A significant number of businesses have taken significant steps in order to prepare themselves for life outside the customs union and single market, but one of the reasons for the campaign we are launching now is to ensure that every business has the information it needs. I hope to work with my hon. Friend and other hon. Members in order to ensure that business has the support it needs to take advantage of the opportunities and also to deal with the changes that are coming next.
Nick Smith (Blaenau Gwent) (Lab)
It was only yesterday that the Government announced £100 million to develop HMRC systems to reduce the burden on traders. Why have these systems not already been developed?
Parliamentary Constituencies Bill
Nick Smith ExcerptsTuesday 2nd June 2020
(3 years, 11 months ago)
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Chloe Smith
I can promise you, Madam Deputy Speaker, that that is the last intervention I will take, but it does give me the chance to say that the boundary commissions will listen to the debates in Parliament and will perhaps hear at a different level of detail the arguments that right hon. and hon. Members put. I welcome the hon. Gentleman’s having said that; I am sure it will be listened to by those who operate the rules that we give them through the legislation.
Let me turn to the data, which is very important. Again, we do not intend to alter the long-established practice of reviews being based on the electoral register as updated by the annual canvass. The canvass is the process by which those who are registered to vote in an area are checked and verified every 12 months. Electoral data drawn from the registers in Scotland, Wales and England is further checked by the relevant agencies—the National Records of Scotland and the Office for National Statistics—and the collated information, including on Northern Ireland, is then published centrally by the ONS, so it is a complete and current picture of the situation in all four nations. From that point on, it is used by the boundary commissions. As a general rule, the data that comes after the annual canvass represents the most up-to-date, robust and transparent information source on which to base a boundary review.
Let me turn to the impact of coronavirus on this year’s annual canvass, because it is very important. This is where the reasoned amendment tabled by Opposition Members contains a good point. To state the obvious, it relates only to the immediate next review, rather than to the principles of the Bill. I assure the House that I have been looking at the issue for some time and am considering carefully the options for the next boundary review to be based, on a one-off basis, on an alternative dataset not affected by the coronavirus pandemic. I will update the House on that in due course. I hope that reassures right hon. and hon. Members that we will be able to return to the issue during the later stages of the Bill, thereby allowing us to take the time to observe the problem and get it right as a one-off this year.
In closing, let me give a further reassurance that I am working extremely closely with what we call the electoral community.
Chloe Smith
I am trying to close so that Back-Bench Members can speak, but if the hon. Gentleman wants to cut into that time, he is welcome to do so.
Nick Smith
I thank the Minister for giving way, but her most recent remarks about which register the next boundary review will be based on were a bit ambiguous. Is she saying that it will be based on the 2019 numbers or the 2020 numbers to come?
Chloe Smith
It is a logical question. I have said that I will update the House in due course on that. I am looking at several options to get the most complete and accurate data for us to use in the boundary review this year. I am not seeking to avoid answering the hon. Gentleman’s question, but I will be in a position to bring the information forward during the Bill’s later stages, when I look forward very much to completing the reassurance I am giving the House that we want to use the best data that is unaffected by the pandemic. That stands slightly separately from arguments that perhaps he or other colleagues would like to make about other types of data that should be used. I am talking specifically about how to handle coronavirus. I know that he will understand that that needs to be kept in mind.
I was about to go on to say that I am in contact with the electoral administrators throughout the sector to see, up to the very latest moment, the challenges they face and how they can be dealt with in the publication of canvass data to give the best input to the Bill and for all the other purposes for which canvass data are used—mainly helping people to register to vote.
The Bill is very important. It is technical, but its goal is simple: to ensure 650 equal and updated constituencies. The people of the UK deserve fair votes and effective representation, and to have trust in and certainty about the boundary review process that delivers those things. I commend the Bill to the House.
Future Relationship with the EU: Negotiations
Nick Smith Excerpts(4 years ago)
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Urgent Questions are proposed each morning by backbench MPs, and up to two may be selected each day by the Speaker. Chosen Urgent Questions are announced 30 minutes before Parliament sits each day.
Each Urgent Question requires a Government Minister to give a response on the debate topic.
This information is provided by Parallel Parliament and does not comprise part of the offical record
Michael Gove
My hon. Friend is a brilliant advocate for our farmers in the beautiful part of Wales that she is so lucky to represent, and she is absolutely right that the uncertainty over whether or not we will leave on 31 December is deeply damaging. I am afraid that the uncertainty generated by the Labour party is a problem, because they cannot have their date and eat it.
Nick Smith (Blaenau Gwent) (Lab)
What concrete proposals to improve workers’ rights will the Minister take to these negotiations, which he has just said is his ambition?
Debate on the Address
Nick Smith Excerpts(4 years, 5 months ago)
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Thangam Debbonaire
Obviously I have a biased audience around me. I have been proud to be a Whip for three years, so I want to say a very personal thanks to our colleague Nic Dakin, who lost his seat. We all miss him very much already, and I believe that that also goes for the Government Whips Office.
The Queen’s Speech offers the illusion of action on many matters of great importance, but at the moment there is still too much that is implied or missing. I promise the people of Bristol West that I will do my best to persuade, cajole and challenge this Government at every step in this Parliament on their behalf.
Draft Representation of the People (Annual Canvass) (Amendment) Regulations 2019
Nick Smith Excerpts(4 years, 6 months ago)
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The Parliamentary Secretary, Cabinet Office (Chloe Smith)
I beg to move,
That the Committee has considered the draft Representation of the People (Annual Canvass) (Amendment) Regulations 2019.
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Buck. May I reassure the Committee that, although we are in the midst of thinking about a general election and preparing for it to be run successfully from an administrative perspective, this statutory instrument is not to do with the forthcoming election? I want to make that clear at the outset in case anyone has such thoughts in mind. The changes brought about by the draft regulations, which will first be made use of in the 2020 canvass, will run from July 2020 to December 2020, so what we are talking about now does not come into play for the general election that will follow in a few weeks’ time.
As I am sure hon. Members are aware, the annual canvass is an information-gathering exercise that electoral registration officers are obliged to do every year to ensure that their electoral registers are as complete and accurate as possible. It currently involves sending a form—I am sure hon. Members have filled the forms in themselves—to each residential address with a pre-paid pre-addressed envelope, which households must legally respond to and which ascertains whether the details that the ERO holds for that address are accurate. That is then followed up with a further two written reminders and a household visit if the household does not respond. The point of the process is to find out who lives in a household and then to invite them to register. That is what the canvass does.
The problem we are dealing with today is the one-size-fits-all approach to the annual canvass. It incorporates a lot of prescribed steps and takes little account of differences within and between registration areas. It is heavily paper based, complex to run, and arguably stifling of innovation on the part of the administrators, who do a great job and a lot of hard work. I want to put our appreciation of the administration officers on the record here today.
The process is expensive. It is inefficient for EROs and, crucially, for citizens. It is financially unsustainable in its current form. It is clear that it needs to be improved. We do not want such processes to confuse citizens, and it is citizens we should think about first. If someone has lived at the same property for 30 years, it seems nonsensical to keep completing and returning a form every year that says basically the same thing.
As part of our commitment to make the process of registration as smooth and as simple as possible, we worked with 24 local authorities in 2016 and 2017 to design and deliver pilots across Great Britain to test potential alternatives to the current annual canvass process that could be more efficient and at least as effective—an important point that I want to impress on the Committee. We are aiming for greater efficiency for administrators and citizens, and for the process to be at least as effective, which was one of our main goals.
The evaluation of the pilots provided a strong body of evidence that informed the development of a new, less prescriptive and less burdensome canvass model that will still be an effective audit of the electoral registers. The regulations implement the new model. The most significant change is that it moves away from being one size fits all and instead becomes a more tailored canvass. Households that have not changed since the previous year can follow a more streamlined and cost-effective process, allowing the ERO, crucially, to target their resources where they are most needed. That is important to all of us because we all believe everybody should have their voice and should be able to be registered if they so wish. Of course, we also want to be able to assist administrators to put those resources where they are most needed, targeting those whom we consider the hardest to reach for electoral registration.
Households for which responses and updates will most likely be required will be identified at the outset through a new data-matching step, which will tell the ERO which households likely remain unchanged and which do not. The pilots show that 57% to 83% of households across the pilot sites stayed unchanged from the previous year, and by identifying those properties, the ERO can focus their attention on those that did change and are likely to require additions to the register.
Let me give a few examples of what we are talking about when we talk about under-registered groups. We are talking about people who move home frequently—for example in the private rented sector; young people, including, but not limited to, students; and some groups of a black and ethnic minority background. I am sure we all agree that those groups have absolutely every right to be registered and ought to be the beneficiary of the changes we are talking about.
The data-match step will involve EROs matching their data on registered electors against data held by the Department for Work and Pensions and, where relevant, locally held data sources. Where the ERO’s data on registered electors matches data in a national or locally held dataset, the ERO can have a level of confidence that the details they hold remain accurate.
The ERO will then follow one of three routes for each property, and let me briefly recap what those are. First, the matched properties route will be used for properties where the data shows that the names already held are likely to be complete and accurate. By introducing route 1, we will align the audit of electoral registers with people’s expectations, because, quite understandably, people expect not to have to take action unless an update is required. A burden is also avoided for EROs, because they do not then need to put their resources towards an intensive exercise that is not needed.
Route 2 is for so-called unmatched properties and will be the default route. It will be used for properties where the data-matching exercise shows that there may be a change in the people who are currently registered or not registered for the property. This route is similar to the current canvass process, but the crucial change is that it lets the ERO use e-communications and telephone calls to communicate with electors, instead of hard-copy paper correspondence. I think we can all agree that that is a way to enable greater innovation and greater convenience for citizens as well. I should point out that hard copy may, of course, be still be used; what we are talking about is opening up possibilities, in addition to paper, if that suits an ERO or household.
Route 3 is for defined properties. It is available for properties where the ERO believes they can more effectively and efficiently get the current list of residents using an alternative approach. The ERO will be able to identify a responsible person to give the most up-to-date list of people who should be invited to register in respect of that property. Examples would be care homes or student halls of residence, where a manager might be in a position to provide the ERO with information on those who ought to be invited to register.
I should just note at this point that this is not a proposal for automatic registration. The Opposition Front-Bench spokesman might want to talk about automatic registration, and there is a whole policy debate about the merits or otherwise of it, but this is not that. I point that out, Ms Buck, to help with the scope of this discussion, because automatic registration is not in the scope of what the regulations do—not that you need help; I am just trying to be helpful to the Committee.
In respect of all three routes, the regulations allow for more efficient and modern communication methods. We are talking about emails, text messages, phone calls or, where needed, a short letter encouraging electors to respond using these channels rather than the post.
Nick Smith (Blaenau Gwent) (Lab)
We all have experience of this topic, haven’t we? If the ERO thinks that a voter is still in residence and therefore does not need to be part of the annual canvass, but the streamlined process is not responded to—for instance, if an email goes into a junk folder or a phone call from the ERO is missed by the resident—will that person be taken off the electoral register, even though the council may still believe them to be in residence?
Chloe Smith
The short answer is no, not immediately. These models retain what we already see in the canvass, which is a number of attempts to ascertain information. Through this change, we are allowing for those attempts to be made more easily. We are not looking to reduce the likelihood that someone is able to get on the register.
Nick Smith
The Minister said, “No, not immediately.” What guidance will EROs be given and what further steps will be taken to make sure that a voter is left on the electoral register when the ERO believes them to be still in residence, to ensure that they are not robbed of their vote?
Chloe Smith
I welcome that point, because it is incredibly important. I can give the reassurance once again that we are not seeking for people to be taken off the register when they should not be. By the way, may I add that we are not seeking for people to stay on the register when they should not be, if they have genuinely moved home—deletions are, of course, as relevant as additions.
To the hon. Gentleman’s point, I will provide the detail of how many times that can be done. The point is that, in line with the current law, removal would not be done immediately, from the citizen’s perspective. The hon. Gentleman—I want to be clear in my words here—may think that, when I say that it is not immediate, I mean that it is done by some sinister regulation other than the ones we are talking about. I want to be clear that that is not the interpretation. What I mean is that, just as now, the ERO does not immediately remove anybody, but continues to inquire. I will give him the detail of exactly how many times that method is done as I go through other details in my remarks.
I also want to cover the scope of these provisions. They relate only to the parliamentary registers across Great Britain and the local government register in England. Responsibility for the registers for local government is devolved in Scotland and Wales, so the final policy that hon. Members see in front of them today has been agreed over many months between myself, the Member who covered my maternity leave, and counterparts in the Scottish and Welsh Governments. It will be for the Welsh and Scottish Governments to introduce complementary legislation to cover the registers in Wales and Scotland.
I am grateful for that cross-party and cross-institution collaboration. Officials from the three Governments have worked closely to enable these statutory instruments to be produced. Those are due to be laid in their respective legislatures in the coming weeks. That will allow the reforms to be in place across the Great Britain registers by the beginning of 2020. It is helpful to remind the Committee that this shows that we can do that kind of work between Administrations. I fully welcome that as a way of being able to maintain complete and accurate registers for all electors across Great Britain.
I want to say a quick word on the support of administrators for these measures. EROs fully support these reforms. Given their frontline experience administering the process year on year, they are best placed to understand how important it is to modernise it. These regulations are the culmination of three years of collaboration with stakeholders such as the Association of Electoral Administrators and the Scottish Assessors Association, which represent EROs and administrators. A public consultation was also run on the regulations, gathering responses from administrators throughout the country. I am grateful that my officials visited every region of Great Britain to present the proposed reforms to groups of administrators ahead of the publication of the final statement of canvass reform policy in September.
The feedback from the electoral community about these reforms has been very positive. For example, the chief executive of the Association of Electoral Administrators, Mr Peter Stanyon, noted that
“using data to deliver a better experience for citizens is the right approach to take…It will also deliver much needed cost savings to local authorities.”
We have also worked closely with the Electoral Commission, as per section 8 of the Electoral Registration and Administration Act 2013, and its response is overwhelmingly positive. It supports the regulations, saying:
“The canvass reform proposals should result in greater efficiency, allowing Electoral Registration Officers (EROs) to focus their increasingly limited resources on areas of greatest need thereby better meeting the objective of the canvass.”
After its consultation, the Information Commissioner’s Office also supports the scheme.
Today’s reforms bring up to date a process that is no longer fit for purpose. The regulations give EROs greater flexibility to decide how to canvass their local areas. They provide them with opportunities to identify where greater efficiencies can be made locally, and make the citizen experience more streamlined and user-friendly. The regulations also incorporate the safeguards that the hon. Member for Blaenau Gwent has quite rightly been asking about, which can be expected to continue to apply for citizens. Before making any removals, an ERO must find a second source of information, or conduct a review, which includes a legal process.
I assure the hon. Gentleman that non-response to the canvass does not lead to deletion. There are also safeguards in place for unread emails or unanswered telephone calls; for example, when email is used, the elector must respond. If no response is received, a letter is sent to make sure that the email is not in a junk folder, for example. This is all geared towards residents not missing out on updating their records, and the same is true for telephones. There is further detail in the policy statement, the impact assessment, and all the other documentation that goes alongside these reforms, which I hope will reassure the Committee that there will not be a reduction in the level of the service for ensuring citizens are not removed incorrectly.
Of course, I will answer any further questions the Committee may have about these regulations. However, I remind Members that we are looking to make greater efficiencies for both administrators, who sorely need them, and citizens, who quite rightly expect this process to be streamlined and user-friendly. If we do not pass these regulations, we are condemning citizens to continual greater inefficiency, and administrators to a further round of a costly process.
We are aiming to make changes that are ready for the canvass in 2020. Making those changes today will enable the data-matching step to be done in early 2020, and the canvass in 2020 to be run using those improvements. Not passing these regulations will lead to another year of greater cost and inefficiency, which is unfair to administrators and deeply unfair to citizens, who could have had better.
These regulations are uncontentious. They are largely highly technical, and they have the support of all the major stakeholders in this sector, including cross-party, cross-political support from the Welsh and Scottish Governments.
Chloe Smith
In that case, I am glad that the hon. Gentleman agrees; his first argument has fallen away. These pilots provide a better experience for under-registered groups. They show no negative impact on under-registered groups and EROs agreed that they had more resource available to target those groups. We should all surely support that.
I can give a few more points of detail that may be helpful. For example, let us look at attainers, who are the group coming towards the age of being able to vote; this is not an argument about whether that ought to be 16 or 18, but about those who attain the age for voting. The reform allows EROs to be helped to get data that will help them to work out where and who those young people are, and to invite them to register. It is about helping EROs get better quality data that they can use to target their work where it is most needed, and to get people on to the register.
Nick Smith (Blaenau Gwent) (Lab)
Does that mean the Department for Work and Pensions will give the attainer’s national insurance number to EROs to help boost electoral registration? My very good Blaenau Gwent ERO told me that Blaenau Gwent council has found that, when young people try to register to vote, that voter registration effort fails because they may not have an NI number. Therefore, there is under-representation of young people because that important data is not woven into the system.
Chloe Smith
The short answer is yes. Today’s data-matching step allows for those data fields—national insurance is one example, but other information is held in the DWP’s customer information system and in locally available sources, which I covered in my earlier remark. There is the potential to use those datasets to reach people who have not yet been identified to be invited to register to vote. That is exactly the point of what we are discussing. These regulations allow that data- matching approach, which is what the hon. Gentleman’s —I am sure excellent—registration officer has been searching for. We are enabling that improvement today. It is a mystery to me why his colleague, the hon. Member for City of Chester, indicates that he would not wish to support that. Voting against this instrument condemns the Blaenau Gwent registration officer to continue fumbling around in the dark.
Nick Smith
I do not speak on behalf of my colleague; he is more than able to do speak for himself. Our general fear is that the Minister is rushing her fences. It would have been much better to have more time to consider the regulations and deal with them after the general election, in anticipation of the annual registration drive in the autumn of next year. I understand that there are technical reasons that make it difficult for the Government, but a longer run-in would help to address the very real concerns we have about under-registration, as well as the need to involve people and boost electoral registration.
If the voter is thought to be in residence, but the follow-up, streamlined measures do not lead to registration, as the Minister mentioned, will there be a household visit at that place, similar to an annual register, but targeted at those people—
The Chair
Nick Smith
I apologise—I will be succinct. Will there be a household visit to pursue those people who may not have responded to the streamlined measures the Minister outlined?
Chloe Smith
Yes, household visits remain in the system. I can clarify that we are talking about omitting the household visit only in route 1, which is where there is no change in a household. Why should people visit a household where they have been told there is no change? That seems to be good common sense. Routes 2 and 3 still include household visits in the mix of methods available. I hope that is helpful to the Committee.
Let me add a little further detail to the points about national insurance numbers. We have worked with HMRC to put a “register to vote” prompt on the issuing of national insurance numbers for 16-year-olds who might be getting those numbers. If it would be helpful, I would be happy to write to the Committee to be more precise on exactly which national datasets are in hand. I do not wish to confuse the Committee in any way about the types of data available from DWP and HMRC. I want to be able to get that right, so I will write to Members to confirm it.
Let me move on to a few other points that were made. The hon. Member for City of Chester asked whether this statutory instrument has been rushed. I understand why the argument arises, because here we are in the few days before the Dissolution of the House of Commons. As I explained, the substance of the statutory instrument is not to do with the general election, but I understand that we are having to debate it with fewer days’ notice than would otherwise have been the case.
As I explained, the passing of this instrument and the equivalent ones in the other legislatures was always going to be this autumn; we are talking about only a matter of days or weeks’ change. I cannot speak for the usual channels about exactly when the Committee would have been scheduled for, but the relatively short notice given in inviting hon. Members to join the Committee was more to do with Dissolution procedures than anything intrinsic to this statutory instrument. It is not being rushed through the House; it would always have been in front of the House this autumn.
Let me remake the point that three years’ work has gone into this exercise, including considerable consultation and joint working between Administrations. That is the very opposite of being rushed. This has arguably been a slow, methodical process. I hope that reassures the Committee.
I want to go on to the impact of not passing the regulations today, and I want to use the Electoral Commission’s words. It says in its consultation response summary that
“the success of canvass reform is highly dependent on new data-sharing mechanisms and careful planning and implementation activities being completed in good time ahead of the start of the 2020 annual canvass, which will commence from July 2020.”
In other words, if we do not agree to the regulations today, we will be depriving those hard-working electoral registration officers of being able to do data sharing—which is to the greater good—careful planning and implementation activities. That would be foolish.
The Electoral Commission reminds us:
“Under the current rigid statutory requirements for the canvass, EROs have to carry out the same steps…even if there has been no change…This means that EROs are unable to focus their resources in areas of greatest need, and a disproportionate amount of resource is required to be directed at…activity which does not identify eligible electors…We do not believe that the current system is meeting the objective of the canvass as well as it should, nor do we believe the model is sustainable in the short to medium term.”
That is the cost of voting against the instrument. It would be foolish to do so.
Draft Government of Wales Act 2006 (Amendment) Order 2019
Nick Smith Excerpts(4 years, 6 months ago)
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Kevin Foster
I will keep my conclusion brief. I very much welcome the support of the shadow Minister. I agree with many of his comments, although not necessarily all of them.
I emphasise that the core of the order is about modernising the process of the annual canvass. At the moment, it is based on paper forms being sent out and, in theory, exactly the same effort going into areas where there is no particular evidence that people are not registered or that households have changed as goes into communities where there may be a greater chance of people not being registered to vote. The order allows, in devolved and reserved elections, resources to be focused on getting people on to the register who might otherwise be excluded. A constructive piece of work has been done with the Welsh Government. The Cabinet Office, the Welsh Government, local government in England, and Scotland are looking to see how we can improve the process.
Nick Smith (Blaenau Gwent) (Lab)
On the point about the UK Government supporting the Welsh Government and EROs in boosting electoral registration, when talking to my ERO in Blaenau Gwent, I found out that when young people try to register to vote, the single most common reason for them not registering to vote properly is their inability to provide their national insurance number. It is a simple thing, and many of us know it off by heart, but young people have not learned it yet. Will the new regulation allow EROs in Wales, or Welsh Government Ministers, to have stronger influence over the Department for Work and Pensions, so that there is better digital transfer of information, particularly around NI numbers, allowing EROs to target young people and provide that information as part of their boosting of electoral registration to support the growth of our democracy, as recommended by my hon. Friend the Member for Vale of Clwyd?
Kevin Foster
I thank the hon. Gentleman for the interesting intervention. He may want to look at the main canvass reform orders that will be laid, which look at how DWP data could be used to identify those who may be being excluded from the electoral roll. He will notice that there are some clear safeguards around such data matches being used, so that ERO teams can target exactly who might be most likely to not be registered or households where there may have been a change in composition. Again, we realise that those who are in receipt of particular DWP support are perhaps most likely to not be on the electoral register.
There are also some specific provisions in the English orders, which have now been laid before the House by the Cabinet Office, to look at issues such as specialist accommodation. Rather than just firing out random paper forms, we can do better work to identify a responsible person to then identify those who may be being excluded from the electoral roll. In some cases, it is about people literally not knowing how to get the form done or make declarations of local connections. Our priority is to target resources and move away from a bureaucratic method where we send a form and do not get a reply, then send another form, then knock on a door—that is from another era.
Welsh Ministers will also want to engage on the franchise that has been set for the devolved elections and how they can reach out. Speaking as the UK Minister with responsibility for democratic engagement, we welcome the steps that are being taken in all the nations of the United Kingdom to try to engage more people and get them to participate in our democracy. As hon. Members will appreciate, however, there is a separate system in Northern Ireland under the chief electoral officer, for fairly obvious historical reasons, where a requirement for an annual canvass does not exist under the laws that pertain there.
To use the earlier expression, this has been a tidy debate that has elicited a wide consensus. I commend the order to the Committee.
Question put and agreed to.
Oral Answers to Questions
Nick Smith Excerpts(4 years, 7 months ago)
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Kevin Foster
We certainly welcome any moves being taken by the social media giants to try to remove those who are looking to distort information or inappropriately influence elections. As part of the consultation we are taking forward, we will try to achieve some consensus about how we can have a modern and up-to-date set of rules that ensures people cannot go online to sidestep rules that are very strong in the physical world.
Nick Smith (Blaenau Gwent) (Lab)
Can the Minister confirm how many convictions there were for polling station fraud last year—exactly how many?
Kevin Foster
I must say that perhaps it would have been better to ask that supplementary on the next question, but I will just say that in building confidence in our electoral system, it is vital that we tackle a range of issues. If the hon. Gentleman wants to see what happens when people’s democratic rights are stolen via electoral fraud, he should talk to his hon. Friend the Member for Poplar and Limehouse (Jim Fitzpatrick).