Oral Answers to Questions
Debate between Chris Elmore and Simon Hoare(4 months, 3 weeks ago)
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Chris Elmore (Ogmore) (Lab)
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities (Simon Hoare)
Free, fair and resilient elections are pivotal to our society, and if we agree on nothing else in this House, I hope it is on that. The Government regularly meet the Electoral Commission, both at ministerial and official level, to discuss a broad range of electoral issues, and I am due to have my first meeting with it next Tuesday.
Chris Elmore
I thank the Minister for his answer, and I welcome him to his place. He will know that the cyber-attack in October 2021 was not detected until August 2022, and the commission admitted that it had failed a cyber security test in the same year. What work is the Minister doing with the Security Minister to ensure that the defending democracy taskforce has a remit with the Electoral Commission? I agree with the Minister, as should all Members of this House, that we should have free and fair elections without intervention from other states, so what work is he doing to ensure the general election next year is protected from any hostile states?
Simon Hoare
The hon. Gentleman—and, dare I say it, my friend—raises an important point. There is a good range of discussion taking place between my Department and the Home Office and a range of meetings focused on that. Conscious of the role that the commission can play, we must ensure that those who stand in our elections, participate in them and administer them feel safe and secure in their roles, and moreover that the results, whatever they are, stand up and are not open to challenge as a result of cyber-attack or anything else.
Draft Dorset (Structural Changes) (Modification Of The Local Government And Public Involvement In Health Act 2007) Regulations 2018
Draft Bournemouth, Dorset And Poole (Structural Changes) Order 2018
Debate between Chris Elmore and Simon Hoare(5 years, 11 months ago)
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Simon Hoare
My hon. Friend the Member for Mid Dorset and North Poole, in some uncharacteristically cheap sedentary chunter, says, “Shut up and sit down!” I note the ironic “Hear, hears!” from members of the Committee. I view that as an invitation to move on to volume 3, but I shall not. Let me draw my remarks to a close—
Simon Hoare
Tantalising though the hon. Gentleman’s invitation is, I hope he will not hold it against me if I do not avail myself of his invitation at the current time, but I reserve the right to return to it at a later stage.
Let me close as I opened. I want—and I hope that all of us, as practitioners of party politics, will want—all our constituents, whether they voted for us or not, whether they think we are the best thing since sliced bread or the worst thing since the bubonic plague, to have confidence in this one unassailable truth: that we have locked horns and engaged in strong, heartfelt, passionate debate. That debate is now drawing to a close. Something tells me that there is very little this afternoon that will reconcile the viewpoint of my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch, my hon. Friend the Member for Bournemouth West and myself on this issue.
The one thing that will ally us all is a strong affection and admiration for our former Prime Minister, Baroness Thatcher. We all remember that scene—often now parodied as a pastiche, but heartfelt at the time—when the new Prime Minister on the steps of Downing Street prayed in aid the words of St Francis of Assisi. It was a very heartfelt, moving, spiritual prayer. Let me close with the words of St Paul: we have fought the fight to the finish; we have the run the race to the end. We have now got to the end. Let us now roll up our sleeves and make this damn thing work.