Meg Munn
Main Page: Meg Munn (Labour (Co-op) - Sheffield, Heeley)Department Debates - View all Meg Munn's debates with the Cabinet Office
(13 years, 5 months ago)
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Meg Munn (Sheffield, Heeley) (Lab/Co-op)
To prevent the voting problems that occurred in Sheffield and other places, the Electoral Commission recommended changes to administration, which I know the Deputy Prime Minister supports and which I support. The commission also recommended a change in the law. The right hon. Gentleman has stated that he does not believe the law should be changed. Can he tell us on what basis he made that decision and who he has consulted on it?
The Deputy Prime Minister
The hon. Lady has raised this matter before and it is indeed a serious issue. It is a question of trying to match the solution to the problem. Much of the evidence appears to suggest that the real problems were to do with the organisation by certain returning officers and the resources allocated to specific polling stations, not least the one that she and I know well in Ranmoor in Sheffield, where there were particularly long queues. I am open-minded about this but, in my view, simply changing the law without changing the resources provided to those polling stations will not improve the performance of the individual polling stations.