Paul Sweeney
Main Page: Paul Sweeney (Labour (Co-op) - Glasgow North East)Department Debates - View all Paul Sweeney's debates with the Cabinet Office
(6 years ago)
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Chloe Smith
Yes, I have had that experience, and I would be surprised if many Members had not heard that from voters. The widespread assumption among voters is that ID is needed already. What we are doing is bringing Great Britain’s electoral system into line with other parts of the world, including Northern Ireland—inside the UK, of course—and Canada, which already run such a system successfully with turnout remaining up and evidence of fraud down.
Mr Paul Sweeney (Glasgow North East) (Lab/Co-op)
The Minister mentions Canada, but in the last general election my constituency had the lowest turnout in the UK, and that is combined with a low registration rate. If this policy is rolled out at a general election, how on earth will it help my constituents, many of whom are already at the margins of society? We need to engage them and bring them back into participating in our democracy. How will this approach help when evidence from the United States suggests that it suppresses votes?
Chloe Smith
That is quite wrong. The evidence does not suggest that this suppresses votes. The evidence says that turnout has remained up. I quoted the evidence in the Northern Ireland example, and I have cited how it has reduced electoral fraud while not damaging turnout. Let us have the debate on the evidence.
The hon. Gentleman asks how I can help his constituents. I suggest that we need to work together to ensure that more register to vote. To be fair to him, he has given both parts of the voting process—low registration rates and turnout rates—and the key is to ensure that we have higher registration rates. That is why the Government have set out a full democratic engagement plan, to drive registration rates up across all the groups in our society who register least. I am following through on that and I am passionate about doing so. Today we are talking about the policy that ensures that, once registered, those people have the confidence in the system to go and vote to complete the process.