"I have seen several proposals—some argue that moving elections to weekends would somehow increase turnout, others argue for compulsory voting—but the answer is not to introduce new processes and systems, but for us politicians to engage and excite the electorate. The huge turnout for the Scottish referendum had nothing to …..." Sam Gyimah - View Speech
"We want everyone in the country to have a say in who governs them, and we would encourage all people to vote, but it is the job of politicians to do so, not the Government...." Sam Gyimah - View Speech
"I know that the hon. Gentleman would like to rewrite history, but there was a decisive result in the Scottish referendum, and the vow has been delivered completely and faithfully...." Sam Gyimah - View Speech
"I am sorry to disappoint the hon. Lady, but data are not available on the number of local authority areas in which people in more than 90% of households are registered to vote. As she is aware, each register is held locally. Aggregated electoral statistics are available from the Office …..." Sam Gyimah - View Speech
"I do not agree that a catastrophic mess was made of the system. If the hon. Lady looks at the forms issued by the Electoral Commission to local authorities to get households to input all the names, she will see that it was clearly stated that people under the age …..." Sam Gyimah - View Speech
"I thank my right hon. Friend for his question. Of course we regret going into another election with some constituencies such as Arfon having 38,000 electors and others such as the Isle of Wight having 110,000. Those are not equally sized boundaries, but, as they say, we are where we …..." Sam Gyimah - View Speech
"For getting young people on the register, I believe online registration makes it quicker, simpler and more convenient. It takes roughly three minutes and it will help get young people on the register. Indeed, more than 1 million applications from young people have been through the online process. We are …..." Sam Gyimah - View Speech
"If we did not want young people to get on the register, we would not be funding the very organisations that have the experience and expertise for getting young people to vote. That is the first point. The second is that the Northern Ireland system was paper-based, but we have …..." Sam Gyimah - View Speech
"I am pleased to report that the implementation of individual electoral registration is proceeding smoothly. [Laughter.] We have safeguarded the register by automatically transferring nine out of 10 existing electors on to the new system, and by ensuring that no one registered to vote at the last canvass …..." Sam Gyimah - View Speech
"Absolutely. The hon. Gentleman revels in his 2011 nomination for the Total Politics Labour point-scorer of the year. In fact, he has plastered the information all over his website. To answer his question specifically, since December, 1.3 million have been added to the register. Each day and each month, more …..." Sam Gyimah - View Speech