Stephen Gethins
Main Page: Stephen Gethins (Scottish National Party - North East Fife)
Stephen Gethins (North East Fife) (SNP)
The Scottish National party welcomes the extension to registration. Our right to vote is precious, and we all bear responsibility for giving people that right, so I thank the Minister for coming to the House today. I also agree with the comments made by the right hon. Member for North Somerset (Dr Fox), who said that we would rather avoid legislating for an election during an election period, but we are where we are.
It is essential that everyone who wishes to register is able to do so, and the SNP will back the Government today on extending the registration window. This is a critical vote, and Members across the House with different views recognise the importance of this referendum. It will affect future generations, and it will have a much more substantial impact on younger voters, who will have to live with the decision that we make in two weeks’ time, than it will on older voters. We are on the final straight; there are two weeks until the referendum. Will the Minister assure us that there will be a post-match analysis, so that we can consider what lessons we can learn from what happened over the past 48 hours?
Mr Hollobone
I am listening to the hon. Gentleman with great interest, and I agree that there should be a post-match analysis. Does he share my concern that that analysis will be conducted by the Electoral Commission, which will be writing a report about itself? Should there not be some kind of independent analysis? Otherwise, the report will automatically be skewed.
Stephen Gethins
Of course the Electoral Commission should look into this matter; we should always consider how we can improve our democracy. I hope that the Government will also look into this issue, given that they bear the burden of responsibility for it.
Tommy Sheppard (Edinburgh East) (SNP)
It is important that there is a steward’s inquiry at a later date into what happened. Does my hon. Friend agree that we must also consider the effect that moving to individual electoral registration has had on this issue? Every time the register is compiled, there is a surge of new people joining it for the first time; this year, I fear that we may have had the additional burden of a lot of people who were previously on the register checking to see whether they are still on it, or realising that they are not, and that has created a big spike in demand.
Stephen Gethins
My hon. Friend raises a good point about people double-checking. I double-checked myself, and I encouraged others to do so, so I wonder whether the Government will consider that.
I also ask the Government to consider what lessons can be learned from Scotland. During the independence referendum, voter registration was at 98%, and everybody involved in that process should rightly be proud of themselves. My right hon. Friend the Member for Gordon (Alex Salmond) has also reflected on that. Having had 98% registration, we had an 85% turnout in the referendum, with huge voter participation on both sides, and we should learn from that. I hope that we will reach a turnout of 85%, or even higher, in the referendum, as I am sure that colleagues across the House do, although I am not sure we will quite get there.
Danny Kinahan
I wonder how much of that increase was due to lowering the voting age, and giving younger people who are at school the chance to take an interest.
Stephen Gethins
The hon. Gentleman makes an excellent point. If, as has been suggested, younger voters are the ones registering, I encourage that, and perhaps we should consider giving 16 and 17-year-olds the vote. Evidence shows that the younger a person engages in the political and democratic process, the more likely they are to be engaged in the long term, so I hope we can reflect on that.
Mark Tami (Alyn and Deeside) (Lab)
The hon. Gentleman makes important points, but we should not forget that an estimated 7 million people are not even on the register in the first place. We should not lose sight of that, or of what we need to do to get those people to register.
Stephen Gethins
The hon. Gentleman makes an excellent point that ties into the one raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Edinburgh East (Tommy Sheppard). My hon. Friend the Member for Midlothian (Owen Thompson) and other SNP Members have wondered whether we should start looking at automatic registration. We want to encourage people to register, and we do not want this problem in future. Automatic registration works in other countries, and it can be a better and cheaper system. Will the Minister commit to considering automatic registration when he conducts that post-match analysis? In conclusion, the SNP welcomes the extension to the registration period, and we encourage as many people as possible to take part in the important decision in two weeks.
Mr Hollobone
I am sure that no students in Durham will be affected by this potential anomaly.
Stephen Gethins
I am not sure what the hon. Gentleman is saying about the quality of the universities that he knows, or about how fast their battle buses must be to take them from one place to another, but will he at least accept that we should be encouraging students and young people to become involved as a point of principle?
Mr Hollobone
I have already said that twice, but I am happy to say it again. I think it is great that we are seeing loads more people signing up to the electoral register, especially young people. If it were up to the hon. Gentleman’s party, or the other party, we would not be seeing that at all.
The instrument makes it clear that there will be a post-match analysis, and that the Electoral Commission will have to produce a report on the conduct of the referendum. This is a serious point: the Electoral Commission will be writing a report about what the Electoral Commission has done in the referendum. Now, that is fine—that is one piece of evidence—but there is no provision in the statute for another investigation to be conducted.
This is a matter for my hon. Friend the Member for Harwich and North Essex (Mr Jenkin). I think that, whatever the result of the referendum, it will be an urgent priority for his Committee to initiate an investigation of not just this matter, but the way in which the system has worked in general. I understand that there are issues involving the electoral arrangements as a whole—not just registration, but the way in which the referendum is being handled—owing to the scale of the challenge confronting registration officers, and those who conduct the referendum itself. I urge my hon. Friend and his Committee to begin that work as soon as possible after the referendum. The Minister helpfully said that there were 214,000 applications to register in the hour before the crash. I think I am right in saying that the down time of the crash was one hour and a quarter.