Question to the Cabinet Office:

To ask the Minister for the Cabinet Office, what steps he is taking to increase the level of participation in elections.

The Government is committed to building a democracy that works for everyone. To promote democratic engagement, National Democracy Week was held in July 2018 and the Cabinet Office is leading on three projects funded by the Suffrage Centenary Fund Programme. These are the Democracy Ambassadors Scheme to recruit and train youth democracy ambassadors, the development and publication of a toolkit for parliamentarians to engage young people, and a new secondary schools resource which will be released later this year.

More widely, on 30 August 2018 the Government published the response to its Call for Evidence on Access to Elections. This includes a series of actions to be taken forward to remove identified barriers to further support disabled people to participate in elections.

We also expect to boost democratic participation through work on voter identification and the measures proposed in the Government’s consultation “Protecting the Debate: Intimidation, Influence and Information.” Democratic participation is more likely when citizens can cast their vote in confidence. Proposed measures to tackle intimidation will help ensure voters can make a free choice at the ballot box, based on an informed discussion focused on policy and principle, rather than on misinformation or abuse.