Asked by: Ian C. Lucas (Labour - Wrexham)
Question to the Cabinet Office:
To ask the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster and Minister for the Cabinet Office, what recent discussions he has had with the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport on (a) data protection and (b) electoral reform.
Answered by Kevin Foster
The Cabinet Office is taking a cross-Government approach to the safeguarding of our electoral processes through the Defending Democracy programme and we continue to work closely with the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS). This work is led within the Cabinet Office by the Minister for the Constitution, under the oversight of the Minister for the Cabinet Office.
The Government remains committed to ensuring our electoral law is fit for purpose, now and into the future. In May this year, the Government announced we would be launching a consultation on electoral integrity. As part of that, we are considering measures to strengthen the regulatory framework around elections and ensure they are fully up to date for a modern electoral system. We are also awaiting the publication of the final report from the Law Commission on their review of electoral law, which we understand will be published early next year, and will look at their recommendations and comments with interest.
DCMS is responsible for data protection policy and sponsors the independent regulator of the Data Protection Act 2018, the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO). The ICO are consulting on a draft framework code of practice for the use of personal data in political campaigning, which concluded on 04 October.
Asked by: Chris Ruane (Labour - Vale of Clwyd)
Question to the Cabinet Office:
To ask the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster and Minister for the Cabinet Office, with reference to the Electoral Commission's report Accuracy and completeness of the electoral registers in Great Britain, what steps his Department is taking to reduce the disparity between electoral register completeness of voters from white ethnic backgrounds and those from other ethnic backgrounds.
Answered by Kevin Foster
The Government is committed to protecting, promoting and respecting our democracy. We want to build upon recent record levels of electors registering to vote and participating in elections. Since 2013/14, the Government has provided more than £27m to fund diverse activities by EROs, civil society groups and others to promote electoral registration and democratic engagement.
The Cabinet Office has recently published the findings of a project investigating the barriers to registration for under-registered groups, including some minority ethnic backgrounds.
This evidence is available along with other resources on GOV.UK to assist Electoral Registration Officers and others to better understand why some ethnic minorities are less likely to be registered and to target them more effectively.
The Government is also taking action to reform the annual canvass of all residential properties in Great Britain. These reforms will significantly improve the overall efficiency of the canvass process and allow Electoral Registration Officers to focus their efforts on activities including the targeting of under-registered groups.
Asked by: Chris Ruane (Labour - Vale of Clwyd)
Question to the Cabinet Office:
To ask the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster and Minister for the Cabinet Office, with reference to the Electoral Commission's report Accuracy and completeness of the electoral registers in Great Britain, what assessment his Department has made of the factors influencing the increase in electoral register entries with major errors from 2015 to 2019.
Answered by Kevin Foster
The Government will review the Electoral Commission’s report in detail and consider its conclusions.
The Government is taking action to reform the annual canvass of all residential properties in Great Britain. These reforms will significantly improve the overall efficiency of the canvass process and allow Electoral Registration Officers to focus their efforts on where change has occurred. This will play an important role in helping them maintain the accuracy and completeness of their registers.
Asked by: Stewart Malcolm McDonald (Scottish National Party - Glasgow South)
Question to the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office:
What support his Department has offered to the Government of Ukraine in relation to that Government's democratic reforms.
Answered by Christopher Pincher
The United Kingdom is providing substantial assistance to strengthen Ukraine’s democracy and institutions as part of its reform programme. In July 2017, we hosted the inaugural Ukraine Reform Conference and have since participated in annual conferences including Toronto (2019). We are providing over £32 million of programme support, including at least £9.2m for reforms via the Good Governance Fund. The UK improved capacity of Central Election Commission training over 2,600 key electoral officials. In short we helped ensure that recent presidential and parliamentary elections were widely hailed as Ukraine’s freest and fairest to date. I look forward to my visit to Ukraine next week.
Asked by: Chris Ruane (Labour - Vale of Clwyd)
Question to the Cabinet Office:
To ask the Minister for the Cabinet Office, what additional central Government funding was made available to electoral registration officers for electoral registration in each of the last five years; and which local authorities were successful in bidding for that funding.
Answered by Oliver Dowden - Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster
Since 2015, Cabinet Office has provided five years of annual grant funding to Electoral Registration Officers in England, Scotland and Wales to cover the additional cost that Individual Electoral Registration (IER) introduced to the registration system.
Initial in-year allocations are paid to all local authorities in England and Wales, and valuation joint boards in Scotland as early in the financial year as possible. If local authorities/valuation joint boards require further additional funding, they are required to submit a justification led bid (JLB) towards the end of the financial year.
Since 2015, the Cabinet Office has provided £96M to cover these additional costs
● 15/16, £27M
● 16/17, £21M
● 17/18, £18M
● 18/19, £16M
● 19/20, £14M (initial allocations announced and payments being processed – does not include JLB funding.)
Since 2015/16, 50% of the Local Authorities and Valuation Joint Boards have received additional JLB funding on top of the initial allocation in at least one of the years of funding.
It is anticipated that plans to reform the annual canvass of electors will significantly reduce the overall cost of electoral registration and place electoral registration services on a more sustainable footing.
Asked by: Chris Ruane (Labour - Vale of Clwyd)
Question to the Cabinet Office:
To ask the Minister for the Cabinet Office, if he will make an assessment of the potential merits of ring-fencing funds allocated by his Department to local government for the purpose of voter registration.
Answered by Oliver Dowden - Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster
Funding for the annual household canvass and year round electoral registration (in addition to funding for polls at a local level) is paid for by the local authority using monies from the Revenue Support Grant (RSG) provided through MHCLG and the revenue raised by the authority through council tax, business rates and any reserves. This provides the majority of the funding for electoral registration.
Since the transition to Individual Electoral Registration (IER) in 2014, central Government has provided annual direct funding to local authorities to cover the additional costs of IER compared to the previous household system.
Since 2015/16, five years of annual funding has been provided by Cabinet Office to cover these additional costs, totalling £96M to date. It is expected that planned reform of the annual canvass of electors will significantly reduce the overall cost of registration. The Government is not therefore minded to make an assessment of the potential merits of ring-fencing IER grant funding.
Electoral Registration Officers are responsible for delivering electoral registration services and securing funding from the local authorities that appoint them. It is for local authorities to decide how they allocate their budgets.
Asked by: Andrew Percy (Conservative - Brigg and Goole)
Question to the Cabinet Office:
To ask the Minister for the Cabinet Office, what steps the Government is taking to tackle postal vote fraud.
Answered by Kevin Foster
Electoral fraud is unacceptable on any level. There are already measures in place designed to enhance the security of postal voting.
In response to (the then) Sir Eric Pickles report on electoral fraud, the Government accepted recommendations to strengthen the postal vote system and, in line with our manifesto commitment, we are working to reform postal voting to ensure our elections are secure.
The Government will look for opportunities to introduce measures that will restrict the handling of postal votes by people who may seek to abuse or subvert them. We will also look to introduce controls on the return of postal votes via polling stations, which has been a cause for concern in past elections.
Asked by: Alex Chalk (Conservative - Cheltenham)
Question to the Cabinet Office:
To ask the Minister for the Cabinet Office, what steps the Government is taking to prevent postal vote electoral fraud.
Answered by Kevin Foster
Electoral fraud is unacceptable on any level. There are already measures in place designed to enhance the security of postal voting. In response to the Pickles report on electoral fraud, the Government accepted recommendations to strengthen the postal vote system and, in line with our manifesto commitment, we are working to reform postal voting to ensure our elections are secure.
Cabinet Office coordinates cross-Government work to protect and secure our democratic processes and ensure those involved in delivering our elections receive cyber, physical and personnel security advice from experts at the National Cyber Security Centre and the Centre for the Protection of National Infrastructure.
Asked by: Michael Fallon (Conservative - Sevenoaks)
Question to the Cabinet Office:
To ask the Minister for the Cabinet Office, what steps his Department is taking to safeguard the electoral process in respect of postal voting.
Answered by Kevin Foster
Electoral Fraud is unacceptable on any level. We have processes in place to defend against electoral fraud and there is ongoing work with electoral administrators and Royal Mail to implement these. In response to the Pickles report on electoral fraud, the Government accepted recommendations to strengthen the postal vote system and, in line with our manifesto commitment, we are working to reform postal voting to ensure our elections are secure.
Cabinet Office coordinates cross-Government work to protect and secure our democratic processes and ensure those involved in delivering our elections receive cyber, physical and personnel security advice from experts at the National Cyber Security Centre and the Centre for the Protection of National Infrastructure.
Asked by: Patrick Grady (Scottish National Party - Glasgow North)
Question to the Cabinet Office:
To ask the Minister for the Cabinet Office, if he will issue a response to the recommendations published by FullFact on 12 April 2019 on reform of electoral laws governing online campaigning.
Answered by Kevin Foster
The Government is committed to increasing transparency in digital campaigning. On 5 May 2019, the Government announced that candidates, political parties and non-party campaigners will be required to brand or ‘imprint’ their digital election materials, so the public is clear who is targeting them. The Government will bring forward the technical proposal for this regime later on this year.
Whilst there are no current plans for a database of online political adverts, we are encouraging action to increase transparency of wider political advertising online. Several social media companies have already implemented tools to enhance transparency about the origins of political and electoral adverts on their platforms, including political advert libraries. However, these efforts have been inconsistent and the Government is clear that more could be done. As such, the Online Harms White Paper, published on 8 April 2019, proposes that under the new online safety regulatory framework platforms could be required to improve transparency of political advertising, as part of their duty of care to protect their users from disinformation.