New Clause 1
Political Parties and Elections Bill
12:45 pm
Eleanor Laing (Shadow Minister, Justice; Epping Forest, Conservative)
No, of course I am not. It is right to educate people about such important matters, and so it is right to teach people that they have a duty to register to vote. We all often go out on the campaign trail and I assume that every member of the Committee sometimes knocks on people’s doors and asks, “Will you vote?”. Usually we ask “Will you vote for me?”, rather than “Will you vote?” generally, but often the conversation comes round to whether a person votes generally. We find people who say “I don’t vote”, like “I don’t smoke” or “I don’t eat pasta” or “I don’t ride a bicycle”, as if there is no duty to register to vote. It is as if they are asserting that they are in some way morally superior because they do not get involved in the political process, but they will be the first to complain if something goes wrong and their representative has not done anything about it. That is a massive generalisation that I do not propose to back up, but we all meet people who say that they do not vote. It should be up to the Government to tell them that they have a duty to register to vote. If they then choose not to vote, of course every individual has the freedom to choose whether to exercise their vote.