Cabinet Office – in the House of Commons at on 11 February 2021.
Daniel Poulter
Conservative, Central Suffolk and North Ipswich
What plans he has to tackle voter fraud in elections.
Michael Gove
Minister for the Cabinet Office and Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster
The Government are committed to delivering our bold agenda of electoral reform to strengthen our democracy and protect public trust and confidence in our elections. As outlined in our 2019 manifesto, the Government will introduce measures requiring identification to vote at polling stations and to stop postal vote harvesting.
Daniel Poulter
Conservative, Central Suffolk and North Ipswich
The Minister will be aware that, during the previous election and, indeed, during the 2017 election, there was considerable concern about students potentially voting in more than one location. Is there more that my right hon. Friend can do to ensure that we prevent this from happening? Rather than just relying on retrospective prosecutions, can we look at improving the registration process to stop people registering to vote or potentially trying to vote in more than one location at a General Election?
Michael Gove
Minister for the Cabinet Office and Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster
My hon. Friend makes a very important point. My colleague, the Minister for the Constitution and Devolution, is looking at exactly how we can ensure that we have effective voter registration so that either confusion or, indeed, an outright attempt to subvert the integrity of the poll can be dealt with, and we will be bringing forward more detail in due course.
The cabinet is the group of twenty or so (and no more than 22) senior government ministers who are responsible for running the departments of state and deciding government policy.
It is chaired by the prime minister.
The cabinet is bound by collective responsibility, which means that all its members must abide by and defend the decisions it takes, despite any private doubts that they might have.
Cabinet ministers are appointed by the prime minister and chosen from MPs or peers of the governing party.
However, during periods of national emergency, or when no single party gains a large enough majority to govern alone, coalition governments have been formed with cabinets containing members from more than one political party.
War cabinets have sometimes been formed with a much smaller membership than the full cabinet.
From time to time the prime minister will reorganise the cabinet in order to bring in new members, or to move existing members around. This reorganisation is known as a cabinet re-shuffle.
The cabinet normally meets once a week in the cabinet room at Downing Street.
In a general election, each constituency chooses an MP to represent it by process of election. The party who wins the most seats in parliament is in power, with its leader becoming Prime Minister and its Ministers/Shadow Ministers making up the new Cabinet. If no party has a majority, this is known as a hung Parliament. The next general election will take place on or before 3rd June 2010.
Ministers make up the Government and almost all are members of the House of Lords or the House of Commons. There are three main types of Minister. Departmental Ministers are in charge of Government Departments. The Government is divided into different Departments which have responsibilities for different areas. For example the Treasury is in charge of Government spending. Departmental Ministers in the Cabinet are generally called 'Secretary of State' but some have special titles such as Chancellor of the Exchequer. Ministers of State and Junior Ministers assist the ministers in charge of the department. They normally have responsibility for a particular area within the department and are sometimes given a title that reflects this - for example Minister of Transport.
