Electoral Participation (Media) — [David Crausby in the Chair]

Part of the debate – in Westminster Hall at 4:14 pm on 27 April 2016.

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Photo of John Penrose John Penrose The Lord Commissioner of HM Treasury, The Parliamentary Secretary, Cabinet Office 4:14, 27 April 2016

It is good to have you looking after us this afternoon, Mr Crausby, and making sure we all behave ourselves and have a productive debate. I add my congratulations to Owen Thompson on securing it. As he said, he is involved in the all-party group on democratic participation, which does incredibly important work. We need to develop a better cross-party approach in this area, particularly on such things as voter registration; we do better together than we do separately. Political parties no doubt have a place in getting their normal demographic supporter base to get registered and to get out, take part and use their vote on polling day. More than that, however, if we can co-operate on a cross-party basis, it is often reassuring for voters because they can see that it is being done from purer democratic motives, rather than just for party advantage. That can make a difference, so the all-party group’s work is in that proud tradition and is hugely to be supported and applauded.

The hon. Gentleman mentioned various surveys of democratic engagement and democratic involvement. Interestingly, the results that he quoted pretty closely match—directionally at least—what we see if we start to compare levels of voter registration. Voter registration is not a perfect proxy for democratic involvement, because someone can be registered to vote and then not use their vote on polling day, but it is not a bad one. It was very interesting to hear him mention that some BME community groups are under-represented and less likely to be registered. Incidentally, others are extremely well represented—there are some parts of the Asian community in this country whose registration rates are well above average—but as he rightly mentions, some are below average.

Equally, we have problems with people who are living in short-term rented accommodation, who perhaps move regularly. There is some debate about whether their reason for not registering is because they are disaffected and do not believe in the idea of democracy being relevant to them, or whether it is just inconvenient because the registration folk do not keep up with them as they move around—it may be a bit of both. There are some queries about that. Students can be a problem in terms of levels of registration, although interestingly, a degree of evidence now shows that quite a lot of students are registered at their parental home address as opposed to their university address, so we need to be careful about how that set of figures are taken.

The single worst group for registration is one that we often forget about—expatriates. There are between 1.5 million and 2 million Brits currently living abroad who are legally entitled to vote. At present, they lose the right to vote after 15 years, and we aim to change that in due course. However, as the law stands there are perhaps 1.5 million people, or even more—estimates vary, but there could be up to 2 million—living abroad who are legally enfranchised, but the level of registration among that group was just over 100,000 at the last general election. Therefore, only between 5% and 10% of them are registered, at most. They are by far the least well-registered group and are therefore, the least well-represented group among all the different ones that we need to get involved and bring into the fold.

As the hon. Gentleman said, the role of media is incredibly important. He pointed out that the way in which social media has changed democratic debate is important not only for us as practising politicians, but for the overall body politic—for the state and how our democratic consensus is forged, and how democratic debate takes place—and I particularly liked that. He is absolutely right that more of that is now peer to peer, which I think was the phrase he used. I venture to suggest that in the past, peer-to-peer debate was basically what people said to their mates down the pub, but the advent of social media means that Facebook groups, Twitter streams and, dare I say it, even Snapchat groups of one kind or another, are now all over the place. They mean that people with very disparate interests and opinions can come together much more easily and share their points of view.

That is relevant for campaigning groups: people who have a particular interest in anything from saving hedgehogs through to democracy in Burma, and everything in between—the sorts of things that, actually, are frequently covered by all-party groups in this building. It allows them to organise nationally much more effectively, much faster and much more cheaply than they ever used to. However, we need to be careful: if someone is always surrounded by like-minded people online, or physically in the offline world, they risk finding themselves purely in an echo chamber where everybody always agrees with them. I am sure the hon. Gentleman agrees that nothing is more dangerous for a politician than to hear the opinions only of people who always agree with them. That can lead to dangerous waters, including the belief that they are always right and, if not careful, they may become impatient with people who have the temerity to hold a different point of view. Part of the weft and warp of good democratic debate is that someone can disagree honestly, fervently and strongly without being a bad person. They may just be incredibly principled and happen to hold different views.

One danger of the echo chamber effect is that people become more likely to be short-tempered with one another if they hear competing views. None the less, digital media and the vastly extended scope of peer-to-peer debate is incredibly important to the way our democracy functions—not just our democracy, but every democracy.

The hon. Gentleman mentioned the effect of broadcast media and we should include TV, national radio and local radio. I thank him for introducing me to Gary of “Gary: Tank Commander”, who does not make it quite as far down in the south-west as where I live in Weston-super-Mare. I am resolved to try to find him because I am told that he is very funny and has done some interesting stuff as a comedian interviewing politicians in Scotland, which is an interesting cross-over that has not been done commonly, certainly not in this country or much more widely. If it has, it has been done more along the lines of taking the mickey out of unsuspecting politicians, rather like Sacha Baron Cohen, which is different. It is potentially very interesting, but there are other areas where the broadcast media have historically done great things.

Sitting suspended for Divisions in the House.

On resuming—