Speeches by Cocking.

“Does my hon. Friend therefore agree that this measure could be reintroduced during the next parliamentary Session, when we can give a lot more thought to where the demos will take place and to the detail of who will be auto-enrolled first, and we can properly scrutinise the Government? As he rightly points out, this Go…”

“It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Dr Allin-Khan. We are coming at this debate in the wrong way. We need to look at when someone becomes an adult in this country, rather than at an arbitrary age at which it is acceptable to vote. The last Labour Government obviously thought that people become adults at …”

“Some of those 8 million people may have chosen not to be on the electoral roll. Would the hon. Lady like to stand in a constituency where half of her electors are auto-enrolled and the other half are not? What are the consequences of that if the election is very close? Will it be taken through the courts?”

“If the Minister issued new oil and gas licences for the North sea we could produce more of our oil and gas here at home. That would mitigate some of the problems that he has just raised about being over-reliant on oil states.”

“Q Karen, I have a question for you. You said that in Wales there have been four pilot areas of automatic voter registration. For my benefit and that of the Committee, could you tell us where they were? Were they for council elections? If they were, why did you decide to do them for council elections and not a Senedd el…”

“Q May I briefly follow that up? Is it your opinion, then, that if we are going to have automatic voter registration, everyone should be automatically registered for the same general election? Vijay Rangarajan: Yes; there should be some uniformity of registration across the UK and for other elections, or else a voter wi…”

“Q We have not touched on this with this group of witnesses: Richard, what are your views on automatic voter registration? In particular, what are your views on a situation where not everybody would be automatically enrolled at the same time for the same general election, potentially creating two groups of the electorat…”

“Q If you are going to take those recommendations forward and do automatic voter registration across Wales, it is your view that everyone should be done in the same Senedd election, rather than it being done in two halves, for example? Karen Jones: My understanding is that that is the plan in Wales. We will be working t…”

“Q I should declare that when I was a councillor, I did a number of things with Councillor Golds on similar committees at the Local Government Association. Harry, earlier you mentioned a percentage of people in your data who get turned away at polling stations. Was that all because they did not have the appropriate ID? …”

“Q I would like to talk about the 8 million people you reckon are not registered. Some of those people might choose not to register to vote, and the Government’s intention in the Bill is to bring in automatic voter registration. Do you see any issues with that if they are not all automatically registered for the same ge…”

“I am Lewis Cocking, the Conservative Member of Parliament for Broxbourne, and I am a leaseholder as well.”

“So you do not reckon the market is ready. If the Bill passes and commonhold becomes the default, am I correct in thinking that you do not think the market as it currently stands with the solicitors and conveyancing process is ready for that big change?”

“Does anyone else want to comment on that?”

“Hang on—what do you mean by “education and training for the public”? The public go out and get a solicitor, who should be advising them on all these matters. We do not need to train the public to say, “This is what you need to do”.”

“I have a few questions about conveyancing. I think most of us can agree, particularly those of us on this Committee, that managing agents are the biggest baddies in the leasehold and commonhold system, closely followed by solicitors and conveyancing. I do not think they point out to people what they are buying—what the…”

“Obviously you have a lot of experience and you know a lot of the detail behind all of it, so if you were advising Government, would you say five, 10, 20 or 60 years?”

“Douglas, based on what you know now, and all the evidence and your experience, where would you put the figure? How long would you give?”

“Paying illegal asylum seekers £40,000 to leave the United Kingdom is a kick in the teeth for my hard-working constituents. Why are we not using that money to build a detention centre so that we can detain and immediately deport those who arrive in this country illegally?”

“So at this moment in time, you would not have gone any further than what the Bill currently proposes?”

“I want to follow up on Lee’s question, Angela, because you did not particularly answer it, and you are not usually shy of giving us your opinion. Let us roll back: what is missing from the Bill that you would have ensured was in there if you were Secretary of State today?”