Speeches by Holmes.

“I beg to move amendment 26, in clause 17, page 23, line 23, at end insert— “(f) if the person’s existence has been properly verified using three separate datasets used for national and local data matching.” This amendment requires the registration officer to register certain electors only when their existence has been …”

“My hon. Friend is absolutely correct. Let us not forget that in very recent history the Government have completely ignored the view of the Electoral Commission anyway. When the Government said that they would not cancel local elections, and then did, and then got found out in court and did not defend the case, the Elec…”

“It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Dr Allin-Khan. Good morning to you and to members of the Committee. I am pleased to see the Minister in her place, although I am slightly surprised that she has asked me to withdraw my amendment; I have not yet talked about why it is so brilliant. I hope that she will …”

“I put on record my thanks to the officials in the Box for making that last set of amendments discussable, because they were so technical. We had an interesting debate, none the less. We come to the crucial clauses that relate to automatic voter registration. I will speak on behalf of the official Opposition to amendmen…”

“The difference between me and the hon. Gentleman is that I do not want to legislate for when people can become engaged in politics. Younger people can absolutely become engaged in politics and join a political party. As I think I have said previously, I love elections and I love politics. I joined the Conservative part…”

“If the hon. Gentleman only dares to look at the polls from recent weeks, I suspect that he will find that his style of politics and his party’s politics are not attractive to 16-year-olds—they are voting for other parties because of the record of the current Government. But I do not want this to be a debate about how p…”

“I hope the Minister will forgive me—it is quite possible, indeed likely, that this is my ignorance—but she outlined the datasets the EROs will analyse. Will she clarify whether those will be the same datasets in each geographical area? If not, does that not risk creating a different set of parameters and methods for wh…”

“I thank the hon. Gentleman for his intervention, but look at the evidence that the Electoral Reform Society gave the Committee. It believes in a change of voting system and in reducing the age of the franchise to 16. However I have just cited evidence from a report from his Minister’s own Department; it states that the…”

“I agree entirely. As I have attempted to outline, and as I think my hon. Friend is saying, without such detail why should people trust a word that the Government say? It has been the same with other legislation, as I know from being a shadow Housing, Communities and Local Government Minister, and it is pretty clear tha…”

“What I think is fairly obvious is that if there was consistency from the Government, someone’s being allowed to vote for their representatives would enable them to stand as a representative themselves. I am a big fan of the hon. Gentleman’s and I want this Committee to be good tempered—as his colleagues will know from …”

“That is no reflection on the Minister; I do not think I explained it particularly well. The Minister outlined that the ERO will assess datasets to ascertain whether to add somebody to the electoral roll automatically. In the context of the pilots, would those datasets be the same types—the same original information sou…”

“I agree with my hon. Friend. I was a Conservative at 15—maybe that means I have just been completely stupid all through my life. [Interruption.] I said it—there is no need for an intervention on that! We know the reason why the Labour Government have brought this forward. I was elected as a councillor at 19, and the vo…”

“My hon. Friend raises a good point that I had not thought of, as is normally the case. I am concerned that the political leadership have not given their sign-off or their thoughts, and that this Committee should be given the views of the Northern Ireland Administration. Having briefly served as a shadow Northern Irelan…”

“Which is the point, the Minister says from a sedentary position, but it is our contention that we then need to look at the age of majority across the whole of the United Kingdom.”

“I am genuinely not trying to be difficult, because the concern I have is genuine; otherwise, I would be intentionally misleading the House, which I am not, I would not and I do not. The reason I asked the question is that we are about to take a significant step towards automatic registration. We have a disagreement, bu…”

“What an interesting idea from my hon. Friend. It is one of his more radical suggestions, but he raises a serious point. The inconsistency of this Government’s approach to the age of majority is about to be made worse by this Bill. If the Minister had come to the Committee this morning and said, “We are going to open a …”

“The Government have the luxury of being able to carry over this Bill. Its Report stage will be not in this Session, but in the next. Ministers have plenty of time to do this properly and not only give it proper scrutiny and listen to this Committee, but go away and think about it. Instead of bringing in amendments in s…”

“I do not think a 15-year-old should be allowed to be Prime Minister. The hon. Gentleman is advocating for a 16-year-old to be able to elect a Prime Minister and their Member of Parliament, but does not want them to have the equal right to stand as a candidate for Parliament. I understand his intervention, but he still …”

“After the Minister’s winding up, I think it is even more necessary to push amendments 26 and 27 to a vote—particularly amendment 26, which concerns data checks. The Government are proposing a major change without the detail necessary to inform our decision on whether it should happen and with a lack of detail on the sy…”

“That goes to show the picking and choosing attitude of the Labour party when it comes to enfranchising younger people. They want to allow them to elect Members, but believe that 18 is the right age to vote their candidate selections and internal processes, so why are we suddenly discussing legislation proposing that 16…”