Speeches by Carling.

“In which case, as a follow-up question, are we in line with what a lot of other countries do?”

“Just to touch on a couple of other things that Dr Sandher was speaking about, you said that, at the moment, you sample and then weight by age and sex. Presumably, you are limited from stratifying the sample in advance because you do not have enough data on the people living there until you have surveyed them. Is that a…”

“I welcome the Government’s announcements today, in particular on the Oxford-Cambridge growth corridor. Cambridgeshire and Peterborough are an economic powerhouse for our country. What we often find is that spin-out businesses from Cambridge look to move to Peterborough as they grow, because of our expertise in advanced…”

“When an election address is sent to you by a candidate, you rely on the candidate to tell you where it needs to go.”

“That is right, yes.”

“Absolutely, and absolute credit to you for the work that was done; I know you are under a very tight timescale. Just to bring up another similar issue, there were some boundary issues. A number of colleagues raised that the wrong freepost was being delivered in the wrong areas. Could you tell us a little more about whe…”

“Okay, that is really helpful. That may be something I will follow up with you about later. Thank you.”

“I want to revisit the freepost issue, which you started to mention before in terms of the election address. In my constituency, we found that it was coming out very late, and I know a lot of colleagues around the area did too. Just about the week before the election, I was out delivering what was supposed to be the fol…”

“That is really helpful to hear. I would be interested to hear if you have specific thoughts on what that could look like.”

“Tangentially to a question of Charlotte’s, there is a lack of clarity in the guidance about what political party tellers can do, and a lack of awareness in general about what they do. Do you think presiding officers are in a space where they are able to manage the relationships effectively, or are there problems that m…”

“Are there particular demographic patterns in the people who manage to do this job and is that changing very much over time?”

“On the staffing of polling stations and other polling-related staff, you mentioned that there have been a number of issues in terms of both recruitment and retention. I wonder if you could go into a bit more detail about that and tell us whether you think it will get worse or better as time goes on.”

“That makes a lot of sense. One of the other things in my mind is the way we are seeking people to do these pieces of work and whether the advertising mechanisms are appropriate. I often see adverts on social media, but if it is primarily an older demographic, perhaps that is not the most effective way of doing it. Do y…”

“Sure. It is worth highlighting that election addresses are an issue only for general elections, so they might come up less often in your constant feedback processes. Finally, you mentioned timelines by which you are expected to deliver the election addresses. Can you let me know what those are?”

“Okay, that is interesting, and something we can certainly take away and look at. Have you done any work on how you can learn from that experience about where the issues were? Is there any guidance you are looking at producing for agents in that case, or anything else along those lines?”

“Just before Christmas, I was fortunate to attend the latest passing-out parade for graduates of the Firebreak scheme at Stanground fire station in my constituency of North West Cambridgeshire. That intensive five-day intervention programme provides a positive alternative learning environment and is aimed at young peopl…”

“I have one more question, if I may, Chair. The misinformation and disinformation point that you mentioned is something we have had a lot of discussion about recently. Can you speak a bit more about the action the Electoral Commission took in advance of the election in that space?”

“That is really helpful, thank you. The statistic about the proportion of younger people who think it is okay to abuse a politician is really shocking. Often, in the public discourse around that, you don’t picture a young person as a typical person who would abuse a politician. It is quite interesting in terms of where …”

“Earlier, you started to talk a little bit around disengagement in young people and them not feeling that politics was important in general. Your report says you have a view that “high quality education about democracy and elections” is important to encourage particularly young people, but people in general, to vote. Co…”

“It is a pleasure to have you in the Chair, Mrs Harris. I spent some time thinking about whether I wanted to speak in this debate. I thought to myself, “On our first day back, when I’ve got a lot to be getting on with, have I got the mental stamina to listen to Conservative Members talk about how, before Labour came to …”