Political and Constitutional Reform Committee
Oral evidence: Voter engagement in the UK, HC 1059
Thursday 20 March 2014
Ordered by the House of Commons to be published on 20 March 2014.
Written evidence from witnesses:
Members present: Mr Graham Allen (Chair); Mr Christopher Chope; Tracey Crouch; Mark Durkan; Paul Flynn; David Morris; Chris Ruane; Mr Andrew Turner
Questions 142 - 206
Witness: David Babbs, Executive Director, 38 Degrees, gave evidence.
Q142 Chair: Welcome, David. It is good to see you. As you know, we are in the middle of our inquiry on voter engagement in the UK. It is very good of you to spare the time to come and talk to us today. Is there anything you want to say to kick us off or shall we jump straight into questions?
David Babbs: I have some brief opening remarks I can make, if that is helpful.
Chair: Fine. Please do.
David Babbs: Thank you. The very first thing I wanted to say was to thank you for inviting me. I think it is a really great thing that your Committee has invited 38 Degrees members to submit evidence into this inquiry. I am sure we will spend the majority of the time talking about the detail of what our members have said, but I thought it might be helpful to start by offering a few reflections on who is saying it, who the members are who have been submitting into this survey and have been offering us their thoughts on voter engagement.
The 38 Degrees membership in general is a pretty broad church. They are a pretty diverse bunch from all over the UK with, as my written submission sets out, quite a wide range of party political starting points or no party political starting point at all. There is a wide range of ethnicities, ages and social backgrounds, but they are not simply a random sample of the general public, as I am sure you will be aware. First, they come to 38 Degrees because 38 Degrees is an organisation with a set of values of fairness, sustainability, democracy, human rights and community. Secondly, they are probably towards the more engaged end of the spectrum. They are people who quite clearly are engaged in questions of politics and policy. They are trying to get involved and probably on the whole they are fundamentally optimistic about the potential of getting involved to make a difference. That is why they are taking part.
There are probably a couple of further sample biases within the responses to this particular survey. First, as with any voluntary survey, there is a response bias, which in this case probably skews things in an optimistic direction. We had many hundreds of our members get in touch with us and say that they didn’t think it would make a blind bit of difference to submit into the survey and people with those kinds of attitudes are therefore probably under-represented within the results. Also within this survey, compared to our membership as a whole, there is an upward age bias. I have a couple of theories about that. It might be that it is a relatively long survey and retired people have more time on their hands, particularly given the relatively short amount of time they had to submit in time for the written response deadline. That might be one of the things that has biased it. Speculating even further, it might be that our younger members disproportionately fall into the category of those who are sceptical about whether it was worth their while to fill in a survey of this nature, although when we have looked at the younger people who did fill in the survey, of which there were over 13,000, their results did not differ markedly from the other respondents.
The key message that I am reading from the responses is that there is a crisis of confidence that has manifested in things like voter engagement in turnout and registration but it runs quite a lot deeper than that. In the views of our members, it is a crisis of politics and the political system as well. I have read a lot about disappointment with politicians who they feel are not listening, are working for others not for them and are breaking their promises. For the party political system as a whole, there is a sense that they do not see values clearly expressed by the parties. They do not see that it makes much difference who they vote for. They do not see clear vision or clear leadership. But I see within these results quite a few positive signs and practical solutions, which I hope we can explore as well.
For a start, although the overall message from our members is pretty bleak, there is quite a variation of perspectives and one of the key influences of that variation of perspectives that we can see within the survey results is their experience of their local MP. Many of our members—a minority I am afraid, a relatively small minority but still a significant number—feel they have a very positive experience of their local MP. I think some of those MPs probably have things to teach the rest of you. Without wishing to embarrass you, Tracey, you are one of the MPs who did very well relative to most of your colleagues in this survey and our members gave quite a lot of examples of things that you have done that they feel makes you stand out and makes you different. You are a good person for the rest of the Committee to be learning from with some of these questions.
The other thing that came through in the detail of the survey is that there are a lot of practical suggestions for ways that the system could change that would make our members feel that it was more worth engaging in. They range from having a “none of the above” option on the ballot paper, to the right to recall, to an optimism and a hope that non-party organisations can contribute more to democracy in the future.
To summarise my opening remarks, I think this is a crisis that parliamentarians and those within the political classes need to take responsibility for and something that calls for leadership, the kind of leadership that is about taking criticism on the chin and acknowledging that there is a need for really big change. The fact that over 100,000 members of 38 Degrees have taken the trouble to fill in this survey suggests a certain amount of optimism and hope that you are prepared to do that. I think that is probably a direct result of your having extended the invitation for us to come here.
Chair: Great. Thank you, David.
Q143 Mr Chope: I am sorry, I have to leave to do a first order question so I won’t be able to stay for the whole of your evidence. I was disappointed that, in describing the people who responded to this survey, you didn’t actually draw attention to the fact that a very small proportion of those who responded identified themselves as Conservatives and a disproportionately large number identified themselves as Liberal Democrats. Since there are only about 8% or 9% of the population saying they would vote Liberal Democrats, almost the same number of Liberal Democrats as Labour people and an enormous number of Greens responded to the survey. How can the survey be representative of the people as a whole?
David Babbs: I don’t think they have identified themselves as Liberal Democrat or anything else. They have identified themselves as having voted for a party at the last election. To be honest, I suspect that the number who are saying that they would vote Liberal Democrat at the next election will probably be quite different, and indeed I suspect all these figures will be quite different. I said at the start that it was not an unbiased sample of the general population, that 38 Degrees members come together around a set of values and I listed what those values are. I have heard members of all political parties, and none, express an alignment with those values. It does seem within our membership that at the last election our members leant in particular directions and you are correct that fewer 38 Degrees members voted Conservative at the last election than of the general population, although quite a significant number did. I think it is around 20%, isn’t it?
One of the things that our members sometimes talk about as a cause of their disappointment with politicians is an eagerness that they perceive among some MPs to dismiss them and to put them in a category or say that they are coming from a particular persuasion. Yes, they vote and that means at any point in time they are in a particular category, but first and foremost they are just people who care about stuff and are getting in touch with their MP because they have an opinion on an issue.
Q144 Mr Chope: I have not put them in a category. You have put them in a category. You have put them in a category in your evidence.
David Babbs: How do you mean?
Mr Chope: You have identified that of the people who answered your survey, fewer than a fifth were Conservative supporters and more than a half were Liberal Democrat and Labour supporters. You have done the categorisation. I have not done the categorisation.
David Babbs: I have just sought to give you a picture of the kind of people who are responding. Is it that you feel that this makes their views less useful? I am not sure I understand what it is you are getting at.
Mr Chope: I am asking the questions and hopefully you are going to be answering them.
David Babbs: I am sorry. If I don’t understand the question, it is harder for me to answer.
Q145 Mr Chope: The question is, when you introduced your remarks about the nature of the people who responded to the survey, you did not identify at that stage the fact that the survey was very much biased in favour of people who, certainly at the last election, held views supporting either the Greens, the Liberal Democrats or the socialists. Therefore this survey cannot be representative of the people as a whole because at the last general election a lot more people voted Conservative.
David Babbs: With respect, in terms of me concealing things from you, which seems to be what you are implying, it is on page 1 of the written evidence that I gave you and I set out the values and the ethos of 38 Degrees in my opening remarks. I don’t think anything is being concealed. What I infer that you are getting at is a suggestion that 38 Degrees has some kind of party political agenda that we are concealing and I am happy to refute that. We are independent of all political parties and on numerous occasions have challenged and held to account Members of Parliament of all political parties.
Q146 Paul Flynn: The distribution in the age groups is interesting, both in the response and—do you think that people, particularly young people, see any connection between the fact that most Governments now agree with taking benefits from young people and giving additional unneeded benefits to rich pensioners? Is this a consequence of the number of people who vote?
David Babbs: I don’t think I am able to give you a very clear sense of that from this survey. It is something I have heard some younger 38 Degrees members observe but it is certainly not something that comes through really loud and clear. A lot of older 38 Degrees members in this survey have talked about voting and participation as something that they do out of a sense of civic duty but almost despite whether they think it is going to make any difference. I would speculate that that sense of civic duty, which acts as a good reason for doing something that you fundamentally think is a bit of a waste of time, maybe runs less deep with some young people.
Q147 Paul Flynn: The influence of this Committee and those of us who believe strongly in voter engagement has been in competition with the very eloquent voice of one particular person with his 7 million Twitter followers who is urging young people not to vote. How can one counter that?
David Babbs: Are you talking about Russell Brand?
Paul Flynn: Russell Brand, yes.
Chair: Always, unfortunately.
Paul Flynn: Always. He is the invisible figure that dominates this discussion.
David Babbs: When Russell Brand did that interview on Newsnight, we posted it up on the 38 Degrees Facebook page and a really interesting debate ensued between those who thought his verdict that it was a bad idea to vote was a correct one or a deeply harmful one and positions in between. I think the majority of 38 Degrees members felt that they disagreed with him in terms of his prescription but the overwhelming majority did agree, to a fairly significant extent, with his diagnosis of the deep problems with parliamentary democracy as it exists in the UK.
Q148 Paul Flynn: Isn’t the danger that it is likely to be deepening the disengagement? When an attractive figure makes it fashionable for young people not to vote, it becomes a thing not to do. It is very difficult to counter that when you have an array of Dad’s Army MPs urging them to vote.
David Babbs: I guess you should ask him to come and give evidence to you.
Paul Flynn: What a good idea. That is a brilliant idea.
David Babbs: There are two things I have perceived, and lots of 38 Degrees members have observed to me, about the backlash to Russell Brand. One is that I think he is highlighting some important problems and shooting the messenger or criticising him for not having all the answers when he is highlighting an important problem is something that not many of the public have that much sympathy with. They think it is legitimate for someone to say, “This is wrong. I am not claiming to have all the answers but this is wrong”. Secondly, I know Russell Brand has been engaged in campaigns that have had a parliamentary focus, alongside expressing his views on voting, around drugs regulation reform and that is something that has engaged a lot of people in the political process. I can see why people in your position would see him as a kind of bête noire. I think he has some quite interesting things to say and it might be worth your seeking evidence from him.
Paul Flynn: I rest my case. I have to leave, not because of the brilliance of your answers, which I am delighted with, but I do have to leave anyway. Thank you very much.
Chair: He has an appointment with Russell Brand.
Q149 Tracey Crouch: David, thank you for your kind comments. I have to say I don’t blush easily but you succeeded in making me do so this morning.
Do you recognise how much influence you, as an organisation, have on the way people think about politics and politicians, in the same way that perhaps Russell Brand might not appreciate how much influence he has, and that with that influence comes responsibility?
David Babbs: Yes, certainly. I think often when politicians are talking to me about that influence they don’t necessarily understand how 38 Degrees works. I think they think about us in categories of institutions and organisations that are familiar to them, particularly political parties and their centralised structure where decisions about what a policy position is are taken by a small group of people and then broadcast out. It then depends how effective party discipline is as to how many people think that thing.
38 Degrees works in the opposite way. Our policy positions and how we decide what we are campaigning about is decided by our membership who are continually being surveyed and their views solicited as to what we should be campaigning on, which means that when you see an email going out to 38 Degrees members about a campaign, it is not that people in the office are telling 38 Degrees members what to think. It is that 38 Degrees members have asked us to run a campaign on that issue. Their feedback and their input has shaped the message that is then going back out to all 38 Degrees members. The extent to which I am deciding what 38 Degrees members do or think is, in my view, often hugely exaggerated when politicians talk about our influence. We obviously have a co-ordination role as a staff team and that brings with it a certain amount of power and a lot of responsibility, but we don’t decide what 38 Degrees members campaign on.
Q150 Tracey Crouch: You have over 2 million members of 38 Degrees and they have signed up because they agree with the ideals and principles of 38 Degrees, which you outlined earlier. You have a captive audience in many respects with the campaigns that you run. Do you think that they, and indeed the outcomes of this survey, reflect society more broadly or do you think this is just a reflection of the 2 million members who have signed up to the principles of 38 Degrees?
David Babbs: I said at the beginning that the survey respondents are not simply an unbiased sample of the general population and I offered some thoughts as to the ways in which I think they differ around values. Not everyone in the UK, sadly, would subscribe to values of community, democracy, sustainability and fairness but a lot do. I also talked about the age bias and the activity bias. So, no, I don’t necessarily think that everyone in the UK thinks exactly as 38 Degrees members do. I do think, however, that they are a very broad section of people, pretty ordinary people from all areas of the UK, and if they don’t hold every persuasion of view that is present across the UK, they probably know someone who does. I would suggest that they probably represent a wider section of opinion than normally gets to give their evidence at, say, a Select Committee hearing.
Q151 Tracey Crouch: Previous witnesses to this inquiry cited various reasons why we have low turnout, such as dissatisfaction with the electoral system, lack of confidence in politicians, lack of knowledge about the process. You have highlighted some of those responses in your survey, but do you think that organisations like yours represent an alternative to the traditional participation in politics?
David Babbs: A partial alternative probably. I don’t think anyone within 38 Degrees, whether our membership or our staff, believe that 38 Degrees is the answer to all problems or that 38 Degrees could replace Parliament. There is probably something interesting in the fact that so many people choose to get involved in organisations like 38 Degrees or other organisations and that membership of our kinds of organisation is growing at a time when party political participation is declining. Our members tell us, for example, that they like the way that they feel that 38 Degrees’ agenda is shaped by them, it responds to their views and gives them a menu of ways they can get involved, both on and offline, that works for them. I think some of those probably are things that you could learn from.
Q152 Mark Durkan: In your survey the option that people indicated was most likely to encourage them to vote was the option of “none of the above”, essentially an anti-voting option being included. What do you think your members would see as the advantages and disadvantages of having such an option on the ballot paper and how do you think it would skew campaigning at either a local or national level?
David Babbs: I would put “none of the above” within an election cycle and the right of recall outside an election cycle together a bit. There is a sense from a lot of our members that the way politics works, partly because of an electoral system where there are lots of safe seats and safe council wards and partly because of the culture and the way that our members perceive there to be a political class that is made up of quite a narrow section of the population, often means these things are basically a stitch-up. There is not much chance of them changing the outcome and the party man—and it is normally a man—who has that seat can take it for granted. I think they see “none of the above” as a way of participating without being forced to fit into the categories that suit those people. In the same way, they see recall as an opportunity to challenge an incumbent and to keep them on their toes.
I am probably going to vote in the local elections in a couple of months’ time. I live in Hackney. It is always going to be Labour councillors. My councillors don’t live in my ward, they don’t respond to requests for assistance, they just don’t seem very interested, but they are going to win. Why should I vote? What is the point? I probably will vote because I am the kind of person who thinks there is a sense of duty but I will do so knowing I am wasting my time. I think it would be quite nice to send those people a wake-up call and tick the “none of the above” box. That would feel more meaningful to me.
Q153 Mark Durkan: How would you see it working in terms of a result?
David Babbs: Where “none of the above” wins?
Mark Durkan: How you vote for “none of the above”.
David Babbs: You would have to have some kind of rerun, wouldn’t you? Hopefully that would send a signal and stir things up and you would have new candidates. Maybe it would trigger some open primaries, say. That is another thing our members find interesting, the way that someone becomes the candidate. The primary things they have to do to become the candidate is showing a sense of loyalty and working for a very narrow section of society, those who are selecting locally, plus raising money from a very small number of donors in order to be able to run the campaign locally. If the first thing they had to do in order to get on the ballot paper was to win an open primary, that would be quite an interesting idea as well. Maybe “none of the above” could trigger an open primary.
Q154 Mark Durkan: Have you looked at other places where this happens?
David Babbs: We did this survey last week and I was surprised at how strongly “none of the above” jumped out as an option. To be honest with you, that means it is something that I intend to do more looking at and thinking about, as a staff team, to see how we can explore with our members campaigning for that. That is how 38 Degrees work. I had about a day’s more warning than you did that it was something that was going to stand out in the survey.
Q155 Mark Durkan: Did any other changes strike you that your membership indicated that may make them likely to participate in future elections?
David Babbs: They listed a few. Recall was an important one. “None of the above” was an important one. Within the theme of perceiving politicians not to be working for them, to be working for others, donations and funding of political parties is a big issue. There is a sense that their MP should be listening to them, representing them but too often they are beholden to donors and those are the people who get an ear, so reform of that is something that our members are quite keen on. We got a lot of thoughts on other changes to the voting system in terms of AV+ and PR stuff like that. I wouldn’t say one single system jumped out as the clear front-runner.
Q156 Chris Ruane: Are you still pursuing that even though it has been put to a referendum?
David Babbs: It is not something that 38 Degrees is campaigning on at the moment but a lot of our members in varying forms offered critiques and frustrations about the current first past the post system.
Q157 Chair: Just a quick one from me and then I want Tracey to have a follow-up. Any campaigner will tell you this, and you are an effective campaigner so you will know this, that it is always easier to get a no. It is always easier to get a negative and we have all probably done that in our own various ways in the past. “I am against those MPs. I don’t like what the Government does. I don’t like councillors, they don’t do this, that and the other”, and you can get a good chunk of people who will come to that. Part of what we are trying to do in our inquiry, which we need your help on, is to figure out the positives. What are the things that we can get progressed? What are the specific issues? That often requires a more nuanced approach than to fill out a questionnaire. I am not giving you the whole responsibility of finding all the answers here but all I am saying is it is a difficult thing to tease out from people.
We need to understand what those mechanisms might be in order to get some of the answers, because they are often quite sophisticated, quite nuanced. They are about structures, for example how many people know the difference between Parliament and Government. I would argue that Parliament is very weak and not much good at its job; Government is incredibly strong and controlling. If you take that argument beyond a questionnaire, it is rather hard to get that over. How do we—and in fact how do you with a great responsibility talking to your 2 million members—get those more nuanced and sophisticated arguments across in order to get some positive proposals, which is what my Committee is really looking for at the end of this process? Sorry that was a bit long-winded. Even that is hard to explain.
David Babbs: You might need to help keep me on track with my answer, but here are a few thoughts. A key message that came out of the survey from our members is that, while they don’t reject the idea of changes to mechanisms and structures are necessary, I think we are talking about culture and attitude here as well. They perceive politicians not to respect them and not listen to them. They will attribute that to structures and mechanisms. They talk about even those MPs who have good intentions being constrained by the system we have, but they also perceive something that goes in at the cultural level here.
Q158 Chair: That is the easy bit.
David Babbs: I don’t think culture change is easy.
Chair: No, that is the easy bit to say MPs don’t this or don’t that, but what about the hard bit? What do we do about that?
David Babbs: Without wishing to make Tracey blush, there were some examples our members gave of, say, before the vote in Parliament on Syria, I believe you contacted all the constituents for whom you had an email address, asking them what they thought and what they should do but also, and our members noted this as well, telling them what your initial instinct was as to what you were going to do and why. You did two things, both of which are the ways that normal human beings talk to each other most of the time. You said what you thought but you also listened and you did so in a way that our members perceived to be respectful. They probably also agreed overwhelmingly with the voting decision you then took on the basis of that, but that is more likely to happen if you have that conversation in the first place.
That is the kind of thing that I am aware of only one or two other MPs ever doing. We are talking here about something where you were carrying a responsibility to represent your constituents on a grave matter that could lead to people’s lives being put in the firing line. If you think about it, to me it feels like quite an obvious thing to do in that situation, yet it is something that hardly anyone ever does. That is an example of the culture of Parliament and its attitude towards voters. I know of far more examples of MPs responding to a group of 38 Degrees members wishing to come to see them to deliver a petition by calling the police on them or making them wait outside in the rain rather than inviting them into the corridor of their office. I know of far more examples of that than I do of an MP proactively emailing their constituents and asking them what they think about something.
Q159 Tracey Crouch: As it happens, I got quite a lot of negative comments from traditional colleagues saying, “You are elected with a mandate to make a decision. Why are you bothering to engage?” and I felt very strongly about that. But that was not my follow-up question. I wanted to follow up on the question that Mark had about “none of the above”. Do you recognise that if we were to have a “none of the above” option then perhaps we ought to make voting compulsory? Do you think it can work without compulsory voting?
David Babbs: I think I have owned up that this is not an area of policy expertise for me. My members have now told me to become an expert in this but I only got that instruction a few days ago. I think I understand how that would logically follow. I am not sure it would be necessary and I would want to think about it more.
Q160 Chris Ruane: What happens if “none of the above” gets elected?
David Babbs: I guess the point is clearly you have got a problem. My counter-argument would be that you have that problem if “none of the above” would have won if you had given the option. You are just hiding it from yourselves and someone is collecting a salary as an MP despite the fact that the majority of people wanted to vote for “none of the above”. It is better to have that problem out in the open and think about what the solutions are than to rig the system so that that can’t happen.
Q161 David Morris: The written evidence that you submitted presents a picture of broad disenchantment with politicians. If you know what Tracey’s profile is, are you doing private polling in marginal constituencies and, if so, would you be tailoring the questions to reflect the demographic of your members to give them an advantage?
David Babbs: Are we doing private polling in marginal constituencies?
David Morris: Yes. If you know what Tracey’s response is, are you doing private polling in other constituencies? If Tracey’s flashed up, I could flash up, anyone around this table could flash up.
David Babbs: When people filled in the survey they also entered their address, which means you can then look at the responses by constituency. You can see patterns within those. It is not really private polling, I am telling you.
Q162 David Morris: MPs like Michael Fabricant stopped responding to 38 Degrees because he feels there is a bias, yet you are saying to us quite categorically that the questions are not tailored to the demographic of your members.
David Babbs: They are tailored in a sense but what we do is talk about politics in the way ordinary people talk about it and the way that we decide what issues we are talking about are the issues our members tell us to talk about. It is quite a transparent process. We are continually posting up on our Facebook wall, emailing out to our members saying, “What do you think? What do you want us to do?” and then we go out with those things. So in that sense we are quite transparently tailoring our content to what our members want us to do. We are running the campaigns they vote for us to run.
Q163 David Morris: Not many normal people come descending on the MP’s office with national petitions in a cardboard box and a CD. If I remember rightly, we met three years ago and organised a meeting in one of the Committee rooms where we had a condition of 10 items that we would like to have worked with 38 Degrees on as MPs across all parties and not one of those 10 conditions was met by you. Can you explain that?
David Babbs: Remind me what those 10 conditions were.
David Morris: Those 10 conditions were filters on the site mainly. I don’t have the 10 in front of me but I could dig them out and send them to you. The bottom line was that you agreed to work with the MPs to get a better consensus so that it would enable the staff—it was mainly staffers who were in this Committee room meeting. It was applauded all the way through Parliament by all Members of Parliament on all political divides that we would like to engage with 38 Degrees in a more constructive way where we don’t see people descending on MPs’ offices with CDs and large boxes to make a political point.
David Babbs: I think what you are saying is you object to members of the public who are your constituents coming to see you to talk about a political issue.
Q164 David Morris: No, Mr Babbs, you totally misread what we are saying. We want to engage with the public, we really do, and we do engage with the public. I was talking to an MP from, say, five Parliaments ago where he used to get four letters a day. We get about 400 e-mails a day, each and every one of us in this room. We do engage with our public a lot more than we ever have done but we would like to engage in a way so that we don’t have to be using copious amount of parliamentary time responding to individual e-mails where people write in and say at the bottom, as you have on your website, “individual responses”. If we send back a generic response to your generic question we are immediately portrayed as not listening, and that is not the case.
David Babbs: There are a few things in that. I am going to try to infer questions from it. The first is this question of what should engagement look like. One of the reasons lots of our members feel very frustrated with a lot of Members of Parliament is they see engagement as something MPs wish to do on their terms and their issues at their bidding. They perceive MPs to be very keen to appear in a way that looks good for them, particularly in the run-up to an election but more generally as well, and probably more generally as well the more you are in a marginal seat, but not to have complicated conversations and to explore disagreement. That is quite a patronising form of engagement and people can smell that it is not sincere. It is about the picture in the local paper rather than an actual conversation about actual policy.
The second thing that I was hearing in what you said was the view that members of the public benefiting from the fact that the internet makes it easier to communicate and organise with each other in order to get in touch with their MP and express a view as to a policy position is inauthentic or illegitimate or downright annoying. I very much agree that MPs could do with better technology and better capabilities to engage with the public digitally. There are examples of MPs who do it very well but most of them don’t. I think that is probably more about culture and capability than it is about resourcing, but I think it should be properly resourced. The starting point for that has to be that voters getting in touch with their MPs is their democratic right and a good thing. When, as so many of you do, I am afraid, go back to members of 38 Degrees and your starting point is that you are annoyed that they have got in touch and you are rude to them, it is great for 38 Degrees as an organisation. It makes them far more likely to donate to us and stick with us because it is a great illustration of how your system is broken and they are better off sticking with us, but in terms of democracy it is terrible.
Q165 Chair: I am going to come back to David. I start as someone who is immensely sympathetic to what you are trying to do and using means of technology. I am encouraged that you recognise that there might be some resource questions that arise and it might be something you put to your members. Perhaps they would support MPs having additional resources to do their job more effectively and you have to take on some of the unpopular issues as well as the popular ones.
David Babbs: I have never heard our members argue that MPs should not spend money on having an office that helps them respond to their constituents. I have heard them argue that there are all kinds of other things that MPs should not spend money on but they do, but not that.
Mr Turner: Some examples?
Q166 Chair: Let me just pursue this. I will come back to you, Andrew. That would be helpful, and that is what I mean by the nuance. It is quite easy for me and you to stereotype every MP. We cash in then on a fantastic anti-MP campaign in the media and it is cool to criticise Members of Parliament. What I want to do is enable Members of Parliament to be as responsive as you want all MPs to be. If I may put words in David’s mouth, or an argument in David’s head, so to speak, if you get 300 e-mails asking you to oppose the lobbying Bill, let’s say, which happened, I can do nothing other than respond in a standard way. I cannot possibly personally tailor a reply to someone who has sent me a standard campaigning email. The response to a standard campaigning email is a standard reply. It is not possible to delve beyond that and get into someone’s head and imagine what they were trying to get to. Sometimes it will have to be that way. There are ways of being much more sophisticated in the use of the technology, targeting effectively, filtering effectively, which I—and I cannot speak for other colleagues but I would be amazed if they would not—would welcome immensely.
David, I am going back to the notion that it is so easy to be negative. What is tough is to help us get this job done more effectively, to help us improve voter engagement. Yes, we have to look at ourselves and everything we are doing but also all those who want to help us need to do that so that the helping is in the best possible way.
David Babbs: Can I just clarify, though? I do not hear from our members very often—I do occasionally but not very often—the criticism that you have sent 300 people the same response. They wouldn’t expect you to have 300 different opinions on the same thing.
Chair: Okay, good.
David Babbs: If there is a criticism of your responses, it is not so much that they see you sending the same response to 300 people. It is that the response they perceive you to be sending is not your opinion at all but something that is toeing the party line, which is a different criticism.
Q167 Chair: But in a sense aren’t you making MPs think that about all your members when they send a standard email rather than say, “I have read some stuff and this is my opinion”? Anyone who has ever sent me a personal e-mail gets a personal reply but someone who has done what you have just accused MPs of doing, who has just sent something through from HQ, in a sense, off to MPs—believe it or not I have two people working with me in my office in the House of Commons. If I get 300 e-mails then that does impact upon the work I do. I am a Select Committee Chair; I am an active Back Bencher; I do lots of policy things and so on.
David, I am asking for your help here. I am not having a go at 38 Degrees, which I think is a wonderful organisation. What I am trying to say is that we need to get a little bit more sophisticated beyond the sort of e-petitioning into a proper relationship and I am trying to tease out how we get there.
David Babbs: What I am saying is that that proper relationship is not about a relationship between me or any of the other 38 Degrees staff with MPs. It is about how MPs relate to their voters. Most people have never been in touch with their MP about anything. The first time they do it is quite a big deal. It is not something that most people just do at the drop of a hat and making it easy to them means giving them tips, giving them template text to do so. If their first experience back is something that starts with, “Thanks for your identikit clone email from evil Marxist conspiracy 38 Degrees”, and I am more or less quoting directly from something that quite a few MPs send—
Q168 Chair: But please don’t make that as the stereotype for all Members of Parliament. I think you are getting into being a little unfair.
David Babbs: I haven’t said it is a stereotype for all Members of Parliament. I have highlighted some—
Chair: No, but it is the first thing you have said in response to what I thought was a rather measured question to you.
David Babbs: What I am saying is if that is the response, then you are doing what people expect you to do and it is reinforcing that. If you are up front and say, “I have had a lot of people contact me with this so I am letting you all know what I think” and then you invite them for further opportunities to engage, you ask them what they think as well and you do so in a polite way, the tone is very different.
Q169 Chair: Yes, which is exactly what I did on the lobbying Bill. Everyone who e-mailed me, I sent them an e-mail within 24 hours saying, “Please come and meet me at the weekend”.
David Babbs: And some people came to see you, didn’t they?
Chair: They did. It was fantastic. The other thing is people were saying I should be opposing the lobbying Bill. I hope my colleagues will support me and say I doubt there is anybody in the House who spent more time opposing the lobbying Bill, so it was interesting to receive an e-mail saying, “You should be opposing the lobbying Bill” because I think I was actually over-achieving at a Stakhanovite level.
David Babbs: I think that is an example of where the 38 Degrees technology could and will get more sophisticated in letting people know exactly what their MP is doing.
Chair: Wonderful. I think that would be good news for the MPs and it would be great news for your policy agenda as well to have that level of sophistication to draw it out. David, I had better come back to you.
Q170 David Morris: Mr Babbs, I believe that you are a pioneer and you should be congratulated on that, for 38 Degrees. I think it is good that we do have you and that we are able to engage with our constituents through your organisation. What I am saying in a collegiate manner is please come back to us. If we can work together in a more constructive way as MPs across all parties with 38 Degrees, I am absolutely certain everyone around this table would agree that that would be a good step forward.
David Babbs: Okay. Thank you.
Chair: Just to add a little rider to that, if you represent a constituency like mine, of course, there are a lot of information-poor people who are not on text, not on the web and absolutely are not e-mail traffickers, so the point about being representative is quite a significant one for those people. Part of our inquiry is to ensure that those people are properly represented and that their voter engagement is as important as the articulate and capable who can organise technically.
David Babbs: I think that is a really good point. On that, I would draw your attention within the results to the question, “What would make you more likely to register to vote?” where the biggest answer is, “Politicians that better represent me” but the second biggest is, “Being asked by an organisation that I trust”. One of the things that 38 Degrees members have been doing recently, working with some other organisations that you have also called for evidence like Bite the Ballot and the NUS, is participation in voter registration activities. For example, recently 38 Degrees members were running stalls in Asdas around the country where they were making it possible for people to register to vote and hopefully in that way reaching people who don’t have access to the internet, for example.
One practical thing that I think your Committee could recommend would be a measure that would make it easier for organisations other than the Electoral Commission, the Government and the political parties to get involved in that kind of thing. You were a Committee that highlighted some of the ways in which the lobbying Bill did terrible damage to the potential for that to happen and that is something we are all grappling with now.
Another instance where some good could be done in the short term is the Electoral Commission is currently working on an online voter registration system. I think it would be hugely beneficial for everyone if they built that with an open API. It is a technical mechanism that means that other organisations can build tools and put plug-ins into their own website that talk to the back end of that online registration system, which enables them to come up with creative ways or different ways of making it possible for people to register online to vote. For example, it would mean that 38 Degrees developers could build, say, an iPad app that our members could then take into offline locations and use to register people to vote straight into the back of the Electoral Commission website. It is technically possible. It runs against the culture of Government and how these things are normally done but I think you would unlock the capacity for all kinds of other players to innovate, to try different ways of making it easier for people to register to vote and also for people who they trust more and are more likely to listen to to make the case to them rather than it being a Government official.
Q171 Chris Ruane: On the spectrum of engagement, I would put your 2 million members probably right over here. They have probably voted, they are engaged throughout the five-year period of a Parliament. Then there are the people who vote, the people who are on the register who don’t vote—and there is 11 million of them—and the people who are not even on the register, which is 6.5 million. The Chair has mentioned the issue of how you use your position as the best, most engaged to help the 6.5 million here and the 11 million there. These are huge numbers. Democracy is not working while we have these gaps.
I am really pleased about what you said about the open link for registration. Would your organisation consider other measures by holding not just MPs but electoral registration officers locally to account, some of whom are not doing their jobs repeatedly over four or five years, holding the Electoral Commission to account, which intends to introduce photo ID before you go and vote? That is only being done in American Republican states but it has been proposed by the Electoral Commission here. What impact on democracy? What more can you do besides these open links?
David Babbs: Before I go on to answer that, I would like to slightly challenge that description of where 38 Degrees members are on the spectrum. One of the things that is a reality here is that the spectrum doesn’t quite look like that. There are a significant number of 38 Degrees members, a minority but I think a revealing minority, who are very active with 38 Degrees but don’t vote and are not registered to vote because they don’t see the point. I think this an important point to make because I am sure there are some people who are apathetic, I am sure there are some people who could be better educated, but I don’t think fundamentally that is the problem. It is the perception of it being worthwhile or it making a difference. So you have people who care a lot, are by no kind of ordinary measure of the word apathetic but don’t see the point in registering to vote or don’t vote. I think you have to recognise that as part of the problem if you are going to get to the right solution.
That said, 38 Degrees believes that democracy is better if more people get involved. That is one of core ethos. The voter registration days are an example of our experimenting in that area and giving our members ways of getting involved in that. As we get nearer to a general election, we will be thinking about both online and offline means of making the case for voting. I think in general the work of the Civil Society Commission on democratic engagement that was critiquing the progress of the lobbying Bill made a very powerful case that non-partisan organisations getting involved in the issues both during the whole course of a Parliament and during electoral cycles is a key way by which you bring politics to life, by which people see why it matters. All of the organisations that are not political parties but care about issues that pertain to politics are now facing huge new constraints on what we are allowed to do and that is going to be a big issue for us all going into the next election. We are talking about something that was potentially a huge backward step. If you have other suggestions—
Chair: Andrew, did you have something or has it been answered?
Mr Turner: I don’t think it has been answered but it was an interruption of yours.
Q172 Tracey Crouch: Just going back to the original point that I made about influence equalling responsibility—and, as you, know I am a big supporter of 38 Degrees and do engage with people—do you recognise that ensuring that people fully understand that the issue that they are raising, and that means using the correct terminology, is incredibly important? When people were getting in touch with me about the lobbying Bill but calling it the “Gagging Bill” and then ringing my office and saying, “What is Ms Crouch going to do about the Gagging Bill?” “There is no such thing as the Gagging Bill in front of Parliament”, that is incredibly important. Referring to the bedroom tax does give you a political bias by doing so. That is what I mean about influence and responsibility. If you are going to get people to engage in politics in policy, they need to do so on a completely level playing field on an issue that is important but they recognise and understand what it is that they are talking about.
David Babbs: I agree with the premise underlying your question that understanding is an important ingredient in effective engagement. I don’t think I agree that giving things accessible labels, descriptive labels rather than only using the language of the formal political process is a necessary prerequisite of that.
Tracey Crouch: It disengages them with the process if they are not referring to it in a—
David Babbs: On that, I perceived politicians doing exactly that with the “Lobbying and Transparency and Trade Union Regulation Act” or whatever it was called. It had a rebrand halfway through from being the lobbying Bill to the transparency Bill. Everyone uses shorthand all the time, not just 38 Degrees. What we do try to do all the time is talk about things in an accessible way. To be honest, I think one of the ways in which the political classes close rank and keep people out is to use deliberately complicated words and deliberately inaccessible processes to make it baffling to ordinary people. That is something that we unapologetically resist. In doing that, do we need to be mindful of seeking to also be accurate? Yes, we certainly do. I am afraid I continue to believe that the “Gagging Law” is a more accurate label for the “Lobbying and Transparency and Trade Union Act”, or whatever it is actually called, than its official name, certainly more so than the transparency Bill.
Tracey Crouch: You know where the Committee stood on that.
Q173 Mr Turner: You said a moment ago that there were things that you didn’t want to pay us to do. What are those things?
David Babbs: Do you really want me to bring up the expenses scandal?
Mr Turner: No, I want you to tell me what I am doing lawfully that you don’t wish to pay for?
David Babbs: It is not very long since people heard all kinds of examples of many Members of Parliament claiming expenses for everything from duck houses—
Mr Turner: I am talking about now, not something that happened six years ago. You can’t think of any, can you? No, you can’t.
David Babbs: You are not really giving me a chance to answer.
Mr Turner: Well, I am waiting.
David Babbs: The kind of things in terms of money that I think concern 38 Degrees members would be what proportion of your office staff’s time is spent engaging with voters and seeking to solicit their views and understand their issues versus organising photo opportunities and making them look good.
Q174 Mr Turner: I am sorry, I am really interested in this. You think my staff spend a whole lot of time arranging photographs. Is that true?
David Babbs: Most MPs are pretty assiduous in seeking to get themselves in the local papers.
Mr Turner: Yes, of course we are but that doesn’t necessarily mean it is done by people who are paid to do it.
David Babbs: No, but I think that does happen as well. It definitely happens as well.
Mr Turner: It does happen as well, but I am talking about something serious.
David Babbs: Plenty of MPs still employ their relatives quite a lot.
Q175 Mr Turner: What is wrong with that?
David Babbs: I think the problem with it is that generally in most other walks of life most ordinary people have jobs where they have an employer—
Mr Turner: Yes, and I will tell you—
David Babbs: Are you asking me questions or shouting at me? Shall I just be quiet?
Q176 Mr Turner: No, I am not shouting at you. I am saying you must use your common sense rather than just pick things out of hats and say, “We hate people who have local staff working for them”. That is an example that can work very well and I think you are trying to persuade us, as the Chairman suggested, that there are one or two MPs who behaved wrongly and that is now the judgment of everyone.
David Babbs: No. What I am saying is that you have a trust problem across the board. I think there are very good reasons for that trust problem and MP expenses is one example of that. The Iraq war is another example of that. There are all kinds of reasons why people don’t—
Mr Turner: We were asked do you want to—
David Babbs: Please let me finish. You have a trust problem and in that situation, I raised the issue of MPs employing their relatives. You are quite right that there are many other walks of life where it might be perfectly appropriate, that the best person for the job might be a relative of yours, but in other areas of life other things are also in play. You have a manager or a board or a group of people to whom you are accountable, who pay your wages and can check those decisions and scrutinise them and, if you are not doing a good job, at any point they can sack you. That isn’t the case with MPs. You have a job description that lays out your responsibilities.
Q177 Mr Turner: You said there were things you didn’t want to pay us for. I am not paid for those things that are illegal. I accept that. I think it is quite correct that Parliament have the right to call us back. I think that is reasonable and, as you know, the Government are backing it, although their version is rather different from mine. But what I am trying to work out is what things you really dislike that you are paying us for now.
David Babbs: The major preoccupation of 38 Degrees members is not that. The major preoccupation of 38 Degrees members is that they perceive politicians who should be working for them as working for others. Another example of that, as we are on the subject of money, would be donations. It is a shame that Christopher Chope was only here in order to attack the alleged bias of 38 Degrees and then left and didn’t hear the rest of my evidence. If he had still been here, I would have offered as an example of that to him that when 38 Degrees in his constituency see him being rude to them and dismissing them for bias and making all kinds of claims about 38 Degrees and its links to the Labour Party, which are patently untrue—we have never received a penny from the Labour Party—but then see him campaigning for the repeal of smoking legislation and not mentioning that he has been wined and dined to the tune of £2,000 last year by a tobacco company, then that kind of thing is bad for trust.
Chair: David.
Mr Turner: You are not dealing with my question—
Chair: Thank you, Andrew.
Mr Turner: —and I would be very grateful if you did.
David Babbs: Okay, what is it?
Q178 Chair: David, we are running over time and also I don’t think it is appropriate to raise particular things when a Member has said something to you and has left. Maybe we can have a proper exchange about that when he can answer back, because I am sure he has a view about that and I am sure you would like to be fair to everybody. It is one of your values.
David Babbs: Yes. The point I am making is that in terms of Parliament’s attitudes towards 38 Degrees what he did was symbolic of something that is quite corrosive of trust, which is he turned up at the beginning, told us we were biased and then left before hearing any of our answers.
Q179 Chair: You are obviously entitled to your view but as someone who is very friendly to what you try to do, I would just say that adopting a view that Parliament, that is every Member of Parliament, is tarred with a particular brush and fits neatly into a media stereotype, which you might inadvertently be encouraging rather than trying to work with MPs, many of whom—and I speak for myself—might feel that we are not part of the problem, we are part of the answer and we are as powerless, and not many people like to admit it as an MP, in the face of a very over-centralised governing system in this country, we probably have more in common than we have in painting each other as something, “You’re something and all MPs are something”. I would go back to my point about having a degree of sophistication and nuance that will lead us towards some answers rather than a mutual condemnation, which I don’t think is very productive.
David Babbs: I would agree with that. One thing I wanted to pick up on was when you were talking about the need for resources for MPs and that is when I said in flippant way about what 38 Degrees do and don’t think MPs should be spending their money on. The other point I wished to make then was although I think resources might be an issue, there are already examples—they are a minority but there are examples—of MPs who use technology well to engage people within their current resources. 38 Degrees members have wildly different experiences of their MPs and they are not along party lines. They may be partly along generational lines in terms of people for whom technology is more familiar, but by and large the single biggest distinguishing factor between those MPs who successfully engage with members of the public, 38 Degrees members, in a way that enhances rather than undermines their faith in the political system is an attitudinal one, it is a cultural one.
It is an attitude that can be present in MPs of wildly different ideological starting points, completely different philosophies and agendas. It does not involve, as I am sure Tracey would agree, always agreeing with the people you are engaging with. It is about respecting them, frankly. I think what a lot of people perceive from the political class as a whole, with exceptions, is a lack of respect, perhaps partly because of the realities of the political system. They perceive that you know that you are still going to carry on collecting your salary and being an MP whatever you say to them and that you are not interested in their views. They can smell that and it makes them frustrated and less likely to engage.
Q180 Chair: I don’t know if they can smell it but they certainly get that stereotype very strongly from the media. Perhaps it is having a more sophisticated view about the differentiation that there is among people who are elected by the public rather than “they’re all the same, pretty much”. You have said quite repeatedly, David, “you lot, or Parliament”. I think in a sense you are almost determined to lose your friends and it seems a bit of an odd strategy.
Having said all that, I have to bring this session to a close. We have overrun, so clearly this has been an interesting session. I will leave you with one thought, David. You are not just you sitting at the table as an ordinary person. You come as an enormous 800 pound gorilla with 2 million members at your back. You are a very powerful and influential person. I would like to use that influence to get from you and from your members, via your organisation, a serious, positive package of things. Once you have done all your interaction with the members—and I know it is not easy to do that quickly—come back to us, in writing rather than necessarily bringing you back, with some ideas about how we take all this forward. In a sense, we all know where we are and it is not a good place. How do we get to a better place where there is greater voter engagement? If you can help us in that, I think all of us round the table, including yourself, will be happier at the end of the day.
David, thank you very much for coming in today. We appreciate your time. Take care.
David Babbs: Thanks for inviting me.
Examination of Witness
Witness: Toni Pearce, President, National Union of Students, gave evidence.
Q181 Chair: Toni, how are you? Come and join us. Did you want to say something to start us off or do you want to jump straight into questions?
Toni Pearce: I can do. I think this is really exciting and it is something I am glad people are taking an interest in. I am not suggesting that you are only just starting to take an interest in it but it is something that I am excited about because I am very passionate about it. It can only be a good thing that there are lots of different people coming together and talking about the issue. I fundamentally would love to see more people engaging with democracy, particularly young people. I don’t necessarily have all the answers but hopefully I can give you an interesting perspective.
Q182 Chair: Once we have had our discussions, if there are further things—as I offered to David, we are in the field and in the business of producing a report. Obviously we are in the last year of a Parliament so I imagine whoever forms an incoming Government would be influenced. We have this unique situation of being in the last year of a fixed-term, so we have a full year to talk these things through and get ideas floating around about future legislation. It is a really good moment to keep that interaction going.
Toni Pearce: Absolutely.
Q183 David Morris: Can you tell us a bit about what the NUS currently does to encourage students to participate in elections?
Toni Pearce: There are two distinct bits of work that NUS and the student movement more broadly do around engaging people in democracy. One of those specifically for me is around how we engage people in national democracy, in general elections and local elections. Frankly, that is the bread and butter of what student unions do on their campuses, particularly in the lead-up to a general election.
We have been quite involved with Bite the Ballot on national voter registration day. On 5 February, across student unions, we registered 6,500 students to vote and we will be continuing to do that throughout the rest of the year. There is also a big piece of work that we did, and I was involved in as a commissioner on the Commission on Civil Society and Democratic Engagement, about how we ensure that young people’s voices are heard in the forming of policy about interaction with democracy. Also turning people out to vote, so holding things like “Question Time” style debates on campuses with prospective parliamentary candidates and MPs and talking about policy and having open debates as well as encouraging people to understand the causal link between who they vote for and then what happens after they are elected, so a better understanding of what those choices mean.
Then there is a whole different area that I think is really important, which is how student unions engage their own students in their own democratic structures. For a lot of young people and for a lot of students being involved in their student union elections, even if that is just voting, is their first ever interaction with democracy, particularly in further education colleges and for a lot of international students. We have about 600 student unions in membership; about 450 of those are in further education colleges and about 150 in universities. Last year we did a reporting back exercise across 80 of those universities and that showed that 266,000 students voted across those 81 student unions. Some particular examples of student unions where they have a high turnout are places like Leeds, Loughborough, York, Exeter and Sheffield where they are looking at between 35% and 45% turnout every year in their student union elections. That is done on a very low budget with almost no resources and it is about encouraging people to have their voices heard and to engage in a system of voting.
For me that is exciting and learning from some of those practices on campuses about how you engage young people in those processes is very important. The student movement itself has issues with engaging people because there is a fundamental disengagement from politics and that even reaches a campus level, so there are similar challenges. That is what we are doing at the moment.
Q184 David Morris: Your written evidence states that students are not politically apathetic, but barely half of the 18 to 24-year-olds voted in the last general election. Why aren’t people in this age bracket voting more, do you think?
Toni Pearce: I think there is a combination of reasons. There is a piece of research, that I am sure you are aware of, that the Electoral Commission did that shows particular reasons why, which is things like disillusionment, the idea that voting does not make any difference to them or the political system does not make any difference to them. I have a real problem with the idea of apathy because I don’t think there is anybody who is apathetic. There are just people who don’t feel that the right issues are being talked about and so they don’t get involved with them because they are not specifically the issues they care about. There is the idea that maybe as an individual you won’t make much of a difference and to some extent the more that we see ourselves in a global context the smaller you feel as an individual and the smaller your vote feels. I think there is an idea of alienation, that politics is not really for young people, and maybe not feeling confident enough in your knowledge and understanding of politics and the political system to be confident enough to go and do it.
The actual act of voting is an odd one. The first time I ever set foot in the community hall in my village in Cornwall was to go and vote in the last general election. I found that an odd experience because most of my interactions, whether they are to do with gathering knowledge or political interactions or understanding things about the political system, happen online. That was kind of a weird process for me. I didn’t know what to expect and I never had any kind of education about that. Citizenship education and just fundamental understanding of how voting works and what it means to vote and what it will be, what the physical act of voting is, doesn’t get talked about and that is a real problem.
The issue of alienation is a key one for young people. There was something that the Hansard Society came out with that said that only 12% of people surveyed said that Prime Minister’s Questions makes them proud of British politics. That is something I relate to because as a young woman who is quite involved in politics I look at that and I can’t watch it because it looks like people just shouting at each other. It looks like playground politics. I find that alienating and it is not something that I want to be engaged with. So it is something about voting and also something about the political system and the kind of people that you see. I don’t see myself or people that I grew up with reflected in the people who are elected.
Q185 Chris Ruane: Your written evidence flags up the risks of individual electoral registration, IER, for registering students. How do you think the implementation of IER is likely to impact voter participation by students?
Toni Pearce: There are two issues. I keep saying that, don’t I? Sorry. There are two issues though. There is the issue of individual electoral registration itself. For a long time students in halls in universities have been block registered to vote by their halls. NUS agrees fundamentally with the principle behind individual electoral registration and that, as a feminist, I am not being registered to vote by my dad or my husband or whatever, I make that decision as an empowered person to decide to vote, so we agree with that. The problem is that as a transient community of people, it is easy to be confused about where you are eligible to vote. You are eligible to vote in your home constituency and also your student constituency in some elections but not all elections, and you can vote in local elections in both constituencies and in the general election only in one constituency. I think that is difficult.
The other issue for us is the way in which the implementation of IER is being gone about. It is happening quite fast and in the process—
Q186 Chris Ruane: Why do you think that is?
Toni Pearce: I don’t know what the motivations are for it happening fast.
Chris Ruane: I will tell you afterwards.
Toni Pearce: I feel sorry for the people having to implement it at that pace, because it is a huge shift in the democratic function of our society. I think there is a real problem where students particularly will get missed out. If they are already registered to vote in their home constituency and then they change address before IER comes in then they will either be registered to vote again or they will be lost off the system. Part of that is about awareness of voting for young people, an awareness that this is happening and that they will have to register themselves. We are doing a lot of work with EROs and local institutions to try to integrate the process of enrolment at college or university with the process of registering to vote, which I think is an exciting and interesting idea.
Q187 Chris Ruane: Can I ask on that specifically, a cross-referencing of the DWP database and the electoral registers was done. In Aberystwyth for the student part there was only 18.5% registration cross-referenced. When you are dealing with the electoral registration officers, do you ask them if they cross-reference their local government databases as well as the DWP? They are supposed to. When you are dealing with those EROs, are you asking them have they cross-referenced their local government databases? Are they doing door-to-door knocking? Would it help you if I were to supply you with a list of questions, approved by the Electoral Commission, to ask EROs to put that pressure from below?
Toni Pearce: Yes, that would absolutely help. I think it varies from area to area and some of the engagement we have had with EROs in some areas has been excellent, particularly in Sheffield and Liverpool. There are some exciting and innovative ways of doing this.
Chris Ruane: Can you send us details on that?
Toni Pearce: Yes, absolutely. With the raising of the participation age in further education, that every young person aged 16 to 18 by 2015 will be enrolled on a college course or a training course or an apprenticeship, the idea that when they enrol they could at the same time, with the support of their institution, register to vote is exciting. That is not saying, “We will just share the data” but when you are going through the process of enrolling you are caught in that system. I think we should be doing that.
Q188 Chris Ruane: If the NUS were paid to register students would you do a better job? If I can just tell you that the Electoral Commission sometimes spends £4.5 million on registration campaigns. Sometimes the downloads cost £80 per download for the registration form. Bite the Ballot can do it for 18 pence a registration. Would you work with the Electoral Commission to see if they could pay you for registering students?
Toni Pearce: I would be a bit wary about the idea of being paid to register students. It sounds like a commission.
Chris Ruane: Not you personally.
Toni Pearce: I would, but I think it is difficult to do it without any resources. That is the fact of the matter and at the moment we are doing it with very few resources or no resources. The resources that we are using to do it are resources that we might otherwise be spending on campaigning or other types of engagement, but it is a priority for us.
Q189 Chris Ruane: We understand that you worked with Bite the Ballot on national voter registration day. You mentioned a figure of 6,000 students registered through that. What percentage is that of the student population?
Toni Pearce: It is not a very big percentage of the student population—our membership is about 7 million students—but about 25% of the people who were registered on that day were students registered by NUS.
Q190 Chris Ruane: Are you aware that when IER was introduced in Northern Ireland, student registration went down to 25%? Now it has gone back up to 65%, mainly in the past couple of years. What assessment have you made of the Northern Ireland situation so that it does not happen to your 7 million members when it is introduced in a few months time?
Toni Pearce: I am not really sure about the Northern Ireland situation. I know that it went down significantly. For us it is about taking practical steps to ensure that people continue to be registered to vote. Some of that is about integrating it in student union activities on the ground so when students are welcomed into their new institution, whether that is in an FE college or at university, it is something that is constantly ongoing. It is not just one day where you say, “You can register to vote now”. The introduction of online voter registration would have a massive impact on the number of young people registered to vote. How I live my life, which is kind of sad, is online, and extending the ways in which you can register to vote is only a good thing.
Q191 Chris Ruane: You have worked with Bite the Ballot. I think they are an excellent organisation and they have registered, is it, 20,000 young people on next to nothing. Do you think what they do is scalable, replicable? I don’t like to say professionalised but could it be extended around the country to get this 6.5 million people, or the student element of that, on to the register?
Toni Pearce: I think it absolutely could. I think that Bite the Ballot do amazing work and on the national voter registration day those activities were done with a bit of very last minute funding. Increasing the scale of that work is amazing. There are student unions that are really engaged in that who are still registering people to vote off the back of that exercise and competing with each other across the country about who can register the most students to vote in 24 hours. Those things are innovative, competitive and exciting and I think we should be investing in them. One of the problems I suppose for me is that it does not feel necessarily like anybody is taking responsibility for increasing voter registration but particularly not taking responsibility for increasing turnout.
Q192 Chris Ruane: What do you think of Russell Brand’s comments telling people not to vote?
Toni Pearce: I wrote a response to it.
Chris Ruane: Could we have a copy of it?
Toni Pearce: Yes, absolutely. It was not very complimentary to him, unfortunately. I think he is fundamentally wrong and it is irresponsible to use a position of power like that to tell people not to vote and not to engage. I am disenfranchished with politics generally and with the political system but if you want to change it then register to vote and vote and get engaged. Voting is not the only kind of political engagement you can have. You can engage through different routes if you want to change things but you won’t change anything by staying at home. You can say that if you are in a position where you are a multi-million pounds writer and author and comedian and whatever. You can probably say that because you do have the power to have your voice heard, because you will get printed in the Guardian and the Observer and you will get media attention, but if you are a young person growing up where I grew up in an ex-mining town in Cornwall you don’t have another route to get your voice heard because no one is going to print your views in a national newspaper. Voting is the way to do that. I am deeply unimpressed by him.
Q193 Tracey Crouch: Your written evidence highlights the importance of citizenship education. What changes do you think need to be made to citizenship education so that it translates to higher voting participation for younger people?
Toni Pearce: I think there should be some. I didn’t get any citizenship education. Nobody explained to me what our political system was and how that compared to other political systems around the world and where it came from and how women got the vote. I am lucky enough that I have the kind of social capital now to learn those things myself but I didn’t get that at school. I was not taught what left and right means in a political sense and I did not get a background to political parties and where they have come from. I know that that stuff is difficult to do and deliver but we should be trying to do it. Something that has stuck with me that a student officer said to me recently is that if a 16-year-old leaves school not being able to read or write then we blame the state and we blame the education system but if they leave school not being able to understand the political system or vote we blame them. We tell them that it is their fault for not understanding.
In some ways, once you are involved in the political system, and I guess particularly if you are an MP or you work in Parliament or you work in Westminster or you work in NUS, voting seems very simple and the political system just seems to make sense, but it is difficult to remember that when you are outside of it it feels quite closed off. Nobody ever explains to young people how it works. It is not on the curriculum. Entitlement funding and enrichment funding was withdrawn from colleges a couple of years ago. That often paid for people at FE colleges, who tend to be the most disadvantaged people, to have that kind of education and engagement, and that money being withdrawn was a huge problem. That particularly goes for people on vocational courses. My members on vocational courses do a lot of skill-based work. The increase in the number of apprentices is brilliant, but you then end up with a group of academic people who get that kind of more rounded understanding of the world and society and are actively taught how to engage and then a group of vocational students who are not offered that same education about engaging with the world around them and their political system.
Q194 Tracey Crouch: Do you think there is an important role for your members, or indeed the students across the country, trying to ensure that people do understand the political process? I did a Teach First thing at one of my schools and went into a citizenship class with a teacher who is not a trained politics tutor and quite a lot of the information that was being given to the students was wrong because she was not engaged in the political process. There was little understanding, for example, of the hours that MPs work and the types of responsibilities that they have. In fact, at one point she was genuinely shocked that we, as MPs, have a vote on going to war, for example, or should have a vote on going to war.
Chair: We are working on getting a vote on it.
Tracey Crouch: Just thinking about students across the country and practically every university has a politics course, is there not a voluntary role for your students to go in and make sure that younger pupils do get an understanding of our democratic process?
Toni Pearce: Yes. I think that is true. I would go back to the argument that this should be a fundamental part of something that you learn and it should be a basic standard. If young people couldn’t read and write when they left school, we wouldn’t say to students studying English and maths at universities, “You should be fixing that problem”. We should be addressing a problem with the system. We do a lot of that and student unions do that and go out and talk to people and, particularly in the run-up to a general election, explain what is going on, who there is in the local constituency and what your options are. That is a lot of what NUS will be doing. 2 million of my members are in higher education and 90% of those are studying in universities. Once you are at that level you have a certain amount of political capital already. You have more of an understanding than I guess the 5 million of my members who are in further education colleges. Around 75% of those are people who are returning to education who have dropped out of the education system for whatever reason or need to return because they have been made redundant or whatever.
I think back to the people that I grew up with in Cornwall where our nearest university was two and a half hours away and there was a real feeling of isolation from the system, Westminster and politics as a thing and not understanding how it had an impact on your life in an area that was, and still is, in a huge amount of poverty. I think I would have found it a bit odd if people from the university had turned up my school and said, “You should get involved in politics”. I probably would have preferred to have heard from a teacher that I knew who had been trained properly.
Q195 Tracey Crouch: I know that one of my colleagues is going to talk about votes at 16, and education and voting at that age is very much linked, so I won’t progress into that. I have one more question, which is a completely different question, about online voting. Your written evidence suggests that you would support consideration of online voting. Are there any other areas where you think digital opportunities could be better taken advantage of to encourage voter participation? We have just heard from 38 Degrees, but do you think there should be more of that, less of that, something completely different?
Toni Pearce: Something completely different would be great, but I am not sure what it is. I think that a consistent online option would be really important. One of the reasons that online voting is so attractive for me is not just about encouraging young people to vote but the issue of access, particularly for disabled people, for being able to vote. One of the key reasons why it was introduced in New South Wales in Australia was to do with access rather than to do with encouraging young people to vote. It was being able to enfranchise into the system people who are visually impaired or considered illiterate or more than 20 kilometres away from a polling station and give them a different option.
Q196 Tracey Crouch: Does our system of postal voting not deal with that?
Toni Pearce: I don’t know if they did, but I have an interesting story, which is that I e-mail my grandparents and they then write back to me and I e-mail them in response to their letters that they send me. So we exist in analogue and digital and they don’t really meet in the middle. I am revealing my life here. Not only does most of my interaction with the world exist online or face to face but I wouldn’t use the postal system. Those are the reasons why it was introduced in New South Wales particularly.
The idea of online voting would completely revolutionise the way that people see politics, or the way that people see the act of voting at least, because then it just becomes part of your everyday life if you are a young person. That is my everyday life. It took me until I was 20 to go to a community centre that I probably will never go to again, because I probably won’t vote in my constituency in Cornwall, and I didn’t have any connection with that place. I would never have gone there or walked past there or known where it was. I didn’t grow up in a family where voting was particularly talked about or encouraged. I told my mum that she had to come and vote with me but my dad has never voted and he doesn’t want to. If you had time and space on your own territory in your own home to be able to look at it and consider your options I think that would be less intimidating and be more a part of your community.
Q197 Tracey Crouch: Does it not make the act of voting more special when you go down to a polling station? I am not wishing to compare them like for like, but you remember that but I bet you don’t remember how many times you voted online for an X Factor contestant, if you ever have. It is an important occasion. Going out to vote is an important occasion. As two women, historically women have died to give us that vote and that opportunity to go down to the polling station. To just press a button on a phone or on a laptop takes away that historic aspect and that legacy of voting.
Toni Pearce: I get that. I wouldn’t take away the option to vote in person and for particular communities that is really important. It might be a special occasion but in 2010 it was a special occasion for 65% of the population and that is not good enough. I would rather it was a everyday act and not a special occasion for 90% or 100% of the population than a special act for 65%.
Q198 Mr Turner: If voting by e-mail were popular, what would happen to women, and others but women in particular, who are not allowed to vote, their husbands voting for them?
Toni Pearce: Sorry, I don’t understand the question.
Mr Turner: I am suggesting that women in some households, and for that matter children, don’t vote themselves. The responsibility is taken by the husband.
Toni Pearce: Do you mean hypothetically it would be case if it was an online system?
Mr Turner: Actually it does even in the current system.
Chair: With postal votes, Andrew.
Toni Pearce: Sorry, yes. I wouldn’t use an e-mail system. I would use an online polling system. That is much more secure and that means that, for instance, if you based the requirement to vote on the entry of a voter registration number or something like a national insurance number, I think you would provide much more security and much more safety. If the problem of people voting on behalf of other people already exists with postal voting, I don’t see how it is any more of a problem with online voting. I don’t know much about it, if I am perfectly honest, but I think if it is that much of a problem with postal voting then we should be looking at it as a separate issue. I don’t see why online voting would necessarily make that problem worse.
Q199 Mark Durkan: The Cabinet Office have a forum to promote and support the work of electoral registration officers in student registration. What is the student union involvement in that forum?
Toni Pearce: The forum for students is an exciting initiative. It is NUS, GuildHE, Universities UK, the Association of Colleges, the Cabinet Office and the University Registrars Network or whatever they are. I think it is exciting because it is particularly addressing the issue of how we use structures and institutions that already exist to make polling and voting and democracy more accessible to students. Part of that is about, where it is possible, having polling stations on campuses. If you have 30,000 students on a campus then it would seem worthwhile having a polling station on campus. It is also about bringing together institutions within cities, so Sheffield Hallam and Sheffield College in Sheffield to work together across their various competitions to say, “We should be encouraging our city to vote and all of us will sign up to adding voter registration on to our enrolment when people enrol at college or university in the city and we will put on constituency-wide question time events”. I think that forum for students has a very important place and I am glad that the Cabinet Office are taking it seriously.
My only concern is that at the moment it is intended to wind it up after the next general election and I think it should be continuing and be an ongoing conversation until we fix the problem. I don’t think that you can switch it on and off over a general election period. It needs to be during the whole length of a Parliament.
Q200 Mark Durkan: You have indicated some prospects of actual concrete measures emerging. Is there any resistance to those?
Toni Pearce: It is patchy, and some of that comes from different places. Some of that comes from some institutions that are maybe a bit wary of engaging in it. It would be helpful for there to be more not necessarily pressure but support that says, “This is something that is encouraged, institutions are engaged in this process and they take social responsibility for getting their students involved in voter registration and voting”. That would be really helpful. It is something that student unions want to see. Something that student unions are worried about is that their students won’t want to vote in the general election. I think they find that a quite terrifying prospect. There are a lot of good conversations happening. I would love to see that turn into more practical, concrete solutions that actually change things, so a bit of pressure might be helpful.
Q201 Mark Durkan: What about the electoral registration officers? Are you able to detect any patchiness?
Toni Pearce: I might have to come back to you. I don’t have a list.
Chris Ruane: I do.
Mark Durkan: I thought you would.
Q202 Mark Durkan: When the Electoral Reform Society were in last week they were talking about motor-voter style registration where when people are dealing with various public transactions they might register, so when doing their driving licence or whatever they would register to vote. Are you aware of any colleges or universities building registration into the enrolment process?
Toni Pearce: Yes. Sheffield University and the universities in Liverpool are looking at it at the moment. It is hard not naming them by the name of their student union. The University of Liverpool, Liverpool John Moores University and Liverpool Hope University are looking at a city-wide system. So there are some promising areas of good practice.
Q203 Mark Durkan: On lowering the voting age to 16—to be up front, I have always voted and spoken in favour of lowering the voting age—one of the arguments that has arisen is that if we lower the voting age, and therefore increase the franchise, we are not going to necessarily improve the turnout to vote. In fact, we could be diminishing the proportional turnout. What is your argument and reply to that?
Toni Pearce: I have a few. There is something about a fundamental right. Either we choose to take away the option to do all sorts of things when you are 16, like marry or sign up for the armed services or pay taxes, to make those kind of decisions about your future, or we extend the voting franchise to those people. I think there is a grey area at the moment where you can do lots of things, either for the state or you contribute money towards the state but you don’t get to have a say in how that money is spent or whether you do go to war or those sort of things. There are arguments about whether these people are mature enough or whether they know enough. I would argue that when I was 20 I had not had any political education and I had not had any citizenship education and I don’t think I was any more prepared to vote when I was 20 than I was when I was 16. We should be improving the education and levelling up rather than levelling down. There are probably lots of people who are over the age of 18, I would suggest, who don’t have the political education or political understanding or maturity to vote.
But there are historical arguments about increasing the franchise of voting and there have been lots of arguments that if you increase it to this group of people or this group of people then fewer people will vote or it will diminish the quality of votes or whatever; they will not understand what they are doing. In all the extensions of a franchise, that has proved to be wrong. Also there are lots of international examples of this happening and young people taking up the right to vote. In the Isle of Man, for instance, when votes at 16 were introduced people aged 16 to 18 were above the average voter turnout than for the rest of the population. It was 1% higher. Then there is something about a consistency of saying at 16, “You will definitely now be going into some form of further education or training. You are all in this same boat and this is the package that we will offer you of bringing you into the franchise of voting, of offering you political education, of engaging with you as an adult and providing you with the kind of support that you need to be able to vote and use your vote properly and effectively”.
Q204 Mark Durkan: I have observed before that the arguments for votes at 16 are not the same as the arguments for votes for women but the arguments against voting at 16 seem to be very similar to the arguments that were used against votes for women. There was some suggestion by previous witnesses that if we were going to have voting at 16 there could be a case for making voting compulsory for that age group. Do you have a view on that proposition?
Toni Pearce: I think there are some interesting points about compulsory voting. It is a real problem that young people vote less than the rest of the population and we do need to do something about it, but I almost feel like making it compulsory goes back to the idea of saying, “This is your fault for not voting”. I would much rather have a carrot than stick approach and say, “This is why you should vote and this is why it is important and exciting”. I suppose there is the problem of the cohort effect of saying that if this generation of 18-year-olds or 20-year-olds are not voting in this general election then they are less likely to vote for the rest of their lives. That is a real problem. I think whether you agree with compulsory voting or not, if you were going to do it for—
Mark Durkan: They were proposing to do it for first-time voting. It was not clear whether that is councils or general elections.
Toni Pearce: I would say if you think compulsory voting is the answer, you should probably do it for everybody otherwise it feels like a penalty particularly imposed on young people. But I do think that we should all do our best not to get to that point. We should be encouraging people, not saying that, “This is something that you are required to do by the state”. It is something that you are encouraged to do and should feel empowered to do and that you want to go out and do and have your voice heard and engage with rather than, “If you don’t, we are going to charge you money”. The people who are most likely not to vote are the most disadvantaged and you are then almost putting a tax on being disenfranchised and disadvantaged, not getting that education and not having social capital and parents who are politically literate, I suppose.
Q205 Chris Ruane: Do you think the Government would have tripled tuition fees and abolished EMAs if your 7 million voters were forced to vote?
Chair: It is a one-word answer, Toni. I am kidding.
Toni Pearce: You can’t answer that in one word. That is horrendous.
Chair: It is just that I am trying to bring the Committee to a conclusion and Chris was very cheeky getting in at the end.
Toni Pearce: This is the problem of democracy. It is just yes or no. I think what is important is that voter turnout for young people went up massively in 2010 and we saw young people, and particularly students, being turned away from particular polling stations in some constituencies, often because there were permanent residents there who were given priority to vote, which I think was scandalous. But when people engaged with the issues around things that mattered to young people, they did get out and vote and they were more engaged in getting their voices heard. The turnout of 18 to 24-year-olds went up 7% from 2005 to 2010.
I am not sure it would have made a difference, necessarily. I don’t blame politicians themselves for this, I blame the system. It forces you to say, “These people are going to vote so I should probably create policies that keep these people happy”. That is a problem that people have recognised for a long time and it doesn’t feel like people are doing anything about it. All the evidence suggests that the more you talk about issues that young people care about the more likely they are to engage, and that is what they did in 2010. There is something important to be said that they can see that their vote made a difference to who was elected and then they can see what happened afterwards and there is a causal link. Whether that is positive or negative, at least something happened because they, as a movement, came out and did something. I am not sure whether the aftermath of that will have a very positive impact on the turnout of young people at the next general election. I hope so.
Q206 Chair: Toni, thank you very much. I am sure Chris will want to continue that after I have closed the Committee. It was very good of you to come in today. Thank you for some wise words and, as I mentioned earlier, if you have had a think and had a look at some of our other evidence as well, feel free to point us in the right direction. We are determined to come up with a really positive list of things for this Committee for the next Government and make sure that we have those things in line. If you can help us on that, we would be most grateful.
Toni Pearce: I would love to. Thank you.
Chair: Toni, thank you so much. Thank you, colleagues.
Voter engagement in the UK, HC 1059