Oral evidence: Voter engagement in the UK, HC 1059Thursday 13 March 2014
Oral evidence, 13 March 2014.
Witnesses
Jessica Garland, Research Officer, Electoral Reform Society, and Will Brett, Head of Media, Electoral Reform Society, gave evidence.
Chair
If I can now move on, we are going to ask Jessica and Will to come and join us. Good morning, Jessica. Good morning, Will. How are you? Welcome. You know the inquiry we are undertaking. Thank you for sparing the time to come along to advise us this morning. Is there anything you would like to begin by saying?
Will Brett
We do have an opening statement, which is that we would like to thank the Committee very much for inviting us to give evidence. Voter disengagement is an extremely pressing problem, as you all know, and it is also a very complex problem. Our evidence is around the solutions to voter disengagement. It is going to range across a very wide variety of areas. The commitment from this Committee on voter disengagement is very welcome, but we need commitment from all sorts of other areas as well, including Government, the rest of Parliament, schools, civil society and media. We need a combination of public policy, institutional reform and cultural change, all driven by a relentless focus on what will reengage the public in politics.
Chair
Jessica, you have nothing to add?
Jessica Garland
Nothing, not yet.
Paul Flynn
You state in your evidence that low voter turnout “has a high cost for decision-making”. How?
Jessica Garland
Obviously, in a representative democracy, legitimacy is conferred through election and I think the assumption is that the majority of people must be more than 50%. I think it has a cost for both Governments and citizens. If you look at Europe, there has been a trend to farm out political decisions to unelected technocrats and that has had some pretty bad consequences. It is a problem for the citizen because, while a technocrat might make the most efficient decision, it is not democratic and it is not necessarily in the public interest. Of course, what that does is expand it out.
Paul Flynn
Would you explain this to the people in Rome, that when they had very high turnouts for a whole multiplicity of parties that produced better Government than they had being run by the technocrats?
Jessica Garland
It does not always produce better Government, but the issue here is confidence in decision-making and what you get is an increase in the gap. People vote when there are high stakes, when they feel that their vote is going to make a difference. If the person you are electing is not making that decision that is obviously going to have an impact on you. You can see a bit of a vicious circle created there.
Paul Flynn
The percentage of people who voted in 2010 was 65% compared to 59% in 2001. Has that resulted in a happier, efficient democracy?
Jessica Garland
That is a big question. The rise in turnout in the 2010 election was obviously because the contest was much closer. That resulted in the turnout. We, the Electoral Reform Society, do not see an inherent problem in coalition governments. We think they can be very positive for democracy. We will leave that answer there, I think.
Paul Flynn
The people who have decided to vote are usually those who have the strongest motivation and are probably the best informed. Will it be helpful to get those who are less well informed and more susceptible to the pleadings of the tabloid press to engage in voting? Do you think we would improve the quality of Government with 100% of people, a large number of whom have no deep commitment to the issues or no great knowledge of them?
Will Brett
It is a founding principle of democracy that there is an equality of participation and that all votes are equal. I think it would be a mistake to see some people who might vote as inherently more valuable than others.
Paul Flynn
Would you be in favour, when the demise of the Queen takes place by abdication or death, that we should exercise democracy to elect her successor and choose between Charles, William or AN Other? Wouldn’t this be a final scenario?
Will Brett
Elect them all at once.
Chair
Maybe putting his name into that.
Jessica Garland
I think that is straying a little bit from our submission and our policies there. Yes, we think democracy is a good thing but I am not sure we would stray into republican conversations about it.
Paul Flynn
Why is that? You are advocates of 100% turnout and demographic decisions on everything.
Jessica Garland
We are not in favour of 100% turnout in any sort of forced way. We would echo Ruth’s comments on compulsory voting. We do feel that in a representative democracy, which we have, you want a large majority of people to take part in it and equally as well.
Paul Flynn
Your written submission also calls for some wider reforms to the culture and practices of representative democracy. One of the ones you suggest is tackling the adversarial nature of Westminster politics. I can recall when I was a young man one of my great heroes referring to the opposition to his party as being lower than vermin. While it was a gratuitous insult to vermin, it seemed to strike a political nerve. The greatly revered figure of Churchill said in the House, when he was accused of being drunk by a lady Member, “Madam, I am drunk but you are ugly and by tomorrow I will be sober”. These insults have been part of it. Adversarial politics adds some life and colour. Could you imagine the policies of the nation being hastened and quickened by this Committee rather than what happened in the insults in the Chamber yesterday?
Will Brett
Of course adversarial politics does provide great anecdotes and often good copy for newspapers and the press and so on. Ruth Fox’s organisation has just done a study of Prime Minister’s Questions and has found that people are genuinely turned off by that culture. No one wants to see—
Chris Ruane
Why do they watch it if they are turned off?
Will Brett
Not that many people watch it, I think. It hits the news bulletins and so it has a very important place in the public imagination and politics but I don’t think many people are tuning in at 12.00pm on a Wednesday. No one wants to have a completely anodyne political culture where there is no real debate or opposition, but there is a clear desire from the public to tone down adversarialism and there are various ways that you can do that.
Paul Flynn
You also suggest reforming the electoral system. If we look at one of the most recent measures of public opinion we have, which was a vote on the Alternative Vote that was decided by a placard on Vauxhall Bridge, that I crossed every morning, saying, “If you are in favour of AV you are in favour of more babies dying in hospital and more of our soldiers dying in Afghanistan”. I don’t exaggerate. The suggestion was it was going to cost money, there should be a cut and the cut would be in hospital facilities for young babies and in body armour for our troops in Afghanistan. Do you think this is a fine example of democracy in action and fully informed voters who voted on AV?
Jessica Garland
No. I think we could probably fill the rest of this session with discussion about the pros and cons of that campaign and some of the publicity that came out of it.
Paul Flynn
Doesn’t it shake your faith in democracy? People who voted then, the top 30% who don’t vote normally, might well find that argument plausible and AV was little understood, I would suggest, in that election. The chances of getting a real argument about the advantages or otherwise of AV were lost in the media babble and the tabloid nonsense.
Jessica Garland
Yes. We would have much rather have seen a full debate on the pros and cons of voting change. Widening that out to a question of how people engage with Parliament, there is an issue there, which I think Ruth mentioned, about levels of interest and knowledge being very much tied into whether people turn out to vote. When there is no space in the media or anywhere else for the full facts to be debated then that obviously does turn people off.
Paul Flynn
How do you react to Russell Brand telling young people that they shouldn’t vote, remembering that Russell Brand has 7 million followers on Twitter, which is rather more than we members of the Committee have among our followers, all put together, or all politicians in Western Europe put together, I would thought? Is this the way forward? Do you think that it is legitimate for Russell Brand to do that or what effect will it have? How could that be countered?
Will Brett
I think Russell Brand’s intervention is a really good example of the pros and cons of celebrity interventions in this debate. He gave a lot of oxygen to the issue, and that is quite important at a time when the issue is becoming more and more serious, but at the same time his recommendation is not very helpful. With celebrity interventions in general, anything that helps to bring focus to politics and helps to focus minds and brings tension is good, but you just need to be careful.
Paul Flynn
He is attempting to focus minds on our traditional drug policies and advocating a policy that is happening in Uruguay, Colorado and Washington at the moment and trying to get people to sign petitions to get rid of our 42 years of utterly failed drug prohibition in this country. Do you think he is right to say, “Don’t vote in general elections but sign petitions”?
Will Brett
There is clearly an irony in that development in which he has told people not to be involved in politics and then has moved swiftly on to talking about politics himself, the sort of politics that is dealt with here in Westminster and representative democracy. There is clearly an irony there, but I don’t think Russell Brand should be dominating this conversation.
Paul Flynn
We have a vote in this House at 5.00pm tonight on which Members have had hundreds of e-mails. Do you think MPs are more likely to be voted by the petitions, by the e-mails that have come in rather than by what happened to us in 2010 when the electorate were wise enough to choose us?
Jessica Garland
I think the public are choosing to use more direct methods of engagement. In 2011 the number of people contacting their MP online rather than on the phone or through letters exceeded traditional forms for the first time, so there are more people contacting MPs online than anything else. I am sure you all know from your own inboxes that it is quite a popular way of exercising some sort of political voice. Whether one way or another is more important is a wider question. The more ways you can involve the public between elections can really help boost engagement, interest and knowledge, but in a representational system it can never be more important than the election of course.
Will Brett
Single-issue campaigns in isolation are problematic for representative democracy. If people are part of associations of any kind, unions, churches, political parties, and they are having to prioritise the issues that they care about and decide which ones they want to give most of their focus to, that creates a more representative version of collective decision-making and gives people the experience. But of course over time membership of that kind of association has dropped and people’s individualism and consumerist culture has risen, which has made single-issue campaigning of this sort much more prevalent, and that is one of the problems that political parties and Government have to deal with.
Paul Flynn
Finally, two groups who have given evidence to us have urged that the voting age be reduced to 16 and that voting is made compulsory. What is your view?
Jessica Garland
We strongly support votes at 16. We don’t think this is going to solve the whole turnout problem but we do think it could help. One of the reasons for that is it obviously lessens the gap between when you learn about voting and elections and democracy at school to being able to exercise that vote. Depending on when your birthday falls, it could be almost a good seven years before leaving formal education and exercising your vote for the first time. As we have heard from any other contributors, that age group of people tend to be in private rented accommodation, they are moving about more, so they are more difficult to get registered and there are problems following on from that. We don’t support making it compulsory for first-time voters. I would support what Dr Fox said in the sense that that is probably more likely to turn them off politics than anything else. We don’t think they should be treated as political apprentices or a separate section of the democratic society.
Fabian Hamilton
Can I move on to inequality of turnout? We have had evidence given to us previously that the inequality of registration and turnout is a more serious issue than low turnout generally. Your written submission says that, “Inequalities in voter registration seriously undermine the principle of democratic representation”. Could you both expand on this point, please?
Jessica Garland
I think it is fairly obvious that in a good democracy everyone participates as equally as possible. The particular problem with inequalities in turnout and registration is that they do seem to be affecting one group, and that is young people. That is a problem for the future of democracy. People do get into a habit of voting, so if you vote the first time or early on you tend to vote again and again for the rest of your life.
Fabian Hamilton
Which is why votes at 16 are so important, of course.
Jessica Garland
Absolutely. But if you don’t you develop this expectation of non-participation and that tends to be reinforcing. If you don’t vote the first time, if the cohort you belong to is not listened to, if you don’t see your views represented in policy or in political debates, then you are less likely to feel that politics is anything to do with you and that reinforces not wanting to participate the next time. So you can see that trend. I could see us sat here in 10 years’ time addressing the same questions but with much lower turnout and much greater inequality because, of course, that gap is expanding.
Will Brett
The other major inequality in turnout is socio-economic status. That is a real problem. There was a time when that was not the case. The US historical data over a long period of time shows that back in the 19th century you were more likely to vote if you were of a lower socio-economic status than not. That is a really important problem.
Fabian Hamilton
How do you explain that inequality? I represent a constituency that is part of the city of Leeds that has a very poor and mainly immigrant area to the south and as you progress up the road, it is like a pie slice, it gets progressively better off, more middle class, and then quite wealthy. We do see huge inequalities in turnout in the poorest areas. It is almost reflected by socio-economic class and family and household income, but how do you explain that? Is it simply because more people are moving about? Is it because this is the least priority in people’s lives if they are struggling to put food on the table? What is the explanation for that lack of interest?
Jessica Garland
I think there are many factors, although both of those are quite important. We also have to look at the culture of politics and look at Parliament. Do people look to Parliament and say, “That is really representative of me. I can identify with Parliament”? Do people see themselves represented at Parliament? I think that is a big question that they would be asking. How representative Parliament is plays a big role in it as well.
Fabian Hamilton
Wouldn’t you have thought that the more people are struggling, because they see the whole economy as being unfair and distribution of wealth as being unfair, that they might want to change it? They might have more reason to want to change what is going on through the political process and therefore there is something wrong with the political process rather than who represents them. My experience is that most parliamentarians of all parties do their very best to represent the people who have elected them to the best of their ability. They may not reflect them in terms of class, race, religion or gender but they try to represent everybody because that is the principle that underlies British parliamentary representation, as opposed to many other countries that have list systems or anonymous faces.
Will Brett
As Dr Fox was saying earlier, there is a real problem with efficacy, the perception that your vote makes a difference. Lots of voters in safe seats are going to struggle to see the point and if they have lots of other pressures on their time and resources, if they have limited resources, the point of voting is going to be harder to understand. I think that is part of the problem.
Fabian Hamilton
Let me just challenge you on that. I would say you have quite an old-fashioned view. Maybe 10, 15, 20, 30 years ago you could say there were safe seats for each of the parties and it didn’t matter what the MP did, they were always going to get elected, but I would say that has changed hugely in the last 10 or 15 years, wouldn’t you?
Jessica Garland
No. Actually the number of marginal seats has gone down.
Fabian Hamilton
Really?
Jessica Garland
Yes.
Fabian Hamilton
Do you have the evidence to show that?
Jessica Garland
I don’t have the figures to hand but I can certainly send them to the Committee. The way that you measure marginals, the number of seats that can be swung within a certain percentage has gone down.
Fabian Hamilton
I would very much like to see that evidence.
Jessica Garland
Yes, of course. We will send that.
Chair
Mark, we are very grateful you have landed in this country and the first thing you do is come to this Select Committee, which is a great tribute to us. Thank you, Mark.
Mark Durkan
I left Capitol Hill just 12 hours and 10 minutes ago. We are having this inquiry because we are all taking it as a given that there is lower voter turnout. We have talked and we have received evidence about some of the worrying effects of lower turnout, particularly if that continues. Causes of lower turnout: what is actually causing it in your view?
Will Brett
One way of looking at it is that you have short-term causes and long-term causes and what you are getting at the moment is a kind of perfect storm between those two ranges. In the short term we have had a whole series of crises and scandals, the expenses scandal, cash for honours, and also wider scandals around elites generally, not just in Parliament but in the media and banks and so on. That has been the fuse to light these long-term cultural changes, societal changes, that are deeply entrenched and more or less impossible to shift. You have globalisation that creates the sense that politicians’ ability to shape society is less than it was and that feeds through into the public. They feel that politics is less efficacious than it was. Many have changes in societal cultures. You have the rise in consumerism. You have a more autonomous and more highly educated population that is less willing to be represented or told what to do or is much less deferent. You have these long-term changes that militate against people finding formal politics something to engage in. When you have these long-term changes lit by the fuse of short-term changes, that is why we have something approaching a crisis in voter engagement at the moment.
Mark Durkan
It is basically just because of that switch-off, the powerlessness, the irrelevance, the venality of politics. It is those sorts of perceptions. Is it anything to do with the methodology, methods of voting? Do you think changing the voting methods would make a difference to voter engagement?
Jessica Garland
Yes. People turn out to vote when the stakes are high and when the contest is close, and so there is obviously a per election impact there as well. You don’t turn out to vote if you don’t think it is going to make any election, so we will of course say that a change in the electoral system is quite important for that. These are big changes and they are happening all across the world in fact. The Scandinavian and Nordic countries that tend to have higher turnouts have really rigorous registration. That is obviously a factor there, but they also have different political cultures so they are not as affected by some of the things that might be affecting British turnout.
Chris Ruane
Just a point to Will, you said that those who are university educated for the most part don’t want to be told what to do. Is that correct?
Will Brett
It is a generalisation but it is the higher levels of education generally, not necessarily university education but higher levels of education generally over 70, 80, 90 years.
Chris Ruane
The differentials between voter turnout for the university educated, the ABs, and the non-university educated, the DEs, are massive. How do you square that?
Will Brett
It is not a direct relationship between university education and not wanting to vote. It is more that higher levels of education generally in the population, not just higher education itself but standard education, have created an entire cultural shift. It is the sheer difference between the 1930s, the 1920s society and the 21st century society. It is very different in terms of how people relate to authority, to government, to the perception of their own self-worth or their own autonomy. People have a much stronger sense of self-worth. That is a long-term cultural shift and it makes it harder for them to accept the idea of being represented in Parliament or giving over their power to a representative.
Chris Ruane
Secondly, you mentioned the issue of trust and stuff like that and equality. Joseph Stiglitz in his book “The Price of Inequality” has a whole chapter, chapter 5, on democratic deficit. He makes a link that economic inequality and political inequality go hand in hand and it is not just something that has happened. It is something that has been construed; it is something that has been designed. He is talking in an American setting. He points to issues like Republican states putting forward photo ID before you go to vote; a whole range of values put in place to keep poor people, blacks and Hispanics, off the register. In fact, I think in American law it is okay to keep a person off the register if they are a Democrat but it is not okay to keep a person off the register if they are black. He said the whole system in America has been manipulated, deliberately party politically manipulated, to keep the poorest off the register and from voting. Are we seeing an element of that in the UK with the media, judges, senior politicians dripping the issue of voter security while neglecting the fact that there are 6.5 million people not even on the register and 11 million people that don’t vote? What are your views on that?
Will Brett
I think most people would say that we have nowhere near the kinds of problems that America has on that front. On the other hand, there are certain—
Chris Ruane
Are you aware that the Electoral Commission is proposing to introduce photo ID in 2019, which has been introduced by Republican states in America?
Will Brett
We have some concerns about that, not so much because we think it is gerrymandering but because we think it is putting up barriers to voting. Any barriers in the current state of affairs are problematic, in our view. In this country there are certainly cases in which political inequality, the inequality in turnout, shapes public policy. The fact that young people don’t turn out to vote as much as older people has been shown to shape public policy.
Chris Ruane
So they get the tripling of tuition fees. They don’t vote, they get tuition fees.
Will Brett
Not to be specific about it but I think the Intergenerational Foundation have a whole set of data on that. There are always going to be dangers with inequality in turnout but those who don’t turn out are going to get left out.
Jessica Garland
It is always a matter of balance and you mentioned earlier about the postal votes. We would strongly advise against getting rid of postal votes or any sort of retrograde step because, as you say, the really important thing is the number of people off the register and the cases of fraud are very small. Where we are seeing the election process tightened up, we would want to see a balance there and the big issue of under-registration and low turnout is the key focus.
Fabian Hamilton
Can I continue the theme that Mark Durkan started about modernising electoral administration? You have proposed various reforms to modernise electoral administration. Could you outline the main changes that you think would improve voter engagement?
Jessica Garland
We have put down election day registration. I put that first today because that is the one reform that has been shown to improve equality of voting most. In the US where that has been introduced, it has been shown to have the highest impact on people who move home regularly, so we know those are the people who are less likely to register and to vote.
Fabian Hamilton
Can I just be clear on that? If you turn up at the polling station and you are not on the register you can still vote.
Jessica Garland
Yes.
Fabian Hamilton
How can you ensure that there is not fraud?
Jessica Garland
In the US the way they do it is with identification, plus you sign an oath. You declare an oath face to face with the registration officer there and they do an audit afterwards as well just to check up on that. But in the last presidential election, of the top five states for voter turnout, four of them had same-day registration.
Fabian Hamilton
Is that the only one?
Jessica Garland
No. I will go on. We also very much like the idea of motor voter style registration, which we will have to find a better name for. This is where you would be encouraged to register to vote with your government transactions, so with your council tax or when you apply for a driving licence. At different state interactions you would be encouraged to and given a form to register. Lots of people think they are already registered when they pay their council tax so it would not be a massive leap there. In our research we found at least 38% of people felt they would be more likely to register with that sort of encouragement.
Fabian Hamilton
It seems very sensible. I wonder why it has not been done already.
Jessica Garland
One of the things that would be really innovative is if we had votes at 16 they could send the registration form out with your national insurance number card, so you become a citizen in the eyes of the state in two ways there.
Fabian Hamilton
Any other reforms?
Jessica Garland
Yes. I have mentioned early registration. A larger change but one that would be worth thinking about is allowing voters to vote anywhere in their constituency. At the moment you have to go to your specific polling station. I am sure you can think of all the administrative changes that might occur, but if you think about it in connection with same-day registration, if you are registering on the day and you don’t have your poll card, being able to turn up anywhere would be a massive boost as well. In New Zealand, you can vote anywhere in the country on election day, but that is because the returns don’t come in until much later. They don’t declare the election until later.
Fabian Hamilton
I agree with all your suggestions, and it is certainly worth looking at that last one. The only problem is that for all of us in this room who rely on the accurate data from polling districts to see where our strengths and weaknesses lie, I don’t think the political parties would be too happy about it. But my view is that if it increases voter registration and participation in elections, it is a sacrifice worth making.
Will Brett
Parties can evolve.
Fabian Hamilton
Yes, that is very true.
Jessica Garland
It is how we look at the system, in whose interest it is working. We would say make sure the system works in the interests of the voter first and that could mean some big scale changes.
Fabian Hamilton
Absolutely right. Thank you.
Chris Ruane
The Electoral Commission started in 2001. Up until 2011 it didn’t know how many people were unregistered or it had the wrong figure. They thought 3.5 million. In 2011 they revealed it was 6 million. I told them two years prior to that that it was 6 million, after having a meeting with Experian who told me. You mentioned before about the balance between security of the vote and the size of the electorate. Do you believe the Electoral Commission has got that balance right? Do you think there is an over-focus on security of the vote, introducing cutting back on political parties touching postal votes, introduction of photo ID, even before the new changes have been bedded down? Do you think the balance is right within the Electoral Commission? Could they do more on voter turnout? They are great at saying, “You should do this, this box, and you should send out this form”. They measure all the inputs but they don’t measure the outputs; how many people have been registered in a local authority or nationally. They didn’t even have the figures. Is the balance right?
Jessica Garland
I think the introduction of individual electoral registration has raised a lot of issues here and it has raised the issue of millions unregistered. I think that has been quite a good catalyst to look at the role of the Electoral Commission and also ways of getting people registered. The Electoral Commission has had more of a focus on compliance and regulation and we would like to see a more positive focus on issues like registration and turnout, but the Electoral Commission is going to be doing a huge marketing campaign when IER starts coming in later this year, and I think that is something worth looking at and evaluating to see if it could be continued.
Chris Ruane
Are you aware that the outputs, the electoral registration campaigns that the Electoral Commission has run in the past, they judge by the downloads from their website? In 2005, having spent £3.5 million on advertising, each download cost £80. On average it is £25. The best was £5 a download in the 2010 general election. Bite the Ballot can do it for 18 pence. Is there a case for more efficient use of public money, whether it be through the Electoral Commission or through the Cabinet Office, for the purpose of electoral registration? Should we be working closely with groups on the ground that have those connections in those communities or with that cohort or with that demographic? Should we be using the Electoral Commission having greater focus on its value for money?
Jessica Garland
Bite the Ballot do an enormous amount of work on a very small—
Chris Ruane
On a pittance.
Jessica Garland
Absolutely. You have met them, I am sure. Their enthusiasm for getting young people registered is absolutely infectious.
Chris Ruane
Is that enthusiasm tapped by the Electoral Commission, the Cabinet Office or the Deputy Prime Minister?
Jessica Garland
I know that the Cabinet Office has engaged Bite the Ballot in doing some work and I think that is really exciting, and if it works it should carry on. Their national voter registration is a brilliant idea and we were involved with that. Those sorts of initiatives, the bottom-up stuff, is fantastic for getting people registered, but I think you need that top-down approach as well. The Electoral Commission have the national focus and are in a position to be able to really push voter registration.
Chris Ruane
Have they been effective in getting people on the register? Is 6.5 million off the register acceptable after 13 years of existence of the EC?
Jessica Garland
The problem, of course, is that getting people on the register is localised. There is no national register. Each ERO does their own thing and some are amazing. They get 90%-plus registration in inner-city areas where it would traditionally be very difficult to register people and then there are others, that you could say would have an easier job, who have very lower registration rates. There is a big difference in how well each local authority is getting people on the register.
Chris Ruane
Who should monitor the poor performance? Who should monitor, invigilate and punish the poor performance of electoral registration officers? Every ERO is supposed to organise a door-to-door canvass for those who have not registered. I think it is called priority 3. There are 55 local authorities that have not done this. Some of them have not done it for four years on the trot. I am not sure if the Electoral Commission has the ability to censure them but no action has been taken against these local authorities that do it. We have best performance and we have worst performance, and some of them are making no improvements. What can be done? Is it the job of the Electoral Commission? Is it the job of Government Departments? Could that be a recommendation that this Committee makes, that the invigilation, the raising of standards has to be more vigorous and properly implemented?
Jessica Garland
Given the rates of under-registration, there does need to be a very serious focus on it but I think it takes targeted action from all number of people involved in this area.
Chris Ruane
Who?
Jessica Garland
The Electoral Commission, obviously, local registration officers, groups. We can’t put too much pressure on civil society groups who we are saying are doing a huge amount for very little but they can encourage it. But we would like to see a focus on the positive sides of signing people up rather than just on the negative elements.
Chair
Any other questions from colleagues? Is there anything you would like to add, Jessica or Will, to what you have said this morning, which has been very helpful?
Jessica Garland
I think we have covered everything. Thank you.
Chair
Excellent. Thank you very much indeed for your time and it was very good to see you. We will hopefully get our report together in the not too distant future on what is an absolutely vital topic as we are now 418 days away from the next general election. So who is counting? Thank you so much. Thank you colleagues, Mark in particular. Thank you for joining us. Time to go and have a nap. Voter engagement in the UK, HC 1059