Oral evidence: Voter engagement in the UK, HC 1059Thursday 20 March 2014

Oral evidence, 20 March 2014.

Witness

Toni Pearce, President, National Union of Students, gave evidence.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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—

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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%.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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”.

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.

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.

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