My Lords, we are all grateful for the opportunity given to us by the noble Lord, Lord Lexden, to address this subject this afternoon. I am also grateful to the clerks, because the letter from Simon Burton about the next set of amendments to come before us said:
“The bill has only two purposes—individual electoral voter registration and the administration and conduct of elections”.
I find it difficult to see how either rubric fits the amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Lexden. However, the clerks have assured me that it is in order. I look forward to studying their explanation of why this is so this evening, and I am glad that we are debating this amendment this afternoon. I also hope we shall debate the next amendment. I shall be relatively brief, but some of the arguments that have been put should be answered.
At the moment, expats keep the vote for 15 years and then, except for the military and those enumerated, lose it. The aim of this amendment is to extend that period.
Who are these people? There is a huge range of them: some are abroad because they are working abroad long term; others moved abroad to be with their friends and relations; others for the warm climate, or perhaps in a few cases for the cheap gin and tonics; and a few are tax exiles. However, of those who speak to us, I do not doubt their sincerity in wanting to keep voting. I remember in particular the firm lobbying of members of the Brussels Labour group, who wanted the vote to express their Labour and pro-European sympathies.
There is, however, one less obviously desirable reason why they are lobbying for the vote. There is a very well organised lobby which objects to the fact that, broadly, outside Europe British pensions are frozen. Expats in receipt of pensions reasonably think that, if they had representation in Parliament—if they had a vote for MPs—they would be more likely to get this changed. This is entirely understandable. However, we must understand that conceding this would not be favourable to the British taxpayer. My noble friend Lord Hunt of Kings Heath, when he was the Minister responsible in 2005, estimated the cost at £3 billion, which is more than enough to pay for the total cost of the recommendations of the Dilnot report, which would do so much for elderly people living here.
How much do they want the vote? As I said, there is a very strong lobby, but a fact that the noble Lord, Lord Lexden, mentioned makes me a little sceptical. There are estimated to be some 5.5 million Britons of voting age living abroad but in 2011 only 23,388 of those registered to vote—under 0.5%. If the people who have left only quite recently are not bothering to register, how many of the people who have been gone for 15 years or more are clamouring at the door for us to concede it?
This debate is not the first time that Parliament has examined this matter; there was a Question for Short Debate in this House. However, the main document referring to it is a 1998 report from the Commons Home Affairs Committee. That was some time ago, but the argument has not changed much since. Far from recommending an increase, that committee recommended that the period should be reduced to five years. It has not been put into effect but that was its recommendation.
I looked at the evidence put forward to that committee. I want to put the case as it was put to the committee by Professor Robin Blackburn, one of our foremost
constitutional experts. He spoke of the absurdity of extending the franchise so that,
“an expatriate living hundreds or thousands of miles away, for the duration of a period exceeding a whole generation, carrying memories of British politics in the past and with little or no personal knowledge of contemporary issues in the constituency where he or she used to live, can influence the election of the government of a country to which he is not subject and to whom he or she may be paying no taxes”.
In a nutshell, you cannot have representation without taxation. I rest my case.
3.30 pm