I declare an interest as a former electoral commissioner. First, I agree with the remarks made on the previous amendment by the noble Lord, Lord Wallace of Saltaire, that this Bill should have
included the findings of the Law Commission, which have cleared up a lot of the complexity of language involved in legislation. It sometimes goes back to the Victorian times and is really a wholesale mess, frankly. I was glad that the Law Commission came to such clear conclusions.
Of course, the noble Lord will appreciate that the Law Commission by itself cannot alter anything and does not alter the law as it stands. None the less, I agree with him that it is a missed opportunity that we have an Elections Bill of this kind but are not able to take into account the views of the Law Commission. When I was on the Electoral Commission, it would have wanted the Law Commission’s findings to be taken into account as soon as practically possible, as it certainly would now.
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I will speak briefly on Amendment 154. I am sure we are all wondering what my noble friend Lord Howe, who has nobly stepped into the situation, has in his brief. I am afraid to say that he probably has a note from the FCO saying, “No, old chap, don’t agree to this because it might upset the Commonwealth”. That is the sort of line that I suspect he has there; he is nodding, so maybe I have hit the nail on the head. The noble Lord, Lord Green, made the point in his argument about reciprocity that there is a simple point here —if people from particular countries wish to vote, they can have a reciprocal arrangement. A few do, but not many. That deals with the Commonwealth point.
The wider point, which has been made several times during the discussion on this series of amendments, is that citizenship is an important issue. As the noble Lord, Lord Green, said, the Goldsmith report made this point very well in 2008; it is a wonderful report. The issue was also covered by this House, by my noble friend Lord Hodgson of Astley Abbotts, who is not in his place at the moment, in the report of the committee on citizenship that he chaired in 2017-19. It concluded that
“it strikes us from our research that what is missing is any clear, coherent or ambitious vision of why citizenship should matter in the UK in the 21st century”.
In other words, on two separate occasions, widely spread and backed by different parties, this House has made it clear that it is unhappy with the role of citizenship and the way it is decided in our voting system. Therefore, we need some clarity on this issue, and it is a pity that the Bill does not go into that as much as it should.
To allow people who are not citizens of this country to vote in our elections seems to me to simply devalue the whole idea of citizenship. Why should people who are not citizens vote in our elections? People should qualify for citizenship, as they can in the appropriate way, and then be allowed to vote. That treats citizenship as a valuable thing, which I believe it to be. Therefore, as the noble Lords, Lord Wallace and Lord Collins, have argued, we should look at this and give clarity to the whole idea of citizenship, which is what the amendment does. The noble Lord, Lord Green, has
therefore performed a public service in moving this amendment, and I hope the Government will listen to what he says.