My Lords, I will speak to Amendment 155A in my name, which would give the right to vote in local elections to all those liable to pay council tax to that authority. I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Holmes of Richmond, who spoke last week on an amendment concerning the right to vote in parliamentary elections for 16 year-olds who pay income tax. As he pointed out, there is an important principle: there is a connection between a requirement to pay tax and the right to vote. Mine is a probing amendment. Taken as a whole, this group raises the question of whether the key factor for the right to vote should be nationality, residence or liability for taxation—issues which the Bill does little to address.
The Minister will not need to be reminded of the events that took place 3,269 miles to the west of here on 16 December 1773, when a large number of tea chests were thrown into Boston Harbor in protest against the imposition of taxation without representation. Because my aim with Amendment 155A is to secure the right to vote in local elections for all those with an obligation to pay council tax, that would mean taxation
with representation. The amendment takes as its starting point the position of those who are required to pay council tax but who cannot vote in the local elections that will decide how the money they pay is spent. There is a principle at stake here: it becomes almost an issue of consumer rights.
In some cases, notably that of EU citizens, a resident here before 31 December 2020 will keep their local vote. However, the right of EU citizens to vote in local elections following our withdrawal from the EU is being denied to those arriving after 31 December 2020, except where reciprocal arrangements or agreements are in place. The implication of this is that citizens of Spain, Portugal, Luxembourg, Poland, Ireland, Cyprus and Malta will be able to vote in local elections, but citizens of other EU countries or non-EU countries will not. Except that, if citizens of those other EU countries lived in Wales or Scotland, they would be able to vote in local elections, and indeed for elections to the Welsh and Scottish Parliaments.
Am I alone in finding all these differences very hard to justify? The decisions in Scotland and Wales seem to me to be eminently sensible, although they should go even further and extend the right to vote to non-EU citizens who are paying council tax in those countries.
I want to see the franchise widened and a connection clearly made between taxation and the right to vote. I hope the Minister will be willing to think further about the complications that the Bill will introduce across the United Kingdom. I wish that we were still a United Kingdom, but with so many different rules in different places, with different categories of the right to vote, it is getting far too complicated. My amendment might well solve the problem.