During his eleven years in the Lords, Alistair Lexden has vigorously supported the abolition of the existing 15-year limit on the right of British citizens living overseas to vote in our parliamentary elections.
The Government’s Elections Bill will at last sweep away the 15-year limit. The Bill’s Second Reading debate in the Lords took place on 23 February. Some speakers, chiefly on the Labour and Lib Dem benches, argued against lifetime voting rights for our fellow countrymen and women living in other countries. Alistair Lexden answered the critics in his speech in the debate.
He also responded briefly to the maiden speech made during the debate by Lord Moore of Etchingham (as Charles Moore, the well-known journalist and biographer of Margaret Thatcher, has become).
My Lords, I would like to return again to the issue of overseas voters, following in the footsteps of my noble friend Lord Altrincham. Exactly a century ago, his forebear Sir Edward Grigg, a brilliant man, was working as Private Secretary in No. 10 to Lloyd George—but no one should imagine for a moment that the peerage was bought from that notorious seller of honours.
Patience is sometimes rewarded-- not often, in my experience, but occasionally.
It is exactly 10 years ago that, as a fairly new Member of your Lordships’ House, I called, along with other noble friends, for the removal of the 15-year limit on the voting rights of our fellow countrymen and women living beyond our shores.
I set out the case for this extension of the franchise in detail during the passage of what became the Electoral Registration and Administration Act 2013.
Back then, I was told very politely by the noble Lord, Lord Wallace of Saltaire, the Minister with responsibility for electoral issues during the coalition Government, to go away and do some work on the important practical implications of this significant change: the means by which registration to vote could be made as easy as possible, whether votes could safely be cast electronically, the part that our embassies and consulates might play in assisting overseas voters, and so on.
These matters were studied by a cross-party group, under the chairmanship of my noble friend Lord Norton of Louth. Our report was well received when it was debated in Grand Committee before the general election of 2015.
The Conservative Party gave a firm pledge to remove the 15-year limit on overseas voting rights in its 2015 election manifesto. It repeated the commitment at the general elections of 2017 and 2019.
So considerable patience has been displayed by our fellow countrymen and women living abroad. But at last the promise, thrice delivered, will be fulfilled under this Bill.
The principle which this Bill enshrines is entirely right. I reject the charge that it is a partisan measure. Implementing it will give rise to practical issues, which the noble Lord, Lord Rennard [Lib Dem] outlined in his characteristically measured way and which the noble Lord, Lord Grocott [Labour] described with characteristic and enjoyable gusto. We will no doubt return to them in Committee [on the Bill].
This legislation will bring us into line, belatedly, with other major democracies. The United States of America, France, Italy and the Netherlands, among others, all provide lifelong voting rights for their citizens living in other countries, as do Australia, Canada and New Zealand. It really is high time that the United Kingdom joined the international consensus.
I have seen for myself the strength of support for lifelong voting rights at meetings that I have addressed in other countries under the aegis of the excellent organisation, Conservatives Abroad, chaired by my friend, Heather Harper.
I have also received much correspondence from those who have lost their votes after 15 years. One lady in her late 70s wrote: “Even though I expected it, when I received a letter from Corby Borough Council telling me I was no longer eligible to register as an overseas voter, I was devastated and still am. Since reaching voting age back in the 1950s, I have never, ever not exercised my democratic right to vote. But now I have been disenfranchised.” Never again will such distress arise, thanks to this legislation.
The fifteen-year limit is wholly arbitrary.
With very few exceptions, British citizens abroad are debarred from voting in the national parliamentary elections that take place in the countries where they reside.
The world over, the parliamentary franchise rests on nationality, not on residence and not on the payment of taxes.
The noble Lord, Lord Wills, who had responsibility for electoral matters in the last Labour government, said in the course of our debates in 2013: “taxation has never been a criterion for voting in this country and it is not now. “If it had been, Disraeli, who has been extolled in this debate by my noble friend, Lord Willetts, would have been unable to extend the vote to the urban working class in 1867. Few, if any, of them paid taxes.
I have a remarkable man at the front of my thoughts today. Harry Shindler, a Labour supporter in his young days, has lived in Italy since the Second World War, when he helped to liberate that country from Fascist control. He has devoted himself to two causes: the development of Anglo-Italian relations and the right to vote in elections in his native land.
Last year, when he celebrated his one hundredth birthday, Harry was invested with the OBE by the British Ambassador to Italy. It gave him enormous pride.
Harry is the chief hero of the long campaign, which this Bill brings to a conclusion. I shall always think of the clauses in it relating to overseas voters as the “ Shindler clauses”.
Finally, I too applaud the arrival of the noble Lord, Lord Moore. I have known him, though not at all well, since the early 1980s, when the greatest Tory I have ever met, T.E.Utley, dispatched him to Northern Ireland as a reporter on The Daily Telegraph to acquaint himself with the affairs of that wonderful part of our country. He has long been a staunch champion of the Union. I anticipate some tremendous speeches from him on that subject, dear to many of us in this House.
