European Union Referendum Bill

Debate between Lord Dobbs and Lord Grocott

Monday 2nd November 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Grocott]

My Lords, I was not pointing the finger at any individual and certainly not at the noble Lord, Lord Hannay; I was simply making what I think is a very valid point that it is not for us to judge how significant an election outcome is to someone when we are proposing either to give them the franchise or to withhold it from them.

[Lord Dobbs (Con)]

My Lords, I very much welcome the Government’s manifesto commitment to give votes to all expats, no matter how long they have been abroad. It is a very welcome commitment which I look forward to seeing being put into place—but whether it is iniquitous that they have not yet been given the vote, as my noble friend suggested, I am not sure. These are matters of balance and practicality and it is to the practicalities that I will refer very briefly.

I take the point of my noble friend Lord Flight, who asked why, if we are giving votes to people in one part of the world, we should not give them to British citizens in all parts of the world. The Oslo and Stockholm example that the noble Lord, Lord Grocott, offered is very telling. There are something like 5 million British expats living abroad and 2 million of them, give or take a few, live in the European Union. For a very long time they have had the right to vote if they have been there for 15 years or less and I find it deeply distressing, because I believe that they should take an active role in their democracy, that fewer than 20,000 British expats in the European Union have taken up that right to vote. Despite all the efforts and the funding that has been given to advertising by the Government to get them involved, as a group they have shown a very sad lack of willingness to get involved.