Elections Bill

Debate between Lord Rennard and Lord Grocott

Lords Hansard - Part 2 & Committee stage
Monday 28th March 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Rennard (LD)]

My Lords, Amendment 212E, in my name, seeks to draw attention to a principle Parliament has previously agreed and that should now be brought into force. The Political Parties and Elections Act 2009 was discussed, and agreed, in much more consensual debates than is the case with the current Elections Bill. Parliament then agreed that donations and loans from an individual that are worth over £7,500—either individually or in aggregate over a calendar year—would have to be accompanied by a new declaration confirming that the donor is resident and domiciled in the UK for income tax purposes.

The Electoral Commission explained that donors would have to make the new declarations, and that those it regulates would have to ensure that they receive a declaration in respect of each relevant donation and add up donations they receive below £7,500 to check whether a declaration is needed. But this provision was not subsequently introduced. The consequences of this failure, and the real reasons for it, soon became clear. All the main parties have received donations from people who are not domiciled here and do not pay taxes here. The scale of the funding involved seriously distorts our democracy. After the 2015 general election, the Guardian reported:

“The Conservatives have raised more than £18m from wealthy donors who were domiciled abroad for tax purposes, research shows. Labour have also benefited from non-dom donors and accepted gifts of at least £8.55m. The family that controls the Lib Dem’s biggest corporate donor is also domiciled abroad”.


The provisions of the 2009 legislation should probably have been brought in before the 2010 general election, because the relative sums raised indicate why Governments since 2010 have not seen it as being in their interest to introduce these provisions. Ministers since then have tried to maintain that that the 2009 legislation approved by Parliament is unworkable, which is very convenient. But this is not the case as the Electoral Commission produced proposals nine years ago to make it workable. It is time that we insisted that all the parties—and simultaneously—are unable to take donations from those who are abroad simply to avoid paying taxes here. Only when no party can accept donations from people who may be tax exiles can all parties be expected to adhere to this principle. This amendment would bring that 2009 legislation into effect. We should not have a political system which might be described as “the best that money can buy”.

[Lord Grocott (Lab)]

My Lords, I agree with much of what has been said so far, although I think an obvious connection—an obvious debate that we still need to have—between this question of donations from overseas and the massive extension of the electorate living overseas has been missing. The two issues are related and they raise matters of very similar principle. This extension of the franchise would be a massive change: it is an increase in the potential electorate of around 2.5 million people over a couple of years.

Of course, it will be argued that, in practice, most of those who could register as electors would not. In 2019, when the rule was that only people who had been domiciled abroad for 15 years could vote, I think about 204,000 people actually voted, which represents a turnout of about 17%, but there is absolutely no guarantee that that low turnout will persist. I say this particularly to the noble Lord, Lord Wallace, who argued about the importance of connecting different aspects of the Bill, which I agree with. If we move to a system of automatic voter registration—which I am personally in favour of, but I do not expect it to come about as a result of this Bill—you have a potential additional electorate of 2.5 million people.

Once you concede the argument that it is okay for people with virtually no practical connection with this country who have lived abroad for 40, 50 or 60 years to get on the register by “attestation”—that is the word—if there is no way in which you can establish as a matter of fact that they once lived or voted in a particular constituency, albeit 50 years ago, they can get on the register by means of someone else who does qualify attesting on their behalf that they are in fact the person who lived there and they are entitled to vote. It is much easier to get on the electoral register from abroad in many respects than it is at home, particularly when we have voter ID established in the way being proposed.

But, to me, the principle at stake is about individual constituencies. To remind the House, at the last election the figures for the proportion of overseas electors in some constituencies were small. The figures are small at the moment. For example, in London and Westminster it was 2.43%, in Hammersmith it was 2.12%, and in Islington it was 2.36%. They are relatively low figures, but, of course, if you increase the electorate by potentially 2 million, even if the turnout is low, you could end up with 5,000 or 6,000 people in individual constituencies who have no connection with the area worth speaking of at all being able to vote. This could result in particular decisions being made, as they can be at elections, of crucial importance to the people living there. The most dramatic example would be a proposed hospital closure, involving very strong views on either side of the debate. The 5,000 or 6,000 people who have never lived in the constituency and who will never have to cope with the circumstance of the hospital closing could be the determining factor in the election. I am opposed to that; I just think it is wrong. It damages our democracy if there is no residence, no contact and, in truth, no responsibility for the decisions that are made.

I think what is true of voting is also true of money: if you have a situation where people who are on the register are also permitted donors, there can be a totally distorting effect—I am not going to go into the various figures that have already been given—possibly on the outcome of the election itself. If huge sums of money come from a potentially very large number of overseas electors—or even someone who is not particularly interested in voting but thinks “Well, as soon as I become someone on the electoral register, I’ll be able to donate with impunity and I’ve only got get someone to attest that I once lived in a particular area and away we go”—you have a situation where it is now money that might determine the outcome of an election. This is money from people with nothing but a slender and tenuous connection with the country, in this case, in which they are not going to be living with the consequences of their money having a significant effect on the outcome of a general election.