Overseas Electors Bill

Alex Burghart Excerpts

Friday 22nd March 2019 Commons Chamber

[Philip Davies]

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman. That was a very good and sensible intervention, if I may say so. I do not envisage people registering before they have moved, because something might change and they might not do so. I think that that would be quite improper. The purpose of the new clause is to prompt them to be sure to register as soon as they have moved overseas. However, I thank the hon. Gentleman for his intervention, which I think was very helpful.

[Alex Burghart (Brentwood and Ongar) (Con)]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for giving way. He is being customarily generous with his time.

May I return to the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Harborough (Neil O’Brien), who raised the prospect of helpful neighbours sending information to registration officers about people moving? Is not the more pertinent issue that some parts of the Government machine—Departments and officers—may become aware that someone is moving away for work and may choose to share that information with a registration officer, and new clause 1 would then give that registration officer the agency to act?

[Philip Davies]

I agree with my hon. Friend. He has made a very good point. I think it has long been a policy of everyone in the House—certainly a policy of Members on both sides of the House—that we should do what we can to encourage more people to register to vote. I have never known anyone to argue against that principle. As my hon. Friend says, this measure could easily help more people to register, which I would expect to be a welcome move.

The hon. Member for City of Chester touched on this when he moved his new clause in Committee. He said that it was likely to engage more people in voting. He referred to the Electoral Commission’s overseas voter day on 10 May 2016, which was supported by embassies and consulates around the world and which was intended to encourage British citizens who were eligible to register as overseas voters to do so in time to vote in the EU referendum. The commission ran a public awareness campaign for overseas voters between 17 March and 9 June, and more than 135,000 overseas voters registered during that period.

As the hon. Gentleman made clear in Committee, the new clause could go some way towards making overseas voters aware of their voting rights at an early stage. I think we should all welcome that, because presumably we want more people to register and we think that the earlier they do so, the better.