Overseas Electors Bill (First sitting)

Chloe Smith Excerpts

Wednesday 17th October 2018 Public Bill Committees

[Christian Matheson]

I think that is a little bit much. If those arguments apply to domestic 16 and 17-year-olds, should they not also apply to overseas voters? If a review is to take place—as I have said, in 2004 the Electoral Commission called for one—is not the Bill the perfect opportunity and vehicle for that review, and is not clause 1 the perfect clause with which to undertake it?

The Power commission explained the recommendations, stating:

“Our own experience and evidence suggests that just as with the wider population, when young people are faced with a genuine opportunity to involve themselves in a meaningful process that offers them a real chance of influence, they do so with enthusiasm and with responsibility.”

There is absolutely no reason why that should apply to UK-based 16 and 17-year olds but not to 16 and 17-year-old UK citizens who live overseas. The report went on to state:

“We recognise that few people take an interest in a sphere of life or an area from which they have been deliberately excluded. Reducing the voting age to sixteen would obviously be one way of reducing the extent of such exclusion for many thousands of young people, and of increasing the likelihood of their taking an interest, and taking part, in political and democratic debate.”

Those recommendations are increasingly relevant in a Parliament where only 2% of MPs are aged under 30, despite 16% of the UK’s population being aged 18 to 29. I confess that I do not know what percentage of the UK’s overseas citizens are aged under 30; I will try to dig that out. Young voices are consistently under-represented in our politics. In the period from 1979 to 2017, the average age of MPs at elections has been consistently around 50 years old—not that I am complaining, of course, about a candidate being 50 years old.

[The Parliamentary Secretary, Cabinet Office (Chloe Smith)]

Was it your big year this year?

[Christian Matheson]

It certainly was. Government Members may well be surprised to hear that I was indeed 50 this year—[Hon. Members: “Never!”] I am afraid none of us is getting any younger.

The statistics are similar at local level, with just 2% of councillors aged 18 to 29. There is no better time to begin listening to the voices of our young people and properly representing their views. As MPs, we vote every day on issues that will have a direct impact on their generation—university fees, zero-hours contracts and the minimum wage, to name but a few—yet we refuse to allow them a say.

There is an argument, with which I have a lot of sympathy, that if somebody chooses to live abroad, it is perhaps less important that they have a say in what is going on in the United Kingdom, and that the decisions need to be taken by those who will be affected by them; but for young people, more so than for adults who might be permanently resident abroad, there is an importance in having a say, because it has an impact on their future.

I give the example of a young person who is living abroad but wants to return to education or university in the UK; the hon. Member for Oxford West and Abingdon mentioned that she came back to school in the UK. Whereas there could be criticism of expanding the franchise overseas to everybody who wants to vote, no matter how long they have been abroad, those young people have a greater stake in having the vote, because they may choose to have a future back in the UK, separate from their parents or guardians.

What are the Government doing to ensure that this vital section of our society is being listened to? What conversations has the Minister had about the views of young voters? Perhaps now is not necessarily the time for the Minister to consider that, but I put the question out there. The Government can no longer ignore the issue.

Voices from the Votes at 16 coalition continue to demand action. The coalition is made up of more than 60 member organisations, including the British Youth Council, the Children’s Rights Alliance For England, Barnardo’s, the Electoral Reform Society, the Inter- generational Foundation, the YMCA, Christians on the Left and Oldham Youth Council. That reminds me that my hon. Friend the Member for Oldham West and Royton (Jim McMahon) had a private Member’s Bill on that very subject, relating in his case to 16 and 17-year-old UK residents, as opposed to 16 and 17-year-olds overseas.

How will the Government act to involve our young voters in politics and ensure that their voices are heard, and to avoid isolating them before they have even had a chance to exercise their right to vote? Not if but when votes at 16 become a reality nationally, as they will under a Government willing to listen to the evidence and to the voices of young people, that must be accompanied by compulsory political education in schools, ideally at key stage 4.

Who could argue against our young people studying in depth—for the first time in history, I hasten to add—how this place works, who it works for and what the different parties that sit here represent? We all have school visits in our constituencies and down here in the excellent education centre, which is a real asset to Parliament. When those visits are opened up to questions, the youngsters will look around and shuffle a bit—regardless of whether they are primary or secondary school pupils—waiting for the first person to ask a question. The teacher will eventually pick someone and say, “Right, Jane or Jonny, you ask the question.” Once the ice is broken, there is always huge interest and lots of different questions, as young people demonstrate their desire for more knowledge.

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[Glyn Davies]

(Montgomeryshire) (Con): I will take your advice, Mr Robertson, and I will move straight to the amendment, although I did have some quite important remarks to make.

I understand that there have been calls, including today, for the voting age to be lowered, and there are different views across the House of Commons. Indeed, I have expressed my own views. I am surprised the Opposition spokesman did not dig out some of the quotes on votes at 16 that I have made in the past. However, there are no plans to lower the voting age and the House of Commons has repeatedly voted against it.

I want to stress that this is a single-purpose Bill, with the aim of removing the arbitrary 15-year rule for overseas electors. Whether one is in favour of or against votes at 16, that is not part of the Bill. If it were, it would completely dominate and change the Bill. I hope on that basis, the hon. Member for Oxford West and Abingdon will withdraw the amendment.

[Chloe Smith]

May I add my voice to those congratulating my hon. Friend the Member for Montgomeryshire on securing this important Bill? I fully support its principles and intention. We have laid those arguments out at several prior stages, so I am confident that we know what we are dealing with.

I would add my remarks on amendment 1. I thank the hon. Member for Oxford West and Abingdon for tabling it and the hon. Member for City of Chester for adding his capacious comments to the argument. As my hon. Friend has set out, there is a range of views across the House on the subject of the voting age but it is a fact that the House of Commons has repeatedly voted against. The Government also stated in their manifesto a commitment to retain the voting age at 18. That being the case, we are carrying out that promise.

I will add that the Government fully and passionately recognise the importance of engaging young people in decision making. We are working in partnership with young people in the form of numerous civil society organisations such as Bite the Ballot, the British Youth Council and Operation Black Vote, to increase engagement of young people across the country in our precious democracy.

We have also taken the opportunity to use events such as the suffrage centenary year and National Democracy Week, which we ran for the first time this year, to encourage that further. I want to impress the Committee with my strong support for the engagement of young people in general, but that is not for this Bill.

Although the hon. Member for City of Chester tried to inveigle us into believing that this would be the perfect vehicle, which I think were his words, he later conceded that now is perhaps not the time to consider these issues. Once he has sorted out whether this is or is not the perfect vehicle, I can confirm that I do not think that this is a very good vehicle at all for the argument because—

[Christian Matheson]

Will the Minister give way?

[Chloe Smith]

No, I will not. I will be brief. The hon. Gentleman has had ample time to put his arguments. The Bill is not a moment for a “democratic experiment”, to quote the hon. Gentleman further. It is also not the moment to fracture the franchise; it is a moment to extend the franchise. It is not right to make the franchise one thing in one sense and another thing in another sense.

I address that argument directly to the hon. Member for Oxford West and Abingdon, who has rightly brought the argument here today in a spirit of wanting to explore the issues, and I applaud her for that. She said at the outset that she wanted this to be an exploratory debate, and I am grateful that we have had that today. The bottom line is that the Bill seeks to do something different. It is about extending the franchise geographically; it is not about the age at which the franchise starts, and I do not think that it would be a wise course to have two different age starting points for the franchise within the democracy that we hope to sustain for UK parliamentary elections. I hope that the hon. Lady will feel able to withdraw the amendment on that basis. I look forward to making progress through the Bill.

[Layla Moran]

I thank everyone who has contributed to this debate. I do not agree that this is not the time to discuss this matter, or that we should not vote on it. It may well have been voted down in the past, but let us face it: the shifting sands of politics are moving so fast that I do not even know what happened yesterday, let alone what will happen tomorrow. What I do know, though, on behalf of many of the young people I speak to day in, day out, as I have done for the whole of my career, is that this is absolutely the time to press such an amendment to a vote, and that is what I intend to do.

Question put, That the amendment be made.

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[Glyn Davies]

I very much associate myself with the remarks of my hon. Friend the Member for The Cotswolds. He put that very well; I too know Harry Shindler.

The Bill will only enfranchise those who can prove a real and discernible connection to a UK address via a previous registration or residence. At its core is the need to scrap the 15-year rule for overseas voters and rightly ensure that this group can vote for life.

On amendment 33, I too recognise the valid contribution of individuals employed, for example, as Crown servants in the British Council or military personnel overseas. I am pleased that there are existing provisions in the Representation of the People Act 1983 to ensure that those categories of electors are not disenfranchised by the current 15-year rule. The Bill will mean that no other British citizen who was previously resident or registered in the UK will be blocked from voting in this country. That will apply equally to those who were employed overseas by a UK public authority or employed by a designated humanitarian agency. I hope, on that basis, that the hon. Member for Nottingham North will feel able to withdraw amendment 33.

[Chloe Smith]

This is a very interesting amendment. My understanding of what the hon. Member for Nottingham North is trying to do developed slightly as he made his comments, and I am grateful for the way in which he explained what his amendments seek to do. I will take them in two halves and respond to some points in relation to amendment 33 before coming on to the other two amendments.

On amendment 33, I am grateful that the hon. Gentleman recognises the challenge of the residency test. At the moment, there is no way for a person to join the register if they had been resident in the UK, as opposed to previously registered. Those are the two different concepts that we are dealing with, and I think the hon. Gentleman recognises that in what he is trying to do with amendment 33. I welcome that, because the residency issue aims to put right an injustice that, for example, could apply to the children of British citizens who moved abroad. I believe that the hon. Member for Oxford West and Abingdon might have been such an example. Having left the UK at such a young age, she could not possibly have been registered in this country, but of course, she had been resident here.

[Layla Moran]

I was resident here, but my brothers and sisters were not. They were born after me, and were born abroad. Are they less British than I?

[Chloe Smith]

There we go. It is very helpful to have such personal experience of the issues raised in the Bill. However, I feel duty bound to say that the Bill might not help in the instance of the hon. Lady’s brothers and sisters, although it would help in her own instance.

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[Mike Gapes]

When these issues were first discussed many years ago, there was a five-year deadline, which became 20 years and then 15 years. In those days, we did not have the internet and Skype, and we did not have the ongoing communication and connection between people living abroad and this country. We also clearly had far fewer people who travelled to work in other countries for several years and who kept their main home there but came back from time to time, whether to visit families or not. Does the Minister agree that the arbitrary definition to which she has referred relates to a different context from the world we live in now?

[Chloe Smith]

That is correct. The premise of the Bill is that the world has grown smaller in the way that the hon. Gentleman describes and that people are, or can if they wish to be, much more in touch with their home country. The point is that we are seeking to enfranchise those people who wish to be. We are throwing open that door, rather than opening it an inch at a time.

I will pick up on the reference to Mr Shindler, whom several hon. Members present know. I say this with the greatest respect, and I do not wish to be mawkish, but he is very elderly. Alas, if very elderly people were put in the position of being allowed in one year at a time, I do not think that would necessarily bode well for someone his age being able to get the justice that many of us feel that he and others deserve. I hope that that suffices as a thought towards amendments 34 and 35.

Let me come on to two other very important points that have been raised: the burdens that might be placed on registration officers, and how the Bill helps. Those points are absolutely relevant to this section of the debate. The point has been bandied about that registration officers should fear the Bill because it places new burdens on them, but that need not be the case. I want to send out a message to reassure members of the Committee and, of course, the registration community—the community of EROs, who work so incredibly hard to run our registration systems and then, with their colleagues, run our elections. New burdens that arise from this Bill will be funded by central Government. That is clear in the impact assessment; it has been made clear by my Department; and I make it clear again here today. The broader arguments made by the hon. Member for City of Chester about local government funding pressures are not relevant. New burdens from this Bill will be funded. I am very happy to reiterate that. It is there in the impact assessment and here in our discussion today.

There is a precursor to that—I can give a record of credit to it—which is that we did the same for the individual electoral registration reform. We have been fully funding electoral registration officers for the additional burdens brought by that reform. Indeed, we then went on to make further reforms to ease those pressures, because that is, of course, what we all want. We are not in the business of asking people to do more work for fun. We are in the business of asking people to do that work so that we have a flourishing democracy in which individuals’ voices count and British citizens are properly enfranchised and involved. Again, that is the fundamental point of this Bill.

[Sir Geoffrey Clifton-Brown]

To put this issue to bed, could the Minister say a little more? She is right about the financial implications of the Bill. The explanatory notes state clearly:

“The Government plans to provide funding for electoral registration officers’ costs, in accordance with the new burdens doctrine.”

Could the Minister give the Committee a little more information on how that would work? For example, would an ERO who had one application to register under the procedure get a different amount from an ERO who had 100 applications? How will the funding work?

[Chloe Smith]

I thank my hon. Friend for the opportunity to add further clarity. Essentially, the answer remains simple: all new burdens that arise from this Bill will be funded. I can also reassure the Committee that I am in close touch with the Association of Electoral Administrators, the Electoral Commission, of course, and the Society of Local Authority Chief Executives. They are all part of the wider community of registration officers and their colleagues in the relevant parts of local government who do such hard and important work for our society and whom we as a Government seek to support every step of the way.

On future reform, the UK Government, in partnership with the Governments of Scotland and Wales, are seeking to alleviate some of the pressures that relate to the canvass process in our electoral systems. That is another good modernisation opportunity and it will also relieve the pressures that registration officers can find themselves under from some of the aged processes in our electoral law for registering people. I am absolutely in the business of supporting our registration officers, finding ways to help them in their work and, specifically in the case of this Bill, ensuring that any new burdens are met.

Let me turn to some of the smaller changes proposed in the Bill. They are smaller compared with the big point of principle, but of course they are not small at all to an administrator whose job it is to operate the system. I can confirm that we will reduce the amount of information that an elector needs to supply in a renewal of registration. We are going to give EROs a more streamlined system for processing those renewals and recommend email as a method of communication between the ERO and the elector. There are a number of other ways in which we can help streamline those processes so that the Bill can achieve its really important goal—that big principle—while also creating a system that EROs will find operable and easy to play their part in as we extend the franchise to where it should be extended.

[Alex Norris]

I am grateful to colleagues on both sides of the Committee for contributing to an interesting discussion. We have probably set a good shape for the rest of our consideration of the Bill. We have had a discussion about the pragmatic versus the purist. I am not a daft lad—I hope Members have noticed that—so I can read a room, and I get a clear sense that we want a pure and full implementation. I will make my remarks with that in mind.

I was excited to hear the Minister say that there is no desire for gradual or partial admittance or delay, and that if someone is turned away from a polling station and does not come back, that constitutes a denial. I will hold her to that in future sittings and beyond. I was glad to hear the positive messages about resourcing, but we need to understand that things start from the context of deficit: University of East Anglia research from 2016 says that 43% of EROs have suffered real-terms cuts, and in the EU referendum only one quarter of the 254 local authority electoral authorities felt sufficiently resourced to do their jobs. When those new resources are introduced, it must be understood that the existing resources are not sufficient. We have clearly heard today the Minister’s desire to provide resources to electoral registration officers, and I am excited about that.

I hope there will be clear support for the 33 recommendations in the association’s report, which it produced after the 2017 general election, on how to improve elections. If they receive that support, EROs will be able to do their jobs properly and that would enrich all elections. In that spirit, I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.