Overseas Electors Bill (Second sitting)

Layla Moran Excerpts

Wednesday 24th October 2018 Public Bill Committees

[Christian Matheson]

In that case, bearing in mind the time, I will plough on and try to get through it as quickly as possible.

Part of new clause 6 has already been covered. New clause 6 makes it clear that it is essential that a report is provided that details

“how many British citizens currently resident overseas are eligible to register as overseas electors, and how many are likely to be eligible”

if the 15-year time limit is removed following the successful passage of the Bill.

Subsection (2)(b) considers the impact of extending the franchise on the

“likely demand for online registration services and how this demand should be met”.

The Minister has touched on online registration briefly before. It currently acts as a central tool for registering overseas voters and takes part of the burden away from EROs. Overseas electors can now register online and no longer require another British passport holder to countersign the registration form, which reduces administrative work at a local level.

Paragraph 10 of the Government’s policy statement says:

“Applicants will continue to be able to make applications using the register to vote service on GOV.UK, as well as by using paper forms or (in some cases) by telephone.”

However, the Association of Electoral Administrators has outlined several practical issues with sustaining the online system after the 15-year rule is removed. The online platform struggles to stay up to date with new addresses as a result of frequent new housing developments. That problem will be exacerbated with the proposed removal of the 15-year restriction on overseas electors, as previous addresses from many years ago may no longer exist. If the proposed removal of the 15-year application restriction for overseas electors is enacted, the gov.uk online registration service will need to be adapted and improved to allow overseas applications to be made online even though the previous property may have been demolished and/or redeveloped.

I will try to canter through the rest, because I am concerned about the time. Subsection 2(c) considers

“the effects of removing the 15-year time limits on the workloads of local authorities, including demands on electoral registration officers, and how any consequent resourcing…should be met”.

I touched on that in the Committee’s meeting last week, especially the wellbeing of electoral registration staff and the integrity of our local system when staff are overburdened and either cannot process applications quickly enough or give scant regard to the credibility or integrity of an application because there are simply so many to deal with.

Electoral registration officers are valuable, skilled members of our civil service at a local level and provide the vital administrative work behind our elections. Increasing the number of British citizens overseas who are eligible to register to vote will add strain to the already stretched resources of electoral administrators. The Minister has previously indicated that additional resources will be given to meet those extra strains, and I hope that that pledge will continue. Before continuing with the Bill, the Government must consider in detail the effects of removing the 15-year time limit on the workloads of local authorities.

Subsection (2)(d) asks that proper consideration be given to the possibility of increased opportunities for electoral fraud as a result of the Bill. The Government have claimed a strict stance on electoral fraud in the UK, as we discussed earlier, by saying that they are committed to boosting confidence in our democratic process and to safeguarding elections against fraud. That is clearly evidenced by their plans to extend the requirement to show ID when voting. Some Opposition Members worry that that is more about voter suppression, but we have already had that discussion. It is a little absurd that the Government are trying to make it harder for people living in this country to vote by requiring them to show ID, while they are creating a system of overseas voters that is potentially wide open to abuse.

We previously discussed attestation rules. A sworn statement is not sufficient security to prevent fraudulent applications when legal proceedings are very unlikely to be taken forward, given that both applicant and attester are living abroad—that is something I discussed earlier with my hon. Friend the Member for Nottingham North. Considering the strict rules enforced by the Government in UK voter ID programmes, we question how they can take such a hard-line stance on domestic voters but allow more lax rules for overseas voters. That goes back to the point that the Minister made earlier about treating voters equally.

Moving on to paragraph (e), relating to the previous discussion, it is also important that we consider

“whether current election timetables are of sufficient duration to enable the full participation of any increased numbers of overseas electors”.

We have discussed polling day minus 12 being the present registration deadline. We therefore need a proper investigation to see how that works. Forgive me if I am going a little too quickly, but I am keen that we make progress with our consideration.

Paragraph (f) relates to

“how the electorates of existing UK constituencies will be affected”.

That is perhaps the most important part of the new clause. With an estimated 5 million new voters being enfranchised, detailed provision must be put in place regarding how those voters will affect current UK constituencies. As the Minister knows well, the Opposition want a fair boundary system that benefits our democracy, not just the electoral interests of the Conservative party. Cutting the number of MPs by 50 while planning to enfranchise 5 million new voters is beyond illogical. Clearly the political context has changed significantly since the flawed proposals were first floated under the prime ministership of David Cameron, but the spread of new voters across the constituencies, and how they will be allocated, is crucial. There must be detailed consideration to prepare for that.

I would like the hon. Member for Oxford West and Abingdon to be able to speak as well. With your permission, Mr Robertson, I will sit down and return to new clause 11 shortly.

[Layla Moran (Oxford West and Abingdon) (LD)]

Thank you, Mr Robertson, for allowing me to speak specifically on new clause 1. Many of the issues that I am trying to raise with it have been well described, not just today but in our session last week.

The new clause would require the Secretary of State to publish a report about the number of electors. We very much hope that many millions, if possible, of electors register. My concern is that we do not know where they will register, although we can guess. Many young people in particular may have last been in London before they got a job that allowed them to go abroad, so there is a chance that some constituencies could be artificially inflated in numbers and then have to be artificially made smaller geographically by the Boundary Commission to sort that out.

My worry about the Boundary Commission is that, as we all know, we should have had boundary changes already. It should have happened three years ago and it has not. The reason for having a report is not to pre-empt what it might say; we have to ensure that the issue of where overseas electors go is looked at promptly after the first possible point at which they are likely to register, which, let us face it, will be at the next general election.

[Bob Stewart]

I have a constituent living overseas who would be completely confused, because in the last nine years she would have had three constituencies. Assuming the boundary review goes through, she will not know where the hell she started from.

[Layla Moran]

I very much welcome that intervention because that is one of the many reasons the Electoral Commission proposes a solution—a solution that is in the Liberal Democrat manifesto.

The number of people who have registered to vote has inflated since the referendum, as it should. What is happening with the UK and Brexit has galvanised people’s interest in having a say in what it means to be British, and the effect it is going to have on them abroad. In particular, those Britons who live in the EU, such as my parents, now have very specific issues. If Brexit happens, they will continue to have those issues. I hope that the negotiated settlement will sort out all of the issues with British citizens living in the EU and European citizens living here, but let us imagine that there will be things to iron out.

So the proposal is that the Government go away and, at this point, now that the political wind has changed, look at the possibility of overseas constituencies. New clause 1 does not suggest that we say now that that should happen; it simply asks the Government to make sure they come back to this House after the likely date of the next general election, having considered how many overseas electors are registered, where they are and what kinds of issues they have, so that as early as possible, this House has a proper chance to sort out what are likely to be a number of major kinks resulting from this very welcome Bill.

I will finish by raising my other concern, which is about the effect of large numbers of constituents coming into small numbers of constituencies, which then go through a Boundary Commission process that artificially shrinks the geographical size of those constituencies. Let us imagine that 70,000 people enter Oxford West and Abingdon. That is fine—I very much welcome them—but it means that my constituency, geographically, decreases by a third or two thirds. [Interruption.] Or whatever it may be. However, the current boundaries also take into account local authority boundaries and ward boundaries. There is a geographical link that matters to the people who live in the constituency. They have different needs from overseas electors. It is not just about having MPs who can specifically address the issues of those overseas electors, but making sure that MPs who are here can properly serve—in the geographical sense—the constituents who live on this land, in our communities.

[Christian Matheson]

One of my concerns about the Bill as it stands is that there is a lack of clarity as to which constituency an overseas voter might seek to join, and might be added to. That might artificially inflate the number of overseas voters in a particular constituency. Does the hon. Lady share my concerns?

[Layla Moran]

I absolutely share the hon. Gentleman’s concerns. I also share concerns about increased workloads in certain parts of the country, should it be the case that overseas voters are not evenly distributed. We can probably assume—it is more likely than not—that they will not be evenly distributed.

To reiterate, all that new clause 1 does is ask the Government to ensure that, at the first available opportunity after the next general election, they come back and commit to considering all those points. It is not enough just to allow the Boundary Commission to do that, because these two things must be considered together. The Boundary Commission cannot say whether it wants overseas constituencies; that is a matter for this House to consider, and it should be a matter for the Government to consider, in conjunction with the change to the number of constituencies.

[Glyn Davies]

I must say that I do not appreciate it when Opposition Members say things that I agree with, as that makes my position a little bit difficult, but I want to emphasise that—as has been a trend today—the points that are being made by Members on the Opposition Benches are all reasonable. Our aim in resisting them is that we want to maintain the credibility of the Bill—it is a Bill that will achieve wide support—and make sure that it goes through.

As with amendment 28, which was tabled by the hon. Member for City of Chester, these provisions would postpone the enfranchisement of many overseas citizens who rightly want to vote in our elections. I stress that the Bill is a single-issue Bill, and I think the amendments are a distraction from that. I hope that hon. Members will not press their proposals.