Christmas Adjournment

Mike Gapes Excerpts

Thursday 21st December 2017 Commons Chamber

[Mike Gapes (Ilford South) (Lab/Co-op)]

Thank you, Mr Speaker. A merry Christmas to you, to all the Deputy Speakers, to your panel of Chairs and to all the staff of the House. May I also send special best wishes to my friend the Chairman of Ways and Means? I know how hard it is for him at this time.

I am going to concentrate on one issue, and in doing so, I wish a merry Christmas to all the British people living in this country and the 5 million British people who are living in other countries, including 1.2 million in the European Union, because in the last few years we have not given the views and representativeness of those people the weight that they deserve.

In September 2014, the then chairman of the Conservative party pledged to end the 15-year rule applying to the eligibility of British people living overseas to vote in our elections. That commitment was made very firmly. He said:

“Being a British citizen is for life. It gives you the lifelong right to be protected by our military and Foreign Office, and to travel on a British passport. We believe it should also give you the lifelong right to vote.”

The manifesto on which David Cameron and the Conservative party won the 2015 election included that pledge. Subsequently, the Government issued a consultative document, and a commitment to introduce a “votes for life” Bill was announced in the Queen’s Speech on 27 May 2015. The Bill did not materialise, but in October 2016 a policy statement was published, setting out how the removal of the 15-year rule would come about. British citizens who had lived in Spain, Italy, France, Germany, Portugal, Estonia, Lithuania or elsewhere in the European Union for more than 15 years were not eligible to vote in the EU referendum. As a result, although their rights had been more affected than those of any other British citizens by the decision made in 2016, they had no say in it.

It is a notable feature of the EU negotiations in which the Government are involved at this moment that, although the rights of EU citizens in this country now seem to be protected, British citizens living in other EU countries will have inferior rights because those rights will exist only in the countries where they are currently resident; the rights will not be passportable because those people will lose the right to freedom of movement between other EU countries. That is a very important point: whereas EU citizens in the UK can move back and go to any other EU country, as things stand, British citizens in the EU will only be able to reside in that particular country and will not have the rights of free movement elsewhere in the EU. That needs to be looked at.

I wish to declare that I am the honorary president of Labour International—at least until Momentum gets rid of me. [Interruption.] I am not joking; it has been suggested. I am speaking because I am aware of the concerns of so many—not just people in the Labour party but Conservatives internationally. Clearly, there was an excuse: we had a general election this year, so the Bill that might have come through from the 2015 election has not been produced. Therefore, I have been pursuing the matter with some questions.

I tabled questions in November asking the Minister for the Cabinet Office

“what plans the Government has to extend the voting rights of UK citizens who are resident overseas in UK elections and referendums”,

and

“if he will bring forward legislative proposals to guarantee votes for life in UK elections and referendums for all UK citizens living abroad.”

The answers referred me

“to the reply given to the Member for Halifax (Ms Lynch) on Thursday 7 September 2017”.

The answer that my hon. Friend the Member for Halifax received, to a question asked on 4 September, was:

“As outlined in our manifesto, the Government is committed to legislating to scrap the 15-year rule and will do so in time for the next scheduled parliamentary general election in 2022.”

That is not good enough. They were working on a schedule for 2020 and an early general election meant that people could not have a vote in that election. There is absolutely no guarantee in the current political climate that the next general election will be in 2022; it could be before then.

This is not a partisan point; there will be those across the parties who disagree with extending that democratic right to all British people living overseas. But in the modern age, with digital systems of voting, checking or registration, we need to modernise and extend democracy to all those British people, particularly given that we are bringing about significant change not just in this country, but all over the world.