European Union Referendum Bill

Debate between Viscount Trenchard and Lord Liddle

Monday 2nd November 2015 Lords Chamber

[Viscount Trenchard (Con)]

My Lords, I, too, wholly agree with what my noble friend Lord Flight said—that if we are going to extend the vote in the referendum to those United Kingdom citizens who live outside the United Kingdom, it should be extended to all of them. However, I do not feel that those who live outside the United Kingdom have quite an equivalent right to vote as those who live here. As democracy was being extended in this country, it was often said, “No taxation without representation”. I seem to remember that when I went to live and work in Japan, I stopped paying United Kingdom income tax fairly immediately, although I did have to pay Japanese income tax, which was at rather a higher rate.

I later became chairman of Conservatives Abroad in Japan, and asked for the franchise for those of us who were abroad for a relatively short time with the clear intention of coming back. If you have been abroad for a long time and made your life abroad and have no intention of coming back to the UK to live, your right to have your voice heard in a general election or referendum is somewhat less. There may well be a case for extending the franchise beyond 15 years to United Kingdom citizens abroad, but there are practical difficulties in tracing who they are. On which electoral register would they be if they no longer have any family members living in the area where they previously lived? It seems rather complicated, so I cannot support the amendments.

[Lord Liddle (Lab)]

On the point about British citizens living in the EU, of course I go along with the principle of no taxation without representation, but many of our citizens who live on the continent worked in Britain all their lives, paid taxes all their lives and have gone to the continent to retire. So it is a bit hard to deny them the vote on the no taxation without representation ground.