Archive for the ‘Citizenship & Right to Vote’ Category

EU Referendum Bill: Lord Lexden Supports Amendment to include all UK Citizens in other EU Member States

mardi, novembre 3rd, 2015

This is the speech made by Alistair Lexden in the Lord?s yesterday (2nd November, 2015) afternoon in support of an amendment to the European Referendum Bill seeking to give the right to vote in the referendum to all UK citizens living in other EU member states.

Lord Lexden (Con): My Lords, the noble Lords who have tabled these amendments have performed a most valuable service which has wider international dimensions, as my noble friend Lord Flight and others have pointed out. I have strongly and consistently supported the removal of the arbitrary 15-year limit on the right of our fellow countrymen and women living overseas to vote in our parliamentary elections?a right first conferred by Margaret Thatcher?s Government. I urged its removal in my first speech in this Chamber in early 2011. I tabled amendments to the Electoral Registration and Administration Bill in 2013 in order to press the case for change. I took part in subsequent discussions on overseas voting arrangements in a cross-party group chaired by my noble friend Lord Norton of Louth?a group in which my noble friend Lord Tyler played a conspicuous part.

I was delighted when my party included an unambiguous commitment in its recent general election manifesto to sweep away the iniquitous 15-year bar. Swift implementation of that commitment would have dealt with all the aspects of this issue, both as regards the parliamentary franchise and, as a direct consequence, the forthcoming EU referendum. However, the Bill to give effect to the unambiguous Tory commitment has not even been published. I was greatly taken aback to be told, in answer to an Oral Question in July, that there was no certainty whatever that the Bill would reach the statute book before the referendum took place?and it has become even less certain since then. This is deeply disappointing. Nothing could have been more precisely predictable than the emergence of the huge problem with which we are now confronted if swift and early action was not taken.

It is extremely unfortunate, to put it mildly, that work was not set in hand at the earliest opportunity. The Tory pledge was made in September last year. A branch of the Conservative Party?s organisation with which I am closely connected, Conservatives Abroad, has two outstanding experts on all the issues involved in extending the right to vote to all British citizens living overseas. They could have helped prepare the way for the Bill, which, if it were now before Parliament, would have prevented the wholly foreseeable problem that the amendments seek to address; unresolved, it will inflict great injustice on a significant number of our fellow countrymen and countrywomen overseas.

It simply cannot be right to hold a referendum in which some British citizens living in another EU member state or elsewhere in the world are able to take part, while others are excluded because they happen to have been absent from our shores for more than 15 years. The outcome within the EU will affect them all equally and profoundly. It will surely be incomprehensible to our fellow citizens living abroad that an election manifesto commitment cannot be implemented by one means or another in time for them to participate in a vote of such overwhelming importance for the nation to which they belong.

We need to imagine ourselves in the shoes of Harry Shindler, to whom the noble Baroness, Lady Royall, paid tribute, and our other fellow countrymen and countrywomen who have been living overseas for over 15 years and have retained a strong sense of British identity. How would we feel about being excluded from this momentous referendum while those who have not reached the 15-year limit can take part? The Bill should be returned to the other place and amended in order to include British citizens who have been living overseas for more than 15 years. In that way, we would uphold the principle enshrined in the Conservative election manifesto.

British Citizen Living Abroad? Here’s a voting message from the Prime Minister.

mercredi, décembre 24th, 2014

Here’s a message from Prime Minister David Cameron:

Who do you know who lives abroad?

Of the 5 million British people living abroad, virtually none are registered to vote – even though it now only takes a few minutes to do so. Encourage your friends to register – « share » this post or send them this link: http://www.overseasvote2015.com/

https://www.facebook.com/DavidCameronOfficial/photos/
a.658575084166813.1073741829.653092548048400/896304423727210/?type=1

British Citizenship and Right to Vote

lundi, septembre 9th, 2013

The lack of a clear connection in law between British citizenship and the right to vote has permitted successive British governments to allow the following injustice.

Fellow but expatriate British citizens are rather arbitrarily in law deprived of their right to vote in UK elections after 15 years abroad but an estimated 1 million non-British citizens from 54 Commonwealth countries currently resident in the UK will be entitled to vote in , and possibly influence, the 2015 general election.

According to the press article referenced below, in 2007 the then Labour government ordered a review of British citizenship laws by Lord Goldsmith QC, the Attorney General, but did not act on his advice that it should make a ?clear connection between citizenship and the right to vote?. MigrationWatch, which campaigns for lower immigration, is also quoted in this article as suggesting that Labour refused to act because voters from black and minority ethnic communities were more likely to vote Labour than Liberal Democrat or Conservative.

Shouldn’t the Conservative party be pressing for a clearer connection in law between British citizenship and the right to vote in UK elections as part of its overall immigration policy?

Reference: Commonwealth citizens ‘should lose the right to vote’, The Times, 28th August, 2013