Overseas Electors Bill — House of Commons, 2018-02-23
Topic: Immigration
Alexander Gordon Martin (Labour, Centre-left): My hon. Friend is absolutely right. We need to pursue all possible means of ensuring not only that the poll is safe but that everyone feels comfortable and able to use it. Her proposals have a great deal of merit Let us look at where these British citizens living abroad actually vote. Those still eligible to vote here have all lived abroad for less than 15 years, but if the Bill were to go through, they would be eligible to vote here for the rest of their lives. The City of London has 6,000 overseas electors; that is nearly 3% of the voters in that area. In Kensington and Chelsea, 2.5% of the voters live overseas, and in Oxford, the figure is 2.1%. In Westminster, it is 2.2%. Those figures represent a substantial number of people. For instance, there are 2,600 overseas voters registered in Westminster, and 3,300 in Camden, which is 2.37% of the electorate there. That is enough to make a difference on who is elected as Member of Parliament in those constituencies Let us look, however, at a constituency with fewer voters who live in other countries. Rotherham has 474 registered overseas voters, which is just 0.24% of the electorate in that constituency. I am not an expert on the demographics of Rotherham, but I believe I am right in saying that a large number of people from British Commonwealth nations have chosen to make their lives there, and I would be surprised if a large number of them had not decided to move back to the countries where their families came from or, in some cases, where they came from. However, those people are not registered as overseas voters. If we look at this, we can see that the people who choose to register as overseas voters tend to be people who are capable, professional, accomplished and, in many cases, encouraged to do so by the Conservative party I do not think the demographic of people living abroad is at all reflected by the people who are actually registered as overseas voters. Again, I applaud and encourage the work of my hon. Friend the Member for Ilford South to try to get people who have lived abroad for less than 15 years and who would be likely to vote Labour to register, but that does not alter the fact that the vast majority of people registered as overseas voters are not from Rotherham, Middlesbrough, Stoke-on-Trent or any of these other places with substantial new Commonwealth populations and where we would expect larger numbers of people to register to vote when they move back to the country in which the rest of their family live This is not a politically equivalent or politically balanced measure. It is not a measure that will treat voters, or potential voters, who might want to support one party similarly to voters who might want to vote for another party. I suggest that some people decide to move to another country precisely because taxation in this country is higher than elsewhere. If someone decides to move to Bermuda because they would pay less tax in Bermuda than they do in this country, the overwhelming likelihood is that they have a significant amount of money, otherwise they would not be able to afford to move to Bermuda in the first place.