Overseas Citizens
Constitutional Affairs
Mr Peter Bottomley (Worthing West, Conservative)
To ask the Parliamentary Secretary, Department for Constitutional Affairs if he will estimate the proportions of eligible UK citizens resident overseas who have not registered to vote, broken down by (a) service personnel and (b) civilians.
Mr David Lammy (Parliamentary Under-Secretary, Department for Constitutional Affairs; Tottenham, Labour)
The information is not collected. British citizens resident overseas are entitled to apply to be included on the overseas electors' list. This is not compulsory, however, and electoral registration officers are not required to obtain or record the proportion of eligible British citizens previously resident in the electoral area for which they are responsible who do not register as overseas voters. It is not possible to identify separately those overseas electors who may also be service personnel. According to the Office for National Statistics the number of British citizens included on the overseas electors' list in December 2004 was 9,672.