Lord Wallace of Saltaire:

Moved by Lord Wallace of Saltaire

149: After Clause 12, insert the following new Clause—“Creation of overseas constituencies(1) Within six months of the passing of this Act, and prior to section 12 coming into force, the Secretary of State must lay a report before Parliament on proposals for overseas constituencies.(2) A report under subsection (1) must consider proposals on—(a) the most suitable deployment of overseas constituencies;(b) the ratio of nationals per MP;(c) the impact on existing UK constituencies;(d) the local administration of ballots;(e) the appointment of returning officers; and(f) the form of proportional representation best suited to electing Members of Parliament to represent overseas constituencies.(3) In preparing a report under subsection (1) the Secretary of State must consult—(a) the Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs Committee of the House of Commons;(b) the Constitution Committee of the House of Lords;(c) the appropriate committees of the Scottish Parliament, Senedd Cymru and the Northern Ireland Assembly;(d) the Electoral Commission;(e) the Association of Electoral Administrators; and(f) any other person they consider appropriate.”Member’s explanatory statementThis amendment requires the Secretary of State to report on the creation of overseas constituencies.

My Lords, if the Government were in a mood to try to build any sort of consensus on the Bill, which they clearly are not, I would hope that they would be willing to consider accepting some part of this amendment; it does not say that we should necessarily create overseas constituencies but that we should at least consider them.

If I may anticipate the Minister’s comment that this would be an enormous innovation, I point out that the extension of the franchise to people who have lived abroad all their life is itself an enormous innovation. If I were to follow the line that he has argued on former subjects—that we should be looking at the practice of other countries—overseas constituencies are a practice in a number of democratic countries for very obvious reasons. If you are looking after your overseas voters, they have lost their links with their local constituencies, they are much more distant than they were and they have a different set of interests and it is therefore perhaps appropriate for overseas constituencies to be created.

It may be that we have not yet thought this through. I suspect that the Government have not thought about it at all because they do not have the numbers or any of the practice or documentation that the French, for example, have about their overseas citizens with support from their embassies, consulates and others. Nor have we looked into what we do about dual and triple nationals, an increasingly large and difficult category, as we have discovered in our relations with Iran and China in recent years, which takes us into the question of how we might redefine British citizenship as such in a much more global world. The question of how parties fund keeping in touch with overseas voters is the most sensitive one because we know that one of the underlying structural biases in our electoral system is that one party has two-thirds of the funds available for political parties and the others have a great deal less, so we know which party will be able to keep in touch with the overseas voters it wants and the others will not be able to do so.

Having said that, I hope the Minister will recognise that there is a case for looking at this. The current proposals will concentrate overseas voters, by and large, in London, Surrey and other home county constituencies. We do not know the implications of that. A Conservative Peer of my acquaintance told me that the one overseas constituency in France which consistently votes left is the one that includes London; he suspects that there might be some similar interesting differences in where people are living as opposed to where they come from, but at least we ought to be looking at that as part of the package. I therefore ask the Government not to close their mind to this and not to demonstrate that getting this done without thinking through the implications is all they are really concerned with. As part of approaching this major extension of the British franchise, they should look at this, as other countries have done. I beg to move.

I have very little to say other than that it is a very interesting suggestion and I thank the noble Lord, Lord Wallace, for bringing it forward and giving us food for thought. I had no idea that France had overseas constituencies until he tabled his amendment and I looked into it. It is an interesting suggestion.

I fear that at this late hour, I will disappoint the noble Lord. This amendment would require the Government to prepare a report on proposals for the creation of overseas constituencies. The Bill will allow overseas electors to continue to vote in constituencies to which they have a significant and demonstrable connection. This constituency link has always been and continues to be a cornerstone of our democracy. Creating overseas constituencies is therefore not something the Government are considering. To commission a report on the topic is unnecessary. Overseas electors will continue to register in the constituencies to which they have a significant and demonstrable connection.

As the amendment acknowledges, there are extensive and complex bureaucratic challenges to implementing overseas constituencies. There would, for example, be ongoing complexities regarding how constituency boundaries and their electorate would be determined and maintained with a constituency stretching across multiple countries and being affected by fluctuating migration. Furthermore, electoral administration for overseas constituencies would have to be done in a very different way from the current process, whereby it is undertaken by local authorities. We would need to address matters such as: who would be responsible for maintaining the register of electors and administering the polls for an overseas constituency. Overseas constituencies would not fit in with the existing arrangements for organising constituencies and delivering elections, and establishing them would require the consideration of a range of complex issues. I hope the noble Lord will feel able to reconsider this suggestion and withdraw his amendment.

My Lords, that is not at all surprising as an answer. I point out that the extensive and bureaucratic challenges to which the Minister refers are involved in extending the vote to overseas voters in the first place. Those challenges will be met by local registration officers in Britain, but if we are to have a different relationship with our 5 million to 7 million citizens abroad, we need to look at it in a rather more rounded way and consider how we manage it. It is not a question of just extending the vote and leaving it like that.

After all, we have got into some difficulty in recent years with the question of how we relate to overseas citizens, particularly our dual nationals when they are imprisoned in the other countries of their nationality—and these are not particularly friendly countries. That needs to be thought about.

What I hear from the Government throughout the Bill is that they are not interested in anything except their current agenda. They are not interested in thinking through the implications of some of their proposals. I have talked to Canadian Senators about how they cope with these voters. I am aware of the French system; I am surprised that the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman, was not. The Britain, Ireland and Nordic constituency is one of its five overseas constituencies. Many people in London are French and therefore vote in French elections. In the last presidential election campaign, Macron came to address a large meeting in London as part of his campaign. If we were to move in that direction, of course British politicians would need to think about which other countries they would go to campaign in. There are some large implications of this which, if I may say so, the Government appear simply not to have thought through as they push this through.

That is the problem with an awful lot of this Bill. The noble Lord, Lord True, will be responsible for having assisted and enabled a thoroughly badly thought-through Bill to become law. That will be on his conscience and his responsibility. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment 149 withdrawn.

Amendments 150 and 151 not moved.

Schedule 7 agreed.

Clause 13 agreed.

House resumed.