My Lords, I congratulate my noble friend Lord Moore of Etchingham on a remarkable, welcome and amusing speech. It is a very difficult one to follow.
There are some very important issues in the Bill, and we will come to them later. My purpose today is to draw noble Lords’ attention to an anomaly in our election law which, thanks to this Bill, we have an opportunity to correct.
Under current arrangements, Commonwealth citizens have the right to vote in British general elections. However, the present law does not include any length of residence test. Now that election registers are revised every month, that right becomes available virtually on arrival to anyone from Commonwealth.
Some noble Lords will recall that, in 2008, the noble and learned Lord, Lord Goldsmith, the former Labour Attorney-General, produced a report on nationality matters. In it, he recommended that the
automatic right for Commonwealth citizens to vote in general elections should be phased out. In support of his recommendation, he made three points. First, that most countries do not permit non-citizens to vote in national, or often even local, elections. Secondly, that it is right, in principle, not to give the right to vote to citizens of other countries living in the UK until they become British citizens. Thirdly, that this change would restore the significance of citizenship and help people to be proud of achieving it. However, despite these arguments, as some Members will recall, no action was taken on this matter by either the Labour Government or subsequent Conservative or coalition Governments.
Reciprocity is one aspect of this. In 39 of the 54 Commonwealth countries, British citizens do not have the right to vote until they become citizens of these countries. In nine Caribbean countries, British citizens can vote—normally after 12 months’ residence. It would not be fair to deny to nationals of these countries the right to vote in Britain, provided that right remains reciprocal. There is no question of removing the vote from those who already have it—that would be absurd. But the matter is still quite important, because the inflow of Commonwealth citizens who are not UK citizens is in the order of at least 100,000 a year. There are, of course, some political angles to this. For example, the Labour Party’s policy platform before the most recent election, as decided by their 2019 autumn conference, included a pledge to give voting rights to everyone living in the UK, whatever their citizenship. That would have immediately added several million new voters to our electoral rolls.
I see that the noble Lord, Lord Blunkett, is in his place. He commented at the time that opponents would characterise this as a,
“reckless policy to throw open not only our borders but our system of democracy”.
As usual, the noble Lord hit the nail on the head.
This Bill is a valuable opportunity to clear up the present anomaly and to put virtually all foreign citizens on the same basis. I shall be in touch with the experts to draw up a suitable amendment. Finally, I should make it clear that such an amendment would not affect Ireland, with which we have had reciprocal arrangements since 1922. It would, however, affect Cyprus and Malta. We have an opportunity to clean this up, and I think we should do it.
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