My Lords, I will first answer the questions from the noble Lord, Lord Stunell. I am sorry that he did not get as much information as he needed, but I will have to hold the House a little longer to give him more detail.
On candidature, anyone who wants to be a candidate in an election in this country needs to be a resident of this country and to have proof of residency. So, nobody living abroad can be a resident of this country—that is the first thing.
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On prisoners, treating prisoners detained in the UK differently from those that are detained overseas is not inconsistent; it is a legitimate and appropriate difference in approach. The Representation of the People Act 1983 sets out that the prohibition of prisoner voting applies to prisoners held in UK prisons only. Whether someone is imprisoned in the UK or overseas is important. A person imprisoned in the UK has been convicted under the UK justice system for breaches of UK law; a person imprisoned in another country has not. In some parts of the world, people are, for example, imprisoned on account of nothing more than their sexual orientation or for calling something a war rather than a special military operation.
In addition to potentially removing the rights of people who would never have been convicted under the UK justice system, creating a specific ban on British prisoners abroad would be unworkable and unenforceable. How could you ascertain with any degree of certainty whether someone living in any country in the world was in a prison? It is impossible. Some British prisoners imprisoned outside the UK may in theory qualify to vote, but there would be significant barriers to their participation, not least because they would have to manage to register to vote, apply for an absent vote and then cast that absent vote, all potentially from the confines of a prison cell.