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Political Parties and Elections Bill

Like my hon. Friend the Member for New Forest, East (Dr. Lewis), I would like to focus on an omission from the Bill, although perhaps not with the forensic detail with which he made his particular point. I wish to address a disgraceful aspect of elections, because the Bill fails to take any steps to address the scandal of our disfranchised citizens living abroad. A year or two ago, considerable emphasis was placed on the difficulties our service personnel faced in getting registered because of their role and the frequency of their postings. Our annual registration makes it difficult to track them down and for them to participate. A similar thing applies to non-resident British people—those who are living abroad. It is difficult to tell how large the resident population is in this country—hon. Members know all too well that we do not have a proper, accurate count of the population—so it is even more difficult to work out how many ex-patriot Britons are outside these shores. The Department's estimates of ex-patriots living abroad range from more than 13 million to—possibly—more reliable estimates of somewhere between 5 million and 6 million.