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Constitutional Reform and Governance Bill

I will be very happy to provide the Minister with the specific Hansard references for the parliamentary questions that were asked, but I do not have that information to hand at present. When he looks through his files and I provide him with the answer to his question, I am sure he will find that these estimates are made by foreign missions and given on an annual basis to the Foreign Office, which supplies the figures. These are not the numbers of people who are eligible; I completely accept that. They are the figures for the overall quantum of British citizens estimated to be resident overseas at any one time. That includes both the currently enfranchised and those who have lived overseas for more than 15 years and who are therefore by current rules disfranchised. It is of concern to me that that large category of an indeterminate number of people—I think we can all agree that many of the foreign missions do not know how many people are resident overseas, but that they estimate the figure—is currently disfranchised from participating in domestic general elections or by-elections to this place. They are also, in most cases, disfranchised from voting in the national elections where they happen to live, so they are, in effect, electorally non-existent. That seems to me to be fundamentally unfair, unjust and not in accordance with the principles of democracy that this House likes to uphold. It is a great shame that that issue has not been addressed in the Bill. The Minister said that many other countries have restrictions similar to ours in respect of the point of enfranchisement. I accept that the current rule is that if someone spends 15 years away they lose their right to vote. However, from answers to parliamentary questions and research I have conducted, I have found that not many other countries have voting rights more restrictive than ours. Within the European Union, I believe there are three: Malta, Cyprus and Denmark—and it is questionable whether Ireland has more restrictive rights than ours. That is a very small number of countries that provide a shorter period for which their nationals can continue to vote in their home country.