British nationals living overseas for more than 15 years are set to get the right to vote in UK general elections, after a proposed change in the law passed a critical stage in the House of Lords.
The move will end a 20-year battle by 100-year-old Harry Shindler who challenged the 15-year limit on voting rights in the high court in 2016 and in the European court of justice in 2018. It will also deliver on a promise made by the Conservative party in successive election manifestos.
Lord Lexden, who championed the cause, said: “Three manifestos, and now close to being delivered. The bill is expected to become law before the (now imminent) end of the current session.”
Shindler, who lives in Rome, said: “I am delighted and pleased this is nearly over. We are a democracy, but not a complete democracy while we didn’t have the right to vote.”
The move could give the right to 3 million Britons retired or working abroad.
“I’ve been campaigning for this for the last 18 years. And although it has to go back to the House of Commons, it’s now as good as a done deed. This is a historic moment and Britons all over the world will be celebrating,” said Shindler.
Although he received a letter from Boris Johnson last year promising him that the Tories would finally deliver on their promise, he was not confident the bill would get through the parliamentary schedule.
The relevant clauses in the elections bill passed the committee stage in the House of Lords after amendments on the issue were debated but withdrawn. The bill will proceed to the report stage, where it is scrutinised for any legal loopholes, before returning to the House of Commons for a final vote.
While Shindler and campaigners expressed delight, others criticised the bill as a “mishmash of rights” and predicted further changes in two or three years’ time.
Some peers said it would be unfair that some Britons who lived abroad for many decades would get to vote in British general elections while many foreign nationals living and paying tax in the UK could not.
Paul Scriven, a Liberal Democrat life peer, said: “Can the minister explain how that would be perceived as fair and a good platform for our electoral process? People who have not lived here for 50 years will have the right to vote and influence government policy, even though it does not directly affect them.”
William Wallace, also for the Lib Dems, said the government did not go far enough to rationalise “the tangle of voting rights left by imperial history” that gave voting rights to some foreign nationals such as Commonwealth citizens but not others.
Meghnad Desai told fellow peers he had qualified to vote when he arrived in 1965 because, he learned, Indians had the right “as subjects of the monarch”. But he said it was not clear what entitled some to vote and not others, and questioned whether it should derive from someone’s status as local taxpayer, or residency rights. “Until the muddle is clarified, we will have to proceed with a compromised mishmash of rights,” he said.
