Overseas Electors Bill: Money Resolution — Restrict Spending — 16 Oct 2018 at 16:59

The majority of MPs voted to enable any British citizen who has moved abroad to vote in United Kingdom and European Union Parliamentary elections.

The Overseas Electors Bill^[1][2] sought to allow any British citizen who has moved abroad to vote in United Kingdom, and European Union Parliamentary elections. At the time the Bill was proposed voting rights were only retained for fifteen years after leaving the country.

MPs were considering the motion:

• That, for the purposes of any Act resulting from the Overseas Electors Bill, it is expedient to authorise the payment out of money provided by Parliament of any increase attributable to the Act in the sums payable under any other Act out of money so provided.

the amendment rejected in this vote was:

• to leave out “any increase” and insert
• “an increase not exceeding £10,000 in any financial year prior to the financial year after the financial year in which a Minister of the Crown lays before the House of Commons a report on the expected increases arising from the Act and any increase thereafter”.

During the debate Government minister Chloe Smith MP (Conservative, Norwich North) stated^[3]:

• The figure in the proposal, £10,000 per annum, is just 1% of the estimated cost of implementing the Bill.

Restricting the amount of money which could be spent implementing the bill to just 1% of what the Government considered was required to implement it would have prevented it from having the intended impact. Technically more people may have been eligible to vote but the Government would not have been able to put in place systems effectively enabling them to do so.

• [1] Parlliament's webpage on the Overseas Electors Bill
• [2] Explanatory Notes to the Overseas Electors Bill - Overview of the Bill, Parliament.uk
• [3] Chloe Smith MP (Conservative, Norwich North), House of Commons, Official Record, 16 October 2018

Debate in Parliament |