Representation of the People Bill

HL Deb 13 March 1985 vol 461 cc194-209

4.15 p.m.

Second Reading debate resumed.

Lord Tordoff

My Lords, if noble Lords have finished pouring trouble on oily waters, perhaps we can continue with the Representation of the People Bill. My Lords, like the noble Lord, Lord Mishcon, I was somewhat surprised at the terms in which the noble Lord, Lord Elton, presented this Bill to us. The peace and light which apparently had reigned in the other place did not sound like that from my reading of the Second Reading debate there or even from certain exchanges at the Committee stage; although I would accept that by the time the other place came to the end either they were exhausted or they had given up any hope of persuading the Government to make any further modifications and they therefore gave the Bill a very calm Third Reading. I was a little surprised also at the terms in which the noble Lord described the Bill when he said it was an important reform of franchise. Anybody who has been listening to this debate today will not, I think, go away with the feeling that they have been listening to the great reform Bill of 1985. I do not think that it quite comes into the category of some of the Bills of a century ago.

Nevertheless, it is a welcome Bill. The minor amendments that are made to the electoral laws are important and there are some important extensions of the franchise. It does not, however, make any vast extension of the ability of the people to be represented and the electoral system as we have it still does peculiar things for minorities.

It will not surprise your Lordships that I am going to spend a minute or two on the subject of proportional representation, but I can assure the House that it is to be only for a minute or two; and that when I mention the serious effect on minorities I am not, of course, referring to the effect on the Social Democrats and the Liberal Party and the Alliance. I am talking of the curious effect it has on the minority which represents the Government; because, of course, the Government are a minority party just as we all are minority parties today. It simply happens that they have a lot more seats in another place on the basis of their minority representation. They are seriously over-represented and we are seriously under-represented. One of these days there will be a new Reform Bill, put in by an Alliance Government, under which proportional representation is included.

I was interested to hear what the noble Lord, Lord Mishcon, said about the subject of uniformity. The sort of uniformity that we should like to see from these Benches is the uniformity of equal votes of equal value, if I may put it that way—having said which, I do not propose to say anything more on proportional representation either at this stage or at any subsequent stage of this Bill.

We certainly welcome in Clause 1, the votes for British citizens abroad, but we feel that the five-year period is far too short. We realise that this was (dare I say?) the carve-up between the two Front Benches in another place, but I hope that later in the stages of this Bill we can come back to further discussion of this matter because it will certainly be my intention to put down amendments to try to extend that period beyond five years.

I really cannot go along with some of the remarks of the noble Lord, Lord Mishcon, on people who reside overseas. They are not all tax exiles—I know that he did not say that they all were—and neither are they all inhabitants of the "Costa del Crime", and I know that he did not say that they were; but it seems to me that he gave those people undue representation in his remarks. I thought that the intervention of the noble Baroness, Lady Elles, really touched on the point. We do not actually differentiate between those people who are paying taxes and those people who are dodging taxes when it comes to a question of whether or not they should have a vote, however despicable it may be to move your residence abroad to avoid tax.

The noble Lord, Lord Mishcon, seemed to introduce a new concept into the category of people who are entitled to vote. That was the category of usefulness. I think that that leads us down a very difficult path and one that should be avoided at all costs. Certainly many of these people are making a useful contribution to the life of this nation and to the future wealth of this nation. And not only that, but they are making a useful contribution to the wealth of the world at large. My honourable friend the Member for Berwick-upon-Tweed referred to this in another place when he spoke about the work that missionaries were doing overseas.

There are people who clearly have every intention of returning to this country on retirement, but they may spend most of their lives abroad. They are precisely the people who cannot afford to keep a residence in this country and who therefore would be disqualified under the terms of this Bill after the five-year period. I think we ought to take that into consideration because they are the kind of people who are interested in what is happening in politics in this country, whether they be matters concerning citizenship, economics, pension rights, foreign affairs, defence, or even something as simple as the BBC's overseas service, about which they probably know more than most people in this country. They may also be interested in matters of trade policy. They would retain an interest and would surely wish to participate in the democratic processes of this country, on the understanding that it is their intention to return.

There are, as we see, provisions in the Bill whereby people should make such a declaration. I suspect that tax exiles or people such as the gentleman referred to by the noble Lord, Lord Mishcon, and his right honourable friend in another place, who are at present residing in Spanish sun, would be unlikely to sign such a declaration.

It seems to me that at the end of the day the crucial question is whether you are a citizen of this country. I must say I am surprised that the Labour Party, which spent so much time defending the kind of people I am talking about when we were debating the nationality Bill, should so lightly abandon them when it comes to the question of their ability to vote. So I think that their ultimate test should be that British citizens abroad should have the right to vote, and I regret that this Bill does not go far enough down that line.

We certainly welcome the extension of postal voting, particularly as regards parish councils, as the noble Lord, Lord Mishcon, has suggested. Again, to a certain degree at the behest of my honourable friend the Liberal Chief Whip in another place—this is not a Chief Whips' appreciation society; it just happens that this is a subject with which Chief Whips tend to get landed—I think the extension to parish councils is valuable. Often parish council and district council elections occur on the same day and it has been rather foolish to be able to have a postal vote for a district council election but not for a parish council election held on the same day.

There are two provisos that I wish to make about postal ballots. The first is that, of course, they are less secret; and that is something that I believe we should bear in mind. I suspect we all know of cases where elderly people are assisted to fill in their ballot papers for postal votes by members of one political party or another. However improper that may be, it does happen, and I merely make the point that we should remember that these ballots are less secret and therefore there is perhaps some justification for what has happened in the Northern Ireland situation. It is much less easy to police a postal ballot than it is to police a ballot box in a polling station.

The other matter is that the extension of postal voting should not be allowed to extend the effect of multiple registration. One of the questions to which we on these Benches will return at later stages is that of multiple registration, because we believe that it is an abuse that people can register in more than one place and then can decide, because of geographical or geopolitical considerations, where they are going to exercise their vote. Where people vote in holiday areas in order, as it were, to achieve better value from their vote because there is a better chance of their candidate getting in there than is the case with the candidate at the place of their main residence, that seems to us to be a wrong way of dealing with the situation. Certainly we shall seek to remove from the Bill the opportunity for multiple registration.

When it comes to EEC regulations, it is our belief that EEC citizens should be allowed to vote in the countries in which they reside; in other words, citizens of the EEC living and working in Belgium ought to be able to vote in the Belgian part of the European party elections. We are some way away from that, but I believe that it is the direction in which we ought to be going.

As regards deposits, we certainly welcome that reduction to 5 per cent. I must say I was slightly surprised that when the noble Lord said that this reduction would be of help to minor parties he looked in our direction. I have to tell him that this provision would have saved the Labour Party an awful lot more money at the last election than it would have saved us—to the tune, as I see it, of about £14,000. The 12½ per cent. was always, of course, a very silly figure. Candidates who got that number of votes in a constituency were clearly serious candidates, and where candidates lost a deposit after polling many thousands of votes that was always an anomaly.

The whole matter of deposits was introduced at the end of the First World War in order to stop supposedly frivolous candidates trying to get out of the Army rather sooner than they otherwise would have done; and I think that is why the hurdle was then set at rather a high level and has not been changed since. However, we still believe that the deposit system is the wrong one and. like the noble Lord, Lord Mishcon, we would much rather see a system of nominations. The 5 per cent. rule penalises some quite serious political candidates. The Ecology Party and the, dare I say it, Wessex Regionalists, who have written to me and have no doubt also written to other noble Lords, have a serious political point of view to make. These people are to be distinguished from the really very silly candidates who turn up at by-elections. I would not grace them by naming them in your Lordships' House, but we all know that there are poseurs who come along, or there are some people from the entertainment world who use the poll as a form of advertising.

Of course they will still be able to afford to do this. The fact that it will possibly cost them £500 is of no consequence to them. The fact that they have to pay £5,000 would probably be of little consequence to them; they would simply charge it against their professional expenses and treat it as a piece of publicity.

So I do not believe that the deposit system actually stops the very people whom the Government are anxious to stop. Indeed, I am not at all sure that it is very sensible to stop these people, anyway, since on occasions they add a certain amount of fun to by-elections and perhaps stop us from taking ourselves too seriously at times. The better test is, of course, to have an increase in the number of nominations, and again I hope that we can test this point at greater length during the Committee stage of the Bill.

There are just a couple of minor points I should like to make. First, on the question of expense, I think that changes in the provisions there are sensible. I also think it is time that we started to look at the control of national expenditure on elections, because it seems to me that we keep a very tight rein on expenditure at constituency level but that there is virtually no control over the amount of expenditure at national level. Since television, broadcasting and so on play such a large part in our elections these days, I think that in the interests of democracy we must look at this very closely and see whether there is not a national limit on expenditure that ought to be Considered for parliamentary elections.

The other point that comes into this same area is that we believe that challenges in the courts over election expenses and the like should not be left to individual petitioners but should be followed up through criminal proceedings in which the DPP plays a part. Noble Lords no doubt will be aware of a case not a thousand miles away from here where election petitions were brought in regard to a large number of supposed offences. One minor technical offence was found to have been committed, and the candidate was faced with a very large sum of expenses and court costs amounting to many tens of thousands of pounds. That seems to us to be a somewhat whimsical way of dealing with what is certainly a serious problem. One does not want to allow corruption in electoral practices, but it seems to me that it is best left to the criminal law and to the DPP to decide whether or not prosecutions should be brought.

Arising out of what the noble Lord, Lord Mishcon, said about the National Front, I well understand and support his views about the National Front. No one has a greater hatred of that sort of racialism than I and my noble friends here. However, I certainly would not stop these people having halls. I believe that if there is a candidate he has a right to have a public hall. But the noble Lord came at it in a slightly different way from the ways that I have heard before, and what he said bears serious consideration. If they are going to use public halls, then they should use them in the proper way and any hint of racialism should immediately be stamped on by the due process of law.

Similarly, I do not believe that provocative marches are to be tolerated, but I do not think they come within the terms of this Bill and they ought to be dealt with in other ways. It is a difficult problem to stop people having the right to march on political matters, whether they be on the extreme Left or on the extreme Right. But in many cases, a march is clearly a serious provocation and a threat to public order, and it should be dealt with as such, and not within the terms of the Representation of the People Bill.

This is a useful Bill, but it is not a great Bill. We broadly go along with the provisions of the Bill, but will certainly seek to make some changes to it, as I have indicated today.

4.32 p.m.

Lord Allen of Abbeydale

My Lords, much of what is in this Bill is of considerable interest to me, in view of my past experience, but this afternoon I wish to raise only one issue and that is one which is of concern to me in my current capacity as chairman of MENCAP. This point, which has already been clearly explained by the noble Lord, Lord Mishcon, relates to the voting rights of long-stay voluntary patients in mental illness and mental handicap hospitals. Noble Lords will look in vain among the long list of miscellaneous provisions in the Bill for anything on this point. There is nothing there and it is my contention that there ought to be something there. If this opportunity is missed, there is no saying when another one might arise.

It is a problem which has been very fully discussed before and I certainly do not propose to weary your Lordships with a detailed historical review. Rather, I take as my starting point the present provisions to be found in Section 7 of the Representation of the People Act 1983, which re-enacted provisions made in the Mental Health (Amendment) Act in the previous year. I should say that I am not unmindful of the improvements which were effected by those provisions, compared with what had previously held the field. Putting it as briefly as I can, Section 7 now provides that a voluntary patient in a mental illness or mental handicap hospital is entitled to be registered to vote, provided that he can pass, as it were, a test of capacity each year by completing the declaration for which the section provides and getting it attested by an authorised member of the hospital staff.

The difficulty is that he can be registered only if in the declaration he can give an address where he, would be resident in the United Kingdom— and I am quoting the words of the Act — if he were not a voluntary mental patient or. if he cannot give any such address, an address (other than a mental hospital) at which he has resided in the United Kingdom. These words have the slightly odd result that an individual who can be registered can normally be registered in any constituency except the one where he happens to be residing at the time.

But the real trouble is the words "other than a mental hospital". The inclusion of those words in the subsection means that if the hospital is the individual's sole address, even if he has lived there for years and it is in any ordinary sense his permanent address, he is ruled out for registration. This is an anomaly which I should very much like to see removed. It was at an earlier stage suggested that if a change of this kind were made, there would be a risk of the electoral roll in a particular constituency being swamped by the addition of vast numbers of patients in a hospital there. But it is a little difficult now to take that argument too seriously when, for one thing, there is a well advanced programme for reducing the numbers in the hospitals and putting them back into the community, whatever views "Panorama" may have about that programme, and when the numbers of those who have taken advantage of the concessions in the 1983 Act, and who have been able if they wish to make the necessary declarations, have not been all that great.

What I am recommending is, after all, what the Speaker's Conference in 1973–74 thought appropriate. It was their wish that someone whose only residence was a hospital should be entitled to call that hospital his residence. I am very conscious of the fact, too, that those in the psychiatric wing of an ordinary hospital are not barred from registration. What we are currently doing therefore, it seems to me, is to continue to disfranchise a number of people who are perfectly able to exercise their vote intelligently and responsibly, and who differ in no way from considerable numbers of mentally handicapped or mentally ill people in the community or in other institutions who can be registered. I cannot persuade myself that that is a sensible or indeed a humane thing to do.

4.37 p.m

Baroness Elles

My Lords, I have listened to the noble Lord, Lord Allen of Abbeydale, with the greatest attention, but he will, of course, understand that I shall not be following him in the point that he has been making. As president of the British Conservative Association in France, and having met, listened to and received correspondence from hundreds of British citizens working abroad for this country, I should like in particular to address myself to the problem of the right to vote of citizens who live abroad.

Of course, I welcome very warmly the fact that the Government have accepted the principle of British citizens being given the right to vote, even if they are not resident in this country on the qualifying date. I also welcome these faltering footsteps going in the direction of following the United States, France, Italy and other democracies, who for many years have given the right to vote to their citizens wherever they may live, whether in the country of nationality or outside it. In particular, France, which has a system for the time being based on constituencies, is very little different from our own, so the excuse that is sometimes given by the Government that it is more difficult because we have constituencies has been overcome so far as France is concerned.

But almost immediately, having established the principle, my right honourable and learned friend when introducing this Bill in another place, said that there was a problem and that the extension of the right to vote had to have a restriction put upon it. As a result of the Bill going through another place, the restriction at the moment is that those who have lived abroad for longer than five years as from the qualifying date will again be deprived of the right to vote. I know from my contacts abroad, not only in the European Community, but in many other places as well, that many British citizens will feel frustrated, disappointed and rather embittered by the action of this Palace of Westminster, which is, after all, meant to be the seat of democracy and is held out as a shining example. Only the other day, when addressing a large audience in France I mentioned that I was returning to your Lordships' House to speak on this matter, and those people were simply amazed to learn that we do not have the vote when we go to live abroad.

I wonder whether your Lordships will place yourselves in the position of those British citizens who live abroad. Perhaps it is not fully recognised that British laws—and I use the term "British" in the general sense because I know laws can be English, Scottish or Northern Ireland laws—passed in the Palace of Westminster affect these people, whether those laws concern nationality, matrimonial or tax matters, or are laws relating to pensions, social security or education: and a vast number of British citizens abroad send their children to be educated in this country. British citizens living abroad have a direct interest in the results which come from this Palace of Westminster.

We should remember that the economic policies of this country, too, directly affect them. I must say to the noble Lord, Lord Mishcon, who is always extremely courteous and kind, how offended would be many of the people whom I meet abroad to hear themselves described as ex-patriots fleeing from these shores to avoid taxes; or, if I may say so, to be lumped in the same category as people who might be criminals escaping from this country. I must tell the noble Lord that I go abroad quite frequently, as I know he does, and I have yet to meet one of those particuliar characters. Perhaps the noble Lord meets them, but I have not done so.

Lord Mishcon

My Lords, the noble Baroness is extremely courteous in describing my friends and associates abroad. I should like to make it perfectly clear. as I hoped I made it clear in my speech, that I have nothing but admiration for those resident abroad because of ill-health—I did not earlier mention that category, but do so now—or those who serve this country in industry, commerce, and in every other way. There are the "other" people and those who, unfortunately, have to have knowledge of all our British subjects abroad know that they are a fairly sizeable category.

Baroness Elks

My Lords, I thank the noble Lord for that intervention. If we were to argue about statistics, we could go on for a long time and they would be impossible to prove. I imagine, as I have already indicated, that possibly those who vote in this country might also fall into some of the categories which the noble Lord has mentioned.

I remind your Lordships that we are a trading nation, and we send vast numbers of young people abroad. Many of them go not voluntarily but as employees of a business. Whether they are working in Swindon. Windsor, Birmingham, Bangkok or Singapore, they are working for British prosperity and in British jobs. The fact that they are employed by British companies, wherever they may work in the world, makes totally irrelevant their actual place of residence.

I was interested to read a speech made by Mr. David Royce of the Institute of Export, who said only the other day that it takes at least four to five years to establish a market abroad. We know the situation in Japan in particular, where we are trying to break into the market. One cannot expect employees or business personnel to go to such a country for fewer than five years. They not only have to establish their markets, but also have to develop them. Ten years is probably the minimum length of time required to do that. Yet these are the kind of people whom the Bill seeks to deprive of the right to vote.

We talk about tenuous links. It is said that those who have lived outside the United Kingdom for five years and one day since the qualifying date will be deprived of their vote, whereas those who have lived abroad for five years minus one day, according to the date of any election which might be called, will be able to vote. It is incredible to think that one can be chopped off at five years from the country where one has been born and bred, and where one's relations live, and which one visits from time to time.

I sometimes wonder about the beleaguered mentality of the Opposition, who seem to be living in the age of the schooner rather than in the twentieth century and the age of the airplane; to say nothing of the twenty-first century from which we are only about three general elections away. Practically every British person I meet abroad returns to this country at least every year or every two years to visit their family, to deal with their business interests, to keep up the education of their children, or for other reasons. The vast majority of them have their links firmly in this country. Now there is a clause in the Bill which requires them to declare an intention to return to this country. I should have thought that was sufficient reason to remove the five-year limit.

I hope that my next point will be seen in the right context and within the framework of the argument I am using. Surely someone who has been born and bred here and who has to go abroad in order to keep his job and to work for his company has as much right as a British Commonwealth citizen, who perhaps does not even know English, who gains the right to vote within six months of having put his or her name on an electoral roll; or a citizen from the Republic of Ireland who may come over on 9th October, put down his name on 10th October, and within six months have the right to vote in a general election. I do not question such rights because such is the law of the land and I accept it. But surely their links are no less tenuous than those of the people to whom I have referrred.

I now turn to the question of elections to the European Parliament. I was somewhat concerned by a statement made by the Home Secretary in his Second Reading speech when he said, further primary legislation on European elections only will probably be needed if agreement is reached in the Council".—[Official Report, Commons, 10/12/84; col. 756.] There was no agreement reached in the Council before the last European elections in 1984. Consequently, this was the excuse given for there being no change in the rights of citizens abroad. I remind the House that the citizens of other member states were all given the right to vote wherever they were living within the Community, including Belgium and the Netherlands, who gave the right to British citizens living in their countries because they knew that those people were deprived of that right in respect of their own country.

I am reminded of the comment of the noble Lord, Lord Mishcon, when he said how ludicrous was the situation in the case of a person living in one bedroom in Northern Ireland and another person living in a bedroom in another part of the United Kingdom. One had the right to vote but the other did not have the right to vote. Without wishing to speak too much of my own family, I would say that my son and his wife share the same bedroom. My son, being a British subject, did not have the right to vote, but his wife, who is French, did. That is an example of the folly of the system that exists.

If the Council does not come to an agreement over a uniform electoral procedure for 1989, I am anxious that the Government should give an undertaking that they will at least consider introducing measures to give the right to vote to citizens who are within the European Community for European parliamentary elections. I draw the attention of the House to the fact that only two weeks ago in the Political Affairs Committee of the European Parliament in Brussels we adopted almost unanimously a provision concerning the right to vote. It states: Nationals of member states shall be entitled to vote in the country of which they are nationals. Member states shall take all necessary measures to enable their nationals where place of residence is outside their country of origin to exercise their electoral rights without hindrance in the member state of which they are nationals". I hope that that will be taken on board by the Government and that they will at least consider introducing measures for 1989, regardless of whether or not there has been a change in the electoral system itself.

One more important point was raised by my noble friend. As the Bill stands, only those who left the United Kingdom after October 1983 will be able to vote in June 1989. That will exclude nearly all the 1,500 or more officials working in the European Community institutions; in fact, they will be the only people deprived of voting in both national and European parliamentary elections. Many of those officials have served in Government departments at home. Many of them hope eventually to return to this country. Indeed, all those I know either have homes to which they hope to retire or have children at school in this country, and they thus have very close and direct links with this country.

Surely it is myopic, if I am not being too aggressive to my noble friend the Minister, that the Government should seek to deprive these people of the right to vote when they are the only officials in the Community institutions who do not have the right to vote; yet they are expected to work loyally and to support British interests whenever they can and on every conceivable occasion. It seems to be an extraordinary attitude and I hope that, with assistance from noble Lords, we shall possibly be able at least to amend the Bill in that direction.

It was clear from debates in another place—I know the noble Lord on the Front Bench opposite had a slight difference of colour, if I may say, with the opinion of my noble friend the Minister—that at the end of the day, whatever else, there was a certain element of consensus; or at least the Bill was changed in order to get it through another place. However, I remind my noble friend the Minister that every Government, regardless of colour, has an overriding duty to protect the fundamental rights of all its citizens, wherever they may be. One of those fundamental rights in a democracy is surely the right to take part in elections. I feel that this Bill has not shown that the Government have fulfilled that overriding duty. I hope that in this House we shall be able to contribute to seeing what can be done to make the Bill closer to what we regard as the protection of the fundamental rights of our citizens, wherever they may live.

Lord Morris

My Lords, before my noble friend sits down, is she aware—and I am sure she is—that I, too, share a bedroom with my wife while I am disenfranchised but she is not?

4.52 p.m.

Lord Elton

My Lords, this is a major Bill on the representation of the people, in spite of what the noble Lord, Lord Tordoff, has said to reduce your Lordships' regard for it. It makes a number of significant changes in electoral law and there have been only four such Bills this century which have made changes of this order. These were in 1918, 1928, 1948 and 1969.

We have done our best to accommodate different points of view in areas where all-party support is not always possible. I think it is a sign of our success that there is such a short list of speakers this afternoon and that, whatever the temperature, tempo, length, volume or acerbity of exchanges in the other place in the earlier stages, the Bill proceeded from that House with no Division on Third Reading. I shall try to use this opportunity to comment on the positions which your Lordships have staked out for yourselves for the Committee stage.

I first correct, with all deference, the noble Lord, Lord Mishcon, in what I think may be a misunderstanding of how the Bill will work in regard to absent voters in Northern Ireland. Northern Ireland holidaymakers can vote by post or proxy on the same basis as those from Great Britain, subject to the reserve power in Clause 10. That applies exclusively to postal voters and, as the overseas vote is by proxy, it will not be affected; and that is a matter of interest to the person delivering the croissant and café to the adjacent rooms in the French hotel which we were asked to consider, because the post will be the same in each case.

The noble Lord also referred, as did others, to election meetings. We accept that there is a problem, but there is a substantial problem also as regards enforcement, both with the present law and with proposals for change so far advocated. At present we do not have a workable solution to the difficulty of the unpleasant meeting to which the noble Lord referred. As to demonstrations and marches, that is, as he suggested, a matter for the public order review to which he referred.

The noble Lord felt rather strongly that we had done too little by way of preparation for the passage of this Bill. He suggested that we should have used what I think he said was the normal procedure of a Speaker's Conference and that there should have been wider consultations. I understand that it is now generally agreed that Speaker's Conferences are not a satisfactory way of suggesting changes in electoral law. The noble Lord may recall that the Labour Government's 1969 Act failed to implement the most important recommendations of the Speaker's Conference which preceded that Act and neither this Government nor the previous Labour Government were able to implement any of the recommendations of the Speaker's Conference of 1973–74. Experience, therefore, suggests that that method of progress is not fruitful.

We did, however, write to all the Opposition parties in November 1983, seeking their views on the Select Committee's report. The replies were taken into account in the White Paper. There were then detailed consultations with the parties and local authority associations at official level before the Bill was introduced. Further discussion took place across the Floor of another place and doubtless will continue.

Lord Tordoff: My Lords, will the noble Lord give way? I should be glad if he will clarify this point. I thought I read in the debates of another place that the Scottish National Party and Plaid Cymru had not been consulted on these matters. That may not be true but some sort of assertion of that nature was made in debates in another place.

Lord Mishcon: My Lords, perhaps I may be allowed to ask the noble Lord the Minister to answer two noble Lords on one matter. It was also stated in another place at Second Reading, by a responsible spokesman, that there was consultation with the official Opposition on only one minor matter relating to this series of electoral reforms.

Lord Elton: My Lords, I can give only the briefest answer to those two interventions. I understand that both the SNP and Plaid Cymru were consulted. I also understand that the consultations with the main Opposition party in another place, if I may so describe it, went beyond the very narrow point that the noble Lord, Lord Mishcon, suggests.

During the noble Lord's speech we had an interesting debate within a debate on who should be given what I call the overseas, or expatriate vote. His principal attack was directed at those whom we call tax exiles. With them he swept up those whom we call criminals. We shall no doubt return to the matter of definitions at a later stage. The other essential point he seems to have missed, or at least to have ignored, is the fact that the right to an overseas vote is a temporary right lasting only five years, which is a matter of understandable regret to my noble friend Lady Elles—a regret I share even with noble Lords in the Alliance. On the other hand, exile, whether in flight from taxes or the law, is a permanent condition. It was for this very reason that our own preference for a 10-year right was overturned in favour of a right for only five years and, therefore, most often for only one general election. Your Lordships will recall that that curtailment is backed up by the requirement inserted in the Bill, in Clause 2(3)(e), to make a declaration that the applicant does not intend to reside permanently abroad. It was specifically put into the Bill in another place to deal with the anxiety which the noble Lord has expressed. Therefore, although he may not be satisfied with the provision, it is there. I have said that we think the five-year rule is shorter than we should like it to be. The Government have made no— Lord Harris of Greenwich: My Lords, if the noble Lord is saying that it is shorter than the Government would like it to be, is he indicating that the Government would be happy to accept an amendment in Committee?

Lord Elton: My Lords, I sought to make it clear in my speech introducing this Bill that on matters of the election of representatives to another place we have to proceed, as far as is possible, by agreement between the parties. What we have before us in the five-year rule is, in fact, such an agreement. It was arrived at by what I can only describe as retiring from the 10-year position, via the seven-year.

Lord Tordoff

My Lords, would it not be more correct to say that it was with the agreeement of some of the parties?

Lord Elton

My Lords, if we are to get into historical comparisons of detail we should reserve that for a later stage. Nonetheless, it is the position which we now occupy and which we are persuaded to occupy because it appears to represent the overwhelming balance of opinion in the political field in the elected House.

As I have been seeking on three occasions now to say, the Government have made no secret of the fact that this is a compromise. It is a compromise between those who would prefer a longer time limit, or indeed none at all, and those who are opposed in principle to any extension of the franchise to British citizens resident abroad. There is nothing shameful I think about the need to compromise. Major representation of the people legislation has always been brought forward on the basis of consultation and, where possible, agreement between the parties represented in another place. The Government would have set a dangerous precedent had they attempted to force this Bill through in the teeth of opposition from the other parties. In the Government's view, the provisions of the Bill extending the franchise to British citizens resident abroad marks a significant step forward. It could add perhaps up to half a million new electors to the register.

Baroness Elles

My Lords, is that figure based on seven years or five years? I understand that in the Government's reply to the Select Committee they gave 600,000 and 100,000: but that I think was based on seven years. Does the figure that my noble friend has given now apply to five years?

Lord Elton

Yes, my Lords. My noble friend will not have been as aware as the rest of your Lordships that, whatever the answer is, it is based on five years. I think that there are certain skills exercised at Cheltenham this afternoon that have extended themselves into the House.

Lord Mishcon

My Lords, will the Minister agree that his very worthy colleague had a hand in his reply?

Lord Elton

Indeed, my Lords. The new provisions ensure that British citizens who go to work abroad may vote in at least one parliamentary general election and one European parliamentary general election after they leave, provided of course that they have not already left, as my noble friend was at pains to point out. But the real significance of these provisions is that they establish the principle that British citizens should not be disenfranchised because they are not resident here on the qualifying date. In establishing the principle it is right that we should move cautiously, but it will always be open to a future Parliament to extend the five-year period once the new provisions have been seen to be working.

I tried to make it clear at the outset that the Government's aim has been so far as possible to secure all-party support for this Bill. The noble Lord, Lord Tordoff, has nonetheless announced his intention to try, may I say yet again, to convert your Lordships to the principle of proportional representation. I think that, while everybody can have his own view on that issue, and those views may not be divided on party lines, one thing is very clear. There is not the slightest prospect of all-party support for the introduction of any form of proportional representation at parliamentary, local government or European Parliament elections at the present time.

The noble Lord, Lord Allen of Abbeydale, raised the question of the voting rights of the mentally ill, as did the noble Lord, Lord Mishcon. I know that many other noble Lords have that interest very much at heart—the rights of mentally ill and mentally handicapped people whose sole place of residence is a psychiatric hospital. Your Lordships will recall that this was extensively discussed in the House in 1982 during the passage of the Mental Health (Amendment) Act. I recall exchanges with the noble Lord on this issue myself and with other noble Lords who will doubtless return to it.

The Government then responded to views expressed from various quarters by giving mental hospital patients the right to register as electors at an address outside the hospital. A great deal of satisfaction was expressed at the outcome. But I should add that the inclusion of the right to give a mental hospital as the address of the voter was mooted during the passage of the Mental Health Bill in 1982 and it did not command the necessary support to carry it into the Bill on that occasion.

The provisions introduced in that Bill and translated, as the noble Lord has reminded us, into the 1983 Act have been in force for only about a year. We shall be studying their operation with care and we by no means rule out changes in the future. This is, however, a sensitive issue. Further changes at the present time would certainly be controversial, and we feel that it is too soon to judge whether in fact the present conditions are operating satisfactorily. I thought I ought to give the noble Lord that faintly discouraging indication at this stage.

My noble friend Lady Elles brought before your Lordships the concern of European Community officials who work in the institutions of the Community and who argue that they should be given a status akin to that of Crown servants resident abroad who have a right to vote for the constituency where they would be resident if it were not for their circumstances as service voters. Successive governments have encouraged British citizens to take up posts in Community institutions, and British officials make a significant contribution to the success of our membership of the Community. The Government accept that those officials are in a special position, reflecting the uniqueness of the Community itself in international affairs. But, subject to anything which my noble friend may have to say at a later stage, we think that it would be wrong to put them in a special position as regards voting rights.

We should have preferred, as I have said before, a longer time limit than five years, but now that we have reluctantly accepted it, it is hard to see how we could justify creating an exception to it for Community officials, because to do so would cast doubt on the contribution made by many other British citizens working abroad in the private sector whose work, as my noble friend has herself pungently said, is every bit as vital to our membership of the Community as that of British citizens in the public service. Any view that she expressed would have to be sufficient to persuade not only your Lordships but another place. I see that she wishes to add to that in advance of the next stage, so I shall give way.

Baroness Elles

My Lords, I am grateful to my noble friend. I merely wish to recall to him that we managed to make an exception for such people in the British Nationality Act, and possibly, that would be a guidance when discussing this. But perhaps we could raise this matter during the Committee stage of the Bill.

Lord Elton

My Lords, I am grateful to my noble friend for revealing to us some of the basis of her optimism in this matter, which I cannot as yet do much to encourage.

My noble friend also would, I know, wish the Government to take the opportunity of giving all British nationals resident in the European Community the right to vote at European parliamentary elections. The present position is that Belgium, the Netherlands and the Republic of Ireland give the vote to all Community nationals who are resident in their territory. The other member states all give the right to vote to some or all of their nationals resident abroad. Before the 1984 European Parliament elections the Council of Ministers discussed proposals from the Parliament for a uniform franchise under which all Community nationals resident within the Community would have been given the right to vote by their country of origin. These proposals raise substantial difficulties for several member states and no agreement was reached.

The Government do not accept that it would be right in the absence of a Community agreement to extend the franchise for European Parliament elections to all British nationals resident in other member states. To do so would involve creating an artificial link between the elector and his United Kingdom European Parliament constituency, a constituency in which he may not have been resident for many years or, in some cases, in which he never may have resided at all. In the Government's view, it would be preferable, if other member states agree, for the Council to decide that Community nationals who live outside their own member state should be given the vote by the member state in which they reside.

Lord Broxbourne

My Lords, before my noble friend leaves that point, will he be good enough to supplement the point put to him by my noble friend Lady Elles in regard to the voting rights of officials in Community institutions and particularly officials in the European Parliament? Has he had an opportunity as yet to consider the anomaly of non-representation coupled with liability to taxation? Has he perhaps, with the assistance of the assiduous and athletic noble Baroness who sits next to him, as yet been able to familiarise himself with the protocol to which I ventured to draw attention in the speech of the noble Lord, Lord Mishcon?

Lord Elton

My Lords, neither assiduity nor athleticism can always suffice to overcome difficulties of communication. I shall either have to return to this matter at another stage, or write to my noble friend, or, more than likely, both.

We have covered a number of points to which we can return if the House wishes to do so and if the Bill is, as I trust it will be, given a Second Reading. We shall, of course, listen very carefully to everything that is then said. In general, however, we hope that an acceptable balance has now been struck and that on the main issue covered by the Bill your Lordships will not seek to tilt the balance too far in one direction or the other, having in mind the great difficulty of achieving it at all. I believe that this Bill is more clearly drafted than some with which we have to deal, although it legislates by reference—unavoidably, I may say—more than one would wish. I trust that your Lordships are in sympathy with its main objectives. I beg to move.

On Question, Bill read a second time and committed to a Committee of the Whole House.