Oral evidence: Voter engagement in the UK, HC 232Monday 13 October 2014
Oral evidence, 13 October 2014.
Witnesses
Roger Casale, Chair, New Europeans and Samia Badani, New Europeans, gave evidence.
Chair
You are coming before former colleagues in front of the Committee, Roger. I don’t know whether you are going to relish this or whether it may traumatise you, taking you back to the time when you were a fellow Member in this House, but welcome. Roger, and, Samia, welcome.
Roger Casale
Thank you very much indeed. It is good to be back, yes.
Chair
Good to see you. Roger and Samia, did you want to say anything to start us off or do you want to jump straight into the questions?
Roger Casale
Perhaps just to explain who we are and what we do. We are a civil society organisation that exists to represent and promote the interests of people who move, live and work in other EU member states. For example, we estimate that there are about 2.2 million British citizens who live outside the UK but in the European Union, and probably slightly more non-British EU citizens from other member states of the EU who live in the UK. If you put those together it is about 4.5 million. If the British electorate is about 46 million it is a very sizeable pool of potential votes, and yet we feel that they are very under-represented. Part of the reason for that is that they are not registering to vote, particularly the British citizens who live in other EU states. So we are set up to research that, to promote registration and participation; political participation through voting but also social and economic participation and active citizenship. But the emphasis is very much on exercising their right to vote, because we believe that if people have the right to vote then it is better if they exercise that right in order to be better represented. As I say, our work is both with non-British EU citizens who live in the UK and also very much with British citizens who live in other EU states.
Chair
Samia, did you want to add anything?
Samia Badani
I think Roger said it for me. I just want to thank you for the opportunity to be here and to assist you. I think one of our main objectives is to increase voter participation and actually voting. We want to see communities taking part in British political life.
Mr Chope
Thank you for what you just said because the written evidence very much concentrates on the issue of non-British EU citizens being able to vote in the UK. Yet you say that there are 1.6 million European citizens on our electoral register, which is probably quite a high percentage of the, say, 2.5 million of those who could be eligible to vote. Whereas the other way round, the number of British citizens living elsewhere in the EU—and Roger put an estimate of 2.2 million—we know that there are fewer than 17,000 such citizens across the whole of the world who are registered to vote in the United Kingdom to participate in a general election. So I am sure you would accept that, on the basis of those figures, the much bigger problem is trying to find and encourage those British citizens living elsewhere in Europe to participate in our British democracy and take part in a general election here because they do not have the right to vote in a general election in the country where they are resident. Would you accept that that is the bigger problem?
Roger Casale
It is a mirror image of the problem that we emphasised in our evidence, but we are just as passionate about the huge problem—and it is a huge problem—of enfranchising the British citizens who live in the EU. We were with the Electoral Commission last week and I believe that the number currently registered is actually 15,848. That is a drop from 19,101 last year. It is slightly up from December 2008 but it is a tiny number compared to the estimated 2.2 million who are abroad. We have been approached by the British Conservative Association in France, Robin Baker and Chris Chantrey, who we work very closely with, along with Graham Richards from Votes for British Expats Abroad, Conservatives Abroad, Liberal International and Labour International. We know that a number of Members of Parliament here—including yourself, but also Geoffrey Clifton-Brown, the Member for the Cotswolds, and others—have been very active in particular in challenging the 15-year rule, which we support. We are pleased to see that the Conservative Party have made a pledge to remove the 15-year rule and we think that will be helpful, because why would you get yourself on the electoral register if you were only going to be pushed off it a few years later? We would certainly urge the other political parties to follow suit. We think that will help. This is very much a focus of our work. We are working with the Electoral Commission to see how we can help to increase that number. We know that efforts were made before the European elections to get British voters to vote over here. There is some disappointment all round I think in terms of how effective it was, and we stand ready to help and we believe that we can help to push that number much higher than was achieved in the elections. So we are absolutely listening to this because for us it is about participation, it is about engagement and we need the contribution, we need the voices of British people who live abroad to be heard. Also I have to say, increasingly, there are a number of issues that are decided here that directly affect them, to do with pensions, to do with healthcare, and they need to be represented. That is why it is so important to get them to register to vote.
Mr Chope
Thank you very much. We are both on the same page on this. I am asking about this because your written evidence does deal with the other side of the issue so, rather than ask you to repeat your written evidence, I would be grateful if you could spell out what specifically you think can and should be done to increase the participation of British citizens currently resident in the rest of Europe.
Roger Casale
We have been through very closely with the Electoral Commission the steps that they took before the European parliamentary elections. I have to say they worked very hard and they did a lot of very sensible things and I think they achieved quite a lot, so I would not criticise them for what they did. Trying to do it all from London is a little bit like sending a Morse code signal from Beachy Head to France on a foggy night. I think where we can help is actually getting under the skin of communities in the European member states themselves, connecting with the British diaspora who are there. Not least because, of course, British people do read things like the Algarve Daily where you can read regularly about New Europeans I am pleased to say. Of course they are also tuned into the media, the television, radio, and press in the nations where they live. For example, I will be in Bulgaria in a few weeks’ time visiting parliament and I will be interviewed on television to talk about the work that we are doing here to enfranchise the Bulgarian community. There are 25,000 British nationals who live in Bulgaria and I am sure a lot of them watch Bulgarian television and so they will get the message, so I think that is important. With respect, I also think that what you are doing, as Members of Parliament, is very, very important. I can remember from my time as a Member of Parliament people would come to me and they would say, “We did not vote for you but we think you are representing us very well”. I am sure everyone on this Committee has had that experience. But of course if somebody has not voted at all, if they have not paid the ticket to our democracy, then that connection is much harder to make. So whether your expat constituents have voted for you or not, the fact that they have participated in the election will mean that they will feel that you can represent them and that their voice can be heard. I think once their voice starts to get heard, once they hear you representing them in Parliament, raising their concerns about the fact that, for example, they cannot open a bank account unless they have a UK address, that the tax rules are changing in relation to pensions, that it is more difficult for them to move their pensions overseas, that will encourage them to register and to participate more because they will have a representative. Finally, I would make the point about the importance of civil society. The first thing I would do if we were asked—as we hope we will be through the work we are doing with the Electoral Commission to raise the participation of British expats abroad—is I would go to talk to Age Concern in Spain. Age Concern have opened an office in Spain because they have a very large number of British widows who are there who are perhaps in difficult circumstances, who need to access social care, healthcare, have pension issues. I will talk to civil society organisations and say to them, “Yes, Age Concern have opened an office there exactly for this reason. I will talk to them and ask them to carry the message about how important it is also for people to register to vote.” So we have to get at it from both ends. We can send the message out from London but that will only get so far. We need to get at it from the other end as well. I see Members of Parliament have a central role to play because in the end the biggest reason for somebody to vote, whoever they vote for, is that by participating they feel that that person can subsequently represent them. If you can show that that is what you are doing by taking up their issues—and I know, Mr Chope, that that is something that you have done—that would be very helpful. We are very happy to interview you, to put you on our website, to put stuff out through social media across Europe so that people understand, and I know Greg Clark the Minister has done that as well. This is the way to make people realise that, yes, it does make sense for them to go to the trouble to do it. We need to make it easier for them too but in the end the incentive is a really powerful thing. Mr Chope, you are the incentive because you can demonstrate that you will represent them, whether they vote for you or not. So long as they participate, you will speak up for them in Parliament and raise their concerns. I think if we get that message across it will help to go a long way to redress this pathetic level—I am sorry to use that word but it is—15,848 compared to 2.2 million. There are 5 million worldwide, so there is plenty of work to be done.
Mr Turner
You have just referred to what I was going to ask you, namely about those people who are not in the EU. Why do you limit yourself the EU?
Roger Casale
We don’t, but there is only so much one organisation can do. We have a partner organisation called European Citizens Abroad who are based in the United States. They are reaching out to British citizens and citizens of other member states around the world internationally. There is a huge European and British diaspora around the world and we think it is a much underutilised resource. They are people who are very often very enterprising, through whom one can also make all sorts of other connections that are valuable to the UK. But our focus has been very much on these two groups of people so far: the British citizens, the 2.2 million we estimate it to be in other European member states, and the other side of that, the 2.3 million European citizens who are here. But absolutely, the same applies to British citizens around the world. We need to reach out to them. I have Italian blood. I am quarter Italian and the Italians do this very, very well. When I was a Member of Parliament, I was invited back to Italy to speak in the Italian Chamber of Deputies, because they were reaching out to members of parliament with Italian origins in parliaments around the world, as a way of soft power, as well as cultural diplomacy, but this is another issue. I think that there is a tremendous resource if we show that we want to connect and engage with that resource. The central way of doing that is by enfranchising, registering and making people participate in elections. I think there is everything to be gained.
Mr Turner
So there is New Europeans, which I take it is European, covering the EU and others. Who are the others?
Roger Casale
In the British case we estimate there are 2.2 million British citizens who live in other EU member states and then 2.8 million who are in the United States and Australia.
Mr Turner
Is there a body like yours that—
Roger Casale
There is an organisation called European Citizens Abroad, which is based in the United States, who we work with. There is another organisation run out of Denmark called Europeans Throughout the World. It is nothing to do with the European Union as such. We are simply talking about the fact that citizens of other member states of the European Union live here, are building their lives here, sending their children to school here, building their businesses here and we want to engage with them. We want them to participate fully. As far as European elections are concerned, they can either vote here or they can vote in their own member states, but it is about participation and engagement. Many British people prefer to exercise their civil rights and their political rights here. That is fine, so we want to encourage that too. What we don’t want are people to not have a voice, not be able to participate.
Mr Turner
I am still not absolutely clear. Who covers the countries that are not part of Europe, by which I mean the EU.
Roger Casale
Who covers that?
Mr Turner
Yes.
Roger Casale
I don’t know. The way that we try to cover it is through partnership with other organisations, simply because there is only so much work we can take on. The two organisations that we work with: one is called European Citizens Abroad and the other is called Europeans Throughout the World. We also work with Conservatives Abroad, Liberal International, Labour International and they have an international reach. That is a global reach.
Mr Turner
Are you publicly or privately funded or a combination or what?
Roger Casale
We are run by volunteers and we are funded through private donations. You can find the form on our website and we would be very grateful for any help with that. We also have programmes that are grant funded, so we have to bid in order to do that work. The kind of work that we are talking about here, in terms of registering people to vote, is very resource intensive but we believe that we give very, very good value for money.
Paul Flynn
You are very generous in your praise of Comrade Christopher. Are other parties doing the same? Are there prominent people in the Labour and Lib Dem parties?
Roger Casale
In respect of the British expat vote or in respect of European citizens here? I think in respect of the British expat vote, we would like to see the Labour Party and the Liberal Democrats follow the Conservative Party down the road of seeking to abolish the 15-year rule. On enfranchising European citizens living in the UK, there I would almost put a curse on all the houses in a sense. I think none of the parties are really doing enough to promote this participation. The Labour Party does do things. It has Labour Friends of Italy as Labour friends, which is good but I think there is much, much more that could be done and I would urge all the parties to do it. Because, Chairman, with respect, they are missing a trick. There will be regional elections in 2016 for the Welsh Assembly and for London. In fact, all over Britain and the EU, citizens will all have the vote in this. So I think it makes sense for all political parties to reach out and engage because there is potentially a large political payoff for doing so. We stand ready to work with any party and all parties and none to encourage that engagement. What we want to see is political parties reaching out to this constituency, engaging with them, encouraging them to register and to participate and try to win their vote. Traditionally this is something that has perhaps been done at European elections, but what has happened is that we had a European election in 2009 and a census in 2010, and it wasn’t until the 2010 census that we really picked up how large this number was of EU citizens, non-British EU citizens who live in the UK. So the 2014 European election was the first opportunity to go and actively seek their vote, which is why we ran our voter registration campaign so strongly. I think there is another opportunity in 2016 with the regional elections, and I would like to see all political parties stepping up to the plate a bit more and doing a bit better and the biggest gainers will be the ones who do that best.
Paul Flynn
There are large concentrations in many constituencies of particularly people from Eastern Europe, of Czechs in certain areas, Slovaks, and the Poles, who do not have any deeply rooted loyalty to any particular parties. Can you think of any examples when this proved to be beneficial? I recall one campaign where one of the candidates, a former MP, was a speaker of an Eastern European language and as it happened he did not win the seat, but he did calculate that it would bring him in a couple of thousand votes; other factors were involved. In order to encourage this approach to get more people involved, are there any examples you can quote of having a group of people from another country that was larger than the normal majority in seats where they have actually affected the result?
Roger Casale
In Southampton, which is a city of about 200,000 electors, the Polish adult population there is more than 20,000, so if you can mobilise the Polish vote in one direction that is 10% of the electorate. In Lincoln at the local elections in 2014 there were a number of Polish candidates who stood as Polish candidates and they did not get on terribly well. I think what I would say to you is that our research has shown, because we do surveys with the help of, for example, the Polish Federation of Great Britain or the Italian equivalent organisation, where we ask people about their voting intentions. We get a similar sort of spread to what you would think of in the rest of the population. In fact, we even found some Polish people who were going to vote for UKIP. So I think Polish people, French people and German people living in the UK are not from Mars or Venus. They are just from around the corner. They look and feel and speak just like us. They watch British television. They read UK papers. They also read the Polish papers. So we have done a lot of work. We have a team of translators translating our message into Polish and pushing it out through Polish papers. But in terms of where they are going to vote, well, your guess is as good as mine. It is the same as the British person who lives next door. Some of them will vote Conservative. Some of them will vote Labour. Just because they are Polish, they are not all going to vote one way, and I think that is a very important point to grasp.
Paul Flynn
I am grateful to you. Thank you.
Chair
Roger, in your written evidence you talked a lot about the problems of non-British EU citizens, essentially around the 2014 European parliamentary elections. What do you think is necessary if we are not to repeat that problem in 2019?
Roger Casale
Thank you, Chairman, because that gives me an opportunity to also bring my colleague, Samia, in. But just to set the scene for that very quickly, we were talking about the British citizens living in other EU member states where the number has gone last year to this year from 19,000 to 15,000. I am afraid to say it is on a completely different scale with the European citizens who are living and voting in the UK, because what has happened there is that we had 1,043,629 registered to vote in the European elections in the 2009 elections. But we have now discovered through our research that only 327,883—that is a fall of 815,746—were eligible to vote in the 2014 election. So there has been a catastrophic decline despite our best efforts early on this year to run our voter registration campaign, and other organisations were doing the same. There has been a catastrophic decline in the eligibility of EU citizens in this country to vote, and that is why we have been looking into this. We are very keen to push that number back up again. In order to do that we need to understand exactly what went wrong. Perhaps that is the opportunity to ask Samia to tell us a little bit about our “Vote Denied” report.
Samia Badani
As Roger said, about 80% of non-British EU nationals were not registered to vote in the European elections in 2014. So what we did was that in parallel we ran an online survey to try to understand the experience of voters, and we found different sorts of scenarios that could explain why we had the gap. I think it became clear to us that voters who were successful in 2009 were not aware that there was any additional administrative requirement. Some of them thought that they were automatically registered, so that may be the beginning of an explanation. But what we are really worried about is the trend we have seen of people who actually complied with the administrative requirement who turned up at the polling stations and were told that they were not registered. So, for the majority of our respondents the system was far too confusing. Yes, there was a lot of publicity around the European elections and I think there was no tailored information for EU nationals, so they thought—rightly or wrongly—that they were successfully registered when they received their polling cards and it was not until polling day that they realised there was an additional form that they should have completed. Needless to say, what we gathered from our respondents was that the election was of importance to them. I think as European nationals choosing your MEP you would like to know what your MEP stands for, so they were more motivated to go and vote I think. One person told us that the only reason they went to the polling station was not to vote for the local elections but for the European elections, and they could not vote. So we believe that we should have a simpler registration process. I do not think we can have a cumbersome system that excludes potential voters. I think people were denied a voting opportunity. I want to make the point that there is a difference between that and people actually going to vote. Being registered and being given an opportunity I think that is the main focus first. I think it is another debate to try to understand whether people would actually go and vote. I think being robbed of the opportunity was quite a concern for us.
Chair
Is this something you are taking up with the Electoral Commission and the Electoral Registration Office?
Roger Casale
Thank you, Chair. Yes, the Electoral Commission have said in their statutory report on the European elections that it was unacceptable—they used the word “unacceptable”—that so many non-British EU citizens who wanted to vote were unable to vote. With New Europeans, they are setting up a working group which will meet in early November to look at, yes, the causes. So we will look very closely at the research that Samia has done that we have presented to the Committee. If we may, Chairman, we will send a full version of our published report but also, crucially, the steps that we believe need to happen in order to push that number back up again from just over 300,000 back to where it was in 2009. What has happened is that, at a time when politicians in Europe have been talking about the importance of engaging with European citizens, and at a time when the number of EU citizens in the UK has gone up very strongly, the number who are actually registered to participate in the European elections has fallen off a cliff. We urgently need to redress that. The Electoral Commission will set up a group with New Europeans, with the Electoral Registration Officers and with other representatives to look at a project that will consider the changes in legislation. As Samia has said, we believe there needs to be a one step registration process for EU citizens, rather than the current two step process where the voter has to fill in the registration form but also a declaration to say that they will only vote in Britain, as opposed to voting in their home member state. The key thing is going to be the awareness campaign, the consultation that we will help them with through our relationships with community groups and through our programme of events around the country to drive that message through the communities themselves, so that we can push that number back up again.
Chair
Roger, Samia, thank you very much for coming today and thank you very much for your evidence. You are our last witnesses in this inquiry so you may be even more influential than you think.
Roger Casale
Thank you very much, Chairman.
Chair
Thank you very much. It has been a great pleasure to see you again, Roger. Voter engagement in the UK, HC 232