PARLIAMENTARY WRITTEN QUESTION
Electoral Register: British Nationals Abroad (18 June 2014)

To ask the hon. Member for South West Devon, representing the Speaker's Committee on the Electoral Commission, what recent estimate the Electoral Commission has made of the number of British citizens registered as overseas voters and the number of such citizens eligible for registration.

Asked by:
Sir Christopher Chope (Conservative)

Every British citizen who has been registered to vote in the UK within the last 15 years is eligible to vote in UK Parliamentary (general) elections and European Parliamentary elections.

The Electoral Commission informs me that the most recent figure showed that there were 15,848 registered overseas voters on the UK electoral registers.

The most recent estimates of the total number of UK citizens living abroad are of 5.5 million (The Institute for Public Policy Research in 2006) and 4.7 million (The World Bank in 2010). However, it is not possible from this data to establish how many citizens living abroad were registered to vote in the UK within the last 15 years and are therefore eligible to vote from abroad. Even in the absence of a reliable estimate, it is nonetheless clear that the number of UK citizens living abroad who are eligible to register to vote is considerably more than those currently registered.

The Commission runs public awareness campaigns to encourage British expatriates to register to vote; the most recent took place ahead of the European elections this year.

Answered by:
Sir Gary Streeter (Conservative)
24 June 2014