The Labour party has been accused of betraying British citizens living abroad by refusing to back a bill that would remove a time limit on their right to vote, the Guardian can reveal.

British expatriates lose their right to vote in UK elections after 15 years overseas. Extending votes to all expats with no time limit was a Conservative party manifesto promise in the 2017 election.

The overseas electors bill is being introduced into law as a private member’s bill sponsored by the Conservative MP Glyn Davies. It is working its way through parliament.

In a private letter to a campaigner for the bill, seen by the Guardian, Cat Smith, the shadow minister for voter engagement and youth affairs, said the party would not support the bill because it would involve too much administration.

“Abolishing the 15-year rule would completely overstretch electoral administrators who have described the sector as ‘pushed to the limit’,” Smith wrote in the letter to Harry Shindler, a 97-year-old war veteran in Italy who has campaigned on the issue since 1997.

“We believe that the current 15-year rule strikes the right balance between allowing expats to maintain strong links with the UK and ensuring the integrity of the electoral system,” she wrote.

Jane Golding, the chair of British in Europe, a coalition of UK citizens groups across the EU, said: “We are very disappointed that the Labour party appears to put administration and resources above democracy.

“More than 60% of the estimated 4.9 million British people living abroad could not vote in the [EU] referendum, which will change the face of the UK, despite being promised our vote back in 2015.



“The least the Labour party could do is support their right to a voice in the democratic process in the UK and seek to amend this bill or put forward another. The UK is way behind most of its neighbours and many countries in the rest of the world on this issue. The right to vote is a fundamental right of citizenship and Labour should not be opposed to ending the 15-year rule.”

Only an estimated 1.4 million of the 4.9 million British citizens of voting age who live overseas are eligible to vote in UK elections, because of the 15-year rule.

British expats are estimated to have among the lowest levels of voter registration of any group: only about 20% of eligible expats – 285,000 people – registered to vote for the June 2017 general election.

Shindler, a second world war veteran who has lived in Italy for 35 years, gave up the chance of Italian citizenship to fight his campaign for expat votes.

He is now considering resigning his party membership over the issue. “This is a very bad day for the Labour party,” he said. “I represent not just people in the Labour party but the whole community of people with British heritage who are living all over the world. If the party are going to put administrative issues above democracy then it is betraying them.”

Shindler recently won permission from an EU court to sue to try to overturn the referendum result. He argues that the Brexit outcome was invalid because he and 12 other long-term expatriates were denied a vote due to living abroad for more than 15 years.

The European court of justice will now hear his case, which argues that the EU was wrong to initiate a withdrawal procedure “without expatriate European citizens having had the opportunity to set out their views on the possible loss of their European citizenship”.

A recent study by the University of East Anglia found that 43% of local authorities experienced real-terms funding cuts to their budget for running elections between 2010-11 and 2015-16. According to survey responses from 254 local electoral authorities administrating the EU referendum, only a quarter of electoral officials said they had enough funding to support their work on the register.

The Electoral Commission has acknowledged concerns about the bill’s cost. In a briefing paper to MPs, it said: “Increasing the number of British citizens overseas who are eligible to be registered to vote will add strain to already stretched resources of electoral administrators … [There are] increasing challenges faced at a local level in delivering well-run elections.”