Despite Grant Shapps’ promise last year, the government rules out giving voting rights to British nationals living overseas for 15 years or more

The government has ruled out extending the right to vote in the upcoming EU referendum to all British citizens living abroad, despite a promise made by the Conservative party chairman that it would.

The EU referendum bill, which will be announced after the Queen’s speech on Wednesday, will make clear that the franchise – the people eligible to vote – will be the same as in general elections, which is adults from the age of 18, Irish and Commonwealth citizens resident in the UK, and British citizens who have lived abroad for less than 15 years.

This means that more than 1 million EU citizens living in Britain will not be able to vote, as they are in local elections, in what would be seen as a victory for Eurosceptic campaigners. The bill will also rule out giving the vote to 16- and 17-year-olds, an idea backed by Labour and the SNP.

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David Cameron will step up his pre-referendum campaign to win back more powers from Brussels on Monday evening when he hosts Jean-Claude Juncker, the president of the European commission, at his Chequers country residence for dinner.



The Eurosceptic Tory MP John Redwood was pleased with the franchise outlined in the bill. “It would be quite wrong to use this election to start making changes to the electorate,” the MP for Wokingham told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme on Monday. “I don’t think it’s the time to start experimenting with who should vote. What we need to do is get over the main arguments.”



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Also speaking on Today, Laura Sandys, a former Tory MP and chair of the pro-EU campaign group European Movement, argued that the outcome of the referendum would affect British citizens living in other EU member states more than anybody, but said she thought the issue of extending the right to vote to 16-year-olds was the most important issue.

“If you’re talking about general elections, those are reversible. Coming out of the European Union is an irreversible decision that needs to be done by the largest franchise we can respectively put forward,” she said.



UK nationals who have been resident overseas for 15 years or more will not be eligible to vote, despite assurances from the Conservative party chairman, Grant Shapps, last year that they would be.

“If the Conservative party wins the next general election, we will remove this cap [on the number of years a person can live abroad before losing voting rights] and extend it to a full right as a British citizen to vote in British elections for life,” he said in September last year.

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The last Labour government reduced the number of years a British citizen could live abroad while still retaining voting rights to 15 years from 20 years in 2000, a decision that has been subject to concerted campaigning from expat groups, including a number of Conservative party supporting groups.

The EU referendum bill, which will set out who will be eligible to vote, will be introduced to parliament on Thursday and include provision for there to be a referendum on Britain’s membership of the EU before 2017, as promised by the Conservative party before the general election.

The Labour party said on Sunday that it plans to join forces with the SNP and exploit the government’s relative weakness in the Commons and the Lords to try to ensure 16- and 17-year-olds are allowed to vote in the referendum.

A Labour source said that, given teenagers have a “tremendous vested interest in whether or not we stay in the EU or leave”, there could be a strong appetite for amending the EU referendum bill in the Lords, even if Labour and the SNP fail to recruit the relatively small number of Tory rebels they would need to defeat the government in the Commons.