Overseas Representation - How the Italians do it...

During the summer,  the All Party Parliamentary Group on citizens' rights ran a seminar on Overseas Constituencies where we heard from our own Manuela Perteghella MP, Elena Remigi, UK Councillor for the CGIE (General Council for Italians abroad) and for ComItEs London (Committee for Italians abroad) and Tom Brake from Unlock Democracy. There was also a representative from Labour International and I spoke briefly on LibDem Policy.

Overseas Constituencies are the policy of the LibDems and we agreed at the last Autumn conference that the Government should ...Enable all UK citizens living abroad to vote for MPs in separate overseas constituencies, and to participate in UK referendums.

Elena Remigi's description of the Italian system made it clear just how far the UK needs to go to achieve better representation of its overseas citizens but it also highlighted the need to be clear about the aims of our policy and to be certain the means do not obscure the aims.

Currently each Italian consular region is supported by an elected Committee of Italians Abroad elected from residents in that consular area; there are three for the UK. In addition to her role on the London committee, Elana is also a councillor on the General Council for Italians abroad (CGIE) that represents the interests of the Italian diaspora to the Italian government. In addition, Italians living abroad return 8 deputies to the Italian parliament and 4 senators. The current system has been in place since 2020.

During its two annual plenary assemblies, the Council examines the problems of Italian communities abroad, formulates opinions, proposals and recommendations in terms of state or regional legislative or administrative initiatives, international agreements and EU provisions concerning Italian communities abroad.

Of particular note is that the CGIE - presided over by the foreign minister - was set up in 1989 and thus pre-dates the parliamentary representation by 30 years!

In particular, the CGIE formulates an obligatory opinion on the government’s objectives regarding state financial support for Italian communities abroad, long-term programmes and financial arrangements in respect of educational policy, professional training and social and welfare protection, criteria for the allocation of funds to national associations, charitable organisations, professional training bodies, press and information bodies, radio and television programmes for the Italian communities abroad and  guidelines for the reforming of the consular, education and social services.

Our policy of creating overseas constituencies is the basis of trying to make the government of the day more responsive to the special situation of citizens established abroad. Currently in the UK, there is no specific attempt to review legislation or executive decisions in the light of their impact on Brits Abroad. Although many decisions seem to be taken deliberately against our interests, more likely is that the existence of overseas citizens is simply forgotten.

Tom Brake spoke on how we should campaign, especially in the light of an upcoming Elections Bill we think will be introduced this parliament by the Labour Government. Frankly, the immediate prospects for an Italian system of representation seem remote in the extreme. Even the concept of locally resident UK citizens having input to the consular activities of their local consul is far away from Foreign Office thinking and the upcoming spending cuts demanded of the FO make these sort of scenarios even less likely.

Overseas constituencies are not Labour policy, never mind the policy of the government. It seems likely that whilst issues such as the non-indexing of pensions remain policy - governments are unlikely to wish to properly franchise voters who can be activated to protest against it!

Although as with Italy, millions of citizens have left the UK and could and should be an important resource for the country and its soft power projection; the more prevalent view seems to be that at best they should be ignored or at worst that they are tax-exiles who do not deserve any hearing.

We will need to work hard on a cultural and attitudinal change to achieve better representation of Brits Abroad; whether overseas constituencies will be the driver or result of that change is hard to say.

While we are waiting, there are steps that we can take now to raise awareness of our issues in Parliament and to position the LibDems as the natural representatives of citizens abroad.

Our Parliamentary party should form a small committee of MPs to review all upcoming legislation from the viewpoint of its impact on citizens abroad. This committee could also act as a centre of expertise on general issues concerning citizens abroad and be able to advise MPs in their dealings with constituents outside the UK.

We can show how a small number of representatives in Parliament for overseas citizens could work and pave the way for future direct elections.