Conservative party chairman Grant Shapp's announcement yesterday raised a wry eyebrow, but definitely not a smile, in our household. Well used to seeing the party politicking on every media outlet before any relevant vote - in this case the 2015 General Election - like many expats I am too long in the tooth to take much notice of any of the promises being made in order to gain my vote. Naturally, this story has already prompted the inevitable raft of comments on social media spewing out the same old rhetoric... "they've abandoned the UK, why should they have a say?" being the most repeated. And were it not for the fact that I have been an expat for the past eight years, I confess that I would probably be asking the same question.
Instead, I can answer that question quite plainly: many expats continue to pay taxes and NI contributions to the UK, or have a "sufficient link" (UK Gov speak!) by way of receipt of State Pension. But after 15 years, despite the Treasury still collecting these funds, the British expat is totally cut off from having any say in the governmental issues of their homeland.
This is in complete opposition to most (but admittedly not all) other European countries, i.e. France who provides voting facilities in the UK for their nationals living and working there. Even those countries further afield, i.e. the USA, have a voting provision for their expats living in the UK. And no, British expats living in other EU countries do not have the right to vote in the general elections of their residential country!
Also, for the 3.3 million vote-eligible British expats worldwide, the UK system is deliberately complicated and antiquated - something that ensures that only a few thousand die-hards are ever registered to vote. It would seem, however, that there is change in the air, with some recent improvements made for registering online and the Electoral Commission, led by HoC Speaker John Bercow, seeking for an electronic, online system that could not only appeal to British expats around the world, but possibly engage younger voters in the UK.
However, even after explaining this to some, the argument still rings out that expats have cut their ties with their homeland. On the contrary, most expats maintain a very close-knit relationship with their homeland through strong family bonds, regular visits and financial ties.
Something that it is difficult for many UK residents to recognise, is that being an expat is no longer the exclusive domain of the rich. Any one of you reading this could become an expat. We are expats. We live less than an hour from the UK. We do not live in a chateau. We have not been blessed with a Lottery win (yet!). It was simply something we chose to do after 40 years of hard graft and dues paid. Time for a quiet life. Oh how we wish. Instead we are the minority group that, if targeted in such a fashion in the UK, would see the headlines screaming out accusations of us being the victims of discrimination, racism, sexism... you name it. But no, we are expats... turncoats of the worse kind (*irony*).
Anyway, that is our life example, but many British citizens of a younger, working age may head off for a few years, then return to retire
back in the UK - but will be disenfranchised as a voter if their career keeps them away for over 15 years. Pensioners, who have retired for a quiet life in another European country, receive their State Pensions - and there are some green-eyed monsters living in the UK that say even this is wrong. That if you do not live in the UK, you should have no right to a State Pension. So should we do that to all the OAPs who have left their county's of birth or work and headed to Cornwall for their retirement?
Even those expats not quite old enough to draw pensions continue to pay their dibs to the UK Treasury coffers, in the form of National Insurance Contributions. After all, British expats have no right to draw a pension in their country of residence if they have never worked there. Would you agree to immigrants arriving straight off the boat and claiming a British State Pension? No, of course not. So we do not expect the French/Spanish/Italian/etc governments to supplement ours.
Then there are those British citizens who have spent their working lives serving the British public, in our schools, hospitals, emergency services and Armed Forces, who receive their pensions, as rightly so for the contributions made. These pensions, unlike the State Pension, are
only taxable in the UK. For that
THERE IS ABSOLUTELY NO CHOICE.
So, many expats have paid into the UK coffers all their working lives, some continue to pay NI contributions, others are still liable for Income Tax on their public pensions... and after 15 years...
NO VOTE, NO VOICE, NO REPRESENTATION
So, if you have got to this point and are asking why I am denigrating the Conservative party's offer to lift this restriction, I will tell you why (hold onto your hats):
Firstly, I believe that David Cameron is only making this proviso to garner the votes of existing eligible expats (like us - still eligible to vote in General Elections until 2021) to get his party into power next year. As we all know, politicians will say
ANYTHING to get a vote... note, Clegg and the tuition fee debacle. And why wait until after the May 2015 election? Why not now? The Lib Dems have already made this promise and, in all likelihood, even some Labour MPs would support the cause.
Secondly, the same political party offering this to expats have already announced their intention to remove the right of British expat pensioners living in the EU to receive the Winter Fuel Payment from 2015... after they sweep to power on our proposed votes! This is despite Cameron's 2010 pledge that his party would never take away this benefit from State Pensioners (and he did not specify only UK SPs!). Okay, another contentious issue that many will decry with "
but they all live in the sunshine, they don't need money for heating" - an argument backed up every year with a particularly spiteful and malicious Mac cartoon depicting rich expats using their payment for stocking up their booze supply. Oh how I wish that were true.
Yes, the Mediterranean countries do have temperate winters, I am not going to argue with anyone on that matter. But what I have taken extreme exception to is Iain Duncan Smith's skewed and deliberately manipulated average annual temperature dataset, whereby he claims that France is
HOTTER than Italy... is intending to retain the winter fuel payment for expats in Italy... and used a particularly sleekit (Scottish word meaning sly, crafty) method of comparing said annual average temperatures with the south-west of England (the thermometer, excuse the pun, for deciding who is eligible to receive WFP) - by including the French overseas departments (DOMS)... all based in the Caribbean and Indian Ocean where only a handful of OAP British expats live!
Thirdly, and I am going back in time a bit here, so bear with me. In 1992 the then-Conservative government, in conjunction with complying with EU social security rules, had to decide which UK-based benefits could be exportable if eligible British citizens moved to live in another EU country under Freedom of Movement. They chose to place Disability Living Allowance - care and mobility elements - along with Attendance Allowance and Carers Allowance in the "basket" as non-exportable. Now I am not going to bore anyone with the legal ramifications, but after a protracted, expensive (to the UK tax payer) legal case, the European Court of Justice decided, in 2007, that DLA (care element only), AA and CA
WERE EXPORTABLE and should be paid to any eligible British citizen who had had those benefits removed when moving to another EU country.
However, even today the UK Government is still spending tax payers money (and remember, expats are tax payers too) in its attempts
not to reimburse owed monies to some eligible claimants. The UK Government (under Labour in it's dying days of 2010) did finally accept the European Court of Justice ruling, but the current coalition government continues to procrastinate - and defend at great cost - certain legal challenges, including, in 2011, that of maintaining the DLA mobility element as non-exportable by taking the case successfully to the European Court of Justice again, using tax payers money.
So presumably (and, yes I am being sarcastic here) any disabled, wheelchair-bound British citizen, will be able to throw away their wheels and walk the minute they land on the shores of another EU country. I don't think so, Mr Cameron. And I don't think, despite your own family sufferings, that you have
ANY idea of the difficulties of living with disability if you can allow IDS to be so ferocious in his attack on that particular group of people, both at home and abroad. Oh but wait, it's okay to send all that Child Benefit out of the country to children who have never lived in the UK and whose parents have barely made a fingernail dent in the contributions they have paid into your coffers!
Finally - yes, you can breath a sigh of relief now - in the HoC debate on the EU in/out referendum, support was given to the British expat by several MPs, including Mike Gapes, Labour, Ilford South, who proposed an amendment for British expats to be allowed to vote in the proposed 2017 referendum. After all, a withdrawal from the EU will affect us all. Mr. Gapes' amendments were not called to a division. So, unlike our counterparts living in the "UK State" of Gibraltar, no vote for the EU-resident British expat in a referendum that could see the withdrawal of our rights to healthcare, frozen State Pensions, requirements for residential permits, no right to exportable benefits, non-acceptance of educational and professional qualifications... the list goes on.
There is no doubt the Conservatives are terrified of the UKIP momentum and are seeking any way they can to ensure that the removal van is not needed at Number 10 in May 2015.
USING EXPATS AS A POLITICAL PAWN IS NOT ONLY CYNICAL, IT IS DOWNRIGHT OFFENSIVE.
UKIP want to raise the UK drawbridge. If the Conservatives continue to play their nasty game, they'd better be prepared to roll out a red carpet across that drawbridge and welcome their expats home. I just hope that their plans include the necessary funding for housing, benefits, NHS facilities, etc, for our return.
Links:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/expat/expatnews/11068438/Tories-pledge-to-give-vote-back-to-all-expats.html
http://uklibdems.eu/en/article/2013/684052/we-want-our-votes-back
http://www.connexionfrance.com/news_articles.php?id=5217
http://www.connexionfrance.com/expat-wins-care-benefit-appeal-10343-news-article.html
http://www.thisfrenchlife.com/deuxsevres/2013/11/european-inout-referendum-gibraltar-in-the-rest-of-us-out.html
