Question to the Department for Levelling Up, Housing & Communities:

To ask the Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities, how many overseas electors will be eligible to register to vote in the event that the 15 year rule is removed under the proposals set out in the Elections Bill.

The Elections Bill Impact Assessment estimates the removal of the 15 year rule will increase the number of British citizens abroad who are eligible to register to vote from 0.9 million - 1.1 million people to 3.2 million - 3.4 million people in 2023/24. It is not possible to accurately estimate the future numbers of overseas electors, due to the uncertainty over what proportion of the newly enfranchised will choose to register. The central estimate in the Impact Assessment for the Elections Bill considers the scenario in which 550,000 overseas electors are registered to vote in 2024 - an increase of 320,000 compared to the numbers of overseas electors registered at the time of the 2019 general election (by way of context, there were 47.6 million UK Parliamentary electors registered at the 2019 general election).

This suggests a potential uplift in the number of persons on the Parliamentary electoral register in the region of 0.7%, and such numbers would be distributed across the country.