Part of the debate – in the Senedd at 2:37 pm on 4 June 2019.
May I ask the Trefnydd for two statements from the Government? First of all, of course, we'll all be aware that many EU citizens had failed to vote during the European elections recently. That is a cause of concern for each and every one of us. I know that at least 3,500 have made official complaints across the UK that they had got to the polling station and been rejected. There will be far more who won't have made an official complaint, and there will be yet more who won't have received the relevant paperwork before even getting to the polling station. It’s not a new problem—there were problems in 2014, but they were far worse this time.
Simple steps could have been taken and could have been to contact directly by letter and e-mail those constituents—as some local authorities did, by the way—but also to offer the UC1 forms that had to be filled in order to say that you were voting here rather than elsewhere, and to provide those not only online but in the polling stations themselves, where they could have been filled in on the spot. Two simple steps, I think, that could have prevented the great misdemeanour that many constituents faced. So, could I ask for the Government to make it clear what contact you've had with the UK Government, and with local authorities, in order to express the concern that many of us have on this injustice, for those who were not allowed to vote, and in order to ensure that that won't happen again?