I oppose the granting of rights to vote on the basis of being a foreigner in this country who is not prepared to take the ultimate step of taking out citizenship. In medieval times, all citizens' rights ultimately derived from the concept of allegiance to the monarch. Well, we've moved on, in democratic terms, from that, but, ultimately, this is all about allegiance to one's country. And it is a fundamental doing of damage, in my view, to that concept of national cohesion that that represents.

After all, the right to vote is one of the most important of the rights of citizenship, and I think you've got to have a long-term commitment to this country in order to be worthy of it. If you're only resident in this country for a relatively short period of time and you have no intention, possibly, of making your residence in this country permanent, I, personally, do not see why you should be given the right to determine the country's long-term interests.

This is an unusual provision internationally as well. Most EU countries do not grant rights such as we're being asked to grant this afternoon. Certainly, the bigger countries—France, Germany, Italy, Poland—none of them grants the right to vote in their elections to foreigners. I believe it's a fundamental devaluing of citizenship and, indeed, of the concept of naturalisation, which, of course, changes the legal circumstances in which one lives.

I think that, ultimately, this is all about your commitment to the country in which you live; it's not simply a transaction that you get in exchange for paying taxes. After all, all sorts of people pay taxes simply by the fact of purchasing something in a shop and paying value added tax on it, but that, in itself, shouldn't be a justification for granting them a vote. I believe that this is a very solemn issue, which we are treating in a relatively trivial way.

Of course, we all know why this is being done, because, as a result of the shock that Brexit gave to the metropolitan elites, this was one of the things that they decided to do in order, perhaps, to make a second referendum produce a different result. This is a relic of two years ago, when it was developed as part of the Labour Party's policy. I believe that that is a reprehensible reason for making a change of this kind, which has very wide repercussions indeed. But Labour's dwindling voter base, of course, has had to be shored up in various ways. Mass migration under the Blair Government was almost explicitly brought in in order to, as Andrew Neather, who was an adviser to the Blair Government, wrote in a moment of candour in an article, I think, in the Evening Standard—he said that mass migration was intended, even if it wasn't its main purpose, to

'rub the right's nose in diversity and render their arguments out of date.'

I believe that this notion of extending voting rights to those who fundamentally do not have allegiance to our country is part of that agenda. It is to bolster the potential for those whom the Labour Party think are going to choose them, or other parties of the left, rather than parties of the right. So, fundamentally, I think that this strikes at the very heart of British democracy. For that reason, I hope that it will be defeated. Thank you.