EU Referendum: We didn’t actually ask for a vote!

Wednesday 24 February 2016

Islanders won’t be getting the chance to vote in the EU referendum, and it turns out we didn’t even ask for one, even though the UK government asked for our views.

The Island’s External Relations Minister moved to clarify the position in the States Assembly this week, following claims from a former Guernsey politician, Tony Webber, that Jersey, Guernsey and the Isle of Man didn’t request that Islanders be included, even though they had the opportunity to do so.

Facing questions on the topic in the States, Senator Sir Philip Bailhache confirmed that no request had been made to take part: 

“There was no extensive process of discussion on voting arrangements. Crown Dependencies were consulted, along the lines of, ‘...this is what we are proposing to do, do you have any observations?’ To us it seemed that the correct position was that reached in 1975 (on the referendum to gauge support for UK’s continued membership of the EEC, in which Jersey didn’t take part).”

A written statement issued by the Chief Minister’s department, gave further details as to what happened:

“There was no approach from the UK Government to seek Jersey’s participation in the UK referendum.

The franchise in the UK Referendum Bill is a matter for the UK Parliament, which decided that the franchise will be the same as the franchise for a UK general election.”

But the statement also suggests that a late approach was made to see if Jersey could take part, but by then it was too late, as the decision had been made:

“We contacted the UK Government in the light of recent calls for the UK to extend the franchise, and it has been confirmed to us that the franchise for the UK’s referendum has been decided, and is not liable to be changed.”

A campaign to extend voting rights to Jersey, Guernsey and the Isle of Man has been launched by the movie actor, John Ryhs-Davies. So far his petition has received 1,249 signatures – it needs 10,000 before the UK government will issue a response – if the petition gets to 100,000 signatures the petition would be considered for debate in parliament.

You can sign the petition here.