Policy Groups

Why they exist

It is not difficult to state what British citizens abroad want. It is considerably harder to state it in a form a minister could adopt.

Most of our issues have been argued for years by people who understood them thoroughly. The arguments were sound and they did not succeed, partly because the people making them could not vote, and partly because “this is unfair to us” is not a proposal. A minister needs something that survives contact with a domestic audience which has no particular sympathy for people who live abroad, a Treasury which will ask what it costs, and officials who will ask how it is administered.

So each policy group works to a two-part test:

1. Does it actually solve the problem? Not gesture at it, not mitigate the worst cases — solve it.
2. Could a UK politician sell it? To colleagues, to the press, and to voters who have never lived abroad.

The second test is where most proposals fail, and holding to it is the main discipline of the organisation. Our 20-country report exists largely to serve it: a recommendation is much easier to defend when several comparable countries already do it.

How they work

Groups are small, meet online across time zones, and are made up of members with direct experience of the issue — often alongside professional expertise in the relevant field. They gather evidence from branches, test proposals against the two-part standard, and produce material the Forum uses in meetings with MPs and at the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Citizens’ Rights.

How to join one

Policy group membership is open to BOVF members. When you join as a member you choose which groups you want to take part in, and existing members can change their selections at any time from the member area.

You do not need to be an expert. Direct experience of a problem is evidence, and a group made up entirely of specialists tends to produce proposals that only specialists find persuasive.