European Union Referendum Bill

Debate between Baroness Suttie and Lord Davies of Stamford

Wednesday 28th October 2015 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Suttie (LD)]

My Lords, I agree with the comments of the noble Lord, Lord Foulkes, on the Scottish experience in September last year. At a time when there are genuine concerns about voter apathy and lower voter turnout, the Scottish experience showed that you can engage and enthuse young people to believe that their vote really will make a difference. All the 16 and 17 year-olds to whom I have spoken were extremely positive about being able to vote in that referendum.

With this high turnout and higher levels of voter engagement achieved, it would be a backward step politically, not least in the Scottish context, not to include the same 16 and 17 year-olds in the referendum on the EU. If the referendum is held in the summer of next year, we could potentially face a situation in which a young Scot, who had just turned 16 in August 2014, for example, and so was able to vote in the Scottish referendum, would find themselves unable to vote on the future membership of the EU next summer. Can the Minister confirm whether the Government have given due consideration to the potential political impact, as well as the factual one, of this group of young Scots? Have they assessed the numbers involved in Scotland in this situation?

[Lord Davies of Stamford]

My Lords, there is no way, either empirically or by reference to theory, in which one can reach what might be an agreed doctrine on the right age at which people should begin to enter into a parliamentary franchise. We could debate the matter all night as to whether it should be 16, 17, 18 or some other age, or why it should be one particular and not another. We would never come to a definitive conclusion.

If we debated what have to be the essential qualities of a law, and especially the essential qualities of a constitutional law or rule, we would come to a definitive conclusion. By definition a constitutional law or rule must have a very wide degree of support. It must have legitimacy. That is the essence of an effective constitution. You cannot have legitimacy if you have a law that is contradictory and incoherent. At present we have a law or set of rules that are utterly incoherent.

It is not possible to find a respectable argument to say to a young Scot, in exactly the sort of case cited in the noble Baroness’s intervention a moment ago, that they had the right to vote in the Scottish referendum on independence and the break-up of the United Kingdom but no right to vote in the referendum on the future of our membership of the European Union. I have yet to hear a respectable argument that could be delivered to such a young person. If somebody on either side of the House has one I would be delighted to give way immediately so that we could hear what that respectable argument is. I simply do not think that it exists.

It is also not a respectable argument to say to a young English person, “The Scots were able to vote in an important referendum but you are not capable of exercising the same degree of choice as a Scottish person of the same age”. That would be a hideous thing to say to anybody. Of course this applies equally in Wales. The noble Lord, Lord Wigley, gave us a good example. Young people in Wales are now being told that they have a right to vote on whether the Welsh Government should have tax-raising powers, but not on whether Wales and the United Kingdom should remain part of the European Union. On what possible basis can one make that distinction? What possible respectable argument could one use in saying that to such a young person, who would quite rightly be challenging that kind of judgment?

At the moment we have complete incoherence, which we should not have because it is deeply damaging to the legitimacy of our constitution. The logic of what I am saying means that we should also change the voting age for Westminster general elections. One thing that we absolutely should not do is keep the present franchise for the referendum on the European Union, cutting out 16 to 18 year-olds throughout the United Kingdom, including Scotland, and then a year or two later change the voting age for Westminster elections. In other words, we should not deliberately close the door on a referendum that, as had rightly been said, affects people for the next 40 or 50 years—this will not affect us in the House in this time, but it will affect those young people—and then say that these people can vote now in Westminster elections after all: we have waited a couple of years but have cut you out of the referendum, which is even more strategically important for the country. That would be an indefensible thing to do.