European Union Referendum Bill

Baroness Young of Old Scone Excerpts

Wednesday 28th October 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Blencathra]

I did not make that speech. I was in no position to make it. I cannot recall what my views were. I was not a Member of Parliament then and I certainly was not in this place. My point of view now is based on what the law currently is for the age of majority and why Governments and both Houses of Parliament have accepted 18 and granted all these rights to people only when they reach the age of 18.

Let me briefly conclude on this point. Until you are aged 18 you cannot open a bank account in your own name. You cannot even get a tattoo, buy fireworks or make a will. You cannot even carry an organ donor card or use a sunbed for tanning. You cannot stand as a Member of Parliament until you are aged 18. If we lower the voting age to 16 are we then going to allow people to stand as a Member of Parliament when they are 16? There are a range of other examples but I will not bore the House with them.

[Baroness Young of Old Scone (Lab)]

I was born in Scotland and I was brought up in a Scottish Conservative household. When I was 16 I thought that the election result, when a Labour Government was returned after 13 years of what is now known as Tory misrule, was the end of the world. I had been taught to believe that. Two years later I was canvassing for Labour in the election.

What changed me was that at the age of 16 I could get pregnant. At that time I could not get birth control in this country at that age. During that period, when I was aged 16 or 17, the first Brook Advisory Centre opened in Edinburgh. I could then go on the pill. Quite frankly, it was probably the best thing that ever happened to me. The knowledge that I could not get proper support for being sexually active—I had had a good Scottish diet and was very precocious for my age—was what politicised me. I have no qualms about announcing that here tonight. It is a real insult to people aged 16 and 17 to believe that, when they are in a position where they make crucial decisions about their own future, they cannot make a crucial decision about the future of this country in Europe.

[Lord Blencathra]

There is a lot of detail there and it is a route that I dare not step down. Whatever language or terminology I try carefully to choose, I will inevitably offend someone somewhere. That is not a risk I wish to take. I simply say that the fact that one can get the pill at the age of 16—rightly so—is no justification for saying one should therefore have the right to vote.

I concluded with a list of all the things that Parliament has decided that people can do only when they are aged 18. Some sound so trivial, but if that is what Parliament decides, it is perfectly legitimate to say that the age of majority is fixed at 18 and that we should not lower it for the purposes of this referendum.

Just because young Scottish people aged 16 and 17 were enthusiastic, it is irrelevant to deciding on this matter. Politically, we know why the SNP Government lowered the age. It is because their private polling suggested that 16 and 17 year-olds would be twice as likely to vote for independence as for staying in the union. You can bet your bottom dollar—or your pound Scots—that if their private polling had been the other way around, the Scottish Government would not have lowered the voting age to 16. They would have kept it.

If these amendments are passed, accepted by the other place and become law, we will have 16 and 17 year-old Commonwealth and Irish citizens also being granted the right to vote, because they are included on the register. If some noble Lords’ amendments to include European citizens were passed as well, we would have 16 and 17 year-old children from European countries also being allowed to vote. If we get a close result with that scenario, I think a lot of British people would be outraged that a majority of 200,000 to 300,000, either way, had swung the vote, because of the inclusion of 16 and 17 year-old European, Commonwealth and Irish citizens. That is a rather dangerous route to go down. However, we may be able to talk about that later.

I oppose these amendments because the age of majority is 18. It should stick at that but if we want to change it we should do it in a general Bill relating to the franchise. We should then take a close look at all the other things that these 16 and 17 year-old children cannot do, because, if we lower the age of majority to 16, we should change the law on a whole range of things from buying knives to buying a pint.

--- Later in debate ---

[Viscount Trenchard]

My Lords, I echo the views of my noble friend Lord Higgins. I argue against these amendments on the grounds that this is not the proper place or time to extend the franchise to 16 and 17 year- olds. Just because, in my view, a mistake was made in Scotland, that does not justify making a second mistake. Two wrongs do not make a right.

You could also argue that, if you think that 16 and 17 year-olds do not have the political maturity to make decisions for the next five years, how much less should we trust them to have a voice in decisions that are going to have an effect for a very much longer period than that? I do not think you should make a distinction on the grounds that someone is going to live much longer and this is going to affect them for much longer. If you have political maturity sufficient to elect your Member of Parliament, you probably have the same political maturity to vote in a referendum.

Another point that has not yet been made is this. I wonder what the result would be if you asked a cross-section of 18 to 25 year-olds whether they thought that 16 and 17 year-olds should be given the vote.

[Baroness Young of Old Scone]

I wonder whether the noble Viscount is aware of or takes part in the admirable Peers in Schools scheme that the Lord Speaker has instituted, where Peers go out and talk to young people about the nature of your Lordships’ House. Those of us who are active in that scheme meet a wide cross-section of young people—and please let us call them young people, not children; it is very demeaning to call 16 and 17 year-olds children, even though legally they may be so. When you go into classrooms of 16 and 17 year-olds, the degree of maturity, thoughtfulness and balance evinced by those young people is fascinating. They frighten the living daylights out of me with their level of maturity. If the noble Viscount has not had that experience of meeting those very mature young people, I wonder whether he might sign up to the Lord Speaker’s scheme instantly.

[Viscount Trenchard]

I accept the noble Baroness’s point of view. I understand, and agree with her, that young people today show a much greater level of maturity than they did a decade or two ago. This is a gradual process, which I welcome, and it is right that from time to time we should consider what the age of majority should be. But we should consider it in the round, as it affects the age at which young people should be regarded as full citizens. I also agree with the noble Baroness that it is demeaning to refer to 16 and 17 year-olds as children, so I am with her on very much, but this is not the right time to make a piecemeal change.