Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill

Debate between Lord Desai and Lord Howarth of Newport

Monday 13th December 2010 Lords Chamber

[Lord Desai]

My Lords, it never fails to surprise me that when people want to resist an advance in the franchise all the same objections are made. They say, “These people do not know how to vote. They are not interested in politics; they are just not good enough”. That happened in 1832 and it has been happening steadily ever since, every time a reform is suggested, especially when people believe sincerely in the reform but do not want to implement it, as is the case with noble Lords on the Liberal Democrat Benches. They say, “Ah, but there are administrative difficulties. We are entirely for it in principle, but it is so difficult to transfer a number from one computer to another that we cannot do this”. It is almost a universal law that every time any advance in the franchise is proposed, the establishment is against it on the ground that people who are about to get the franchise are too ignorant and too stupid to deserve it.

In proposing this amendment, my noble friend has done a very nice thing. Given that we are talking about a referendum, we are not so worried about which constituency people are registered to on the electoral register. The constituency does not matter; this is a nationwide election. Therefore, as my noble friend Lord Rooker said in his imaginative intervention, once you have your national insurance number, people know that you are 16 and then you are eligible to vote. One could even experiment with e-voting given that we are not electing Members to represent constituencies but asking the nation a question: “Are you for AV, or not?”. We should not be so conceited as to presume that students, or their teachers, do not understand the issues surrounding AV. They can all read and write and people have been reading about this stuff for ages.

I remember that in the 1960s the only party which publicly supported voting at 18 was the Monster Raving Loony Party, and it was far ahead of the electorate in that respect. These really radical reforms always come from the outside, as it were. For some strange reason the Government want to hold the referendum on 5 May 2011; perhaps it should be held in 2012, but they want it on 5 May. However, they should not let that one little thing be an obstacle to achieving a good reform. If we can achieve this reform, it will make a tremendous difference. As regards the point about today’s 14 year-olds being eligible to vote by 2015, that is a great idea. We could easily amend the noble Baroness’s amendment to say that anybody who is likely to be 18 by 2015 should be eligible to vote in the referendum.

[Lord Howarth of Newport]

My Lords, this amendment concerns the age at which one should be eligible to vote in the referendum. However, it is difficult, if not impossible, convincingly to separate out the arguments for allowing people to vote at 16 on the referendum and lowering the voting age for other elections. Indeed, in the speech in which she so ably moved this amendment, my noble friend Lady Hayter engaged with those wider considerations, as did my noble friends Lord Soley and Lady Kennedy of The Shaws.

My observation of young people’s views on what the voting age should be is a little at odds with the experience of my noble friend Lady Kennedy of The Shaws. Like many Members of Parliament, I used regularly to have meetings with sixth formers in my two former constituencies. They were very different constituencies situated in different parts of the country with very different socioeconomic make-ups. I expected my youthful constituents to be enthusiastic about lowering the voting age but I found that that was not commonly the case. I used to go to their schools to talk to them about the role of a Member of Parliament, the way Parliament works and broader constitutional issues, and very often the question of whether the voting age should be lowered came up. While my young constituents were well informed, sophisticated in their interest and in no sense apathetic about politics, Parliament and their future role as citizens, I was struck that commonly they did not think it was appropriate to lower the voting age. Many points of view and a range of arguments were put forward, but commonly they felt that it was not right to lower the voting age and that they were not ready for that. You can take a horse to water but you cannot necessarily make it drink.

We have noted at a series of elections that the lowest turnouts are among those entitled to vote for the first time, which worries us all. That should not necessarily be interpreted as disaffection from politics, but it is a matter of concern that those in the youngest age group eligible to vote are not conspicuously prone to exercise that right. If we lowered the voting age, I worry that that trend might intensify and become extended. Therefore, there is a case for caution. I would be interested to know whether my noble friend Lady Hayter thinks that my observation is correct and that there is not a great demand among young people for the right to vote at a younger age than 18, whether on a referendum or in other elections.