Lord Elton
Main Page: Lord Elton (Conservative - Excepted Hereditary)(11 years, 2 months ago)
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Lord Elton (Con)
This is about participation. Will the Minister start talking about maturity, judgment and experience and how they relate to the decision about when people should have the power to vote for the future of this country, to fight for it, and the age of consent? A broad range of decisions is based on calendar age. If the biological age of this country is changing, we need to know.
Lord Gardiner of Kimble
My Lords, in preparation for this Question I asked about age-related legal thresholds for a number of issues. My noble friend mentioned fighting for our country. At 18 you can join the Armed Forces without the consent of a parent or guardian, be deployed, sit on a jury, buy alcohol and hold a licence to sell alcohol. There are many other sectors in which 18 is considered a suitable age-related threshold.