Elections: Voting Age

Lord Tyler Excerpts

Wednesday 27th February 2013 Grand Committee

Tabled By

[Lord Tyler]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government how they intend to respond to the majority vote in the House of Commons calling for a reduction in the voting age to 16.

[Lord Tyler]

My Lords, the Prime Minister and the Cabinet seem to have accepted the case for extending the franchise to 16 and 17 year-olds. They have not just promised to accept the change but have acted to make it a reality. Before noble Lords express incredulity, let me add an important caveat. They have indeed done so, but only, of course, for our fellow citizens in Scotland, and only for the specific 2014 vote on whether Scotland should become independent. It is a matter of record—I refer noble Lords to the statement made by the Secretary of State for Scotland on 15 January—that the Government have accepted that this could happen under the Edinburgh agreement. The Secretary of State said that,

“what happens in Scotland affects the whole United Kingdom”.—[Official Report, Commons, 15/1/13; col. 748.].

It was in that context that on 24 January, MPs voted by 119 to 46 for a Motion to rationalise the extension of the franchise in this respect throughout the United Kingdom. The support was cross-party, just as it is for my own Voting Age (Comprehensive Reduction) Bill, which has received support from all parts of your Lordships’ House. In my view, cross-party support is absolutely critical for an issue of this sort. Some politicians advocate changes in the electorate, such as those who advocate the extension to overseas voting, because they hope that it is going to be to their political advantage. But in this case the sole advantage is to the electorate as a whole and its reconnection with the political process as a whole. I am therefore delighted that my noble friend Lord Lucas is hoping to be able to participate in this debate shortly, along with the noble Lord, Lord Adonis, and the noble Baroness, Lady Young of Hornsey. All three intend to participate because they have given their support to my Bill. However, I pay special tribute to my noble friend Lord Lucas because I have shamelessly plagiarised his Bill of 10 years ago.

It would be patently inequitable, irrational and absurd to limit this reform of the franchise to one part of the country for one occasion only. As things stand, the same cohort of the Scottish population that will be added to the register for the referendum will then be refused a vote in the general election a few months later. That makes no sense. What if a Westminster, Holyrood or local government by-election poll takes place in Scotland on the same day as the referendum? Are 16 and 17 year-olds to be issued with only one ballot paper for the referendum, but excluded from choosing their representative? Would 16 and 17 year-olds be refused a vote in any subsequent referendum, such as on our continuing membership of the European Union? Quite apart from the issues of principle, let us imagine the complex bureaucratic nightmare of such markedly different registers for different purposes if these inequities are allowed to continue.

It is being trailed that the Scottish change was agreed only reluctantly because the First Minister demanded it in exchange for meeting the UK Government’s insistence on one simple, approved question in the referendum and a supervisory role for the Electoral Commission. It has even been suggested that Mr Salmond made it a condition of accepting these other requirements because he anticipated that they would be refused. Some cynics take pleasure in noting that not only did the Westminster Ministers and all parties call his bluff, but all the signs are that younger people are just as doubtful about the merits of breaking up the UK as everyone else.

Whatever may have been the cause of this acceptance of a temporary change to the Scottish electorate, surely no one can deny that it would be irresponsible and damaging if it led to what the Constitution Committee of your Lordships’ House has always warned us against—namely an,

“ad hoc and piecemeal approach to constitutional reform”.

In its report, The agreement on a referendum on independence for Scotland, our committee also insists that the relevant authorities must act,

“in accordance with their constitutional responsibilities of fairness and equal treatment”.

If that applies north of the border, surely it must also apply everywhere else in the United Kingdom. The case for equality in the franchise must make itself for the whole of our country.

However, to those Members of both Houses who regularly attend sixth-forms—in the case of Members of the other House, in their constituencies; or for Members of this House, on behalf of the Lord Speaker’s outreach programme—the substantive case for extending the franchise must be just as clear. Students of this age cohort are far better informed about the major issues of our day than I was at that age. Fifty years ago, most people inherited their opinions and political allegiances from their parents. This was all too apparent when I first canvassed in the 1960s.

It is of course also true that 18 year-olds at present are, on average, unlikely to have the opportunity to vote in a general election until they are well over 20. Even if the franchise is extended, 16 and 17 year-olds may not have that opportunity until they are 18 or more. However, getting on the electoral register with full entitlement to vote would be a natural end product of the citizenship course in schools. It would become part of the normal process towards complete legal maturity, and addressing it in school would deal with some of the fears about under-registration that have been expressed in this House.

When the Government bring forward regulations for individual electoral registration, they could easily stipulate that all 14 and 15 year-olds in school should be registered in year 10 at school, in readiness for entitlement to vote, once they turn 16. The Government would, in turn, have to bring forward the time at which national insurance numbers are issued, or establish an alternative identifier for this group. That is not that difficult.

This simple but significant change would also help young people to appreciate that national elections are not the only occasions for democratic influence on the conditions in which they live. As my honourable friend Stephen Williams observed when he introduced a successful Motion in the other place on 24 January, this age group has shown a dramatically increased awareness of political issues and institutions in recent years. The audit undertaken by the Hansard Society has shown an increase from 17% to 31%, in a relatively short number of years, in that age group’s general knowledge of the working of Parliament, bringing them into line with the older electorate. It should be a logical further step in the success of citizenship education to bring them into the franchise.

I know that some Conservatives resist the idea that a 16 or 17 year-old is mature enough to cast a vote in a local or national election. However, as I noted in the January debate, the Minister responsible, Chloe Smith, was not able to deny that a 15 year-old can be a voting member of the Conservative Party, and therefore vote for the election of its leader. What I am asking the Minister to do this afternoon is accept that there is now a strong case for a proper examination of this issue.

As a member of the informal cross-party group of parliamentarians who advise the Electoral Commission, I am very conscious that the commission, rather than party politicians, should be responsible for advising Parliament on extensions to the franchise. However, it is now nearly 10 years since the commission studied the issue. Its report promised a,

“further formal review of the minimum voting age within five to seven years of this report”.

That was nine years ago, in 2004. In July 2007, the then Prime Minister promised yet more examination of the case, including an analysis of,

“whether reducing the voting age would increase participation in the political process”.

Although the resulting Youth Citizenship Commission found strong support for votes for 16 and 17 year-olds, it also identified “a real evidence gap” on the issue. That was nearly four years ago.

There are two areas in which further evidence could be sought immediately. The first is the claimed tendency that those who start voting young, continue to do so throughout their lives. Secondly, we need to take account of the practical experience of secondary schools in Northern Ireland where completion of citizenship naturally leads to inclusion on the individual electoral registration process.

I hope that the Minister will be able to give us a firm commitment, after all these previous promises, that the Government do not consider the upcoming franchise extension in the Scottish referendum as an ad hoc, piecemeal, self-contained irrelevance, and that the Electoral Commission will now be invited to fulfil its promise to undertake further comprehensive investigation as a matter of urgency.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Tyler, for bringing this debate to the Lords. He started his speech by referring to a debate in the Commons on 24 January, which I read with some interest, and I have to say that I found the most novel argument to be one that in a sense complements the argument just made by the noble Baroness, Lady Hayter, which is that of the increasing imbalance in the electorate between the over-65s and young people. That imbalance will grow, and all political parties know that we are pulled in the direction of those who vote and thus are pulled towards putting resources into the over-65s and not into young people. The argument was made in one of the Commons speeches that this might be one way of beginning to redress the balance and to encourage political parties and Governments to think more actively about the needs and interests of young people. It is an argument that I think we all need to take into account.

Let me stress that the Government have no plans to lower the voting age in this Parliament and that, as has already been mentioned, there is no consensus within the coalition Government. That in turn reflects the different views held across society at large and the divergent positions on this topic both within and across the various political parties. After all, we have discovered over the course of the past two and a half years just how difficult political and constitutional change is and how on any proposals for political and constitutional change there are always at least 15 different and contradictory arguments for why nothing should be done, while fewer arguments are made in support of the case for change. Nevertheless, we welcome the ongoing discussions and debate on this issue and we would encourage the noble Lord, Lord Tyler, and others to maintain their approach.

On the question of the age of majority, which was raised by a number of noble Lords, I simply repeat the comment made by the noble Lord, Lord Parekh, that there is no standard age of majority within the United Kingdom. The process of moving from childhood to majority takes place over several years, and the question of where that should be standardised would itself open up a very difficult process. However, the question of how to re-engage young people in our democracy, in citizenship and in local society is important and we all need to address it. When taking the Electoral Registration and Administration Bill through the House of Lords, I was struck by how severe a problem this is becoming. Younger people do not feel engaged in politics and they are not committed to political parties. In one way or another, we all have to address that problem. The noble Lord, Lord Adonis, said that providing the vote at the age of 16 is not the answer, but it may be one of the ways of contributing to an answer. It would certainly mean that schools and parties would pay much more attention to citizenship education, which is important, and we would have to think about how else we could hook young people into their local communities and into wider engagement as a whole.

We all recognise, as the noble Lord, Lord Norton, pointed out, that young people are already the least likely to vote. That is the problem, of course, and the question is how to tackle it. We know that a number of things have contributed to it: the increasing remoteness of national politics; the decline in local government and local politics; the decline in respect for our political institutions—above all for Westminster—and the decline of participation at all levels in intermediate bodies from churches and chapels to trade unions and social organisations. The question is: where do we go from here and how can we ensure that engagement in democracy at all levels from the local to the national does not continue to decline in the long term? We cannot let this question go.

Perhaps, as the noble Lord, Lord Wills, suggests, deliberative democracy on the Granada 500 model—I think that was what it was called—is something that we should be experimenting with again in terms of bridging the gap between the governors and the governed. However, I suspect that television companies would be less willing to invest in such activities today as they were 20 or 25 years ago, partly because they would be less convinced that it would command the sort of audience that those very interesting experiments did in the 1980s.

We have a real problem here; we do not yet have a consensus on how we should move forward, as the debate has again shown. The research that there has been in a number of different activities is itself inconclusive. The Government do not disagree with the conclusions of the youth commission report that the approach of using independent commissions to review this should not be used again in the near future. However, we all need to focus. All of us who are committed to democratic politics and want to see a high level of political engagement have a huge and rising problem. All the research that went into looking at the shift to individual electoral registration persuaded me that this is a large and secular issue to which we do not have much of an answer. In a week in which the combination of the Eastleigh by-election and the Leveson report has encouraged the press to throw almost everything it has got at politicians of one sort or another—and people cheerfully say, “Well, don’t worry, they will move on to another set next week”—we recognise how deep a problem of democratic disillusionment and disengagement we have.

[Lord Tyler]

I am very grateful to my noble friend the Minister for giving way. Since we have a few minutes in hand, will he specifically address the fact that both the Electoral Commission and the Youth Citizenship Commission have said that there is a real gap in the research in this area, which has been reflected throughout your Lordships’ discussion this afternoon? Will the Government at least give an undertaking today that they will look again at that lacuna, which has been so clearly identified, and invite the Electoral Commission to look specifically at this again?

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

I hesitate to make a commitment as broad as that, but I will certainly feed it back and we will look at the question of whether there is a substantial lacuna. One of the issues that we all face here is that we know what the situation is now, and we know that the evidence of demand from young people for votes at 16 is weak. The question that I take particularly from the speech of the noble Lord, Lord Adonis, is whether we are happy about that, and whether we ought to be getting out there to persuade young people that they should be interested in having the vote and they should want to be re-engaged in politics. That is a much larger set of issues.

The previous Government, to their great credit, did their best to get at the question of citizenship. A number of distinguished political scientists contributed to that with modest success. We all recognise that schools have all sorts of other priorities, and that PSHE has not been one of the grandest or most glorious aspects of the secondary curriculum. There is a large issue out there, and we need much more public debate on it. This is part of a much larger issue about popular disillusionment with democratic politics as such, which has to concern us all. None of us would wish to suggest that lowering the voting age would begin to solve that; it would be only a small part of a strategy which I suggest all of us interested in democratic politics, from whichever point of view, should recognise is a shared problem to which we all need to find some shared answers.