Representation of the People (Young People’s Enfranchisement) Bill [HL]

Lord Wallace of Saltaire Excerpts

Friday 28th January 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)]

My Lords, 15 to 20 years ago, I did not feel very strongly about this issue, but I have changed my mind and I now strongly support a reduction in the voting age to 16 for three reasons.

The first is a rising concern about political disengagement in Britain. We see declining party membership—the Conservative Party 20 years ago had well over a million members, and it is perhaps 150,000 now. There is a rising level of active dissatisfaction with conventional politics in Britain. That is not a consequence of current scandals; it has been a trend for some time. I have with me a committee report from 2014 on voter engagement in the UK which marks all the problems that we were then facing. We have reached a point where, according to public opinion surveys, satisfaction with democracy in Ireland is twice as high as it is in England. That should not leave us entirely happy. If people despair of conventional politics, political activity will move on to the streets and that is not a good thing for a stable society.

My second concern is that citizenship education in schools has not progressed; it has gone backwards in the last 10 years. It has been pushed out of the curriculum. It takes place in independent schools. Sitting here and thinking about which schools have invited me to go and talk to them, I think I have spoken to a majority of the independent schools in West Yorkshire over the years—there are not very many of them—but state schools are too busy with getting through the national curriculum to have spare time for this. If the voting age went down to 16, secondary schools would engage much more actively with the political dimension of citizenship. We would find ourselves much more engaged with them as well.

My third concern is the shifting age balance of the electorate. I have a life expectancy a great deal higher than that of my grandfather, as with the rest of us, and we know that the elderly vote in large numbers— 95% in many areas—whereas the young do not. That means that our politics stress, when elections come, what we do about the health service—I hardly used the health service until I was 65; I have used it quite a lot since—old-age pensions, and so on, and they are not so much about proper spending on education, opportunities, the transition to work and training. That is bad for the future of the country. The age divide in British politics, politically, is something that should concern us just as well. We now know that the elderly tend to vote Conservative and the young increasingly tend to vote for other parties.

I have to say that I was disappointed with the speech of the noble Lord, Lord Hannan. I was following with great sympathy for the first three and a half minutes—I enjoy his lively articles in the press, and I increasingly enjoy the liveliness of his speeches in this Chamber—but he came to a very disappointing and lame conclusion. What I thought he was coming to say was, “What the Conservative Party now needs is a Disraeli moment. The Conservative Party is becoming the party of the old and we need to recapture the young, and the way to do that is to seize this issue, push it through ourselves and engage with secondary schools and with the young”. I look forward, perhaps within the next two years, to reading an excellent article by him in which he explains why he has finally changed his mind and come to this conclusion. I hope then that he manages to persuade his party in turn.

A range of issues have been raised in this debate. The noble Baroness, Lady Falkner, talked about changing the culture of politics. Getting citizenship education into schools much more actively is part of the way we have to change the culture of politics. Again, sitting and listening to this debate, I remembered how many universities I had been to, in many campaigns, with full lecture theatres having active discussions about the political issues and students coming up to me afterwards. That does not happen in schools, and 50% of 16 to 18 year-olds do not go on to university. It is those people whom we really need to get to if we want to reinvigorate our democracy. We have a passive electorate at present. There are fewer opportunities for political participation as local democracy has been cut back and squeezed by this Government and their predecessors. We need to have a much more active and engaged electorate if we are going to maintain the stability and cohesion of our society. That is partly why I feel so strongly that votes at 16 is part of regaining that sense of engagement and participation.

We have discussed whether 16 is the right age. It is clear from this debate that there are a variety of age points in the transition from childhood to adulthood—10, 16, 18, 21—and which should be when the right to vote is gained is a matter of choice. It is therefore a matter of political choice, and I vote for 16. My noble friend Lord Rennard also remarked on the problem of registration. Under-registration of the young is a very serious problem which requires us to move further towards automatic registration. Perhaps when the national insurance number is given out, voter registration should be automatic, but that is a matter for when we debate the elections Bill.

I am persuaded that, if we want to reinvigorate our very damaged democracy and do something about the often bitter disgust our voters have for what they call the Westminster bubble, extending voting to 16 is one part of how we can regain public confidence and public participation.