Votes at 16
Debate between Alex Chalk and David Linden(5 years, 1 month ago)
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Alex Chalk
Of course, they can join the Army, but they are not entitled to serve on the frontline in a way that might put them at risk of losing their life. In some ways, I respectfully suggest that the hon. Lady’s point makes the argument for me. Part of the reason why 16-year-olds cannot serve on the frontline and be at risk of losing their life is that under the UN convention on the rights of the child, child soldiers may not serve on the frontline. That is in recognition of the fact that we take the view that children are children and adults are adults.
I am not suggesting for a second that this is not a legitimate argument to have, but people watching this debate might take the view that there is a broad consensus in Parliament to move towards votes for 16-year-olds. I do not sense that there is such a consensus and, critically, that view is not echoed in the court of public opinion. Polling tends to suggest that there is not a majority in favour of reducing the voting age.
Alex Chalk
Let me make one last point. Before I came into this place, I spent a lot of time as a barrister, and when I go into schools in my constituency such as Pate’s Grammar School, Balcarras or Bournside and ask, “If you were accused of a crime you had not committed, would you be happy to be put on trial with a jury made up of 16-year-olds?”, the schoolchildren often say, “Perhaps not.” Just imagine the inconsistency. The trials that I have prosecuted might involve post-mortem photos—really grisly and explicit photographs—and we take the view as a society that people aged 16 are not old enough to watch a film in the cinema such as “The Wolf of Wall Street” or “The Silence of the Lambs”, or to see those kinds of explicit photographs in a jury trial. If those people were considered old enough to vote, that would be a troubling inconsistency.
Cyber-bullying: Young People’s Mental Health
Debate between Alex Chalk and David Linden(6 years ago)
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David Linden (Glasgow East) (SNP)
I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for his powerful speech tonight. I speak as an MP from Scotland, where this is very topical, the issue of revenge porn online having been highlighted in the Sunday Herald. My colleague Councillor Rhiannon Spear, a young female councillor in Glasgow, had a powerful impact this weekend when she talked about boys taking photographs of her naked and posting them on Twitter. Does he agree that the Government need to look more at revenge porn, given how these images are distributed on social media and the impact it has on young people’s mental health?
Alex Chalk
The hon. Gentleman rightly raises a really important point. It is only recently of course that revenge porn has become a criminal offence, but I dare say there is more that could be done. It is just one aspect of the hinterland of cyber-bullying but an extremely important one to raise.