Voting Age

Andrew Percy Excerpts

Thursday 24th January 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr Nuttall]

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for that intervention, but he reinforces my point. If a decision was made to reduce the age of majority to 16, in three or four decades’ time this House would be full of people saying, “That was years ago, we ought to consider making it 14. People made that decision long ago and they are far away.”

[Andrew Percy (Brigg and Goole) (Con)]

I apologise for missing the start of the debate, but I was in a Select Committee. My hon. Friend has already stated that if the age were reduced to 16, turnout would be very low. Does he think that adding a whole set of people to the electoral roll when the majority of them will not vote will in any way enhance our democracy? The simple fact that people cannot vote at that age does not stop them from being politically engaged.

[Mr Nuttall]

Indeed, there is nothing to stop a young person who is politically motivated from going along and joining Conservative Future—or, if they were particularly misguided, the equivalent group in the other parties.

I am conscious that I have used up my unofficial allocation of time, but I think I have made some points that give the other side of the argument. We do not want only to hear young people’s views. Millions of people in this country think that the age at which people can vote should remain at 18 and it is important that those arguments, as well as all the others, are heard today.

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[Jonathan Ashworth]

I would rather not, if the hon. Gentleman will forgive me, because the Deputy Speaker is keen for us all to get in.

In recent days, I have held a survey in my Leicester South constituency. Interestingly, apart from the over-50s, those who have taken part in my survey are overwhelmingly in favour of allowing 16-year-olds to vote.

[Andrew Percy]

How many people took part?

[Jonathan Ashworth]

I understand that the respondents are arguably self-selecting, and it is not a scientific survey, but the results are interesting none the less. On the other hand, just for balance, there was a vox pop on Radio Leicester this morning, in which people said that they did not think that 16-year-olds would understand the issues or be interested. I have to say, as many other Opposition Members have done, that when I speak to year 11 groups, or to sixth forms, as I will tomorrow at Madani high school, I find that young people are very much engaged. They may not be interested in the cut and thrust of party political debate in this place, but they are certainly interested in the issues that affect them.

All my life, I have seen Chancellors of the Exchequer of both parties pull rabbits out of hats in the Budget statement in this place, and it is usually some sort of give-away to pensioners. Whatever party the Chancellor is from, the party members behind him cheer and wave their Order Papers. We do it because we know that we can put that give-away on our leaflets and in our direct mail, and we know that pensioners vote. I suspect that if 16-year-olds had the vote, we would be less cavalier about trebling tuition fees to £9,000, abolishing the education maintenance allowance, and levels of youth unemployment, because we would be worried about those young people having their say at the ballot box. It is entirely fair that they should. They do not all have to vote; we are talking about giving them the opportunity to vote.

I hope that the hon. Member for Bristol West (Stephen Williams) divides the House; I get the impression that he will. If it is the will of the House that 16-year-olds should have the vote, will the Minister think about allowing them to vote in next year’s European elections? Then we could look at the level of engagement, and at whether that galvanises people. Perhaps she will comment on that when she sums up. The proposal seems entirely fair and right; let us just get on with it.

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[Pete Wishart (Perth and North Perthshire) (SNP)]

It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Huddersfield (Mr Sheerman). I know what it feels like to be a lone voice, on the nationalist Benches. I totally and fundamentally disagree that allowing the vote to 16 and 17-year-olds has any impact whatsoever on childhood. The voice that we do not hear in the House is that of young people. If we give young people the vote, we will get to hear that voice, and it is a voice that I will welcome.

[Andrew Percy]

rose—

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[Julie Hilling (Bolton West) (Lab)]

I congratulate the hon. Member for Bristol West (Stephen Williams) on securing this debate. As a former youth worker, I agree with him on how important it is. I have to say to the hon. Member for Shipley (Philip Davies) that it is not “new and trendy”; we have been having debates about votes at 16 ever since I started to do youth work, which, sadly, I must admit was a considerable number of years ago. Leading youth-led organisations such as the British Youth Council and the UK Youth Parliament are very actively campaigning for votes at 16.

Last week I went to St James primary school in Daisy Hill in my constituency to present prizes for my Christmas card competition. I talked to the young people about Parliament and being an MP, and told them about this debate. I took a vote on whether they thought that 16-year-olds should be allowed to vote. Interestingly, all but a handful of pupils thought that they should be given the vote at 16, but all the staff voted against, which I found quite sad. I told them that I would report their vote to Parliament today, as it is representative of the many young people I have spoken to about this issue.

A few weeks ago, I chaired the all-party parliamentary group on youth affairs. This APPG is very different from the majority of APPGs in that different organisations bring in young people to debate issues with parliamentarians. I encourage many more of my colleagues to come along to the APPG. At that meeting, we debated votes at 16 and, again, the vast majority of the young people attending believed that the vote should be given to 16-year-olds.

[Andrew Percy]

Of course, the young people with whom the hon. Lady is engaging are those who are already engaged in politics. We have a huge problem in this country in that, sadly, the vast majority of young people are not engaged in politics. It would therefore be better to focus on the 18 to 24-year-olds who are not engaged, the majority of whom do not vote at the moment. We should get them voting and then we can extend it.

[Julie Hilling]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his intervention. I believe absolutely that if we start to encourage voting at an early age, where that is supported and people are educated about their rights and responsibilities, we can make voting a lifelong activity, and concentrating on 18 to 24-year-olds misses that huge opportunity. I will say a little more about that later.

Let me talk about some of the things that the young people at the APPG said. Yes, they are young people who are engaged. However, an important point about youth organisations and youth workers is that we actively go out to engage not only with those aspiring young people, but with young people from all walks of life to enable them to have their say in civil society. Carly stated that many young people are dissatisfied with local issues but struggle to know how to become properly involved in politics. She argued that there was a need for better education and noted that not all adults made arguments based on solid reasoning. Another young person stated that political apathy from some young people is not a valid reason to exclude those young people who are engaged, and noted that not all adults vote. Steve said that a lot of older people lacked an interest in political engagement and awareness but the same ideas about requiring a level of knowledge for 16 and 17-year-olds was not placed on people over 18. A number of young people argued that politicians are able to ignore their views because they do not have the vote, and compared the loss of education maintenance allowance and the increase in tuition with the protection of benefits given to the grey vote.

Some voices were raised against enfranchising 16 and 17-year-olds. One young person felt that they should not be enfranchised because they do not have experience of life outside the home, but she was challenged by someone who argued that many people now do not move out of their home until they are in their thirties, so that is not a valid reason to stop them having the vote.

The main thrust of the arguments against changing the voting age was lack of knowledge, and very strong opinions were voiced, both by those in support of votes at 16 and by those against, for the need for effective citizenship education in schools. They also argued that it should be part of the Ofsted inspection framework to ensure that such education was being carried out in all schools in a good way.

I am sure that we have all knocked on the doors of people who do not vote because they do not know how to do so or who to vote for. I believe that we have a duty in a civilized society to educate people about their civil duties, including voting. If done effectively, that should increase turnout by all future voters.

Many schools already undertake a lot of activities, such as mock elections, at the time of general elections, but, sadly, that rarely happens each year, meaning that four cohorts can miss out altogether.

That encouragement to vote—enabling young people to understand the political process and to vote at 16—should be viewed as positive. Voting at 16 would instil a pattern for lifelong voting. However, whether or not we believe that the voting age should be lowered, we clearly should be doing more to educate young people and, indeed, older people about how and why to vote.

We can all bandy polls about and I want to quote an online poll from The Guardian, which found that 53% of people were in favour of lowering the voting age. Of course, if a more right-wing paper conducted a similar poll, it may well come up with a different answer, but one accusation that cannot be levelled against readers of The Guardian is that they are not deep thinkers who will not have considered the pros and cons of lowering the voting age.

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[Miss Smith]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for pressing that point, and I will come on to deal with the fact that we do not have a single age of majority in this country. Hon. Members on all sides have debated whether we ought to have a single age and what it should be, and the debate has covered both axes of the argument. I was taken by the point made by the hon. Member for Foyle (Mark Durkan)—we should not be protecting young people from democracy.

[Andrew Percy]

The hon. Member for Foyle (Mark Durkan) did indeed name me, but is not the point that although we may be debating the age at which people can vote, whatever our view on that we all want to see young people engaged? Opposing a reduction of the voting age to 16 does not make us any less in favour of wanting to get more young people involved in the political process.

[Miss Smith]

My hon. Friend makes part of my argument for me, for which I am grateful.

As I have said, we ought not to amend something as important as the electoral franchise without a clear case for doing so. I note that there are great divergences of opinion in wider society. Most studies and polls show that a majority of 16 and 17-year-olds favour lowering the voting age—perhaps that is not surprising—but the situation is not always clear. A 2009 YouGov survey of 14 to 25-year-olds conducted for the Citizenship Foundation, another organisation for which I am sure hon. Members have great respect, showed that a majority of that age group—some younger and some older than those in the category we are debating—opposed votes for 16-year-olds: only 31% were in favour, but 54% were against. That provides food for thought and gives hon. Members something to think about on the question of who is likely to say, “Yes, I’d like 16-year-olds to have the franchise,” and who is likely to come to other interesting conclusions.

Hon. Members have raised the issue of 16 and 17-year-olds in Scotland.