European Union Referendum Bill

Baroness Royall of Blaisdon Excerpts

Wednesday 28th October 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Balfe (Con)]

My Lords, earlier this year I tabled a Private Member’s Bill that came so low down the list that it is never likely to be debated. It sought to extend to European citizens the right to vote in British elections, on the basis of no taxation without representation. If people pay taxes to the British Exchequer, the fact that they hold a different passport should not preclude them from exercising a say in how their money is spent. Having tabled that Bill, I went into the electoral system that we have in great depth. I did not realise exactly how complex it is. That certainly led me to conclude that a debate on the European Union Referendum Bill is not the place to start extending the franchise.

All my life I have heard guff about young people. When I was 16 years old and I became an official in the local branch of my trade union, everybody was saying, “Isn’t it marvellous. We really need young people here”. There is a sort of idolisation of the young. Of course, we need young people but we also need mature people. I spoke in our group meeting not so long ago against the idea of throwing all noble Lords out of this House when they get to 80. I am some way short of 80 but I do not propose to support something that disfranchises people because they have reached a certain age. I know some people of 60 who are nowhere near as bright as our good and noble friend Lord Plumb. He is not here at the moment, but at the age of 90 he gave one of the best speeches I have heard in the European Parliament recently when he spoke at the Former Members’ Association.

To get back to the point, when this was proposed initially, I thought it was tabled because the “yes” side thought that more young people would vote yes than no. I am not sure that that is the case now, having looked at the evidence. I now ask, why are we extending or changing the franchise on the back of a Bill about the European Union? Why are we making these changes when we consider the difficulties that we could have in registering the said people? I ask the noble Baroness, Lady Anelay, to respond to that. This is not like Scotland where there was a long lead-in to the referendum between the Act and the voting date. This referendum could take place within a very short time. For the moment, I am not convinced that the age and wisdom of a small group of people spanning just two years is worth making a fundamental change to the electoral system.

[Baroness Royall of Blaisdon (Lab)]

When the noble Lord is canvassing, I wonder whether he has had the experience, as I have, of knocking on a door and having a conversation with somebody who really does not know what you are talking about. They then sort of talk back at you, and when you say, “Where did you get that information?”, they say, “I read it in the Sun”. I am afraid to say that a lot of 16 and 17 year-olds who have citizenship lessons at school and who live in a world where there is information coming at them from every which way, are more able to take decisions than many people who currently have the vote.

[Lord Balfe]

I note the noble Baroness’s point. I would say that it is a matter of opinion, not a matter of fact. Of course, I have had many conversations on doorsteps.

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[Lord Davies of Stamford]

Not for the first time in these European debates, the noble Lord and I, although associated with very different camps, agree on something. We agree on the word “coherence”—a word that the noble Lord used and which I used myself. I totally agree with what he said. One should not legislate in a piecemeal fashion, particularly for constitutional legislation. One should look at the whole. That is precisely why my party proposes a constitutional convention to ensure that we do not go in for piecemeal legislation on the constitution. That is another debate for another day.

[Baroness Royall of Blaisdon]

I point out to the noble Lord, Lord Forsyth, that it was his Government who let the genie out of the bottle precisely by enabling Scotland to give 16 and 17 year-olds the vote. I am delighted, but once the genie is out of the bottle I am afraid that you cannot put it back in.

[Lord Davies of Stamford]

I fear that that is the case. The noble Lord and I agree on coherence. The only way to restore coherence now is by the way I have just suggested. The pragmatics—the actual experience of this—are that 16 and 17 year-olds make very mature choices. That has been the lesson of the Scottish referendum. Giving them the vote has encouraged and increased participation rates, and increased intellectual interest in politics and in public life in general among young people. All those things are very desirable. The pragmatics support the theory.

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[The Earl of Listowel (CB)]

My Lords, I feel passionately about this issue. I have been wondering why that is the case, especially as so many people that I respect hold exactly the opposite position to myself. Principally, it is because I have often seen, over many years, young people in care being allowed to make decisions that are not age-appropriate. A local authority will, quite commonly, offer a 16 year-old in care a flat of their own and a sum of money or the choice to stay with their foster carer. Many choose to take the flat and the pot of money. We are told that in many cases, drug dealers befriend and move in with them, or they cannot manage to meet the rent and they lose the flat. I spoke to a foster carer who said that her foster daughter was doing so well in school before a local authority offered her a flat of her own; now she is doing very badly in school and the carer does not know how she is doing in her flat. One of the reasons I feel so strongly about this amendment is that I am concerned about whether this is an age-appropriate decision—although clearly children are not going to harm themselves, in the way that children in care apparently can often be harmed by being giving decisions too early, in this particular case.

I listened with great interest to my noble friend. I have sympathy for his concern that this is a very long-term decision that we are coming to as a nation, which will affect the young people in question particularly. But I am afraid I disagree with him; I heard the speech of the noble Lord, Lord Tyler, differently. I respect the great depth of knowledge and the effort that the noble Lord, Lord Tyler, has put into this issue; I have heard him speak about it on many occasions. My sense, is that for him, at least, this is part of a project—not just an issue for this particular referendum Bill but more generally—to lower the franchise. I feel really concerned about that, although there are many people I respect who think it is the right thing to do. Some child development experts would agree with them, while others would be concerned.

There is concern about the impressibility of 16 and 17 year-olds. Some of your Lordships may remember the film “All Quiet on the Western Front”. It begins in a schoolroom, with a teacher talking to young people and enthusing them with notions of the greatness of their country and the importance of fighting for it. It then follows their careers in the Army. Your Lordships may remember that in the Chinese Great Leap Forward young people were targeted and used as the force for taking that forward. Your Lordships may also remember how effective, in the 1930s, some nations were at manipulating their youth to do things none of us would agree with.

There has been concern about growing nationalism across Europe and there are increasing pressures. Thankfully—and tribute should be paid to the Government and the coalition Government before them—we have avoided the serious unemployment which is a large contributory factor to this. But at some future date we may not be so fortunate. It concerns me that we are painting a target on the back of our young people by giving them the vote at the ages of 16 and 17. There are people who are very good at using the internet to manipulate people, and 16 and 17 year-olds, as we know, have been vulnerable to this in various ways.

I am also concerned about the wider ramifications for children around the country. Noble Lords have spoken from experience, which I cannot yet do, about their own children. Of course, many children will not have had the support that I hope your Lordships will have had—I hope I am not speaking out of turn. I am thinking particularly about the work the noble Lord, Lord Faulks, took forward recently during the passage of the Criminal Justice and Courts Bill. The noble Lord listened to the concerns of parents of 17 year-olds who had been held in custody in police cells. They were sometimes held over the weekend for two nights and, regrettably, a number of those young people had taken their own lives after that experience. The noble Lord listened to those concerns and acted promptly to change the law. I was pleased to learn, recently, that it had changed and that 17 year-olds in custody will be treated as children.

The last time that we debated this matter, Barnardo’s produced a briefing in which it sought to change the Children and Young Persons Act 1933. In that Act, the age of majority is 16 and Barnardo’s wanted to see it raised to 17. In aid of his approach, the noble Lord, Lord Tyler, put forward the argument that if you are old enough to marry and join the Army at 16, you should be able to vote. Others may say that if you are old enough to vote at the age of 16, you do not need to be treated as a child and can be put in a police cell at the age of 17. If you are old enough to vote at 16, maybe it is not so outrageous to have an age of criminal responsibility of 10—the lowest in Europe: I think the average age is 14. I am concerned from that angle.

I conclude with my concern about child development issues. These children are in the middle of adolescence, which is a very interesting period. I do not want to be too technical and maybe this will be quite obvious to most of your Lordships. Young children are very attached to their parents and to their siblings. In adolescence, they make a move from that attachment to an attachment to their peers and eventually to a romantic partner of their own. That is a huge change, which will play out in many different ways. Partly, they will react against their parents. Quite often they will take polar opposite views and values to their parents—for some time, at least. I can think of that in my own family history. My father grew up in a landowning family; he was an aristocrat. When he went to private school, he became the school’s only socialist, reacting very strongly against the ideals of his parents. He moderated over time.

We are not talking about young people voting Labour or not, but I worry that if we set this precedent it will be used on other occasions. Young people may be more likely to vote for Labour or the Liberal Democrats—parents tend to be more conservative, so their children may be reacting.

[Baroness Royall of Blaisdon]

Forgive me, my Lords, I did not understand the last point that the noble Earl made about Conservatives, Liberal Democrats and Labour. The noble Earl makes a very powerful speech, with which I disagree. Will he accept that there are many older vulnerable people who are just as open to persuasion from external forces as young people? The noble Earl will, like many of us, go into schools—with whatever scheme—and find young people who are absolutely able to withstand pressure and who are not vulnerable in that way. I would be grateful if he would explain the point about Conservatives and Labour because this has absolutely nothing to do with party politics. This is about empowering young people however they wish to vote. It is not about being in or out but giving them the ability to vote and determine their future.

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[Lord Faulks]

Although it is tempting to go down that route and describe the cause or causes of the door being open—I was not in any position to argue that matter then—I think that we should return to the basic fact that, after careful consideration, 18 was considered the right age. Of course the noble Lord, Lord Kerr, is quite right: there is an element of arbitrariness about whatever age you choose. The question is: is it an age which has, by and large, received approval and consent? Yes it is. Of course that does not mean that this is the last word on the subject; people will differ about these things. There will be people who think that 21 was the right age and it should never have been lowered to 18.

Noble Lords will know that the power to determine the voting age for Scottish Parliament and local elections in Scotland was devolved to the Scottish Parliament, and the Scottish Parliament decided to lower the voting age to 16 for those elections. The Government have responded to requests to increase the powers of the devolved Administrations and will soon devolve similar powers to the Welsh Assembly.

Devolution, by its very nature, gives rise to the possibility of different laws applying in different parts of the United Kingdom. It does not mean that we must harmonise our differences. The fact that people may do certain things in Scotland aged 16—get married without parental consent, formally change their name, access their birth records if adopted—does not mean that the same rules must or should apply across the United Kingdom. One of the advantages of devolution is the capacity of different parts of the United Kingdom to make these choices.

More specifically, what about the precedent set by the Scottish independence referendum? The decision was made by the Scottish Parliament that whoever opened the door would decide on the franchise. It is right that decisions about the franchise for elections and referendums that affect the whole of Great Britain and Northern Ireland are made by this Parliament. As I said, decisions of the Scottish Parliament do not and should not prevent Parliament from taking a different decision.

The Government do not think that this is the right vehicle, as my noble friend Lord Higgins pointed out so cogently. Any change to the entitlement to vote must to be considered properly and fully in specific legislation. I gave some examples where the law places restrictions on 16 and 17 year-olds. Any proposal to lower the voting age must be carefully examined in that overall context.

[Baroness Royall of Blaisdon]

My Lords, I hear what the Minister says; indeed, in another place, the Foreign Secretary himself said that this was an argument for another day. Could the Minister assist me by saying whether, over the course of this Parliament—in the next four or five years—the Government might consider a change to the franchise?

[Lord Faulks]

I am not privy to all the Government’s thinking, but, no, I do not understand that that is on the horizon. Any proposal must be examined carefully: we cannot change the voting age and simply assume that it will have no implications for other areas where our law and our society treat 16 and 17 year-olds differently from their 18 year-old counterparts.

Noble Lords will wish to reflect on how this change would look to the public. I have no idea how 16 and 17 year-olds—were they to be given the vote—would vote. A number of people might guess and they might well be wrong. The noble Lord, Lord Tyler, said, in an exchange with my noble friend Lord Tebbit, that he thought that 16 and 17 year-olds were more likely to use their vote better than my noble friend Lord Tebbit. I am not quite sure what that said. Nor do I know how 18 and 19 year-olds are likely to vote. It is possible that a change in the franchise of such a radical nature—this is a radical change—will be perceived, rightly or wrongly, as some sort of attempt to affect the result of the referendum. We are anxious as a Government that, whatever the result of the referendum, the legitimacy of the process cannot be questioned. The safest way of doing that is to stick to the Westminster franchise and leave the vote at 18.

The noble Lord, Lord Wallace of Saltaire, who is not currently in his place, made a valiant attempt to say that we have opened the door by allowing Peers to vote or by the minor adjustment in Gibraltar. We are talking about millions; we are talking about a radical change. It is a change that not only would be radical, but would have the potential to affect timing. I am grateful to my noble friend Lord Hamilton for referring to the report of the Electoral Commission. Quite rightly, the commission did not offer a view on 16 and 17 year-olds, but it did, in addition to the paragraph to which he referred, say:

“The Commission’s view is that any changes to the franchise for the referendum on the UK’s membership of the European Union should be clear in sufficient time to enable all those who are eligible, to register and participate in the referendum”.

The noble Baroness, Lady Morgan, said, “Well, we could accelerate the process having regard to the fact that so many young people are aware of social media and could be brought up to speed with the issues”. However, as I understood the debate yesterday about registration, it was so important that we did not rush the procedure because people might be left off. It was far too important a matter to in any way accelerate. Therefore, if it affects the timing, which I understand to be very important in a number of contexts, that is a relevant factor. However, the crucial argument is that this is not an appropriate moment to make that change. In all those circumstances, I ask noble Lords not to press their amendments.

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[Lord Hannay of Chiswick]

Okay, I think the noble Lord was intervening in my speech and, if he had listened carefully to what I said, he would have heard that I most particularly noted that the parallels with other members are not very apt because nobody has ever voted to leave the European Union—nobody has ever voted in a referendum whose outcome, if it went in favour of leaving, would deprive a large number of people in the country of their rights under EU law. I covered that. I know that earlier in this debate we forswore use of words such as xenophobia but I have to say that some of the arguments he advanced in his brief intervention were, let us say, rather close to the line.

[Baroness Royall of Blaisdon]

My Lords, I fully support the noble Lord, Lord Hannay, and, indeed, I put my name to one of the amendments. I will just add two points. I believe that it is right to enable these citizens of other member states to have a vote in this referendum precisely because their very being in this country is linked to membership of the European Union. If it were not for the freedom of movement within the European Union they would not be working here, contributing to our economy and helping build our society. Therefore, it is right that they have a vote. I also ask the Minister: in his view, what would happen to these citizens if we were to leave the European Union? Would they have to leave? One does not know. We have to have answers to these questions at some stage before we progress much further along the referendum line. If they did have to leave, this country would miss out a great deal by losing their contribution to our society and, most especially, their contribution to our economy. We are all familiar with the phrase “no taxation without representation”; they are paying taxes and therefore they should be enabled to vote.