Cities and Local Government Devolution Bill [HL]

Earl of Listowel Excerpts

Wednesday 15th July 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Tyler]

My Lords, I can be relatively brief, because the case for this amendment is very straightforward and has been rehearsed on all sides of your Lordships’ House with considerable support on many occasions.

The Liberal Democrats have been in favour of this extension of the franchise to 16 and 17 year-olds for many years. Indeed, I presented in your Lordships’ House Private Member’s Bills on the subject in the 2013-14 Session, the 2014-15 Session and the current Parliament. These have enjoyed widespread support across the House. I am especially grateful for consistent support from the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, on the Conservative Benches, the noble Lord, Lord Adonis, on the Labour Benches, and the noble Baroness, Lady Young of Hornsey, on the Cross Benches. Recently, we have enjoyed the very substantial support of the Labour Party, which now officially endorses the campaign. I am delighted to share this amendment with the noble Lord, Lord Kennedy.

Hitherto, our support for the extension of the franchise has been based on personal experience of the growing maturity of this age group, their increased responsibility and the acknowledged fact that their citizenship course should lead inexorably to voter registration as they become adult citizens and then to participation in the democratic process. There is good reason to think that young people are more likely to register to vote, and start a lifetime of actually voting, if they are still in the home environment. Once they leave, usually at about the age of 18 for further education of all sorts or employment, they become much more elusive. All the other distractions kick in and their involvement in the life of their home area weakens or ceases altogether. The 18-plus age group all too often disappear off the electoral scene, and once gone many never return.

We would be the first to admit that this used to be based on theory and subjective judgment. However, since September last year, we have had hard empirical evidence from Scotland of the readiness among young people to take on this vital civic function. The huge success of the extension of the vote to 16 and 17 year- olds in the referendum, as negotiated by my right honourable friend Michael Moore but agreed to by the whole coalition government Cabinet, was thought by some to be a step too far.

But consider the facts. First, there was a remarkable response in terms of registration—no signs of disinterest there. Secondly, the level of debate, as noted by all observers including Members of your Lordships’ House, was lively, intelligent and very well informed. Thirdly, the turnout on the day of the poll was excellent, with 75% casting their vote, which far outweighed that of the 18 to 24 year-old cohort, which managed only 54%. That demonstrates the point that I was making earlier. Fourthly, and contrary to the hopes of Mr Alex Salmond, the majority of those in that younger age group supported the Better Together case, displaying more maturity and resilience to the blandishments of the separatists than many of their elders—notably, middle-aged men. In summary, the new young voters proved themselves to be better informed, more conscientious and even more mature than many of their elders—they blew to smithereens all the misgivings and dire warnings of the doomsayers.

As a result, in the debates on the Wales Bill in your Lordships’ House last autumn, I successfully argued that a similar referendum in the Principality could not rationally and in justice exclude this age group. My understanding is that all parties in the Welsh Assembly have now decided to include them.

I will quote the views of the leaders of the parties in the Holyrood Parliament. Since the referendum in Scotland, that Parliament voted on 18 June this year to extend the franchise consistently both for the Scottish Parliament itself and for all local elections north of the border. All the parties, including the Conservatives, whose leader has been an enthusiast for this reform, voted unanimously for the change. That prominent Conservative, Ruth Davidson MSP, argued this persuasively in a recent interview in the Guardian:

“I’m happy to hold my hands up and say I changed my mind. I’m a fully paid-up member of the ‘votes at 16’ club now for every election. I thought 16- and 17-year-olds were fantastic during the referendum campaign. I can’t tell you the number of hustings and public meetings I did, and some of the younger members of the audience were the most informed. You know, there is nothing more terrifying for somebody up on the stage who is trotting off the latest IMF figures to have somebody in the front row with a smartphone googling your answers to make sure that you’ve got it exactly right. That happened, and that is terrifying, let me tell you”.

She spoke at a BBC event for youth voters and said, about that:

“There were eight and a half thousand kids there asking questions about the Barnett formula! It was phenomenal. It was truly, truly impressive”.

Then she was asked by the Guardian interviewer if she had told the Prime Minister that he is wrong about the franchise. She said:

“Absolutely, absolutely. I’ve spoken to the prime minister about it. He’s not convinced, but I continue to work on him”.

I hope there will be Members on the Government Benches this evening who will also be prepared to work on the Prime Minister to recognise the facts of life as demonstrated north of the border.

All parties in Holyrood have now, as I say, had direct experience of this extension of the franchise, this inclusion of this age group, and it is clearly both rational and right. At the end of my speech on this issue in Committee, I posed two simple questions for Members of your Lordships’ House who might still remain resistant to this logical change. I suggested that they ask themselves, first:

“What evidence have they that the young people in this specific age group in England and Wales are less mature, less responsible and less well informed than their compatriots in Scotland? Secondly, if this is truly a United Kingdom, how can they justify discrimination in such an absolutely crucial matter as the electoral franchise, which will exclude young people south of the border?”.—[Official Report, 29/6/15; col. 1918.]

The electoral register is surely the foundation stone of our representative democracy. We should not knowingly countenance variations of this order in different parts of the country. In the subsequent debate, and indeed in the days since, not one Member of your Lordships’ House has even attempted to answer those questions; nor has anyone else, to my knowledge. The half-hearted objection that this Bill is not the appropriate place to achieve this reform simply does not stand up to scrutiny. The Long Title of the Bill includes the following statement:

“to make provision about local authority governance; and for connected purposes”.

As the Public Bill Office correctly advised us, here it is, this amendment, on the Marshalled List. Nothing could be more relevant to local authority governance than the franchise on which its governors are elected. I beg to move.

[The Earl of Listowel (CB)]

My Lords, I oppose this amendment, but in doing so I must apologise to the House because I was slightly delayed at the start. We went through the previous grouping very quickly and, with the permission of the House, I would like to intervene at this point.

I opposed this move the last time that it was raised by the noble Lord, Lord Tyler, on the then Wales Bill. Immediately I learned that moves of this kind were in the Labour manifesto I sought to speak with Labour’s representative on youth. I feel very concerned about this matter although it is encouraging to hear what the noble Lord says about the experience in Scotland, and I look forward to studying the outcome. The aims are utterly laudable considering that young people in this country more and more will be carrying the burden of our pensions and of healthcare of the elderly. Listening to their voices is very important indeed, and of course we should always seek as far as possible to listen to the feelings and wishes of young people. The trouble is that, with respect, I do not think this is the right way to do it.

I am very interested in adolescents. I have worked with them and much of my life has been spent thinking about the issue of adolescence, speaking with professionals and reading the theoretical material around it. It is really important to think about adolescence in this context. “Adolescence” comes from the Latin root “to grow up”. It is a huge change in young people’s lives. One looks, for instance, at Anna Freud and her work in the 1960s on adolescence. She of course set up the Hampstead nurseries at the end of the Second World War to provide for children separated from their parents, and the Anna Freud Centre is named after her. She was a great expert in this area. She highlighted the fact that huge physical changes take place in adolescence, that huge sexual changes take place, and that issues around aggression and how young people manage aggression manifest themselves. It really seems unfair to ask so much of young people when they are going through all these changes. She also highlighted the way that one week they will be studious, perhaps—thoughtful, intellectual—and then the next week can go to the other extreme, to the opposite sort of behaviour. They of course also very much reject their parents as they go through adolescence and often take extremely opposite views from those of their parents.

These young people are going through a very interesting time, and of course they are rather suggestible, particularly with the use of the internet now. It is easy to access them, so politicians who wish to and are unscrupulous can quite easily manipulate these young people. We have seen the ease of manipulating such young people through the process of grooming young people for sexual exploitation and by Islamic State. These young people may manifest themselves as quite intellectual at times, but they change very suddenly to a different point of view. They are not very stable because of their growing period.

I feel very concerned about this, and I hope your Lordships will reject this amendment. I look forward to the House’s response.

[Lord Heseltine (Con)]

My Lords, this is a highly controversial subject. There are many opinions on both sides of the House, and I have no doubt that the issue will be returned to time and again. Perhaps, however, your Lordships will agree with me that this Bill is the implementation of a manifesto commitment by the elected Government to devolve power from the Whitehall departments to combinations of local authorities. It is not about changing the electoral system. There was no reference in the manifesto associated with this commitment to changing the electoral system. Although as a Member of another place I was probably guilty on many occasions of abusing the full interpretation of the law in order to advocate petty or personal views that I held, I cannot believe that your Lordships are going to agree to add little bits—like trinkets on a Christmas tree—that suit our own particular ambitions but actually are not the intention of the Bill.

If the noble Lord were to talk about the need to change this, there is a proper place for that to happen, and that is for the Government to launch a wide basis of consultation. I think it would be appropriate for that to start in another place, which after all reflects the elected democracy of this country, and it would not be appropriate for this House to try to impose on another place a suggestion of that sort. I do not enter into the merits of the case. I merely suggest to your Lordships that we are here with a very specific task: the implementation of a manifesto commitment, which we should execute with dispatch.

On that basis, having heard all the eloquence that the noble Lord brings to this cause and to many others, I hope very much that he will feel he has served the purpose that he had in mind and not seek to change the electoral arrangements under the guise of devolving power to local authorities.