Voting Age

Debate between Hugh Bayley and David Nuttall

Thursday 24th January 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr Nuttall]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for that point and congratulate him on securing the debate. It has given the House the opportunity to give the subject an airing, for which I am sure we are all grateful, whichever side of the debate we are on.

It is not that long ago in the history of this country that the voting age was reduced from 21 to 18 and we are now debating whether to reduce it from 18 to 16.

[Hugh Bayley (York Central) (Lab)]

It is very kind of the hon. Gentleman to give way. I was one of the first beneficiaries of Harold Wilson’s Labour Government’s decision to reduce the voting age from 21 to 18. I was born in 1952 and voted in my first general election aged 18 in 1970—the first general election in which there were 18-year-old voters. It seems to me that all the arguments being made against reducing the voting age could have been and were made in the 1960s, and it is now many years later. The hon. Gentleman says that it is not very long ago, but I am old enough to have a senior person’s railcard now. It is about time we moved on and allowed younger people, who are better educated now than I was then, to vote.

[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.”