Education: Citizenship

Lord Grocott Excerpts

Wednesday 14th January 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Nash]

I agree with my noble friend’s sentiment. This Government have funded five organisations to test new approaches to improve registration levels and democratic engagement, including funding UK Youth in this regard.

[Lord Grocott (Lab)]

My Lords, on democratic participation, do we not in this House have a big advantage over young people coming on to the register? During our lifetimes, we have been able to participate in general elections on average once every three years and 10 months, whereas the upcoming generation, thanks to legislation by this Government, will be able to take part in a general election only once every five years. A simple decision that could be made to increase the possibility of democratic participation by young people would be to scrap these wretched five year fixed-term Parliaments.

[Noble Lords]

Hear, hear!