Botulinum Toxin and Cosmetic Fillers (Children) Bill

Lord Hannan of Kingsclere Excerpts

2nd reading
Friday 16th April 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hannan of Kingsclere (Con)]

My Lords, it is a great pleasure to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett, my noble friends, and noble Lords opposite. In fact, I would like to associate myself with all the informed concern and expertise brought by so many more qualified than myself. I do not want to add anything to what has already been said, other than to associate myself with the congratulations for my noble friend Lady Wyld, and for Laura Trott for bringing the Bill before us.

Instead, allow me to invite your Lordships to ponder the somewhat anomalous legal position in which a 16 or 17 year-old British subject finds himself or herself. At that age, you are allowed to pay tax but not to quit full-time education; you are allowed to have sex but not to watch it on the screen; you are allowed to smoke cigarettes but not to buy them. Anomalies are intrinsic in any legal system in our imperfect, Aristotelian, sublunary world. An anomaly is not intrinsically a reason not to do something. None the less, there has been something of a harmonisation around the age of 18 as the moment at which we recognise legal adulthood and informed consent. You have to wait until your 18th birthday to buy a bottle of wine, a knife or a mortgage—though probably not in that order. You have to wait until you are 18 before you can serve on a jury or indeed be confined in an adult prison.

In a way, all that this legislation is doing is bringing this procedure into line with what we are increasingly recognising as the age at which adulthood begins. This has been, by the way, a move carried out under Governments of all parties—it was the previous Government, I think, who raised the age for buying fireworks, using sunbeds, buying knives and so on.

I leave your Lordships with the thought that it would be extraordinary to ban people under the age of 18 from making all these decisions about their own bodies while enfranchising them, and thereby allowing them, through the ballot box, to play a part in deploying the full coercive power of the law on the decisions that other people are allowed to make. If 18 is the age of adulthood, it would be extraordinary, whether in elections or referendums, to lower it. If you cannot get fillers then you should not have the franchise.