Elections: Voting Age

Lord Parekh Excerpts

Wednesday 27th February 2013 Grand Committee

[Lord Parekh]

My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Tyler, for securing and introducing the debate. I must have thought about this question for nearly 40 years as a political philosopher. Although it is a subject on which it is difficult to take a definite position, because one can see arguments on both sides, I am increasingly convinced that the case for a reduction in age from 18 to 16 is very weak and the case against it is fairly strong.

The case for it seems to rest on three arguments, which I will call the arguments of consistency, fairness and democracy. The first argument runs something like this: reducing the age to 16 will bring it in line with other areas of life; for example, children can leave school at 16, get married at 16, can and have to pay tax at 16, join the Armed Forces at 16 and consent to sexual relations at 16. If that is the common age, why can it not be true of voting as well?

The second, right-based, argument is that 16 year-olds these days have the maturity to form political judgment and it is only right that they should be able to vote in the same way as 18, 19 or 20 year-olds. The third argument is that it will increase their interest in politics and strengthen the foundations of participatory democracy.

I am afraid that I am not persuaded by any of these three arguments. The first, that it will bring it in line with other areas of life, is a half-truth. There are several areas of life in which 16 year-olds today cannot do things; for example, they cannot buy alcohol, they cannot serve on a jury and they cannot place a bet. If they can join the Armed Forces at 16, it is only with the consent of their parents, not on their own. Therefore, to say that it will bring them in line is not true.

It is also important to bear in mind that, although they pay taxes—the argument being that there should be no taxation without representation—if a five year-old or seven year-old goes to a shop to buy a bar of chocolate, he ends up paying VAT or whatever indirect taxes he is subjected to. It would be wrong to say that a nine year-old should be able to vote simply because he pays tax; the argument would be absurd.

On the second argument, that one can acquire the capacity for political judgment on what is the right thing to do at 16, there is no evidence for this. What kind of research is this alluding to? I have not seen any here, in the United States, or in any of our European partners. People having access to more information on the internet simply means that they have more information—but information is not knowledge, let alone judgment. In politics, as a voter one is concerned with a practical activity that entails a practical judgment about the range of possibilities that are open to one, and how one should exercise one’s vote. Practical judgment does not come simply by looking at Google and the internet. I would say the same of citizenship classes. One can marshal all kinds of information about various political ideologies; all the things that we have taught in universities for years. Does the kind of information that one can communicate to students in itself give someone the competence to make a political judgment on the issue of whether they should be voting Labour or Liberal Democrat, or whether or not they should be supporting the war in Iraq?

On the third argument, that this will increase their interest in politics: fair enough. However, as my good friend the noble Lord, Lord Norton, said, that seems to me to be putting the cart before the horse. You cannot dangle a vote in front of somebody, saying, “We will give you the vote now in the hope that you will take an interest in politics”. One would hope that a vote is a reward, not an incentive. We are reducing a supremely sacred political activity—the vote, the exercise of highest sovereignty a community has—to dangling a kind of carrot and asking, “Look, if we give it to you, will you vote?”. It is striking that 18 year-olds have had votes for a long time. In the previous general election, only 39.6% of them voted, compared to the rest of the population at somewhere in the region of 70%.

Therefore, I would suggest that the arguments for are not persuasive; at least I have not found them persuasive so far, but other arguments could be produced, in which case I would like to hear them. The arguments against 16 year-olds being allowed to vote seem fairly strong. First, as I say, voting is an exercise of power. It is a participation in sovereignty. If you are going to exercise power, you must have a capacity for judgment of a practical kind. Unless you have had some experience of life, some independent existence and have broken out of the sheltered environment of the family and seen the world on your own and made choices, how will you be able to know what kind of judgment you should make?

My other simple fear is that, given low turnout among young people and the fact that low turnout can be habit-forming, if a 16 year-old gets into the habit of not voting, he or she might continue that habit until the end of their lives. There is a danger that if we give 16 year-olds the vote in the hope that they will participate more enthusiastically in the voting process, the opposite will occur.