Voting Age

Debate between Paul Blomfield and Barry Gardiner

Thursday 24th January 2013 Commons Chamber

[Paul Blomfield (Sheffield Central) (Lab)]

I congratulate the hon. Member for Bristol West (Stephen Williams), whose motion is supported by Members on both sides of the House, on securing this debate. A number of Members have suggested that it is timely, but I suggest that it is overdue. As we have been reminded, when the Electoral Commission said back in 2004 that the voting age should remain unchanged, it also said that we should look at the issue again in five to seven years, so by any account we are at least two years late.

I am disappointed that the hon. Member for Shipley (Philip Davies) sought to diminish the debate by suggesting that those of us who were advocating this cause were simply trying to be trendy. Looking at those Members who have spoken so far, including myself, I do not think there is any chance that any of us will be mistaken for being trendy—[Interruption.]—with the exception of my hon. Friend the Member for Wigan (Lisa Nandy).

In preparing for the debate, I invited views from constituents. I want to share just one, from Simon Landau who had been out campaigning on the NHS. He said:

“I was very much struck by a young man carrying his baby son in his arms who came up to us on the stall... He was 17, doing his training at Catterick and was due to go to Afghanistan this year. He was interested in our leaflets and the petition on the NHS as he realised its critical importance to his family. He was also aware that he didn’t have a vote, and so he wondered whether he was allowed to sign the petition.”

My constituent’s observation was that the doubt ought to be removed. I thought about that young man. He is old enough to be concerned about the NHS, and rightly so, old enough to join the Army, old enough to have a baby, old enough to be married and old enough to pay tax and receive benefits. If he had chosen a different course, he would also be old enough to be a company director, to join a trade union and, indeed, to vote in trade union elections—another example of the Labour movement setting the progressive path—but he is not judged old enough to vote in other elections. There are currently over 1.5 million 16 and 17-year-olds exercising those sorts of responsibilities on a daily basis, and they should have a bigger say.

Opponents, including the hon. Member for Shipley and others, say that we restrict many things to 18-year-olds. He cited buying cigarettes, drinking alcohol and gambling. There is a common thread there: we tend to restrict to 18-year-olds the stuff that is bad for people. We do not really want to lump engagement in democracy in that basket.

Although I agree with the hon. Member for Bristol West that there should be varying age limits and thresholds, 16 is a threshold for a significant range of rights and responsibilities. I disagree with my hon. Friend the Member for Huddersfield (Mr Sheerman), who is not currently in his place, because I do not think that childhood extends to 18.

We should empower 16 and 17-year-olds not only because it aligns their rights with their responsibilities, but because it makes them more likely to participate in politics in the longer term. There is considerable evidence that the younger people are when they start voting, the more likely they are to stick with the habit. If young people do not get the opportunity to vote in a general election until six or seven years after their citizenship education—whatever efforts the Education Secretary is making to undermine that education—that gives the impression that their views are not valid. It gives young people time to feel excluded from politics, even before they have had the chance to express their political views. If people do not vote when they are young, they might never vote again.

My hon. Friend the Member for York Central (Hugh Bayley) referred to our common experience of being beneficiaries when the voting age was reduced to 18. I am sure that many Members of the House at the time voiced exactly the same arguments that have been raised against today’s proposal: that 18 to 21-year-olds would not be mature enough to vote. I guess that the majority of us who benefited would disagree with that argument because we felt we were mature enough to vote, but I talk to many 16 and 17-year-olds in schools and colleges, and I have to say that they are more impressive than many of us would have been at that age.

[Barry Gardiner (Brent North) (Lab)]

Does my hon. Friend agree that one of the biggest examples of that is the Youth Parliament debate that took place in this Chamber, which was absolutely exemplary?

[Paul Blomfield]

My hon. Friend makes an important point that is confirmed by the contacts and engagement I have had with youth parliamentarians in Sheffield.

I can see why many in the Government might not want to extend the right to vote to 16, for very practical reasons from their point of view. Policies are often shaped in recognition of the power of the elderly vote, and rightly so—that is what democracy is about. However, young people have borne the brunt of this Government’s policies, with the abolition of the education maintenance allowance, the increase in tuition fees, the scrapping of the future jobs fund, turning the clock back with GCSE and A-level reforms, and much more besides. How differently those issues might have been viewed if 16 and 17-year-olds had had the vote. Just as with the elderly vote, that is what democracy is about. Because of their responsibilities, because they are affected by so many of the decisions made here and by local councils, and because we can trust their judgment, we should take the bold step of extending the voting age to 16.

Budget Resolutions and Economic Situation

Debate between Paul Blomfield and Barry Gardiner

Tuesday 22nd June 2010 Commons Chamber

[Barry Gardiner]

I should be very happy to look at the pages of the Red Book in due course, but if the hon. Gentleman wants to challenge the fact, which I have just stated, that the poor spend a greater proportion of their incomes on VATable items, I am sure that he will find not only that he is wrong, but that he is out of sync with other Liberal Democrats—his leader, in fact, and his deputy leader—who have said exactly the same as I have. No wonder that the Liberal leader had to write to his MPs today to insist that he had not sold out on his party’s promise to protect those who are on average incomes.

I simply refer those hon. Members to “Liberal Democrat Voice”, published on 8 April, in which the Liberal leader said:

“So if you’re on an ordinary income, you have a choice. If you want your taxes to rise: vote Labour or Conservative. If you want your taxes to fall: choose the Liberal Democrats.”

The smugness is breathtaking, but nowhere near as breathtaking as the G-forces exerted by the speed of the U-turn that he has performed. His talk of progressive cuts certainly did not go down well in Sheffield, Hallam, where the axing of the Labour Government’s £80 million loan to Sheffield Forgemasters has denied his constituency of the manufacturing future and new jobs that local people so badly wanted and that he once said that he believed in.

As the Social Liberal Forum reminded the Deputy Prime Minister in an open letter last week:

“The Liberal Democrats did not sign up to the Conservative formula of cutting £4 for every £1 raised in additional revenue and it would be impossible to pursue such a policy without adversely hurting the most vulnerable in society. With this in mind, it seems incomprehensible that we could be contemplating a rise in VAT at this stage. As the Liberal Democrats pointed out before the election, a VAT rise to 20% would cost every person in the country an average of £389, disproportionately hurting the least well-off who would be least able to afford it.”

That is Liberal Democrats talking. Frankly, we expect the Conservative party to attack the poorest in society. It was rather refreshing to be told a week last Thursday, by the Under-Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, the hon. Member for Bromley and Chislehurst (Robert Neill), that

“Those in greatest need ultimately bear the burden of paying off the debt”.—[Official Report, 10 June 2010; Vol. 511, c. 450.]

At least he got it right.

[Paul Blomfield (Sheffield Central) (Lab)]

It is unfortunate that the Deputy Prime Minister is not listening to the comments about Sheffield Forgemasters, and I assume that he was not listening to the Prime Minister’s remarks yesterday, when he made disparaging comments about the shareholders of Sheffield Forgemasters and the financial engineering associated with the deal, which has been through the most robust critique by the Treasury. Does my hon. Friend agree that, when the Deputy Prime Minister returns to Sheffield, it would be appropriate for him to apologise on behalf of the Prime Minister for those comments?

[Barry Gardiner]

I entirely endorse my hon. Friend’s remarks. The only thing that I find more smug than the comments that have been made was the fact that, during the entirety of oral questions to the Deputy Prime Minister, he refused to answer any of the questions that he would have found difficult to answer. One wonders why they are called oral questions to the Deputy Prime Minister if he is not going to bother to answer them.