Oral Answers to Questions Debate

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Department: Cabinet Office

Oral Answers to Questions

Philip Davies Excerpts
Tuesday 26th October 2010

(14 years, 1 month ago)

Commons Chamber
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Nick Clegg Portrait The Deputy Prime Minister
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Whether people are entitled to vote should not in principle depend on whether they exercise that right. One can accept the principle that people should be entitled to vote at certain ages, without making that entitlement contingent on their exercising it.

Philip Davies Portrait Philip Davies (Shipley) (Con)
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Does the Deputy Prime Minister agree that there is something slightly irrational about those who, in the previous Parliament, thought that we should increase the age at which people are allowed to smoke from 16 to 18, but who now think that 16-year-olds have the right level of responsibility for the voting age to be reduced from 18 to 16?

Nick Clegg Portrait The Deputy Prime Minister
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I certainly agree—[Interruption.]