European Union Referendum Bill

Debate between Tommy Sheppard and Will Quince

Thursday 18th June 2015 Commons Chamber

[Tommy Sheppard]

My hon. Friend echoes the points that I am making. There are many international comparisons in this discussion. Young people—16-year-olds—have the right to vote in Austria, Brazil and many other countries. Nearer to home, they have the right to vote in the Isle of Man and the Channel Islands. I think we should play catch-up and accord them the right to vote here. This is an idea whose time has come.

Several hon. Members have suggested that they are relaxed about the longer-term principle of lowering the voting age in this country but they feel that we are rushing into it with the referendum, so they object to it today because of their commitment to trying to get the process right. I suggest that they should look at it the other way around. They should treat the referendum as an experiment, a trial and an opportunity to see whether lowering the voting age would work. The results of that experiment could inform our longer-term discussions about the franchise more generally.

[Will Quince]

Is it appropriate to have experiments with our constitutional matters?

[Tommy Sheppard]

The hon. Gentleman’s Government have been quite keen to inflict experiments on Scotland. I refer him to the poll tax, if nothing else, which the Government decided to implement first in Scotland on an experimental basis before applying it to the rest of the United Kingdom. There is an argument for saying that with constitutional change of such magnitude as changing the voting age, we might want to try it first and see how it works in a referendum, after which we could certainly apply the results to the longer-term franchise.