Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what plans he has to reduce the age for jury service to 16 to align with the lower voting age.

While both voting and jury service are civic duties, they carry distinct responsibilities. There are strong safeguarding and welfare reasons for maintaining jury service as an adult duty, including the fact that jurors may be exposed to distressing evidence and be disrupted from education or training at a potentially critical stage. The Government therefore considers it appropriate to maintain the current minimum eligibility age of 18 and has no plans to change this.