Lord Wallace of Saltaire:

Moved by Lord Wallace of Saltaire

137: After Clause 11, insert the following new Clause—“Voting from age 16 in parliamentary elections(1) The Representation of the People Act 1983 is amended as follows.(2) In section 1(1)(d) (definition of voting age for parliamentary elections), for “18” substitute “16”.”Member’s explanatory statementThis new Clause would lower the voting age to 16 in UK parliamentary elections.

My Lords, Amendments 137 and 138 are grouped with Amendment 143 in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Holmes of Richmond, who will undoubtedly want to speak to that amendment.

We have just had a long debate on voting systems because the Bill contains a clause that intends to change part of our voting system. The Bill also has a number of clauses that add somewhere between 1 million and 4 million extra voters to the electorate by extending the overseas electorate. I declare an interest as I have two sisters who have lived abroad for 50 years who would now be able to vote in British elections, not to mention a niece born in Britain, so I am conscious of the problems with that.

That means that the discussion as to whether or not the electorate might also be extended to include those between the ages of 16 and 18 is within scope of the Bill. As I mentioned in my earlier speech, it would have been appropriate for that to have been considered together with the question of whether to extend the electorate by increasing the opportunities for overseas voters to register. I do not intend to rehearse all the arguments for voting at 16. I say merely that I was converted to this by going round schools and learning about, first, the lack of citizenship education; secondly, the lack of engagement by young people in politics; and, thirdly, our failure to get young people to register.

The proportion of people aged 18 to 25 on the register is, in some areas, as low as 40%. That is an extremely poor failure within our electoral system. It is also very bad for our politics that we have an increasingly elderly electorate, which votes. Parties recognise this and therefore produce policies that appeal to older voters. Young people do not vote, which therefore means that the parties tend not to produce policies that they think are particularly important for younger voters. Again, I declare an interest, as I have twice led the manifesto process for my own party and I can remember, in 1996-97, people saying, “William, that’s not terribly important; we have to produce policies that appeal to people in their 40s, 50s and 60s, not those in their 20s and 30s, because those are the people who really care about this.”

The two amendments on which I am speaking are for parliamentary and local elections. I raise these as probing amendments. I suggest that the Government ought at least to be open to the idea of opening voting in local elections to young people aged 16, because it would involve them in discussing local democracy. It would therefore help to educate them about local democracy and that is very important for the future of our country.

I will make just one further remark. The last debate was remarkably English, with the exception of the contributions from the noble Lords, Lord Murphy and Lord Kilclooney. We have had proportional representation in the United Kingdom in two different forms in Northern Ireland and in Scotland and Wales. I am now talking about the problem of young people throughout the United Kingdom. I hope the Minister will at least address the problem of how we engage young people in politics. How do we get citizenship education back into our schools? How do we make sure the young do not switch off from politics, as there is substantial evidence that they have? I beg to move.

My Lords, I support Amendments 137 and 138, to which I have added my name, and oppose Amendment 143. Last November, the eminent professor of politics at Cambridge University, David Runciman, published an extended article arguing that children should be allowed to vote from the age of six. He cited a new book by John Wall which makes the case for no lower age limit on voting rights in the name of true democracy, and which addresses objections such as those based on competency. Wall suggests that parents and guardians should be able to cast proxy votes until such time as a child feels ready to vote on their own behalf. Runciman argued that

“if societies want to be truly democratic, they need to overcome their engrained biases and embrace the whole human community”.

I cite these examples not to make that argument but to show how modest and unradical the growing call for votes at 16 is. It is a step already taken by our sister Parliaments in Holyrood and Cardiff. Nevertheless, I acknowledge there is not a consensus in favour, as was clear from the evidence presented to the Select Committee on Citizenship and Civic Engagement, of which I was a member and which was chaired by the noble Lord, Lord Hodgson of Astley Abbotts.

Indeed, children and young people themselves are not unanimously in support, as I discovered in research I undertook into young people’s transitions to citizenship some years ago. The main reason given against the idea in that research and elsewhere was that the young people did not feel they had sufficient knowledge and understanding of politics to vote wisely. To my mind, the very fact they think that indicates a greater thoughtfulness about voting than some adults show.

That underlines the importance, as has already been mentioned, of citizenship education. As we said in our Select Committee report,

“Citizenship education is a crucial piece of the puzzle for thinking about the age at which people can vote.”

We noted that

“The UN Committee on the Rights of the Child recommended that if the UK should choose to lower its voting age it should ensure it is supported by ‘active citizenship and human rights education’.”

Unfortunately, the committee found the state of citizenship education to be pretty woeful, and I do not have reason to believe that it has improved much, if at all. But that is not a reason for not extending the vote to 16 year-olds; rather, it is an argument for giving much higher priority to decent citizenship education, as recommended by the committee.

There are instrumental arguments in favour of extending the franchise to 16. With decent citizenship education, 16 and 17-year-olds could be much better prepared for voting than older voters. They could be more likely to vote and then to keep voting as they get older. If they had the vote and used it, politicians might pay more attention to their needs and concerns, as the noble Lord, Lord Wallace of Saltaire, has argued.

For me, the overwhelming argument is that so many in this age group are already acting as citizens and have been taking the lead on crucial issues such as the climate emergency. In the study I carried out, those who wanted a reduction in the voting age felt that without it they were not being listened to or respected, and that the vote would help them feel that they belonged and that they had a say as full and proper citizens

In the same vein, the Select Committee on Citizenship and Civic Engagement heard from the young people we met that the lack of the vote was “a sore point”. Even if votes at 16 are not young people’s top priority, they pointed out to us that

“the Make Your Mark campaign coordinated by the UK Youth Parliament included … votes at 16 one of their core campaigns”,

voted for by over 950,000 young people. What better way to recognise these young people as full citizens than to extend the vote to them?

It is because of the implications for citizenship that I oppose Amendment 143, as tying the vote to employment and income tax status would create two classes of citizenship. In doing so, it would be divisive and exclusionary, which is the very opposite of what citizenship should be about and what we want to achieve by extending the franchise. From a practical point of view, it would be subject to annual decisions about the level of the tax threshold so young people on low incomes could find their right to vote fluctuating like a yo-yo, which is not conducive to them turning out to vote.

In the Commons, two Oral Questions on votes at 16 were met with a one-word answer: “No.” I have no doubt these amendments will be rejected also, but I hope not in similar peremptory fashion. I hope that the Minister will first give serious consideration to the case made, which is gaining more and more support.

My Lords, I follow the noble Lord, Lord Wallace, and the noble Baroness, Lady Lister, with pleasure. I will speak to Amendments 137 and 138, to which I have attached my name. Like the noble Baroness, Lady Lister—I am sorry we have not heard from the noble Lord, Lord Holmes of Richmond, and are yet to hear his case—I oppose Amendment 143 on the basis that it assumes that contribution to society can somehow be measured by income. In fact, we know that many of the people who contribute most to our society, whether they be carers—there are many young carers in our society—or people involved in the community, are huge parts of their community without receiving any income for that.

I will speak chiefly to Amendments 137 and 138. The noble Lord, Lord Wallace, in introducing this, reflected on the previous group being very English in its debate. That is particularly relevant to this group, as Scotland and Wales have votes at 16—the former having had it since 2015—with full cross-party support, including enthusiastic support from the former Scottish Tory leader and now Member of your Lordships’ House, the noble Baroness, Lady Davidson. It is a pity she is not with us today; I hope she might join us to share her thoughts on this on Report because that would be interesting and informative.

The success of the policy north of the English border has been very obvious, with very high turnout among 16 and 17 year-olds—a higher turnout than for 18 to 24 year-olds, with 75% voting and 97% saying they would vote in future elections. It is also worth noting that research shows they got their information from a wider range of sources than voters of older age groups. There is very strong evidence that people who vote in their first possible election are far more likely to keep voting. We have lost generations of people who have not voted in their first election. If we have votes at 16 and 17, we can see from the Scottish example that people are more likely to vote and keep voting.

I often speak to young people in formal and informal settings. I will insert a little advert here, for Members of your Lordships’ House who are not involved in it, for the Learn with the Lords programme, which is a great way to have contact with young people from a wide range of audiences.

I speak a great deal to climate strikers. I find that 16 year-olds are, on average, as informed about politics as 60 year-olds, perhaps rather more so. However, I endorse the remarks of the noble Baroness, Lady Lister, that society would benefit from a great deal more political education and understanding.

It has long been Green Party policy to have votes at 16. I declare an interest in that it would certainly be a benefit to our vote. Thinking long term is a core part of our political philosophy, and for young people, the long term is much more personal than it is for their parents and grandparents. It is their life. However, that is not why we want votes at 16. We want it, as do many others, because our current political structures are tottering, unstable and dangerously undemocratic, and votes at 16, while no panacea, would be a positive step forward.

The historical view is very useful here. The average age of voters in 2019, in our fast-ageing population, with a much lower turnout from that 18-24 group, is higher than it has ever been before, and less representative of the actual population than ever before, as we are seeing many European residents who are losing their right to vote in local elections.

There is also a huge ideological gap between generations, reflecting different life experiences and far higher levels of education in younger age groups. A 16 or 17 year-old is an expert on being a 16 or 17 year-old in a way that no one in your Lordships’ House can possibly be. The voting age also feeds into the age of our parliamentary representation, at least in the other place. If we look to continental Europe, the Parliaments are frequently far younger. In model democratic states such as Scandinavia, Ministers in their 20s and 30s are no cause for comment, reflecting a different kind of political culture which votes at 16 could help to bring in.

I am somewhat surprised and pleased to learn that the noble Baroness, Lady Lister, has pre-empted me in quoting David Runciman and that research. I was also going to suggest votes at six. She has stolen my thunder, but it is something that we might have a chat about later. I have met some very smart and politically engaged nine and 10 year-olds, who have asked some of the most pointed and difficult questions of anyone that I have ever encountered. They very often ask: “Why are things this way, why aren’t they different?” from a perspective which is very valuable.

The noble Lord, Lord Wallace, said that he introduced this as a probing amendment, but I put a proposition to your Lordships’ House. Our membership has an average age of 71 years. Would it not be a gift for us to put votes at 16 into the Elections Bill?

My Lords, I shall speak to Amendment 143, which has received such wholesome support from other Members of Your Lordships’ House. I can sum it up in four words: no taxation without representation.

I do not suggest for one moment that other contributions are not valid. The clause says nothing on that. I do not suggest anything to the wider debate; that has been well laid out. It is a clause set out in extremely simple terms on an incredibly specific point: the disfranchised 16 to 18-year-olds who currently can work and go to war cannot vote for how those taxes are spent and cannot vote for the Government who send them to war. Nothing more, nothing less than that.

I do not decry wider issues; it is simply a point on that specific group of people which is currently disfranchised. The Minister may wish to consider one possible solution: taking the 16 to 18-year-olds out of taxation completely. Amendment 143 offers an alternative solution, where they can be represented. I accept entirely the point of the noble Baroness, Lady Lister, on the complexities in previous years, but what one can now do with digital tax and real-time tax data would overcome those points. It is a simple amendment for a specific group of people, and a cry which has gone through democracies for centuries: no taxation without representation.

My Lords, I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Holmes of Richmond. I would have pre-empted him, but I am so glad that I did not. With respect, some noble Lords wrongly anticipated an incredibly creative and clever probing amendment. He has made the point about no taxation without representation through Amendment 143. I would not like to see it on the statute book because I do not want to return to the link between property, earnings or wealth and the franchise, but he has made a brilliant point very succinctly and incredibly well.

I will not torture Ministers further with my views on this subject. I have tortured Ministers of both stripes with my support for votes at 16 for some years. The poor Minister was tortured a while ago by my noble friend Lord Adonis, who is not in his place. We rehearsed this, and I commend to the Committee that extensive debate that we had one Friday, three years ago or five minutes ago; I forget which. It was five minutes ago. I do not support votes at six. I accept that any age of majority is slightly arbitrary because people mature differently. We must pick an age in law.

I rather think that we should be coalescing around 16, not only for voting but for criminal responsibility. The disparity between suffrage and criminal responsibility, in addition to taxation, I find very troubling. The noble Lord, Lord Holmes of Richmond, made his point so well. Of course, taxation is not just for people who are earning and paying taxes. There are sales taxes and, as the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett, said, people who are doing unpaid work and keeping families and small businesses going. However, Ministers have human rights too, and I would like them to get a comfort break and some supper quite soon.

My Lords, I am afraid that I am going to strike a discordant note because I invite my noble friend to reject these amendments, and certainly Amendments 137 and 138. I follow what the noble Baroness, Lady Lister, said about Amendment 143. It is an interesting idea but highly complex and probably not practical.

The Committee will recognise that I am committed to a vibrant civil society. I have spoken about it, I have moved amendments about it, and I think that it is a very important part of our democratic system, because it maximises people’s ability to participate, collectively or individually.

The noble Lord, Lord Wallace of Saltaire, who is not in his place, referred to lowering the voting age in order to increase citizenship education, which seemed to be the wrong way around; citizenship education would lead to improved understanding of what voting is all about. I absolutely agree with the noble Baroness, Lady Lister. That was a central theme of our cross-party review on citizenship for civic engagement. I thank the noble Lord, Lord Collins, as a member of the Liaison Committee, for having backed the idea of a follow-up, since when we have gone sideways, if not backwards. I am pleased to be able to say to him and the noble Baroness that the revised report will be published on Monday and out in the wider world on Tuesday, to probably no effect whatever but at least we will have some benchmarks.

During the committee, we had two issues from which the chairman has scars. The first was about British values. What were they, or were there any? The second was the voting age.

I shall quote a couple of sentences from our report, because they summarise some of the issues that lie behind these two amendments and which mean that I personally do not support them. Paragraph 319 of the report states:

“However, the issue has divided our witnesses. There is no consensus on whether the age should be lowered to 16 or whether it should remain at 18. Proponents of the change listed being able to marry and become a member of the armed forces as a reason for considering that 16 year olds are sufficiently responsible to vote. However this raises questions of whether it is right for people to be trusted as responsible enough to vote whilst not being responsible enough to ‘buy a beer or cigarettes or even drive to their friends or buy a firework’”.

That was what Professor Jon Tonge, professor of politics at the University of Liverpool, said in evidence to us. He and Dr Mycock have been doing some more research on this whole area. As the noble Baroness said, there was obviously a fierce discussion about the pressure for democratic backing for the change. Professor Tonge told our committee that he thought young people were almost evenly divided, though he said that some of that data was quite old.

The noble Baroness referred to the Make Your Mark campaign, but I am not sure she gave the full picture of what we were told. To quote from paragraph 321,

“the Make Your Mark campaign coordinated by the UK Youth Parliament included the votes of over 950,000 young people”,

which the noble Baroness referred to,

“who had voted to make votes at 16 one of their core campaigns.”

However, an analysis of the votes done by our staff showed that

“it received 101,041 votes”— only one in nine—

“and came 5th out of 10 topics. This suggests that young people care more about other topics than about votes at 16.”

Interestingly, the topic that received the most votes was “A curriculum to prepare us for life”, which in turn suggests support for a radical overhaul of the whole area of citizenship education and involvement. As Professor Tonge said:

“You would not let people go out on the road and drive a car without giving them some lessons first, yet we expect them—particularly if we lower the voting age to 16—to go out and vote without giving them any training in what our political systems are about. It seems perverse.”

To summarise, my view is that unless the case for making a fundamental change is overwhelmingly made, we should not make the change. I do not think that case has been overwhelmingly made. It certainly was not made before our committee and that is why I hope my noble friend will reject these amendments.

I shall dare to trespass on the Committee’s time for a further moment, ending with not a discordant but a sour note. In the debate on voter ID in the last meeting of the Committee, my noble friend on the Front Bench took a lot of heavy punishment about how it was being introduced to try to benefit the Conservative Party. He rejected that, rightly in my view. Would I be wrong to say that there might be some advantages for other parties in the House in young people voting and that that may be why it is being so enthusiastically supported?

Would the noble Lord agree that young people look at what their interests are? Maybe if the Conservative Party did more to represent the interests of young people, more of them would vote for it.

I am not saying anything about that. I am just saying that I do not think the case has been made for the change. Where we go from there is another matter.

I take the noble Lord’s point, because there are all sorts of polls and this is in the Library briefing, but I can honestly say that I have debated this issue in the past with Labour Ministers who were not for votes at 16 at the time. I think we are getting to a stage in thinking about sophistication and education where we have to coalesce around an arbitrary age. I go back to the criminal responsibility point. The noble Lord speaks very eloquently. He argues “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” and that we should not make a radical change without a great deal of consensus. He did not speak like that when he was talking about radically overhauling the refugee convention on another Bill.

My Lords, I simply venture to suggest that, at the moment, the priority should be to assist and encourage as many of our young people who are already entitled to vote at the age of 18 to get on the registers. We do not have nearly enough of them on the registers. The Government have a number of important initiatives in hand to encourage more of those aged 18 and immediately above to register to vote. My noble friend might be able tell us briefly about some of those important initiatives when he comes to reply.

My Lords, I will try to be brief. The Labour Party has supported and continues to support lowering the voting age. I would just say to the noble Lord, Lord Hodgson, that the last time we were in government and lowered the voting age, we lost the subsequent election. That was in 1970.

On civic education, in many of my contributions, I have mentioned the noble Lord, Lord Hodgson, and his committee’s report. It is excellent and worth rereading. He is absolutely right about the Government’s failure to respond properly to it. But citizenship education in schools and lowering the voting age are not mutually exclusive. Speaking from personal experience, I joined the Labour Party in 1970, partly because we had organised a mock election in my school. As a consequence of standing as a Labour candidate in that mock election, I went out and campaigned for Harold Wilson, even though I did not have the right to vote. I joined the Labour Party at the age of 15—noble Lords can now calculate how old I am.

Too young for the Lords!

Well, there you go. I am still below the average age—just. The important point is that they are not mutually exclusive. This is about how we encourage people to participate in democracy and, as the noble Lord said, participation is not simply about voting. We want people to properly engage in civic society. That includes other groups which campaign and organise, because that is what influences our politics. Young people are certainly doing that, which is why we are very strongly in favour of this.

Of course, we have the evidence. Scotland and Wales now have a lower voting age, but they are not the only places. The Isle of Man and Jersey have it, as do Guernsey, Brazil and Austria, and it applies to some elections in Germany, Malta and Norway. There is strong evidence of how it can encourage participation and build this in, because when people start voting at a young age, they continue to vote. That is a really important point.

Picking up the point that I think the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett, made, the noble Baroness, Lady Davidson of Lundin Links, changed her mind through her experience in the referendum campaign. I read an article that she wrote for the Tory Reform Group as a consequence of that experience in 2016. She said:

“Those in favour of the status quo argue that while the referendum offered a clear, unambiguous choice, parliamentary elections present a more muddied, multi-layered decision which require a more mature electorate.

But having watched and debated in front of 16 and 17-year-olds throughout the referendum, I have found myself unable to agree. My position has changed. We deem 16-year-olds adult enough to join the army, to have sex, get married, leave home and work full-time. The evidence of the referendum suggests that, clearly, they are old enough to vote too.”

I agree with her. We should do this.

My Lords, I fear I cannot accept these amendments, although, having been mildly disobliging on the previous group about those against first past the post, I will open with an area of agreement. I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Wallace of Saltaire, my noble friend Lord Lexden and the party opposite that we must do more—as much as we can—to engage young people in civic education and understanding what it is to be a future citizen. We are also having other discussions on trying, we hope, to persuade more young people to vote. There is strong agreement there.

We cannot accept these amendments because the Government, having reflected on the matter, simply do not believe that a reduction to 16 is the correct course. My noble friend Lord Hodgson of Astley Abbotts made a very strong speech on this. There are many difficult questions, as the noble Baroness, Lady Chakrabarti, said, about what constitutes full adulthood, which society has to wrestle with. We think, in common with most countries in the world—although not, I acknowledge, the devolved Administrations in Scotland and Wales—that the current position is correct.

We made that very clear to the electorate; we were not trying to hide it, because it was and is a subject of discussion between the parties. We have been criticised for our manifesto not being clear, but it was absolutely clear on this point:

“We will maintain the voting age at 18—the age at which one gains full citizenship.”

That was very explicitly stated. You may not agree with that, but it is the position. I hope the Committee will respect that. Eighteen is widely recognised in the vast majority of democratic countries as the right age at which to enfranchise young people.

There are difficulties. For example, the very radical proposal by the Liberal Democrats to legalise cannabis was not for people below 18 because they were not mature before that age. In 2010, the party opposite raised the age for using sunbeds to 18. Other examples have been given on some more fundamental and difficult questions of peace and war. With respect to the arguments I have heard, the Government believe that the settled, present position is correct, in common with most other democratic countries.

My noble friend Lord Holmes of Richmond’s amendment seeks to lower the voting age to 16 and 17 year-olds by linking the franchise to taxation. I fear I must disappoint him; taxation has never been the basis of democratic representation in this country. For example, an American citizen of voting age who works and pays taxes in the United Kingdom does not have the right to vote in parliamentary elections simply by virtue of tax. However, a British citizen of voting age who pays no income tax, such as a student, rightly retains the right to vote, as do those earning less than the tax-free allowance. In council tax there is a class S exemption—I think it is called that; it was in my day—for households of 16 and 17 year-olds precisely so that they should not pay council tax. The mixing of taxation and voting rights raises difficult problems. It would also potentially disfranchise people who could, for a range of reasons, be unable to work or find work or who may be working but not earning enough to pay taxes.

With respect to those who have a different opinion, the Government have reflected on this. Engagement is important; I was very proud when I was leader of a local authority—I know many other local authorities do the same—of the UK Youth Parliament and youth engagement through schools. I have similar recollections to the noble Lord opposite. These things are important. Let us work together across parties to try to do that, but I cannot recommend that the House adopts this principle in the Bill. I forecast to the Committee that, if it were proposed, because it was a manifesto commitment by the Government to maintain the present position, it would not find favour in the other place. I therefore ask the noble Lord to withdraw his amendment.

My Lords, in withdrawing this amendment, I point out that, if we are saying that there is a problem—which the Minister has admitted, but has said that this is not the answer—then the question of how we manage to get more young people on the register, which we will come to on automatic voter registration, is important. The very near collapse of citizenship education in our state schools is an urgent matter, which we should all address on a cross-party basis. I look forward to the Minister returning to that. I hope he will take back to his colleagues in the Department for Education how important many of us feel this to be.

I merely remark to the noble Lord, Lord Hodgson, that the extensive coverage in this Bill of the extension of overseas voting is there because Sir Geoffrey Clifton-Brown, Conservatives Abroad and the Conservative Party’s international office decided that this would be to the Conservatives’ advantage. Surveys in the mid-2000s suggested that 68% of those voting overseas were voting for the Conservative Party. I was suggesting earlier that a little bit of balance and cross-party agreement on how one extends the electorate might be desirable. Sadly, I do not think this Government are in the mood for that. That is one of the many things I regret about the way this Bill has been introduced and is being handled. I beg leave to withdraw my amendment.

Amendment 137 withdrawn.

Amendment 138 not moved.

House resumed. Committee to begin again not before 8.45 pm.