Electoral Administration Bill

I agree that it is a very useful debate and it is appropriate that I come in at this point to put a counter-argument to that of the noble Lord, Lord Goodhart. The noble Lord said that the Power report was well received; that is an interesting observation. It would be interesting to know who it was well received by, apart from the noble Lord, Lord Goodhart. On the arguments deployed by the noble Lord, there is an important distinction to be made that was not made clear in his argument. Voting can be exercised directly, so when you lower the voting age to 16 you are therefore empowering 16 year-olds. With a lot of the things he mentioned, you are not empowering 16 year-olds but people who can select 16 year-olds for fulfilling certain purposes. He said that 16 year-olds can join the Army; that is not so much empowering 16 year-olds as empowering the Army, because you have to be selected. Mind you, when you are 16 you are not sent to the front, so that is a distinction between those aged 16 and those who are 18. Similarly, you can get married at 16, but only with parental consent. Again, there is a difference. If you lower the age at which you can become a company director to 16, you are not so much empowering 16 year-olds as empowering companies because a selection can be made from 16 year-olds. Similarly, on the amendment we are coming on to in lowering the qualifying age for election to public office, if you lower that age to 18 you are not empowering 18 year-olds, you are empowering the electorate because you widen the freedom of choice of electors of whom they can choose. The 18 year-old would still have to go through a certain process to achieve what they are being given. With 16 year-olds voting, that can be exercised directly. There is an important distinction to be drawn, which we need to recognise. On the issue of whether the voting age should be lowered, you cannot use the argument that 16 year-olds can do other things for the reasons that I have just given, so we need some other basis for change. What could we draw on? Popular support? Opinion polls show that there is no popular support for the change. Today I received a briefing paper making the case for lowering the voting age, which engages in absolute contortions trying to avoid the fact that there is no popular support. Some say it was a loaded question; it was not a loaded question at all. All it found was that people who respond to consultations tend to support them, which is because those who support them want to reply to the exercise. Is following the rest of Europe a criterion? On the whole, elsewhere it is 18 years old as well, so that is not a basis to depart from it. There has to be a compelling case to go against public opinion and practice elsewhere. I have not heard a compelling case for it. A line has to be drawn somewhere. If we are to move from 18 years old, what is the basis for it? I hear what the noble Lord, Lord Goodhart, says. It is well intentioned and it would be nice if it had those effects. The problem is that there is no empirical evidence to sustain the argument. We need more in terms of substance to move away from it. The arguments deployed so far, which are substantive, do not support the case. As I say, there is a key distinction to be drawn between exercising something directly—in this case, empowering 16 year-olds—and allowing 16 year-olds to be chosen to be selected to do other things, where you empower those doing the selection. That is a key distinction which we should not lose sight of. I am not persuaded that I have heard a compelling case for departing from the present situation.