Electoral Administration Bill

In response to the noble Lord, Lord Campbell-Savours, he has made a serious point which, of course, equally applies to the 18 years-old plus age group in many circumstances. It is not unknown for a spouse to exert quite a lot of pressure on his or her partner in such circumstances. If we are to abolish any pressure of that sort, a rather more comprehensive change in the law would be required. The noble Lord, Lord Norton, asked by whom the Power commission report was well received. The answer is: by the Leaders of all three parties, which I hope is significant for him and other noble Lords. They made a substantial case for this to be examined carefully, not least for the important reasons identified by Harriet Harman MP, the responsible Minister, during the Second Reading of this Bill in the House of Commons on 25 October last year. She said:"““It is not a question of people losing the habit of voting. A generation of people are growing up who have never voted. They have never got into the habit of voting””.—[Official Report, Commons, 25/10/05; col. 196.]" She was reflecting on and responding to an important report from the Electoral Commission that demonstrated that not only are the 18 to 24 year-old age group not in the habit of voting, but also, as they get older, they still do not vote. It is a very important issue we all need to address. Young people may not be particularly interested in political institutions, but when they take an active interest in important political issues in school, which they do as part of the citizenship syllabus, they directly address those issues. They are told, ““You have now got a good balance for thinking about political issues, but of course you cannot do anything with it””. We should address that. I give the Government full credit for introducing into the syllabus an important area of new study, of which a lot of people have taken advantage. Teaching is improving all the time. I have a lot of experience of going into schools and I find that the 16 year-olds who have just come through the process are often more alive to real issues than their immediate elders who may not have had the benefit of it or have now become more specialist in their studies because of the imminence of other exams. We have to look very carefully at the way in which young people are introduced to political issues and then are given some influence over them. They may be only a small minority of the total electorate, but they are an important minority. As my noble friend said, the percentage of those who voted in the previous two general elections in the youngest age group at present—the 18 to 24 year-olds—went down despite the figure for the electorate generally going up in 2005. It went down from 31 per cent in 2001 to about 30 per cent in 2005. That is a real problem. I do not expect the Minister to address it in the few minutes we have today, but I hope that all parties recognise that the problem needs to be addressed. We all need to try to find ways to deal with it.