Electoral Administration Bill

I shall not agree with my noble friend on this occasion, having added my name to the amendment. When I heard her say that young people have other things on their mind and do not want to be bothered with that, I felt sure that, if I went back to my grandmother’s diaries from the time when she was fighting for women’s suffrage, I would find that a number of men were saying just the same thing about women—possibly, in exactly the same words. I find myself reacting against that just as strongly. When children are given the opportunity to participate in taking decisions about their lives, as they frequently are in schools, these days—I see a lot of that—they take that responsibility and are extremely glad to be involved. I acknowledge that that is within a smaller community and that they are heavily regulated, but, none the less, the experience of having a voice and taking part is one that children are capable of taking on at a very early age. Neither do I agree with my noble friend Lord Norton of Louth that public opinion as expressed by those who have the vote is necessarily the guide that we should follow. If there had been opinion polls when the franchise started to be expanded, restricted to those who had the franchise, we would have found large votes against almost every change. It was because political leaders chose to make a difference on the basis of what they understood to be right and good for those who did not have the vote that we have the franchise that we have now. Nor do I think that there would be any horrid consequences from extending votes to 16 year-olds. I do not lay claim to any sudden benefits. I know that there are aspirations that that will flow on through education and that there will be a sudden renaissance of interest in politics among 16 year-olds who are involved in the extremely boring citizenship courses that we imposed on them at present. I am of the mind that there is a lot else that we must do to engage pupils’ minds in the world around them by way of reforming the curriculum. It will not happen just because they are given the vote. That is not where I am coming from in this debate. We must decide when we allow our children to have a voice in what is happening to them. Over the past 20 to 30 years, we have been heaping more and more responsibility on children. Not long ago, there was a case in which a girl well under the age of consent had a termination without the consent of her parents. If that is not putting responsibility on children, I do not know what is. There have been many other little ways in which we have been loading responsibility—criminal responsibility or social responsibility—on children, asking them to take decisions, effectively without the support of their parents or family. When we have been doing that, we owe it to our children to consider whether we should give them the right to have a say. That is a right. We have given them the responsibilities that go with it. Should we be giving them the right? That is something that the Commons should have an opportunity to debate. They did not have that opportunity when they were considering the Bill, because the amendment was not selected for debate in Committee. I very much hope that the Liberal Democrats will give us a chance to send that question back to the Commons. If the Commons say no, I should not dream of arguing with them—there is no danger of ping-ponging on this—but we have reached the point where we need to consider this and to take a decision. The very idea that we could say that children can be company directors, with the immense personal responsibility that that involves and, at the same time, deny them the vote, is totally ridiculous.