Electoral Administration Bill

Now that I have had a chance to catch my breath, I note that the Committee is clearly anxious to continue with the Bill. However, I should say that when the noble Lord, Lord Hurd, launched a report into the rise in prisoner numbers, it highlighted that the number of children in custody had doubled over a 10-year period, at a time when crime overall had declined by 10 per cent. The turning point with regard to the number of children in custody was the Bulger case. Media coverage of these matters is becoming more and more important in influencing government policies. Anti-social behaviour orders have resulted in children as young as 10 having their photograph, home address and school recorded in the local press. That is on occasion picked up by the tabloids and one sees photographs of children as young as 10 in their centre pages. We must remember that in Germany, where young people can vote at the age of 16, the age of criminal responsibility is 14. We need to be mature enough as a country to recognise the vulnerability of children and young people, not to demonise them and react in an overly harsh way, before we can afford to reduce the voting age. Inevitably, I am afraid that those in the media who unfortunately have little understanding of these young people—one understands the terrible impact that these children can have on their surroundings—would be encouraged to be more vindictive towards them if one lowered the voting age.