Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill

I shall stop taking interventions now. The argument, which I shall now try to make without taking too many interventions, is that a limit at 18, 16, 14 or 12 is quite random. Individuals mature at different times—I shall not make personal assumptions—so when we draw the line under any voting age, there will be some people who are more mature and others who are less mature, but there are lots of reasons why 16, and not 18, is a good age at which to draw the line. Although I should love to see votes at 16 for every election—parliamentary, local government and referendums—the Bill offers us our only real opportunity to lower the voting age in a referendum, because referendums come up very rarely. The change could be quite easily made; as my hon. Friend the Member for Foyle (Mark Durkan) has pointed out, 16-year-olds are already on the electoral register, so the process will not be difficult for local authorities. Sixteen is a good age at which to draw the line, because it has to be drawn somewhere. All those 16-year-olds will be 18 by the time of the general election, at which point the new voting system will be in place—or not. All I am arguing is that those people need to have a say.