My Lords, I am not rising to resolve that particular problem. Though I am by nature and inclination a referenda man, do not let us go too far down that line. I frequently agree with the noble Lord, Lord Howarth, who is a friend of long standing but I cannot go along with him on much of what he said, although I agree with him emphatically that—I hope—the Welsh people will not wish to vote on independence. At the moment, the polls indicate that only 4% of them are inclined to move that way. Somebody interjects to say it is 3%; the proportion is going down by the minute.
I come at this from a slightly different angle: I believe that among the things that should be common to the United Kingdom as a whole is the franchise. That is why I was critical of the Prime Minister and others, who conceded to Mr Salmond votes at 16 for the referendum in Scotland. I have mentioned my highly articulate and intelligent 16 year-old granddaughter in this Chamber before. Of course, because 16 year-olds were going to have the vote, I engaged with her, and through her with others, on the subject, because it was of such significance. That was far more important than any single vote I have cast in over 50 years of having the franchise; when I was able to vote for the first time it was at the age of 21.
We did concede to Mr Salmond that 16 year-olds should have the vote—and I entered into the spirit of it within family and so on—but I regretted that we had done so. We must consider carefully the wisdom of giving the vote to 16 year-olds. After all, there are so many other areas of life we could talk about in terms of what people can do at 16; some will work and pay taxes and some will not.
Only yesterday in this House the noble Earl, Lord Listowel, introduced an amendment that the Government accepted. He made an exceptionally moving speech, and the Minister gave an extraordinarily generous reply. The substance of that amendment was that 17 year-olds apprehended by the police should be treated in a similar way to 16 year-olds. He advanced an extremely convincing argument, which the Minister accepted.
A 16 year-old cannot drive a car, and is not legally allowed to take a drink. There are, and I think there should be, rites of passage. I believe that there is a danger in giving votes to those who are in full-time school education—I distinguish clearly between school education, and university and further education. We ought to treat this matter extremely carefully. My noble friend Lord Crickhowell made a generous speech in which he said that he was not necessarily against the idea, but that it should not be dealt with as yet another piecemeal reform. We heard quite a lot about those in our earlier debate on this Bill today.
There I entirely agree with my noble friend. This issue has not been dealt with on a UK-wide basis; it has just grown, like Topsy. If we are to move in this direction, with all the implications for the age of majority and everything else involved with it, we should do so only as a result of comprehensive debate and discussion within both Houses of this Parliament. It should also be part of the remit of the constitutional convention or royal commission. A royal commission is the option that I personally would favour, and the noble Lord, Lord Richard, who is not now in his place, also came down on that side. Any such move should be part of the remit of any such convention or commission. We would not be serving the people of Wales, or any other part of the United Kingdom, well if we continued with this piecemeal approach.