Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill

My Lords, I, too, support my noble friend Lady Hayter. I came to this issue rather sceptically but changed my mind when I was chairing the Power inquiry, as we took evidence from around the country and heard from young people and their teachers. One thing that this House should have in mind is the alarming way in which we in this country are losing the habit of voting. What we are finding is that young people, if they do not establish a habit of voting, do not turn to it. People would say to us, ““Well, they soon start voting once they start having children of their own or a mortgage, or when they start paying tax””—often, they were Members of Parliament. Yet the reality is that, if the habit is not established before, very often people do not end up voting at all. Teachers were telling us that already, in schools, there is talk before age 16 about why the vote is so important and about the history of the vote. Then there is a gap, where a substantial number of our young are still not staying on at school to 18, so when they leave school there is a period of non-participation in the public arena. They do not vote, so they never establish the habit of voting. We should move from knowing about voting at school—understanding its history and its importance in our firmament and why it is at the heart of our democracy that people should vote—to harnessing that while people are still young and interested. That is vital. Hearing from young people who were clearly interested in how their country worked and in the issues of the day, yet then hearing from teachers about the terrible loss of interest between the ages of 16 and 18—sometimes, it is as long as four years before these young people get the chance to vote—was a lesson that convinced me that people lose the habit of voting. We should take this opportunity to reform the system as soon as we can. I know that many people, certainly among the Liberal Democrats, share this view. We should be harnessing that interest in politics before it is lost. Now is a good time to do it, when we are in the process of engaging in some reform of our electoral system.