My Lords, as others have said, central to this debate is the question of maturity: whether a young person of 16 or 17 is mature enough to take on the mantle of independent thought and wise enough to play their part in the democratic process. I will not repeat what has already been said in the debate, but it seems that we have not categorically decided when a child becomes an adult, and therefore it is of little surprise that the interests of the young are woefully unrepresented.
The reality of the current political process is that the concerns of those who vote become the concerns of the political class. As a result, the young are suffering the worst employment rates, have a full-time wage that cannot meet the ever increasing costs of housing, utilities and transport. They have become burdened with debt for their education. We have consigned them to be poorer, to live at home for longer, and to look forward to bearing greater responsibilities for looking after the old. They endure a lack of representation that is positively deforming of their interests, so unless all of our citizens participate in the political process, the “political market” will always favour those with votes to spend. And yet we ask this under-represented
group to make life-defining choices before the age at which they can vote, choices that tacitly require investment in a future over which they have no purchase. In doing so, we demand high levels of those same qualities that we doubt they own, those of maturity, commitment and wisdom. If we demand so much, perhaps we also owe them the tools to help shape the future we are asking them to invest in.
The noble Lord, Lord Tyler, referred to the positive relationship between citizenship lessons and registering to vote in Ireland, while others have also talked about citizenship. However, in September this year the statutory requirement to provide citizenship education was, I think, disapplied. The only formal entry point to the democratic process was loosened from the statutory offer in our schools. Next spring will see the introduction of individual electoral registration, legislation that disproportionately affects young people as many of them move to educational institutions and new towns and cities in search of work. Would it not be a much more equitable state of affairs if every young person left school with a full set of jabs, a national security number, a decent education, already registered to vote and—as other noble Lords have commented—confident to vote?
The habits that are formed in youth “stick”, whether they are smoking or reading, sports or debating. A voting habit in the next generation would be transforming to our democracy. We are leaving it too late to invest political power in the young, to make participation a norm, and to give them agency over their investment in the future. We are leaving it too late for them to have the right to demand a world that meets their needs adequately. Some people assert that a 16 year-old is not mature enough to vote, but the right to vote, as others have suggested, is not contingent on maturity or wisdom. If it were, many of us adults might be considered unfit. Voting well or correctly is not a consideration here.
In the Library note that has provided us with the background to this debate, I was amused by the ever changing statistics on the voting patterns for “Britain’s Got Talent” and “The X Factor” versus electoral turnout. Having a right and exercising it are not material; they are two separate issues. In my capacity as co-founder of an educational charity, which is declared on the register of interests, I have been privileged to have visited scores of schools and talked to hundreds of young people over the past decade. Scratch the surface and they display wisdom, energy and foresight in copious quantities. The arguments about introducing an unfit cadre into the electoral equation sounds suspiciously like other arguments of exclusion made at other times.
The question that should frame this debate is not about their suitability, but ours. We have allowed a crisis to develop—a lack of engagement and faith in the political process that threatens its legitimacy. We have failed to deal with many of the most intractable issues of the day and we have left for the next generation a multitude of fiscal, environmental and political debts. Lowering the voting age is not a question of our altruism. The political class needs some votes to spend
on behalf of the long-term interests of the young, and for that we need to allow young people to participate in our democracy.
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