My Lords, all I can say to the noble Lord, Lord Purvis, is that he must have been quite an extraordinary 16-year old if at that age he was thinking of joining the Liberal Democrats because it was going to reduce the franchise age to 16. I have to say that when I was 16, I thought that I was a socialist, but I grew out of that after a while.
I am participating in this debate not to argue the merits or otherwise of whether people should have the vote at 16, but because I think that the process by which this is being achieved is absolutely lamentable. We began our proceedings this morning by discussing whether former Members and MEPs should have access to the facilities—the restaurants and bars—of this place. I sat here thinking that this place is presenting
itself to the outside world as if it was some kind of club, rather than a House of Parliament. This debate, and the way that the Government have dealt with the matter, shows that we are being treated as a kind of club and not as a second House of Parliament with particular responsibilities for constitutional matters.
We have here an excellent report from the Constitution Committee. My noble friend Lord Lang has explained the reservations which have been drawn to the attention of the House by the committee, but the Government propose to charge on regardless. I have the highest regard for my noble and learned friend the Minister, but even he was struggling to make bricks out of this particular straw. He suggested that there was not really a commitment that contradicted the terms. Scotland in the United Kingdom: An Enduring Settlement was published in January 2015 as Command Paper 8990. It has a foreword signed by the right honourable Nick Clegg, the Deputy Prime Minister, and the right honourable David Cameron, the Prime Minister, which states that it is their response to the Smith commission proposals. On page 17, it states:
“To provide an adequate check on Scottish Parliament legislation changing the franchise”,
which is what we are discussing,
“the electoral system or the number of constituency and regional members for the Scottish Parliament, UK legislation will require such legislation to be passed by a two-thirds majority of the Scottish Parliament”.
Is this not UK legislation? Are we not discussing the franchise? What do those words mean if they do not mean what I say they mean? My noble and learned friend is being Humpty Dumpty. Words, it appears, for this Government mean whatever they believe them to mean and not what they say. This was a document presented to Parliament by the Prime Minister and the Deputy Prime Minister only a few weeks ago. We are entitled to ask why this change has been made.
As the noble Lord, Lord Reid pointed out, my noble and learned friend made a contradictory statement. He said that we are not having a supermajority because there is consensus that it should happen. As the noble Lord pointed out, if there is consensus, what is the problem with having a supermajority? My noble and learned friend did not make clear whether that supermajority is still required. The noble Lord, Lord Purvis, said that there was consensus. Suppose that there was a majority in the Scottish Parliament that, having had a bad experience with the franchise set at 16, wanted to change it from 16 to 18. Would that require a supermajority, or has that provision simply been dropped? If the answer to my question is, yes, it would require a supermajority, is it not going to look a bit ridiculous to tell the Scottish Parliament that it can change the age to 16 but it needs a supermajority to change it back to where it was?
I am really dismayed that matters of this kind should be being dealt with by orders and regulations, which effectively prevents this House or, indeed, the other place, from making any amendments or changes and having any debate.
That brings me to my next point, which my noble and learned friend acknowledged. Included in the order is a proposal that the franchise should be extended
to local government. There was nothing in Smith about that. There is nothing in this document that I can see—I stand to be corrected about that. It has come from nowhere for the sake of convenience. Therefore, the idea that we extend the franchise for local government, which may or may not be a good idea, has not been subject to proper scrutiny. No one in Scotland or any other part of the United Kingdom has had an opportunity to discuss the merits of it: there has been no consultation. As my noble friend Lord Lang pointed out—and has pointed out in the excellent report from the Constitution Committee of this House, which has had to be rushed out in order to meet this timetable, ahead of discussing the draft clauses to which this apparently relates—it is an extraordinary way of doing business.
In the early 1960s, as has already been mentioned, when we changed the franchise from 21 to 18, we did it after having two commissions. The noble Lord, Lord McAvoy, may take credit for it, as a Labour Government did this. The Labour Government in those days were very concerned about consultation and constitutional propriety and there were two separate commissions created to look at this before the change was made. One was on the age of majority, which is the point that the noble Lord, Lord Purvis, was struggling with. How can it be right to have an age of majority that is different to the age of the franchise? We end up with the absurd position that 16 year-olds are not allowed to go and buy a pint of beer, to buy a packet of cigarettes, or to drive a car; but they are allowed to decide the future Government of their country. They are almost certainly not paying income tax or other taxes apart from indirect taxes; they will not even have a national insurance number when they are required to go on the register, because they will be 15. The national insurance number system, as the Constitution Committee report points out, is the means by which we check the identity of voters for the voters’ roll, so how is that going to work? There is nothing that I can see in the explanatory material provided by the Minister to explain any of this or to deal with the issue of whether 16 year-olds should be able to stand as candidates.
I happen to believe that, if you have the right to vote, you should have the right to stand. It is true that there has been a difference in the past. When I was at St Andrews University with the late Robert Jones—who was in the other place as the Member for West Hertfordshire and died rather prematurely—he stood as a student in St Andrews. He promptly got himself made chairman of the planning committee and started to block the principle of the plans of St Andrews for the expansion of the university, which caused a degree of consternation. It was argued then that a student should not be able to be on the council deciding these matters, but at the time people accepted that if you had the right to vote and participate in the election you should be able to stand as a candidate. This is illustrated by this House: the reason why Members of this House do not have a vote at the forthcoming general election is that we are our own representatives in Parliament. That is the constitutional theory. Therefore, if you are able to vote in the election, it seems to me that you should be able to stand and put forward your views. This is completely muddled.
What on earth are this Government doing? They seem to be making up constitutional change as they go along. They seem to be doing it under electoral pressure from the Scottish Nationalists, and—do you know what?—it does not seem to be working. Ladbrokes will give you very good odds on the SNP winning more than 39 seats in the forthcoming general election. You would not have got these odds before we made this foolish vow in the last minutes of the referendum campaign. This process of appeasement and making it up as you go along is creating instability in our country and feeding those who wish to break our United Kingdom. These are facts.
I have bored the Minister to death on this subject; I have spoken on it before and I warned him that if we introduced the opportunity for 16 year-olds to vote, then it would be argued that other parts of the United Kingdom should get the same. What do we have from this Government on the position in respect of Wales? Do we have a similar provision for the Welsh Assembly? Apparently not: we have a provision that 16 year-olds in Wales might get the vote in order to vote in a referendum on tax-raising powers for the Welsh Assembly. Where is the logic of that? You would get to vote on tax-raising powers as a 16 year-old when you may not have to pay them but not get to vote for the Members of the Welsh Assembly. However, if you move north of the border you would get the opportunity to vote for the Scottish Parliament because there is consensus among the political parties about this. Why is there a consensus in Scotland? What about England?
What are this Government doing in bringing forward measures based on the Smith commission, which had a narrow remit? Its remit was to consider what was right for Scotland. It did not look at the rest of the United Kingdom or the implications for it.
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