My Lords, the case for extending voting to 16 year-olds is getting stronger year by year. We already have the problem that our generation—the elderly Members of the House of Lords and others who can vote only in local elections—now have a rather disproportionate impact on the way Governments operate and choose financial priorities, because the old vote in larger numbers. There is a case, therefore, for increasing the weight of the young, and a very strong case for combating the disillusion and disengagement from British politics that younger generations now have by encouraging them while still at school to see themselves as citizens taking part in the electoral process.
The issue we have is how far we think it possible or even likely that, within the next eight to 10 years, this may be carried into law. There may well be a change of Government at the 2024 election. If we have already reconstructed the boundaries, we need at least to have a look at what such a change would do.
I add in passing that, if we still have a Conservative Government, and if the Conservatives hold to their previous commitment to expand the allowance for overseas voters to vote beyond a 15-year period after they have left the UK, that would also distort the figures considerably. Do the Government have any plans to extend voting for overseas voters, or have they conducted on that issue yet another of Boris Johnson’s U-turns, having discovered that Britons who live abroad are often rather internationally minded and therefore are not certain to vote for this rather narrowly nationalist-minded Government?
The Government want to draw the net very tightly about the balance between voters in different constituencies. Here are two matters—the extension of the vote to 16 year-olds and, potentially, the extension of the allowance for voting to overseas voters—which could blow that balance out of the water. It makes a great deal of sense to at least assess what the impact would be as a result of that change. I hope that the Minister will either answer my question on whether the Government have any plans to extend overseas voting rights or at least write to me on that matter.