My Lords, I am very grateful to noble Lords who tabled this amendment. It has provided this afternoon an opportunity once again to discuss the pros and cons of allowing 16 and 17 year-olds to vote. The Government have consistently opposed that idea, and I am glad to set out the reasons why.
Less than a year ago, the Government were elected on a manifesto that committed to retaining the current franchise at 18 years old. We have therefore no plans to lower the voting age. The age of 18, not 16, is widely recognised as the age at which one becomes an adult. Full citizenship and individual rights, from buying alcohol to smoking to voting, should be gained only at adulthood.
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The age of 18 is recognised in the vast majority of democratic countries as the age at which one becomes an adult. More than 170 countries worldwide maintain a voting age of 18 or above, including other liberal democracies comparable to our own. Only a handful of countries in the world have reduced their national voting age to 16.
Our manifesto commitment on this point is important, and the reasoning for aligning the voting age to the age at which one becomes an adult is clear. As a result, there would be little point in spending public resources on an assessment of the effects of enfranchising 16 and 17 year-olds.
There are inconsistencies on this across the union. As I said, full citizen rights and responsibilities are given at 18; 16 year-olds do not have full citizen rights. Those aged 16 or 17 must gain parental consent to join the Army or to marry, indicating that they have not yet reached adulthood. The current drinking age is 18. There has been a lot of discussion about this in the past, with the Liberal Democrats mired in confusion as to whether they believe the drinking age should be lowered to 16. The SNP Scottish Government, when Nicola Sturgeon was Health Secretary, attempted to raise the age for alcohol off-sales to 21. Labour was utterly inconsistent on the age of majority, suggesting that its motivations are partisan rather than principled. The Labour Government raised the legal age for buying cigarettes from 16 to 18 to protect children. They raised the age for buying knives to 18, as they did the age for buying fireworks—I could go on; I am trying to show the inconsistencies in where we are on this case.
The noble Baroness, Lady Gale, talked about the Welsh Government, who are seeking to change the electoral law in Wales to lower the voting age to 16 for local elections. However, at the same time, in 2017 Public Health Wales raised the legal age for tongue piercings and other intimate piercings to 18, arguing that young people may be less likely to have the experience or knowledge to have a piercing before 18. We can see the inconsistencies, which is why we as the Government set out clearly in our manifesto that we will continue to say that 18 is the age at which young people reach adulthood.
I should also point out our concern with the substance of this amendment, as well as the amendment which we will move on to next. Both require the Boundary
Commission to take on an entirely new function: publishing a report into the potential impact of two policies that have not been introduced. The commission would be obliged to publish opinions and judgments about what might happen in the future. Of course, speculating about the future, however well-designed the models that one uses might be, is a risky business, but that is not my primary concern. More important is the fact that publishing such reports would almost certainly damage the Boundary Commissions’ reputation for impartiality and independence.
The technical work that the commissions were created for does not include a role of expressing opinions or making judgments, however balanced or well founded. Indeed, the secretaries to the Boundary Commissions are rightly assiduous in avoiding expressing opinions on anything other than the technical nature of their work, as they demonstrated when giving evidence to the Public Bill Committee in another place earlier this year. We should not give them any duties that would prevent them continuing to act with neutrality and even-handedness. This is central to maintaining the trust we all have in the Boundary Commissions and their ability to act impartially.
I hope that noble Lords have enjoyed hearing the debate on the franchise as much as I have, a debate which will no doubt continue in the coming years, but are content not to press the amendment.