Representation of the People Bill (Third sitting)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Dr Allin-Khan. Good morning to you and to members of the Committee. I am pleased to see the Minister in her place, although I am slightly surprised that she has asked me to withdraw my amendment; I have not yet talked about why it is so brilliant. I hope that she will reconsider and look at the amendment again, although I doubt it. Amendment 33 is in my name. At the heart of the issue lies a simple question about clause 1: when do we consider somebody to be an adult? In the United Kingdom, the answer has long been clear—at 18. That is the age at which full citizenship rights and responsibilities are granted. Voting—one of the most significant civic duties in a democracy—should remain tied to that threshold. Those who argue for lowering the voting age to 16 often claim that the issue is about fairness and inclusion, but that quickly unravels when we examine how 16 and 17-year-olds are treated under the law. At 16, individuals cannot marry or join the armed forces without parental consent, and they are not permitted to buy alcohol, gamble, purchase cigarettes or even obtain certain financial services independently. Those are not arbitrary restrictions; they reflect a consistent legal and societal judgment that individuals under 18 are not yet fully mature adults. If we do not trust a 16-year-old to make decisions about alcohol, finance or personal safety, why should we trust them with decisions about the future of the nation? Since the adoption of universal suffrage, taxation has never been the basis for enfranchisement in the United Kingdom, but the Prime Minister has stated that those who pay tax should be able to vote. Those aged 16 and 17 are explicitly exempted in law from paying council tax. Do advocates who say that 16-year-olds should be able to vote in local elections believe that that legal exemption should be removed, so that those aged 16 and 17 become liable for council tax? I suspect the answer is no. Taxation already exists without direct representation for children. Everyone pays indirect taxes, such as VAT. For example, for children, VAT is levied on toys and sweets. Only a tiny number of those aged 16 and 17 actually pay income tax, especially given the Conservative Government’s increases to the income tax threshold. Those under 18 cannot obtain consumer credit, nor can they open a full bank account without a parent’s signature; that indicates how their financial rights are qualified. There is also a striking inconsistency in the Government’s arguments for this change. On the one hand, they argue that 16-year-olds are mature enough to vote. On the other, they support policies that explicitly treat under-18s as children in need of protection: raising the legal age for buying knives, fireworks, cigarettes and even undergoing cosmetic procedures. Those contradictions suggest that the push to lower the voting age is not grounded in principle but in convenience. Consider also the issue of responsibility. Voting is not just a right; it is part of a broader framework of civic duty, yet 16 and 17-year-olds are exempt from key responsibilities such as paying council tax, and only a small proportion pay income tax at all, as I have outlined. Historically, the right to vote in the UK has never been based on taxation alone, and it would be wrong to start now. We should also look internationally. The overwhelming majority of democracies, including the United States, Canada, Australia and New Zealand, set the voting age at 18. That is not a coincidence; it reflects a widely accepted understanding of adulthood. Furthermore, the argument that lowering the voting age will increase long-term political engagement is not supported by strong evidence. Studies show that any increase in participation among younger voters tends to be short-lived, with no lasting impact on political involvement. In other words, the reform risks being a symbolic gesture rather than a meaningful improvement to democracy. A study looking at the effect of a lower voting age in Scotland, which was also cited by the Minister’s Department, advised: “For engagement with politics beyond voting in elections, however, we find no lasting difference between young people who were eligible to vote at 16 versus 18. The experience of voting at age 16/17 did not make a difference in young people’s non-electoral engagement in early adulthood.” It warned that any change in turnout might actually have been due to the polarising effect of the Scottish independence debate, rather than the voting age. It went on: “Our results may reflect this to some extent as cohorts included in our sample of young people enfranchised at 16 came of age in the highly salient and polarised time around the 2014 independence referendum.” Finally, we must consider where the logic leads. If we detach voting from the age of adulthood, then why stop at 16? Why not 15 or 14?