Voting Age

Nic Dakin Excerpts

Thursday 24th January 2013 Commons Chamber

[Stephen Williams]

I will leave matters relating to Scotland to other contributors. If you permit it, Mr Speaker, we will hear from that corner of the United Kingdom later.

The case for lowering the voting age is usually made—the hon. Member for Harlow (Robert Halfon) has alluded to this—on the grounds of other rights and responsibilities that young people already have at 16 and 17. I will come to those later, but I would prefer to justify lowering the franchise age to 16 on the principal grounds that I believe that 16 and 17-year-olds have sufficient maturity and knowledge to cast a vote, if they want to do so. We do not have compulsory voting in this country, so we would simply be affording 16 and 17-year-olds the opportunity to vote if they wished to do so.

[Nic Dakin (Scunthorpe) (Lab)]

The hon. Gentleman is setting out his case very well. I spent my whole life working with 16 to 19-year-olds until I came to this place, and my experience suggests that they are as good at making decisions on voting as the people who are assembled here.