Cities and Local Government Devolution Bill [Lords] — House of Commons, 2015-11-17
Topic: Civil Rights
Graham Eric Stringer (Labour, Centre-left): I was making the opposite argument to the one made earlier by the hon. Lady. If Glasgow, Aberdeen or Dundee were offered more powers and resources, they would grab the opportunity, as the cities of England have done. That was the point I was making On clause 20, I have been agnostic on the voting age. Arbitrary lines have to be drawn somewhere and I have never been completely taken by the argument that 16 is so much better than 17 or that 17 is so much better than 18. The Labour party’s manifesto said that we would reduce the voting age, so had we won the election I would have voted for it, but not particularly enthusiastically, because there are a lot of rather complicated arguments associated with it. It seems to sit oddly with the Labour party’s commitment to a constitutional convention on major changes to the constitution, and I am wary—not just with regard to this Bill, but in relation to the European Union Referendum Bill—that people are making arguments in favour of lowering the voting age in order to alter results, not because they want comprehensively to win the argument. I will therefore abstain on clause 20 when it is put to the vote Another reason I am agnostic on the issue of the voting age is that the argument that there is a direct relationship between people’s age and whether they get involved in elections does not seem to be based on evidence. People vote for a whole series of different reasons, including financial issues, self-interest and principled arguments over how they view the future of society, and the older they get, the more they feel that they have an interest in society. I think that the Scottish referendum was a hugely different experience because it was the future of Scotland that was being considered, so people of different ages turned out in greater numbers than they had done in elections to the Scottish Parliament and to this place and in local elections. I once massively increased the voter turnout in Manchester, not by changing the voting age, but by putting up the rates by twice the level of inflation. Believe me, that created a great deal of enthusiasm for voting, much more so than any change in the voting age Although such arguments are appealing, it does not seem to me that the argument about paying tax is completely convincing. The hon. Member for Carlisle (John Stevenson) made the case that very young people pay tax by paying VAT, while many 16 and 17-year-olds do not pay income tax because they are at college or not earning money. Is the voting qualification just for people paying tax? Similarly, the functional argument for voting is that people can be in the armed forces, but most people do not join the armed forces. Does that mean they should not be allowed to vote? All I am saying is that there are big questions about arguments for lowering the voting age that appear immediately appealing. We need a discussion about when to enfranchise people, but that should not be done in a Bill to devolve power and resources to parts of this country; it should not be done in a Bill to determine this country’s relationship with the European Union either My hon. Friend the Member for Nottingham North is an extraordinarily powerful advocate for devolving powers and resources. His new clause 3 makes the case for devolving to local government the power to decide on the voting system. I am very wary about that as a devolved function. Although the argument is sometimes made that with a proportional representation system—the single transferable vote or another proportional system—turnout will increase with people being more enthused by the different voting system, it seems to me that European elections give that the lie: the previous Labour Government had to put European elections with local government elections because the turnout was so embarrassingly low, and those are the only national elections held on a proportional system The real argument about whether we have PR—the alternative vote, additional Members or whatever system we want—is nearly always one of party political advantage for the party proposing a different voting system. When it started, the Labour party was in favour of PR; as soon as it got a significant number of MPs, it dropped the idea. The Liberals, who are back down to their normative level of eight Members of Parliament, are very strongly in favour of PR, as is UKIP.