Elections Bill — House of Lords, 2022-03-23
Topic: Civil Rights
William John Lawrence Wallace (Liberal Democrats, Centre to centre-left): My Lords, Amendments 137 and 138 are grouped with Amendment 143 in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Holmes of Richmond, who will undoubtedly want to speak to that amendment We have just had a long debate on voting systems because the Bill contains a clause that intends to change part of our voting system. The Bill also has a number of clauses that add somewhere between 1 million and 4 million extra voters to the electorate by extending the overseas electorate. I declare an interest as I have two sisters who have lived abroad for 50 years who would now be able to vote in British elections, not to mention a niece born in Britain, so I am conscious of the problems with that That means that the discussion as to whether or not the electorate might also be extended to include those between the ages of 16 and 18 is within scope of the Bill. As I mentioned in my earlier speech, it would have been appropriate for that to have been considered together with the question of whether to extend the electorate by increasing the opportunities for overseas voters to register. I do not intend to rehearse all the arguments for voting at 16. I say merely that I was converted to this by going round schools and learning about, first, the lack of citizenship education; secondly, the lack of engagement by young people in politics; and, thirdly, our failure to get young people to register The proportion of people aged 18 to 25 on the register is, in some areas, as low as 40%. That is an extremely poor failure within our electoral system. It is also very bad for our politics that we have an increasingly elderly electorate, which votes. Parties recognise this and therefore produce policies that appeal to older voters. Young people do not vote, which therefore means that the parties tend not to produce policies that they think are particularly important for younger voters. Again, I declare an interest, as I have twice led the manifesto process for my own party and I can remember, in 1996-97, people saying, "William, that’s not terribly important; we have to produce policies that appeal to people in their 40s, 50s and 60s, not those in their 20s and 30s, because those are the people who really care about this." The two amendments on which I am speaking are for parliamentary and local elections. I raise these as probing amendments. I suggest that the Government ought at least to be open to the idea of opening voting in local elections to young people aged 16, because it would involve them in discussing local democracy. It would therefore help to educate them about local democracy and that is very important for the future of our country I will make just one further remark. The last debate was remarkably English, with the exception of the contributions from the noble Lords, Lord Murphy and Lord Kilclooney. We have had proportional representation in the United Kingdom in two different forms in Northern Ireland and in Scotland and Wales. I am now talking about the problem of young people throughout the United Kingdom. I hope the Minister will at least address the problem of how we engage young people in politics. How do we get citizenship education back into our schools? How do we make sure the young do not switch off from politics, as there is substantial evidence that they have? I beg to move.