Sir James Cleverly

I take it from his intervention that the hon. Gentleman is now saying that 16 and 17-year-olds are not children. Is that his point? I have tried to squeeze the logical underpinning of this proposal out of the Government, but I have not been able to do so, because I do not think they know what it is. If the Government are going to make the case for giving the vote to children, why 16-year-old children? Why not 15-year-old children? The Secretary of State chuckles, but why not 15-year-old children? The argument is that 16-year-olds have a longer stake in society, but if that is true of 16-year-olds it is, by definition, more true of 15-year-olds—and why not 14-year-olds, or 13-year-olds? Will he take up the proposal of Professor David Runciman of Cambridge University and give votes to six-year-olds? As a society, we do not confer legal adulthood on children, and the law reflects that. Sixteen and 17-year-olds cannot buy alcohol. They cannot buy cigarettes and vapes. They cannot stand for election to this House or, indeed, to other statutory representative bodies. They cannot legally place bets. They cannot marry in England and Wales. They cannot join the armed forces without parental consent. They cannot go to war. They cannot consume pornography, and rightly so. If the Secretary of State and his Government now believe that 16-year-olds should in fact be of civic and legal adulthood, they should simply say so and put in place the legislative changes to bring consistency to the statute book. Good luck to him if he wants to make the case for 16 and 17-year-olds to have the rights laid out in the list that I have just given. If the Government do not feel that 16 and 17-year-olds should have those full rights and responsibilities, this change appears to be selective at best and cynical at worst. Such a fundamental alteration to the franchise for UK elections should rest on broad consensus and careful reasoning.