Contribution
I congratulate the new Minister, and welcome her to her place. It was, I think, a long overdue promotion.
It was a privilege to serve on the Bill Committee; it was my first time. I enjoyed the Committee, and I enjoyed the spirit in which we conducted our debates. There were many occasions when I thought that amendments proposed by Opposition parties were sincere and tabled with good intentions, and on more than one occasion the former Minister, my hon. Friend the Member for Chester North and Neston (Samantha Dixon), had to take me aside and explain to me patiently why the Government’s position was that we could not do something that seemed to me to be a reasonable request. Some complex issues have arisen today as well. I listened with interest to my right hon. Friend the Member for Hayes and Harlington (John McDonnell), who suggested that there might be a need for a second phase, and to many other contributions from Members who are more expert than me in in various fields. There has been a real sense of concern about the point that we have reached as a democracy.
I wanted to take a couple of minutes to continue my debate with the right hon. Member for Tatton (Esther McVey). She is no longer in the Chamber, but I should like to respond to some of her comments about her amendments. Broadly speaking, she seems to be of the opinion that contributing a single vote towards the election of a representative for a four-to-five-year period should be done at exactly the same age at which people choose who should be their marriage partner till death them do part. Let me explain why I do not think that is correct.
We can play a quick game of “higher or lower”. The compulsory school age is five. The age of criminal responsibility is 10. At 12, you can be trained to take part in dangerous performances. You can be kept in police detention if arrested, and you have to sign your own passport application. At 14, you can get a Saturday job. At 15, you can apply to join the Royal Navy or the Royal Air Force. At 16, you can buy spray aerosols, enter a pub on your own, drink beer or wine with a meal, join the armed forces, change your name by deed poll without parental consent, hold a licence to drive a moped, or gamble by buying a lottery ticket. You can enter a housing contract. You can leave home. You can apply for legal aid, and be assessed on your own means. You can consent to surgical or dental treatment. You can buy premium bonds. You can become a pet owner, you can consent to sexual activity, and you can obtain your national insurance number. You have to be 17, however, to donate blood. At 18 you can be deployed in the armed forces, you can act as the executor of a will, you can buy fireworks and explosives and you can buy firearms, but you have to be 21 to adopt, or to supervise a learner driver.
The point I am making is that the transition from childhood to adulthood is not like flicking a switch; it is a process. The question that we are really debating is: at what point within that process should we trust somebody to take their first step as a democratic citizen by thinking deeply and contributing one of many thousands of votes in an election for who represents them?
Speaking as someone who has raised three children to the age of 16, but also as someone whose career has involved working with children and youth, I believe that 16 is the right age for a number of reasons. In particular, the evidence is strong that getting young people engaged in the democratic process at that age means that it sticks with them throughout the rest of their lives, but there is another reason too. We have heard talk of this being vote rigging. I have to wonder what it is about so many Conservative Members that makes them automatically assume that a 16-year-old will not vote for them. Every party in this place has an equal opportunity to appeal to that young person for their vote, but when they do not have a vote, they can be ignored. We only have to look at the Conservatives’ record—cutting child trust funds, closing down Sure Start centres, cutting primary school budgets, cutting the educational maintenance allowance, cutting school transport, closing careers services, closing youth centres, tripling tuition fees, locking people out of the housing market, and not doing enough on climate change—to see why it is important that we give that generation a say in their future. The right hon. Member for Tatton made that commitment at Wilmslow high school nine years ago, and I am disappointed that she has rowed back on it today.
I strongly endorse the comments by my hon. Friend the Member for Milton Keynes Central (Emily Darlington). We need to look at the issue of deepfakes and protect our democracy, because we are all subject to it.