Time to lower the age to vote

The young teens confounded critics who thought they’d be too busy texting and tweeting to turn up at a polling station, by not only voting in droves, but by being truly engaged in the debate.

It’s hard to find a good reason to deny young people this fundamental human and democratic right.

Under British law, a 16-year-old can have sex, get married, join the Army, buy cigarettes, leave home, claim benefits, pay tax, join a trades union and become a company directory – but not vote in a general election.

It is surely time to change that.

With the exception of the Tories, who have been historically opposed to lowering the voting age, most politicians now think it is the right thing to do. The Lib Dems promised the change in their 2010 manifesto, while Labour have pledged to change the law if they win power next May.

And it seems the public is right behind them. When the Electoral Commission last consulted the public on the issue, 72 per cent gave the thumbs-up.

Also, research shows, if people vote when they are young, it is a habit they are likely to keep.

The Tories fear that lowering the voting age would politicise the classroom. This is a patronising stance; many young people hold strong views, and schools encourage debate on topical matters through time spent in form and in citizenship classes.

In the wake of the Scottish referendum, a report by the think tank dpart found that schools had more influence than parents in helping teenagers understand politics. The authors said we should trust schools and teachers to discuss politics in the classroom without fearing they would be “inappropriately ideologised in an easy way”.

One suspects there’s a bit of party politics behind the Conservative party’s stand. There is an assumption young people will be more radical and probably more likely to vote Labour. There are an estimated 1.5 million 16- and 17-year-olds in the UK – quite some prize for a political party to win.

But if the experience of the referendum taught us anything, it is not to make assumptions about young people’s views and aspirations.

Disappointingly, pollsters do not have reliable data on how this age group actually voted in the referendum, but surveys before the vote showed the most important thing to them was exactly the same thing that was most important to adults – the economy. Four in ten youngsters said they had different views to their parents and after discussing the issues at school, went home and debated them with their families.

It seems that rather than brainwashing pupils, schools may be the very place to educate them about the importance of democracy and taking part in the political process.

This is important if we are to re-engage young people with politics. Voter turnouts in General Elections are falling, especially among the young.

It’s a self-defeating spiral; put bluntly, if the young ignore politics, politicians can afford to ignore them. Parties make policies to appeal to their voters, hence the raft of proposals to help pensioners and reduce taxes for the middle classes, while young people have been lumbered with the likes of exorbitant tuition fees, high unemployment and low wages.

The plight of this group has been highlighted this week by “anti-poverty tsar” Alan Milburn who, as chairman of the social mobility and child poverty commission, has warned of Britain becoming “permanently divided” as young people miss out on the economic recovery.

Mr Milburn said young people were being priced out of the housing market, paid lower wages and had diminishing job prospects – despite being educated better and for longer than any previous generation.

His proposals, which are wide-ranging and focus on alleviating child poverty also, include exempting the “working poor” from austerity measures, ending long-term youth unemployment by 2020, increasing housing options, ending unpaid internships and making the UK a Living Wage country by 2025.

I would suggest one more: lower the voting age to 16 and properly engage young people with politics.