James Graham (London, Unlock Democracy): Over on TalkDemocracy, Anthony Tuffin has been pouring cold water on the Government's proposal to revisit reducing the voting age to 16. This reminded me of an article in the Times this weekend by Claire Fox, who was similarly dismissive:
Some supporters of reform assert that today's 16-year-olds are indeed politically literate because compulsory citizenship lessons for all 11 to 16-year-olds have prepared them for the challenges of the ballot box. Brown himself has linked any idea of lowering the voting age to a commitment to ever more citizenship training. This is worrying if you consider the endless Ofsted reports which regularly criticise the paucity of citizenship teaching and the fact that most pupils see citizenship as a Mickey Mouse subject.
Personally, I waver in completely the opposite direction. Most of the arguments against votes at 16 are fatally weak (Claire Fox should be careful to suggest that banality should debar one from voting or she may find herself disenfranchised!). Focusing on exceptionalist arguments about "maturity" and, worse, "brain development" which if we applied to older people, women or people with learning difficulties would be instantly dismissed, do not convince. Either voting is a right, or it is something that you have to "earn". The anti-votes-at-16 lobby can't have it both ways; much of the time they skirt dangerously close to something that resembles eugenics if taken to its logical conclusion.
For me the issue is one of civil liberties which is also at the heart of the problem with successive Government's youth policy. We treat "youth" as that period when you lose the protection of children's rights but have not yet gained full adult rights (in terms of, among other things, employment protection, national minimum wage and benefits). Instead, it should be the other way round: youth ought to be a positive period when people retain childrens' rights and gain adults' rights as well. This would be a credible "respect" agenda.
With that in mind, I propose we reduce the voting age to 13. Then citizenship education and the right to vote can be combined in a genuinely complementary way. Votes at 16 would be progress, sure, but would come towards the end of schooling. Indeed if you were 15 and 11 months at the time of the last general election, you will be almost 20 - and long out of school - before you get your first chance to vote for an MP. The criticism of citizenship education as too abstract is a valid one. Actually having a vote at the same time would help it have more bite.
