Skipper

The recent Labour Policy Forum at Warwick added to its portfolio of proposals the recommendation that the vote should be given to 16 year olds. Support from the Electoral Reform Society and the Youth Parliament are fairly predictable, I suppose, but in the past month we have also seen the SNP come out for it as well as Oona King, Peter Hain, Ed Miliband and Harriet Harmon. The suggestion is now on the political agenda and therefore deserves to be considered seriously.

The basic dilemma we face is that democracy is not much good if we don't bother to vote and have little or no respect for the system. It might hang on for a fair number of years, but without both requirements, democracy will eventually atrophy and die. Older people still subscribe to the 'civic duty' of voting with good majorities of over 55s turning out but within the 18-24 cohort only a minority vote. Turnout in age groups between 24 and 55 is also in decline, suggesting that not voting is a 'learnt' activity which young people take into later life. With barely 60% turning out in 2005 and even less in 2001, we do have a problem and which starts and ends with young people.

The case in favour adduces a number of arguments. The Youth Parliament says that if a young person can: pay taxes; pay adult transport fares; get married and have children; and join the army, then they are old enough to vote. They add that with falling participation and turnout, youth involvement would breath new life into democratic politics.

The case against has not been articulated all that well or widely as far as I can make out. The 'entitlement' case is persuasive, though soldiers under 18 are not allowed to fight as far as I understand. If adult responsibilities are demanded by one part of the state, then it follows there is a case for for reciprocal privileges to be allowed by another.

But I'm not sure how far this argument goes. Because someone pays taxes, for example, do we say they can enter state funded higher education? They have the entitlement, of course, but can only do so if they meet certain qualifying conditions.

The same argument can be made about voting. If someone knows little or nothing about voting there seems no point in them exercising such a right. If current trends are continued, non voting will merely be 'learnt' at an earlier age and our system will become less well rather then healthier. We have enough apathetic voters at present, goes the counter argument, so we shouild avoid adding millions more. Such approaches often conclude that improved programmes of political education would attack the fundamental problem far more effectively,

Now I'm aware that many 16 year-olds are better well informed and more politically mature than lots of people who are over 18, but such major judgements have to made based on a calculation, not just of right but of suitability across the whole age group. If there were clear survey evidence that 16 year-olds were overwhelmingly keen to vote- straw polls at 6th form conferences I have organised suggest they might well be- and were sufficiently well informed to cast their vote with some kind of discrimination, then I'd support it. However, the 16 year-olds I have encountered outside the ranks of those actually studying politics, suggest that neither condition would be met across the age group as a whole. I'd love to be proved wrong on this but suspect that somehow I won't be.