{"id":144593,"date":"2025-04-08T17:14:01","date_gmt":"2025-04-08T16:14:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.politics.co.uk\/?post_type=parliament&#038;p=144593"},"modified":"2025-04-08T17:17:57","modified_gmt":"2025-04-08T16:17:57","slug":"keir-starmer-labour-will-give-16-and-17-year-olds-right-to-vote","status":"publish","type":"parliament","link":"https:\/\/www.politics.co.uk\/parliament\/keir-starmer-labour-will-give-16-and-17-year-olds-right-to-vote\/","title":{"rendered":"Keir Starmer: Labour will give 16- and 17-year-olds right to vote"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<script type=\"text\/javascript\" src=\"https:\/\/player.target-video.com\/player\/build\/targetvideo.min.js\"><\/script> <div id=\"TargetVideo_44128612\" style=\"width:16;height:9;\" > <\/div> <script type=\"text\/javascript\"> $bp(\"TargetVideo_44128612\", {\"video\":\"2086352\",\"width\":\"16\",\"height\":\"9\",\"id\":\"24436\"}); <\/script>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The prime minister has vowed to legislate to give 16- and 17-year-olds the right to vote, in line with Labour&#8217;s election manifesto commitment. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Dame Meg Hillier, the chair of the liaison committee of senior MPs, delivered a question Tuesday put together by members of the UK youth parliament.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">She said: &#8220;They were highlighting the fact that the government promised in the manifesto to lower the voting age to 16&#8230;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">&#8220;The commitment wasn&#8217;t included in the king&#8217;s speech, so they want to know prime minister, when might they see legislation coming forward on this issue?&#8221;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Keir Starmer told the committee:\u00a0&#8220;We will definitely get it done. It&#8217;s a manifesto commitment. We intend to honour it. I think that if you&#8217;re old enough to go out to work, if you&#8217;re old enough to pay your taxes, then you are entitled to have a say on how your taxes are spent.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">&#8220;And also, we do have voting at a younger age in different parts of the United Kingdom. The sky didn&#8217;t fall in, so it&#8217;s a commitment we made [and] it&#8217;s a commitment we intend to keep.&#8221;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The prime minister was also asked if he supported further &#8220;political education&#8221; in schools to prepare students for the responsibility of voting.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Starmer said: &#8220;I would term it as education about citizenship rather than sort of pure political indoctrination &#8211; but citizenship and how the state works, how you participate in it, what the institutions and structures are.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">&#8220;I&#8217;m very pleased to see that that is part of the curriculum. I think it&#8217;s important that everybody learns about citizenship.&#8221;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><i>Politics.co.uk is the UK\u2019s leading digital-only political website. <\/i><a href=\"https:\/\/www.politics.co.uk\/subscribe\/\"><i>Subscribe to our daily newsletter<\/i><\/a><i> for all the latest news and analysis.<\/i><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The prime minister has vowed to legislate to give 16- and 17-year-olds the right to vote, in line with Labour&#8217;s election manifesto commitment. Dame Meg Hillier, the chair of the liaison committee of senior MPs, delivered a question Tuesday put together by members of the UK youth parliament. She said: &#8220;They were highlighting the fact&#8230;  <a class=\"excerpt-read-more\" href=\"https:\/\/www.politics.co.uk\/parliament\/keir-starmer-labour-will-give-16-and-17-year-olds-right-to-vote\/\" title=\"Read Keir Starmer: Labour will give 16- and 17-year-olds right to vote\">Read more &raquo;<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":183,"featured_media":144594,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"template":"","format":"video","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[868],"tags":[5946,3189],"parliament-briefing":[6875],"sign-up":[],"mp":[],"event":[],"class_list":["post-144593","parliament","type-parliament","status-publish","format-video","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-video","tag-keir-starmer-2","tag-meg-hillier","parliament-briefing-from-the-committee-corridor"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v28.0 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Keir Starmer: Labour will give 16- and 17-year-olds right to vote - Politics.co.uk<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.politics.co.uk\/parliament\/keir-starmer-labour-will-give-16-and-17-year-olds-right-to-vote\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Keir Starmer: Labour will give 16- and 17-year-olds right to vote - Politics.co.uk\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"The prime minister has vowed to legislate to give 16- and 17-year-olds the right to vote, in line with Labour&#8217;s election manifesto commitment. Dame Meg Hillier, the chair of the liaison committee of senior MPs, delivered a question Tuesday put together by members of the UK youth parliament. She said: &#8220;They were highlighting the fact... 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