It is my opinion that young people should be given the opportunity to turn out and use their vote at 16.  The voting age was last reduced in 1969. Since then, there have been major changes in society’s expectations of young people, and in young people’s contribution to their local communities and wider society.

Currently, 16 and 17 year-olds can work, pay taxes, get married and join the armed forces – but they are not allowed to elect those who govern them.  As a result, according to a recent British Social Attitudes survey, where a decade ago 38 per cent of 12 to 19-year-olds had at least some interest in politics, now the figure is 31 per cent and a further 68 per cent have little or no interest at all. This is not a healthy indicator for life as fully engaged citizens.

The Electoral Commission’s public consultation on voting age found that 72% of respondents favoured a voting age of 16.   This consultation attracted huge participation including 8,000 young people.  In addition, according to a poll conducted by MORI 60% of people aged 16 or under would support the reform, which suggests that when it is made relevant to them, young people are much more likely to vote and engage in issues of public importance.

If the Government is to deliver sustainable communities successfully then it must ensure that all members of the community, including young people, are engaged in the process.  New Labour has engaged in a broadside on young people with its Respect Agenda, and whilst many of its policy initiatives are welcome, one cannot help but feel that if our relationship with young people was governed with as much respect towards them as we would expect towards us, then the justice of extending the voting age to 16 would be recognised.

Jo Swinson MP has actively campaigned for votes at 16. In the Liberal Democrat, Policy Paper (September, 2007) For the People, By the People she notes: “a reduction in the voting age to 16, to overlap with citizenship education in schools, will help to bridge the gap between teaching about citizenship and exercising its rights and obligations”.

 A complete copy of “For the People, By the People” can be obtained from:

:http://www.libdems.org.uk/media/documents/policies/PP83_constitutional_Sep07.pdf 

 Nearly 600,000 people never convicted of any crime now have their details stored on Labour’s DNA database, shock figures reveal.

More than 400,000 of those were added in the past two years, further fuelling the belief that the Government is building a genetic record of the entire population by stealth.

The figure of 573,639 people on the database who have not been convicted, cautioned, formally warned or reprimanded has pushed the overall total to 4.2million. Civil rights campaigners and MPs want the police to destroy the DNA records of anyone without a criminal recordIn the past two years alone, a total of about one million new people have had their DNA added. Nearly half of them – 434,176 – have not been convicted of any crime.

Police can take DNA fingerprints from anybody arrested on suspicion of a recordable offence, but DNA taken from victims and witnesses to separate it from suspects’ samples at crime scenes can also be added to the database.

The information can be stored indefinitely and potentially matched with samples at crime scenes, even if the suspect is innocent.

Home Office Minister Meg Hillier: “Innocent children are included in the databaseCivil rights campaigners and MPs have been calling on the Government to change the law to force the police to destroy the DNA records of anyone without a criminal record.”

Last month, a Government-funded inquiry called for new laws to limit who can access the database, including restricting police use to ‘seeking matches from a crime scene’.

It also called on Ministers to curtail police powers that allow them to take DNA by force from people picked up for minor offences such as a breach of the peace.

The revelations of the number of ‘non-criminals’ being added to the system are contained in internal research statistics obtained by The Mail on Sunday from the National Policing Improvement Agency, which oversees the DNA database.

The research, carried out at the end of March, compared individuals on the DNA database and records on the Police National Computer.  It is the first official figure on the number of ‘innocents’ on the database since November 2005, when there were just 139,463 people on the system who had not been charged or cautioned.

Last week, the Government also revealed its database contained the profiles of almost 40,000 innocent children.Home Office Minister Meg Hillier said the profiles of an estimated 39,095 ten to 17-year-olds who ‘had not been convicted, cautioned, received a final warning/reprimand and had no charge pending against them’ were on the database.

The UK’s database is the largest in the world, holding the genetic fingerprints of more than 5 per cent of the population, compared with the equivalent database in the United States, which holds 0.5 per cent of the population.

Before 2001, the police could take DNA samples during investigations but had to destroy these and the records derived from them if the people concerned were acquitted or charges were not proceeded with.

The law was changed in 2001 to remove this requirement and changed again in 2004 so that DNA samples could be taken from anyone arrested for a recordable offence and detained in a police station.

Neither the Home Office nor the National Policing Improvement Agency would explain the reason for the apparent huge increase in the number of people not convicted of any offence being added to the system.

A spokesman for the National Policing Improvement Agency said the new figures were incomplete and had been produced only for research purposes. He said: ‘It is not possible to give a precise figure for the number of people on the National DNA Database who have committed no offence as some relevant conviction and caution records have been weeded from the Police National Computer.’He added that he was unable to discuss the apparent increase because it was not ‘a like-for-like comparison’.