Deputy Presiding Officer, I hope you'll forgive me for starting in a slightly more celebratory mood because the central purpose of this Bill as far I'm concerned is to extend the franchise to a most important group of people and, for me, the experience of seeing how 16 and 17-year-olds contributed to the 2014 Scottish referendum was real confirmation that this is a positive move. Far from being apathetic, they seized the chance. A survey for the Electoral Commission found that 75 per cent of 16 and 17-year-olds voted in that referendum. Thousands of young people, supposedly uninterested in politics, we thought, attended the polling stations alongside their parents and grandparents despite having no previous experience of ever having done so.

But it was that experience, and how they participated in the debates that accompanied the referendum itself, which further inspired many Conservatives in Scotland to support this cause, and I think it's a really important thing to bear in mind—how the new voters conducted themselves and showed themselves so interested in full participation in that political question. That has certainly inspired me to fully support this extension of the franchise here in Wales.

And it is also about, Deputy Presiding Officer, citizenship, and the preparation for active participation in common governance. We can strengthen the concept of citizenship, its rights and responsibilities by a programme of preparation in our schools and colleges. We face a crisis of citizenship, frankly, and its connection to the duties of running a democracy, and this seems to be one way that we can start to put that right and get idealism back into the democratic process, which it absolutely needs to flourish.

However, I do believe that the extension of the franchise in any nation is a pivotal moment in its history and should be approached with all solemnity that's appropriate. As I said, I personally enthusiastically support the move to reduce the voting age, and so I will be supporting the general principles of the Bill today, and I would also recommend every Member in this Chamber to do likewise. However, as a group, we will be allowing a free vote so that Members can make up their own minds on this important constitutional reform.

However, having said that, and celebrating what we hopefully will do in the coming months, I do think it's important that this Bill is also strengthened. It is less than satisfactory to leave the question of the franchise and lowering it in local authority elections to a future Bill. We should have looked at the principle of lowering the franchise to 16 and 17-year-olds, or extending it to them, to include all elections under our ambit, and that means local government elections also. We've been promised a Bill and I've no doubt one will be introduced, but this is a highly contentious area in terms of local government reform and that Bill could run into difficulty. I hope it doesn't, in terms of the franchise issues, anyway.

Can I turn to the duty to educate? While there are various arguments for and against the lowering of the voting age to 16, one common concern that's been emphasised is the need for education and awareness raising to accompany this change, and indeed for it to happen anyway, so that citizens are properly prepared for their political duties. The current level of education support was deemed to be sometimes, or even perhaps often, inadequate by a whole range of witnesses. For example, the Electoral Reform Society Cymru stated that political education is relatively poor, and that we have relatively disengaged from devolved politics in particular. That is a weakness. While noting the excellent practice in some schools, even the Minister for Education admitted that there was a variability of provision for citizenship education between schools, and acknowledged that the need for consistency in the messages that young people received in relation to political education through the new curriculum was important.

However, more positively, Welsh students are crying out for better political engagement and education. A 2017 poll showed that 60 per cent of them disagreed that they had received a really good preparation for politics, but that they wanted this to be much better. Many of them, however, did say that much of their information currently comes from sources like Facebook. And, again, I think that we need to tackle that. I think that without a strong education programme behind these changes, we do risk seeing some of the problems they ran into in Scotland, where 25 out of 32 authorities did develop guidance for headteachers—presumably the others did not—but there wasn't much central consistency, and I do think that we could improve things here by generally preparing more effectively and having that central guidance. So, I think that’s an important area.

I realise I'm out of time, but I just hope you'll indulge me in referring to the name. There are difficulties here about legal interpretation, but at the minute, I think we'd all agree that section 2 or clause 2—I can never remember if it’s section or clause—states:

'(1) The Assembly for Wales constituted by the 2006 Act is to be known as the “Senedd”.

(2) The Senedd may also be known as the Welsh Parliament.'

Well, if we got the word 'congress' into those two lines, I think we would have had political bingo and would have been able to shout, 'house'—it may have been appropriate. I think this needs improving. I think we need a bilingual name. That is really important. There are various things I will introduce when we look at this, but our view is actually very—. I should say 'my view', because the group doesn't technically have one. But my view is closely in line with the Counsel General that it should say there will be a Parliament for Wales, which will be known as Senedd Cymru. I think that is where we need to get. I would also have made comments about—