People below the age of 16 pay tax if they earn enough income. That's the reality in our society. So, are we arguing that a one-year-old who happens to have an income that is in excess of the tax threshold ought to have the vote? It's a preposterous argument, frankly.

The point I'm making is that we are being inconsistent as politicians if we legislate to prevent young people from being able to access sunbeds, ingest alcohol and a whole host of other things, and nobody in this Chamber appears to be proposing that we ought to lower the age for those things to 16, then I think that we have taken sensible decisions in order to protect them because they're insufficiently mature. And I think it's the right thing in order to have this age of consistency at 18. That's my own personal view, and that's why I'm moving these amendments today.