The age at which people can be elected to parliament could be reduced to 18, a minister says today.

In an interview with ePolitix.com, Christopher Leslie said there was a strong argument for allowing people who have the right to vote to stand for political office.

"I'm not saying that it is something that is government policy, but there is a strong argument to be made that if you are able to vote then - in a sense - how do you draw the line between the entitlement to vote and the entitlement to stand as a candidate?" he said.

And the minister added that there is "a strong, persuasive and attractive point to be made" that more 18 to 21-year-olds might be encouraged to vote if there were more representatives from their age group in parliament.

Leslie, one of the youngest ministers in the government and one of the youngest MPs in the House of Commons, said he got involved in politics "as soon as I could", becoming a councillor at 21 years of age.

But he added that "I don't necessarily think there is a massive ground of opinion amongst 18 to 21-year-olds that there is some great unfairness in their not being able to be elected"

"There is a wider debate to be had on that particular point and again I wouldn't be close-minded to the issue," he added.

However, the minister was less receptive to the possibility of lowering the voting age to 16, noting that MPs had voted overwhelmingly against such a move.

"As far as the government is concerned, we don't have any plans to reduce the age of voting but certainly we are interested as to see what the response is in terms of public debate and the direction in which people feel this might be a reasonable prospect," he said.

"I'm not sure that would be the solution to turnout issues or the engagement of younger people.

"After all, we see the age group from 18 to 24 is not particularly motivated to turnout to vote, so I'm not sure extending that to 16-years-old makes massive amounts of difference in terms of general engagement.

"But I don't think we shouldn't necessarily close our minds to it."

The minister also said the government was determined to continue testing new voting methods, such as telephone, internet or SMS voting.

"We see Pop Idol, Big Brother all these other things which involve the public and of course they aren't walking down to a local school or driving round and putting their cross on a piece of paper, they are ringing up, they are doing it over the telephone, they are using the internet and so forth," he said.

But he accepted that "electronic voting doesn't appear to have been uplifting in terms of turnout as postal voting has been".

And Leslie said that politicians could learn to make better use of the internet.

He said MPs from all parties were "becoming wise" to the world wide web, but said that "we are slightly behind the curve as a political class".

"I think we are recognising that there is a lot of potential and scope for our own political ideas as well as our candidates to be advanced and be communicating by electronic means," Leslie told this website.