Clegg pledges support to votes at 16

21 January 2010

Nick Clegg, leader of the Liberal Democrats, reiterated his support for lowering the voting age to 16 in an online public meeting with the UK Youth Parliament yesterday. Responding to several questions about the voting age, he said: "If you can ask someone to die for this country, they should have the right to vote for the government of the country. So I can guarantee that we will continue to campaign for votes at 16."

The Lib Dem leader also expressed his disappointment with Barack Obama at the recent climate change conference in Copenhagen. Clegg said: "I think it was particularly worrying that the US president, Barack Obama... basically cut a deal with the Chinese government and cut out and ignored Europe, which was pressing for a much more ambitious agreement."

The Liberal Democrat position on scrapping university tuition fees was another hot topic. Having previously wanted to scrap all fees immediately, Clegg now argues that the dire state of the economy will make this policy difficult:

"We will scrap them, but it will take a little bit longer. It will take six years rather than doing it overnight as we once thought we could. We will do this immediately by scrapping tuition fees for all students in their final year of study. And then we will work down to the other years, and extend it to part-time students, and so over a six-year period this injustice of tuition fees will be scrapped."

This was the first of several UK Youth Parliament 'web chats' with politicians and decision-makers over the coming months.

To read the web chat in full, go to:

http://www.ukypforums.org.uk/showthread.php?t=4869

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