Meeting of the Parliament 09 June 2015
I am very grateful to Stewart Stevenson for that intervention and am pleased to hear what he said because I think that the case for letting 16 and 17-year-olds vote in the EU referendum can and should be won. A united voice in the Scottish Parliament advocating votes for 16 and 17-year-olds will complement the voices at Westminster from a number of parties that are advocating the same, which will be important as the referendum bill progresses.
However, 171,000 EU citizens live in Scotland and can vote in Scottish parliamentary and local government elections; they were able to vote in the independence referendum, something on which all parties in the Parliament agreed. They have chosen to make Scotland their home, so the case for extending the vote to them in the EU referendum is strong; they should have a voice in the issues that affect our country. I do not understand why the UK Government is proposing to grant the right to vote to citizens of three other EU countries living in the UK—Ireland, Malta and Cyprus—but not to citizens of the remaining 24.
The polls have consistently shown that people in Scotland have a more favourable attitude to the EU than do their English counterparts. That is why the Scottish Government will argue for a double-majority provision—a double lock—in the bill, whereby the UK could leave the EU only if each constituent part of it voted to leave. That sort of territorial requirement is not unique; it is used in some federal states, for example Canada and Australia, and it should apply in this instance to the European Union Referendum Bill.