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Order! Order!

Hello, I'm Sean Curran, and this is today in Parliament from BBC Radio 4,

for Thursday the 17th of July, when the government confirmed that 16-year-olds would be able to vote at the next general election.

Young people can work at 16.

They can pay taxes.

They can join the army.

There's no reason why they shouldn't have the right to have a say in who represents them.

But the Conservatives call the plans hopelessly confused.

This strategy has finally refilled their ambition for allowing a 16-year-old to vote in an election,

but not stand in it, probably because young people are being abandoned in droves by the Labour Party.

Also in the programme, peers digest a sobering report on the rise of anti-Semitism.

Most shockingly, the NHS, where Jewish patients cannot

feel confident of fair treatment. Parliament starts its summer break next week. MPs won't

return to Westminster until September. It's become a tradition followed by governments of all parties for ministers

to publish a series of written ministerial statements on the eve of the long recess. It doesn't

leave much time for MPs to question the proposals in the Commons. In a nod to the US political

television drama, The West Wing, the practice is now known as Take Out the Trash Day.

Today, the government released 20 written statements. Four came from the Department for Housing

Communities and Local Government, including one called Restoring Trust in Our Democracy, which set

out plans to give 16-year-olds the right to vote in all UK elections.

The Minister for Democracy, Roshanara Ali, was forced to make a statement in the Commons

...