Should 16-year-olds get to vote in the next election?

Ed Miliband has reiterated his commitment to lowering the voting age to 16 if his party wins next year's general election. "It's time to hear the voice of young people in our politics," the Labour leader said at his party's conference this week.

His views were echoed by Alex Salmond after 16- and 17-year-olds were able to cast their vote for the first time in last week's Scottish referendum. He told The Guardian that they had "proved themselves to be the serious, passionate and committed citizens we always believed they should be" and that was now an "unanswerable case" for it to be extended across the UK.

Several countries around the world allow under-18s to vote including Germany, Norway and Brazil but the issue remains highly contentious in the UK, particularly across party lines.

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The campaign group Votes at 16 argues that it is "impossible to justify" excluding 16- and 17-year-olds from voting as they are able to get married, pay taxes and join the armed forces. It insists that if a 16-year old pays taxes, they should have some say in how those taxes are spent.

"Locking them out is patronising: it relies on out-dated views about young people's capacities," campaigners argue, adding that forcing them to wait until they are 18 "squanders their energy and passion".

There exists little support among Conservatives for lowering the age. "We have to set the line somewhere," argues Tory MP Mark Harper in a report commissioned by the Democratic Audit. "I think that the right place to set it is the age of majority — the age of 18 — when we basically decide that children become adults."

Daily Telegraph blogger Ed West agrees. He argues that most 16- and 17-year-olds are not in employment and "do not have the same stake in society nor understand how taxes work". He also believes that age group are "not as well informed as the adult population" and can be easily manipulated.

"But the best argument against the child franchise is physiological," says West. "The human brain does not finish maturing until the mid-20s," and so he argues that the voting age should in fact be raised, not lowered.