How unrepresentative is parliament’s age profile?

David Kingman draws attention to the fact that the age profile of the House of Commons bears almost no resemblance to that of the electorate

The cohort of MPs who were elected in the 2015 general election forms the most diverse parliament ever in terms of gender and ethnicity. However, despite Mhairi Black’s election as the youngest MP since the Reform Act of 1832, the median age of MPs in parliament actually increased by a year to 51. Parliament may be becoming more representative of the UK as a whole in some respects, but its age profile is strikingly different from that of the people who elect it.

Why should this be, and what impacts does it have on politics?

“Male, pale and stale”?

According to research by the Smith Institute, the typical MP following the 2015 general election still essentially conformed to the unfortunate stereotype of being “male, pale and stale” – he is a white male aged 51 who has spent most of his working life either in politics or in one of the “metropolitan” professions such as law or finance.

A recent analysis into the backgrounds of MPs that was undertaken by the House of Commons shows that the current median age of 51 is actually an increase of one year compared to the previous parliament. As you can see from the chart at the top of this article, the age distribution of current MPs bears almost no resemblance to that of the UK population as a whole.

Nearly two-thirds of MPs (63%) are aged between 40 and 59, while only slightly over a quarter of the UK population are in this age group (27%). Roughly the same share of the UK population is aged 20–40, yet this age group accounts for less than 17% of MPs. It’s also worth pointing out that the over-65s are somewhat under-represented too, although to a lesser extent than young people: less than 11% of MPs are aged over 65, despite this group accounting for almost 18% of the population.

Interestingly, the dominance of older representatives in parliament appears to have changed remarkably little over time: the median age of MPs elected for the three major parties has been between 47 and 50 at every general election since 1951, again according to the House of Commons Library. This compares to a UK population where the median age – although it has now risen to its highest ever level – is still only 40.

Should we be worried?

Of course, parliament is still hardly representative of the broader electorate in plenty of other ways: women and ethnic minorities remain under-represented, and a third of current MPs were privately educated, even though only 7% of children attend fee-paying schools.

Some people may argue that making parliament more representative of some of these other facets of diversity is more important than making it more age-diverse. However, this argument could be made in reverse as well: if it matters that parliament isn’t representative of the people who elect it, then surely age diversity is an important part of that problem?

It is also irrefutable that many of the issues which come before parliament affect young peoples’ lives, and it would almost certainly improve government policy if people who have direct experience of the matters being discussed have a hand in crafting government policy towards them. One obvious example concerns higher education: MPs in their fifties today went through university under an utterly different set of circumstances to those entering higher education now, whereas MPs in their twenties could bring relevant personal experience to bear.

As mentioned earlier, the 2015 general election did see one of the youngest MPs in history get elected, so perhaps there is hope that more young people could get into parliament in future. However, big questions would have to be asked about Westminster politics, such as whether parliament is capable of the cultural change that would be required to accommodate a younger workforce – for example, adopting working hours which are friendlier towards young adults with children.