Keep your snouts out! MPs see off the Lords: QUENTIN LETTS on yesterday in Parliament

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As one Tory MP, Peterborough’s Stewart Jackson (pictured), punchily put it, the ‘superannuated, unelected, unaccountable panjandrums in the House of Lords should learn their place’

The Government easily saw off an attempt by the House of Frauds to impose voting at 16 on the EU referendum. 

MPs yesterday examined their lordships’ proposal during an ill-attended lunchtime debate. 

The policy was returned to sender without approval – and a few brisk words to the effect that the Upper House should keep its snout out of electoral controversies.

As one Tory MP, Peterborough’s Stewart Jackson, punchily put it, the ‘superannuated, unelected, unaccountable panjandrums in the House of Lords should learn their place’. 

It was a loss to the diplomatic world when Mr Jackson chose parliamentary politics. I suspect his words will be ignored by the Lib Dem and Labour peers, at least initially. 

A major confrontation may be needed.

Perhaps the killer point in yesterday’s debate came early, from Cabinet Office minister John Penrose. 

He noted that the last Labour Government had raised, from 16 to 18, the age at which youngsters are allowed to use sunbeds – but now Labour wanted a hefty political issue such as the referendum to be entrusted to the same teenagers deemed too young to assess the risks of obtaining an orange glow. 

Philip Davies (Con, Shipley) made a similar point that politically correct Lefties – the snortingly un-PC Mr Davies has made long and microscopic study of such creatures over the years – did not approve of under-18s smoking cigarettes. 

Yet, said Mr Davies, the same people now wanted these youngsters given the vote.

Mr Penrose cuts an unusual figure at the despatch box, being civilised, soft-spoken, agreeably bluff without being too odiously smooth. 

As he talks he shakes his head so that his whole body shudders in a middle-ranking sort of way. 

He does not give the impression of being much vexed about anything yet he somehow radiates a benevolent force, the can-do geniality of a Harley Street herbalist, or the entertainments officer on a cruise liner.

And yet his speech contained a few muscular phrases, arguing that votes at 16 was ‘not some great progressive cause when an oppressed minority wants to be liberated’ but was rather a ‘Westminster bubble issue, a trendy obsession’ which was furthermore used by some politicians for ‘tawdry tactical political advantage’.

It says something for the skill of Mr Penrose that he can say ‘tawdry’ without riling his opponents.

Pat McFadden, Labour’s shadow spokesman, opposed the Government but without much gusto. He dismissed fears about the extra cost of giving 16-year-olds the vote, saying this amounted to just £6million in an annual Government budget of £773billion. 

The referendum would be a ‘once in a lifetime event’ and it was therefore only right to let those aged 16 take part. 

Stephen Gethins, for the SNP, said ‘we think 16 is the right age’. Hon members: ‘Why?’ Mr Gethins: ‘Because that is when people pay tax.’

Mr Penrose argued that there was ‘no clear point at which a person becomes an adult’ and you had to be 21, for instance, to adopt a child or drive a bus. 

The Government easily saw off an attempt by the House of Frauds to impose voting at 16 on the EU referendum. MPs yesterday examined their lordships’ proposal during an ill-attended lunchtime debate

My wife is 50 but I hope no one ever lets her drive a bus. The passengers’ screams would be louder than on the most frightening fairground ghost train.

Earlier in the day we had Justice Questions, bringing further evidence of Michael Gove’s self-reinvention as a saint of consensus. 

It is increasingly hard to believe that Mr Gove was once the pricker of the Blob, the bracingly principled Education Secretary who took on vested interests on behalf of the electorate. 

Since going to Justice he has become the darling of the lawyers by overturning various Right-wing measures by his predecessor, Chris Grayling. 

The latest concerns magistrates’ court charges. Mr Gove is becoming quite the Establishment darling.

One of his junior ministers, former Guardsman Mike Penning, has shaved off some mutton-chop whiskers that had made him resemble a Victorian butcher. 

Despite this, ‘Mumbling Mike’ was still vocally indistinct. He kept referring to the Parole Board as the ‘Prole Board’. After Plebgate, this may not be wise.