 In 2000 a committee of twelve teenage girls, set up to advise the UK government on youth issues, recommended that the age of consent be reduced to 12.The website from which the group was recruited conducted a poll of 42,000 girls between the ages of 12 and 16 on the age of consent; 87% agreed that it should be lowered from 16.Contemporary arguments for lowering the age of consent in the United Kingdom do not necessarily comprise values like individual freedom or children's rights.