European Union Referendum Bill

Lord Lansley Excerpts

Wednesday 18th November 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Pearson of Rannoch (UKIP)]

My Lords, I wonder if I could set out on a very brief quest which I fear most of your Lordships will regard as hopeless. That quest is to prick the conscience of Liberal Democrat Members of your Lordships’ House if they are thinking of supporting this amendment and thus voting it through. I do so by reminding them of their policy before the last election of appointing Peers to your Lordships’ House in accordance with the votes cast in the previous general election. I take the opportunity of reminding the noble Lord, Lord Tyler, and his colleagues that the percentage of their votes in the last general election was 7.9% of the votes cast. That would give them 43 Peers in this House whereas at the moment they have 112—69 more Peers than they ought to.

We have heard much from the noble Lord, Lord Tyler, and Liberal Democrat Peers about democratic legitimacy and all the rest of it, but I recall our debate on 15 September about the future of your Lordships’ House. I have to say to the Liberal Democrat Peers that if they are thinking of using their hugely unconstitutional and undemocratic position in this House to vote the amendment through, I remind them that the Bill has already been through the House of Commons and has the approval of that House.

I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Tyler, with Labour and with others that we need a constitutional convention to restore our democracy because not only is the position of the Liberal Democrat party in your Lordships’ House absurd but so is that of the Labour Party—and indeed that of the Government in the House of Commons, where the Government of the day, the Conservative Party, got a mere 24% of the electorate, 37% of the votes cast, yet that gave them 330 seats and an outright majority. I am sure that your Lordships would be disappointed if I did not compare that performance to the UKIP result in the House of Commons, where we got a big percentage of the electorate—one-third of the electorate of the Government of the day, 12.6% of the votes cast—but that gave us just one Member of Parliament. Still, I do not want to labour that point now. I simply say to the Liberal Democrats: are they wise if they are going to use this position to vote through the amendment? Otherwise, I agree with the noble Lords, Lord Hamilton and Lord Forsyth, who say that this is a transparent attempt to rig the referendum in favour of those who may wish to stay in the EU. As for the amendment itself, I oppose it and I hope it fails.

[Lord Lansley (Con)]

My Lords—

[Noble Lords]

Minister.

[Lord Lansley]

I will be brief, not least because I agreed with much of what was said by the noble Lord, Lord Tyler. That might surprise some of my noble friends. I cannot agree that it is right to argue that the giving of access to rights and civic rights to young people is analogous to the age at which we protect them from harm and abuse. They are different things, and the noble Lord, Lord Blair, was quite right in making the point that he did. We should not construct this vote, on this issue, on this Bill as determining or seeking to determine the franchise for general elections.

My personal view has been for some time that 16 and 17 year-olds should be able to vote in local government elections but not yet in general elections. I think that what this comes down to—and I have not yet heard this point expressed—is that this is not just a singular election, as the noble Lord, Lord Tyler, said by reference to the Prime Minister’s view about the singular nature of the referendum as an occasion upon which votes are taking place, but it is singular in terms of its impact on those young people. Of course that would be true for younger people, but we have to make a judgment where we can. The noble Baroness, Lady Morgan, was right to say that we know from recent experience in Scotland that we have young people who are well equipped to take a decision on an issue of this kind in a debate of this kind, so in my view we should support them in doing that.

The singular nature of this is that these 16 and 17 year-olds of whom we are speaking will be able to vote at the next general election—but at the next general election they will not be able to change the outcome of the referendum. So often in the past, one of the reasons that has been adduced for not extending the franchise to 16 and 17 year-olds is that, “You will access your civic rights and will have your chance to vote, and at subsequent general elections you will have the chance to change the Government if you don’t like it”. On this referendum they will not have that subsequent chance. If they do not like it, I am afraid they are stuck with it. In the course of what I hope will be next year’s extensive debate about the future of the country in which they have to live, I, for one, would not want to argue to 16 and 17 year-olds that they should not participate in that election.