European Union Referendum Bill

Lord Lawson of Blaby Excerpts

Wednesday 18th November 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Tyler]

That is simply not true. I have worked with the Electoral Commission over the years and there is good evidence that, once you start voting, you tend to continue to vote. The cohort that is missing out at the moment is very much the 18 to 24 year-olds. The turnout for them was down to 54%—it dropped dramatically. Therefore, the noble Lord is simply wrong on that point.

I wonder whether the Minister has come armed with the same wholly inadequate response that was employed in Committee, when I moved a similar amendment. The noble Lord, Lord Faulks, then extracted a very short quote from the advice given by the Electoral Commission:

“The Commission’s view is that any changes to the franchise for the referendum on the UK’s membership of the European Union should be clear in sufficient time to enable all those who are eligible, to register and participate in the referendum”.

Today we have some additional advice from the Electoral Commission:

“Recent media reports have indicated that the Commission believes there must be 12 months between legislation passing through Parliament to change the franchise and the first electoral event to which this applies. This is not the case”.

It then says, in heavy type:

“The Commission has been consistently clear that a change to the franchise is a matter for Parliament, and that we will advise on the practical implications of any such change”.

I hope that the Minister will not now pray in aid the commission.

I have worked with the Electoral Commission for some years, and it is very careful in the words that it uses in advising Parliament. It is responsible to us—to Parliament, not to government—and its advice is to Parliament. It is a statutory commission, with very considerable responsibility. Noble Lords should note that clarity of intention is what it is worrying about, not whether Royal Assent has actually been granted. It can start preparing for this change, as the noble Baroness, Lady Morgan, mentioned earlier. In other words, this is an argument not for doing nothing with this change to the franchise, but for getting on with it as soon as possible.

On the evening before the day in Committee to which I referred, the Minister’s ministerial colleague systematically rubbished the Electoral Commission and all the advice given to us, in the context of the Government’s acceleration of the electoral registration change. We should be absolutely clear now that there is no practical objection to this extension of the franchise, assuming that the referendum is not held before June 2016. For all the other reasons that have already been explained in Committee and today, it is very unlikely that the Government would contemplate a referendum before that date. Six months is acknowledged to be an adequate minimum period for the preparatory work, based on the Scottish experience. So for Ministers to drag their feet while so many in both Houses are urging them to recognise the strength of the case would be irresponsible, frankly. Indeed, trying to postpone it for as long as possible in the hope that that will make the change more problematic would be a failure of good governance.

[Lord Lawson of Blaby (Con)]

What the noble Lord is saying, as others have said, is that the decision to reduce the voting age for the Scottish referendum is a precedent that has to be followed for all elections of all kinds. That makes it a very important matter indeed, which clearly the Westminster Parliament as a whole needs to pronounce on. Can he remind us by what majority the Westminster Parliament decided that this should happen in Scotland?

[Lord Tyler]

My Lords, it did not—but I quoted specifically the noble Lord, Lord Dobbs, who identified precisely that the Cabinet of the previous Government actually agreed with that change.

I am not arguing today for the extension of the franchise in all parts of our electoral system. That is not what is on the Order Paper. What we are debating is very specific. I have an expert witness—I will come to him in a moment—who says that this is an exceptional circumstance in which it should be done.

I simply do not understand on what basis the Government, without a principled or practical objection, are continuing to resist—assuming that they are.