Referendums

Lord Pearson of Rannoch Excerpts

Tuesday 5th March 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, I am surprised that the noble Lord has not also called in aid Mrs Thatcher’s comment in the mid-1970s on the dangers of sliding from parliamentary democracy to plebiscitary democracy. Our political system depends on the principle of parliamentary sovereignty and that is something that we have to cling to.

[Lord Pearson of Rannoch]

My Lords, further to the supplementary question of the noble Baroness, Lady Quin, does the Minister agree that opinion polls consistently show that more than 80% of the British people want a referendum on our membership of the European Union? Perhaps that should be of some significance even to our present political establishment.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

I am glad that the noble Lord is such a man of the people in all these respects. I recall that, three months before the 1975 referendum, opinion polls were overwhelmingly in favour of leaving, but that, in the course of the campaign, opinion was informed and thus altered.