Referendums

Lord Tyler Excerpts

Tuesday 5th March 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, I had indeed reread that section of the Constitution Committee’s report, which said, as the noble Baroness has remarked,

“we regret the ad hoc manner in which referendums have been used, often as a tactical device, by the government of the day … Where possible, cross-party agreement should be sought as to the circumstances in which it is appropriate for referendums to be used”.

Let us hope that we can reach cross-party agreement on such matters in the future.

[Lord Tyler]

My Lords, given the precedent of the Scottish independence referendum next year, is it now the Government’s position that any future national referendum with long-term consequences should extend the franchise to 16 and 17 year-olds?

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, we have debated this before and I do not want to go too far down this road. The Scots have decided that for this one referendum they would like to extend the vote to 16 and 17 year- olds. No doubt we will discuss time and again how much further that should be extended.