Referendums

Baroness Quin Excerpts

Tuesday 5th March 2013 Lords Chamber

Asked by

[Baroness Quin]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government whether they are considering further legislation concerning the holding of referendums in the United Kingdom.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, the Government believe that the legislative framework set out in the Political Parties, Elections and Referendums Act 2000 has worked well. We have no immediate plans to amend this framework. Each referendum held under the Act, however, requires its own separate primary legislation to set the date and question, and to make any other necessary technical changes.

[Baroness Quin]

My Lords, as many with long memories will know, the first national referendum on Europe in 1975 had quite a lot to do with tackling internal divisions on Europe within the Labour Party. Now it seems that we are to have a referendum on Europe principally for party management reasons as the Prime Minister seeks to appease his party critics. Does the Minister think that this is a satisfactory way of deciding on referendums? If not, will he heed the report of the Constitution Committee of this House, which advised Governments against holding referendums for ad hoc tactical reasons and advised building up a wider political consensus about when and if they should be used?

[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.