UK-EU Future Relationship: Young Voters

Lord Forsyth of Drumlean Excerpts

Monday 10th September 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Callanan]

I remind the noble Lord that we have had a people’s vote already. I do not know what he thinks, but I thought that the people voted in the first referendum. David Cameron said, in 2015, that it would be the final decision: a once-in-a generation choice. To use a more personal example, I was not old enough to vote in the 1975 referendum, in which he no doubt participated. I cannot remember much about what happened then, but I might well have voted no, and I have had to live for 40 years with the decision that his generation took. That is in the nature of binary referendums: those old enough and eligible at the time participate.

[Lord Forsyth of Drumlean (Con)]

My Lords, does my noble friend not think it absurd that the noble Lord should be arguing for a second referendum on our decision to leave the European Union while at the same time arguing against a second referendum on Scottish independence?

[Lord Callanan]

None of the positions that the noble Lord takes strikes me as particularly more absurd than any of his other positions.