Outcome of the EU Referendum

Lord Higgins Excerpts

Monday 27th June 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Elystan-Morgan (CB)]

My Lords—

[Lord Higgins (Con)]

My Lords—

[Lord Lansley (Con)]

My Lords—

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Stowell of Beeston]

I am not sure that is quite how I would consider the situation. Clearly what has happened is that this Government believed that the UK should remain in the European Union, and we campaigned for Britain to do so. A decision has been made by the people to leave. The Prime Minister has accepted that decision and said that it has to be for his successor to implement it. That will be the way that we move from here.

[Lord Higgins]

My Lords, the decision that was taken last week has been widely described as democratic. However, it is not what we in this country have understood to be democracy—at any rate, since the time of Edmund Burke. We believe in a representative system of parliamentary democracy where Members of Parliament are elected as representatives, not as delegates, and therefore can take into account all the arguments and not be misled by the kind of misleading propaganda and lies that we have had in this referendum, which has shown very clearly what the disadvantages of a referendum are.

The fundamental problem with a referendum is that it is the dictatorship of the majority—in this case, a very small majority. It is therefore crucial now that our parliamentary system, in the light of what has been said but taking into account the divisions that are so apparent in society, does all that it can to ensure that the implementation of the result of the referendum takes into account the whole range of opinion across the electorate, not simply of those who happen, by a really rather small majority, to have won the debate.

[Baroness Stowell of Beeston]

My noble friend is right that in moving from here it will be essential that we do so in a way that unites all parts of the country, particularly those who voted a different way.

There is a point about parliamentary democracy that I have not already made: as I have said, this was in our manifesto. We passed an Act of Parliament to bring forward the referendum, and that piece of legislation went through both Houses. We debated the terms of the referendum. This Parliament decided those terms and they were the ones that applied. We must remember that. We have all contributed to the way in which the rules were set and the way that the people of this country then exercised their democratic right to vote in the referendum.