European Union Referendum: Young Voters

Lord Kerr of Kinlochard Excerpts

Thursday 26th May 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Kerr of Kinlochard (CB)]

Having heard what the noble Baroness has said, it pains me to have to admit that Cambridge can sometimes get things right. However, I disagree strongly with her and her party on referenda. I firmly believe that Mrs Thatcher was right: referenda are the devices of dictators and demagogues. However, we are where we are. This is a very important debate and I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Roberts, in allowing us to have it.

I am antediluvian when it comes to IT. I belong to the quill pen and forked stick school of messaging and I am not a Facebook user. However, I know that a very large number of young people are. According to the Financial Times, people in their 20s,

“make up 28 per cent of the platform’s UK users”.

I do not have a number, but it is enormous. I am indebted to Ms Lisa Pollack in this week’s Financial Times, who tells me that for the general election and recent local elections, Facebook posted notifications reminding people to register to vote:

“This made the network one of the largest referrers to the registration website, according to the Cabinet Office”.

But she also says that:

“There is not yet a plan to do similar for the … EU referendum”.

I do not know whether the people at Facebook listen to our debate or whether they need to be motivated by the Electoral Commission, and I do not know whether the Electoral Commission needs to be motivated by the Minister. But given that the Minister is, like the noble Lord, Lord Roberts, young, lively and a techno-freak, he will know that all these stages could be gone through electronically within the next 10 minutes before he responds to the debate.

I really hope that an effort will be made to have done by Facebook for the referendum what was apparently done for the general and local elections, because the worst possible outcome to this referendum would be a close result either way on a very low turnout. That is what we must really try to avoid.