Brexit: Petition to Revoke Article 50 Notification

Lord Lilley Excerpts

Tuesday 26th March 2019 Lords Chamber

[Lord Callanan]

I was merely making the point that there have been large expressions of public opinion—demonstrations, internet polls and so on—during previous Governments. At the end of the day, we do not have government by internet opinion poll; we have government by participatory democracy, by the ballot box and by this Parliament.

[Lord Lilley (Con)]

My Lords, does my noble friend recall the Prime Minister saying at the opening of the referendum campaign,

“It will be your decision whether to remain in the EU on the basis of the reforms we secure or whether we leave. Your decision. Nobody else’s. Not politicians’, not Parliament’s. Not lobby groups’ … Just you”?


Does he recall any of the leaders of the remain campaign dissociating themselves from those remarks?

[Noble Lords]

Yes.

[Lord Lilley]

I recall them being endorsed by Tony Blair, Gordon Brown, Nick Clegg and others. Would it not be an enormous betrayal of trust and undermine confidence in our Parliament and our system if we were to ignore the result and simply revoke Article 50?

[Lord Callanan]

As usual, my noble friend makes a powerful point. We need to respect the votes of 17.4 million people, which is a bigger number than the 5 million who signed the online petition.