My Lords, I am tempted to reply to the vast mass of points that have been made during this debate. However, I shall deal with a more fundamental point: clearly, we need a debate and votes in both Houses on the principle of referendums. The reality is that this referendum has brought out very clearly the way in which referendums can undermine our system of democracy. This is a vital issue and we ought to take the opportunity as soon as possible to have a general debate on the principle.
The problem is that we are told that referendums are democratic. They are not democratic in the sense that we in this country understand it. In this country we believe in representative parliamentary democracy where Members of Parliament are elected to act as representatives, not delegates. The referendum undermines their ability to act as representatives, taking all the arguments into account. We should therefore look very carefully at the situation at the moment in Holland, where they are proposing to legislate to prohibit any further referendums, and indeed to prohibit having a referendum on whether they can legislate to prohibit referendums. [Laughter.]
This is not a laughing matter. Our system is in danger of being undermined. Indeed, it is being undermined on this occasion, when we are told that it is an instruction from the people. It is not; the Bill that we passed in this House was clearly for an advisory referendum, but it was subsequently hijacked, particularly the morning after the result by the Prime Minister,
who sought to make it a mandatory referendum and, to a large extent, a hard referendum. We therefore need to stand back after this debate and really consider the whole issue because we are in a very dangerous situation concerning the real democracy that we in this country believe in.
I received a letter after I made a similar speech, from a member of the public who said, “But you don’t realise that it was Churchill who was defending democracy”. I wrote back and said, “The democracy Churchill was defending was not in fact the system of referendums—that was enthusiastically adopted by Hitler”. I have not had a reply to that letter, which perhaps shows that democracy works.
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