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Brexit: Further Referendum

My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Tyler, for so excellently introducing this important subject and giving us an opportunity to debate it today, and I thank all other noble Lords who contributed.

I will first address the remarks made by my noble friend Lady Browning, who made a number of excellent points, which were amplified by the noble Lord, Lord Adonis. She asked a number of questions about the technical conduct of referenda, and some of her points were also reflected in the report of the DCMS Select Committee and others. The Government are currently considering this matter, but it is not within the purview of my departmental responsibilities—it is a matter for the Cabinet Office—so perhaps it would be best for me to write to my noble friend, and copy other noble Lords, with the detailed responses to her questions.

The referendum held in the summer of 2016 was indeed a historic event for the United Kingdom, a vote for which there was the highest ever turnout for a UK-wide referendum and, moreover, the highest turnout in any election or referendum since 1992. I am sorry to disappoint the noble Baroness, Lady Wheeler, but it is our firm view that there can be no second-guessing of the outcome of such a vote—not when more than 17.4 million people voted to express, in the clearest of terms, an

instruction to the Government, as Parliament had asked them to do, to withdraw from the European Union.

The Prime Minister addressed this in the Commons on Tuesday evening. Despite the vote against the deal, the Government still stand by their commitment to the British people to respect the clear result from the 2016 referendum. In 2016 we committed to respect that vote, and we remain committed now. We continue to work to deliver our exit from the European Union on 29 March—not 20 March. We will not hold a second referendum, and to do so would be to disrespect the result of the 2016 vote.