"Might the noble Lord’s view of 16 year-olds voting in the Scottish referendum have been different if an overwhelming number of them had voted to pull out of the union?..." Lord Hamilton of Epsom - View Speech
"My Lords, I do not intend to delay the Committee for very long, but on many of the amendments that came before we have been led by the Electoral Commission. I remind my noble friend the Minister that the Electoral Commission has serious reservations about these amendments for logistical reasons. …..." Lord Hamilton of Epsom - View Speech
"My Lords, we have been discussing virtually all day how we are going to try to make this referendum fair. We want to keep the playing field as level as we possibly can. Enfranchising 1.9 million people of European nationality is a blatant opportunity to try to swing the vote …..." Lord Hamilton of Epsom - View Speech
"I cannot believe that the noble Lord, Lord Hannay, is actually putting this amendment forward because he has no intention to increase the franchise of people who will vote for his position, which is to stay in the EU. Come on—let us see this for what it is: this is …..." Lord Hamilton of Epsom - View Speech
"My Lords, I regret that I was not in your Lordships’ House for the Second Reading; I had business abroad at the time. But I very much support the Bill and indeed feel that, 40 years after we were last given an opportunity to vote on whether we wanted to …..." Lord Hamilton of Epsom - View Speech
"I am rather in sympathy with the noble Lord’s proposal. Does he not agree that, as the years progress, the whole of the eurozone in particular and the EU generally is becoming more and more accident-prone; that one drama follows another; and that by 2019 the whole thing will probably …..." Lord Hamilton of Epsom - View Speech
"My Lords, can my noble friend tell the House what the rise in the cost of legal aid has actually been in this country? Is it not inevitable, if we have to find savings in the public sector, that legal aid should find savings like anywhere else?..." Lord Hamilton of Epsom - View Speech
"My Lords, is not the absurdity of the advice given by the police as outlined by my noble friend Lady Gardner a very good example of why we need elected police commissioners to reconnect with the public they are supposed to serve?..." Lord Hamilton of Epsom - View Speech
"I say to the noble Lord, Lord Rowe-Beddoe, that the union is threatened, and has been for some time, by devolution. Once you start the process of devolution, it becomes a ratchet, with more and more powers then transferred, in the case of Wales, to the devolved Assembly. That is …..." Lord Hamilton of Epsom - View Speech