Lord Adonis: Appropriate For House Of Lords To Say There Should Be Referendum on Final Brexit Deal

14 January 2018, 13:09 | Updated: 14 January 2018, 13:10

Prominent Remain campaigner Lord Adonis has told LBC it would be appropriate for the House of Lords to say there should be a referendum on the final Brexit deal.

He was speaking on The Nigel Farage Show.

Nigel asked: "You're a member of the House of Lords. When you talked about sabotaging Brexit, did that include the way you vote as a member of the House of Lords?"

Lord Adonis said: "I've been very, very clear. I'm a Democrat.

"The role of the House of Lords, in my view, is to refer this treaty, whatever it is that Mrs May negotiates, which we're agreed is going to be a bad deal, refer that to the people.

"I do not believe it's right for the House of Lords to try and block it.

"I don't think that that would be appropriate because we're an unelected House."

Pressed by Nigel Farage on whether he meant that as a member of the House of Lords he would vote for a referendum on the final deal Lord Adonis replied "yes".

He added: "But I'm not going to vote to block the deal.

"I don't think the House of Lords constitutionally has the power to block the deal. I think the House of Commons could, because that directly represents the people".

He went on to say that "it is absolutely appropriate, in my view, for the House of Lords to say that there should be a referendum because our constitutional role is to safeguard democracy, that is the role of the second chamber, and there's no bigger Democratic issue which the British people face now than whether we should or shouldn't crash out of the European Union."

Lord Adonis joined Nigel Farage in the studio for a lengthy discussion on Brexit. He followed Alastair Campbell.

You can watch the programme in full here:

The Nigel Farage Show: Sunday 14 January