David Cameron is facing a delay in his EU referendum until October next year after the government was defeated in the House of Lords when peers voted to allow 16-and 17-year-olds to take part.



Downing Street made clear that MPs, who rejected the proposal on two occasions, will be given the chance to overturn the vote in the upper house.

But the prime minister may have to wait until June to force the bill onto the statute book if the two chambers fail to reach agreement. This would delay the referendum until at least October because the poll cannot be held until four months after the bill becomes law.



The Lords are right: young people should vote on the EU referendum | Polly Toynbee Read more

The latest challenge to the prime minister’s EU referendum came after Labour, Liberal Democrat and a sizeable proportion of crossbench peers voted in favour of following the example of the Scottish referendum, in which 16- and 17-year-olds were given the vote, by 293 to 211 votes. This was an opposition majority of 82.

The tough stance adopted by No 10 suggests that the prime minister is determined to play hardball with the House of Lords. Downing Street will be hoping that the non-party crossbench peers, who are careful about confronting the government, will be nervous about delaying the implementation of a Tory election manifesto pledge.

Government sources also suggested that Labour may be wary of being seen to delay the referendum. Ministers will calculate that this dilemma may come into sharp relief for Labour if the prime minister reaches a deal with EU leaders in December or early next year and then is unable to hold the referendum until October.

A lengthy “ping-pong”– the process whereby a bill passes to and from parliament’s two chambers when they are in conflict– could persuade the prime minister to back down if he wants to keep open the chance of a referendum in June or July. But he would probably face a delay on another front, because the electoral commission has warned of a delay if the electoral roll is to be updated to ensure that all 16- and 17-year-olds are included.

Labour sources suggested that Lady Morgan of Ely, the peer who tabled the amendment, won strong support among crossbench peers after Lord Faulks, the civil justice minister, suggested that 16-year-olds might be overwhelmed by the challenge of voting.

Faulks told peers: “We should not underestimate the gravity of voting. One can say, well it is all great fun, we can join in, it is good to enthuse. It is actually a huge responsibility. It is a momentous moment that every individual undertakes. Of course a 16-year-old, given the chance to vote, will and should take that very seriously. But we have to ask ourselves whether, in our desire to enthuse 16- and 17-year-olds, we may be in danger of placing too great a responsibility on them.”

Lord Tyler, the Lib Dem peer, asked: “Can the noble peer tell us whether he has seen the film Suffragette? The argument he is just advancing was one of the reasons that was given for not giving women the vote until after the first world war and then not extending it beyond those under the age of 28. Those arguments were deployed by his contemporaries, as it were, of that period.”

John Penrose, the minister for constitutional reform, said the government would work to overturn the Lords vote. “The House of Commons has voted on three occasions in recent months against dropping the voting age from 18 – including overturning a Lords amendment just yesterday. The government will reaffirm this clear position when the bill returns to the elected chamber and will seek to overturn this latest amendment from the Lords.”



