Equality (Titles) Bill [HL]

Debate between Earl of Caithness and Lord Jopling

Friday 6th December 2013 Lords Chamber

[The Earl of Caithness]

No, my Lords, because I am not my noble friend Lord Trefgarne, so I could not include it and deliberately omitted it.

I must first apologise to the House and, in particular, to my noble friend Lord Lucas for not being able to take part at Second Reading. I wish that I had been able to be here. I will declare my interest. I do not have any settled estates but I have an elder daughter and a younger son who could be affected by the Bill.

A title is a very complicated document. It is personal property and I therefore agree very much with what my noble friend Lord Wallace of Saltaire said at the end of Second Reading: namely, that this is not a matter for Parliament. It is a matter for the Crown. However, this is an extremely useful debate in order to guide advice to Her Majesty, because in my view this is a logical step forward. The situation that we are in now is anomalous, so in principle I have total support for what my noble friend is aiming to do. All that I would say is that it is horrendously complicated.

I declare my interest as not being an expert in this field. From what I read of Second Reading, I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Thornton, and the Labour Party for their remarks. All my life as a hereditary Peer I have been persecuted and vilified by the Labour Party, but at Second Reading they did a wonderful U-turn and said, “We support hereditary peerages; we’re going to extend them to females so that the titles will keep on for many generations”. I take that point.

Let us look at my own title. The first official document for the Earl of Caithness goes back to 1334. There were Earls of Caithness before that, but 1334 is taken as the first creation. Those noble Lords who are aficionados of Shakespeare will know that the Earl of Caithness appears in the play “Macbeth”—and Macbeth got killed or died in 1057. That Earl of Caithness was Thorfinn, more of a Viking mormær, or Earl, than a Scottish one—it was under Norse law. The person who got the title in 1334, Maol Íosa V, also Earl of Strathearn, was the first creation. He forfeited his titles through treason and the title died out, so that was the end of the earldom of Caithness.

However, because it is the prerogative of the Crown, there was a second grant a few years later, in 1375, to David Stewart, a younger son of Robert II of Scotland, who left his title to his heiress, Euphemia—so the Scots were well ahead in showing that females could inherit a title. That creation died out, too; this is the wonderful thing about having hereditary Peers. There is another gap and then we come to the third creation, Sir George Crichton in 1452—but he surrendered the title in the same year, so the Earl of Caithness came to an end yet again. The fourth creation comes down to me. As one can see, one was able to perpetuate the title but with different families, and now the Labour Party is saying that we can extend that. I feel that after 65 years of persecution, today is a very happy day.

I said at the beginning that the issue was unusually complicated. There will be all sorts of legal problems to be sorted out; in fact, the Bill will become a lawyer’s paradise. For some titles, though not mine, a private Act of Parliament will be necessary in order to effect the Bill. The settlement of the Shrewsbury family had to be done by a private Act of Parliament, for example, so in order to break that, my noble friend Lord Shrewsbury would have to have a further private Act of Parliament. That is just one of the many areas that the lawyers are going to be rubbing their hands over.

[Lord Jopling (Con)]

If we are to do the things that my noble friend Lord Lucas is trying to do, it will mean primary legislation. Dealing with the situation of our colleague, my noble friend Lord Shrewsbury, could be fitted into the same Bill, so I do not think that that constitutes a particular problem.

[The Earl of Caithness]

Indeed, my Lords—if the end result is done by an Act of Parliament. Following the logic of my noble friend Lord Wallace, though, if this is a matter that the Crown decides because our titles are granted by the Monarch, it would not be an Act of Parliament. Therein lies one of the many complications.