Equality (Titles) Bill [HL]

Debate between Earl of Clancarty and Earl of Erroll

Friday 6th December 2013 Lords Chamber

[The Earl of Clancarty (CB)]

My Lords, I agree with the sentiments of the noble Baroness, Lady Deech. We will come to the main discussion on this a little later. I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, for enabling us again to discuss gender equality in the peerage, and I congratulate the noble Lord on pushing the Bill further forward.

On these particular amendments I will be brief. I am not sure that at this stage we should be overtightening the Bill and prescribing so precisely what it contains in the title. In the way that it stands at present it contains peerages and baronetcies. In the next group we will be discussing other Crown offices and rights, so I do not think that we should yet be jumping to any conclusions about what necessarily will be covered in toto in the Bill.

It is probably no surprise to the House that I support Amendment 4. Irish peerages are an identifiable group under the current jurisdiction of the Crown and stem from a time before the current United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, which of course excludes the Republic of Ireland. “Great Britain” therefore is a term which has a certain ambiguity attached to it. My own peerage, the Earldom of Clancarty, is Irish, though I sit in this House by virtue of a viscountcy which is an English title. It would be wise to include the reference to Ireland, just as England and Scotland have already been included.

[The Earl of Erroll (CB)]

My Lords, first, I apologise: I have actually got 16 people for lunch and am meant to be chairing a meeting down in Committee Room G, so I will be jumping in and out a bit.

Even if the Bill does not become law, people will look at it should they wish to produce an equality Bill on titles, so I want to point out some things which need to be considered when rewriting it. The easiest point at which to do this is probably on this amendment. I have some amendments in the second group but I think they are all generically the same—about how you define the titles, how you define a registered title and what gets caught up in that.

I have added my name to several amendments tabled by the noble Earl, Lord Caithness, and the noble Lady, Lady Saltoun, because they are alternatives. With my amendment I have tried—particularly in Amendment 2 and some of the other consequential ones—to define the words “hereditary title” as being,

“hereditary peerage, baronetcy, or other heritable office of the Crown or State”.

That means that all the things we want to include are included in the words “hereditary title”, which means that you do not then need to amend the Long Title or so much of the Bill—you just need to take out the words “hereditary peerage or” and put in the words “hereditary title”.

The current definition of hereditary title, which comes right at the beginning of Clause 1, is too wide. It can catch up certain things that are not titles conferred by Her Majesty the Queen. All sorts of things could be caught up, for instance Scottish clan chiefships, which can devolve separately and differently, and which are regulated by the Court of the Lord Lyon. Therefore I thought it much easier to keep those out of it. In fact, many of the amendments in the name of the noble Earl, Lord Caithness, and the noble Lady, Lady Saltoun, also intend to do the same thing. I thought that an easier way was to define it right at the beginning, so that the term “hereditary title” is restricted in its definition and does not inadvertently catch up all sorts of other honorifics, honorary titles and other things which may be hereditary, such as the hereditary keeper of the something or other, or the hereditary groom of the something or other, and so on. Those can all go on doing what they do, the major titles will be dealt with in the Bill, and then we can put in the equality provisions, to which I have other amendments and for which I will join other noble Lords.

That is why I prefer my Amendment 2, which is the main one, and the other bits, which basically bring it back to hereditary titles. That means that we can leave the term “hereditary title” in the long title of the Bill without having to change it, because it is dealt with immediately later on. I apologise again because I will have to pop in and out, and I will speak as briefly as possible.