Oral Answers to Questions

Baroness Laing of Elderslie Excerpts

Wednesday 5th December 2012 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

For consumers, we have announced our plan to ensure that companies put people on the lowest available tariff, which I think has been warmly welcomed throughout the House and throughout the country. For business, given that there is an issue with the energy-intensive industries, the Government have announced their intention to exempt such industries from contract-for-difference costs under electricity market reform. That is subject to state aid clearance and further consultation, but I think it shows that the Government are working hard to help those industries and ensure that they continue to compete and succeed in Britain.

[Mrs Eleanor Laing (Epping Forest) (Con)]

Q8. The whole House does indeed join the Prime Minister in congratulating the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge on their excellent good news. Will the Prime Minister please confirm to the House that the Commonwealth has at last agreed—after many of us have been asking for this for years—to change the rules on royal succession? Will the Prime Minister undertake to bring a Bill before the House very soon, so that if this baby is a girl she can follow in the footsteps of her much-loved great-grandmother and become our Queen?

[The Prime Minister]

I am very grateful to my hon. Friend for her question. I think I can answer positively on all the points she made. At the Perth Commonwealth conference, I chaired a meeting of the Prime Ministers of all the different realms and we agreed we should bring forward legislation to deal with this issue. All the realms have now agreed to do that. We will introduce legislation into this House very shortly. It will write down in law what we agreed back in 2011: that if the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge’s first child is a girl, she can one day be our Queen. That is the key point. But it is important to explain that the changes will apply to a child born after the date of the Perth announcement of last year even if the birth is before the legislation is passed. I hope it will not take long—certainly not nine months—to pass this legislation, but, just in case, there would not be a problem.