Succession to the Crown Bill

Lord Eden of Winton Excerpts

Monday 22nd April 2013 Lords Chamber

There can be no doubt as to the requirements and priority of the future protection of the rights and liberties of the people of this country. The alternative is that we get an answer from the Minister which writes into the record something to which future generations can look back with satisfaction and recognise as an absolute assurance that, in Her Majesty’s words, the Bill of Rights will remain “a sure thing”, and we can all benefit from it.

[Lord Eden of Winton]

My Lords, this is a bit of a minefield, so I tread with care and trepidation. I will make a very brief intervention, primarily to say to my noble friend how much I recognise the concerns he has expressed and the care with which he has followed these matters through. I know that he is extremely anxious, not only on his own behalf but on our collective behalf, that the legislation now going through the House is correct in so far as it seeks to affect the role and rights of the sovereign and sovereign succession and that it in no way undermines the position of any Member of your Lordships’ House, let alone that of any citizen outside the House.

I believe that the main answer to the questions that my noble friend raises rests in the sovereignty of Parliament. It is, as I perceive it, the right of Parliament to make alterations to legislation, even including the Bill of Rights. As I interpret it, the primary purpose of the Bill of Rights was to protect the interests and the rights of the people. The rights of the people are currently preserved in the powers and obligations of the Houses of Parliament and of the Government of the day. It is for us to make such amendments as we feel are necessary or desirable. In this particular case, a narrow amendment is being suggested which in a way underlines what was required of the sovereign at the time of the Bill of Rights; namely, that the heir to the Throne shall be a Protestant. There is nothing more to it than that. It therefore seems to me that we are exercising a traditional and constitutional right of Parliament to make amendments and alternations as we think proper. We are not in any way going against the obligations or commitments of the Crown. In carrying these matters forward, we shall be preserving the constitutional requirement in this country that the future monarch shall be a Protestant and a practising communicant member of the Church of England.

I do not think that the worries and anxieties my noble friend has expressed so profoundly are justified and, as he himself said, my noble and learned friend the Minister has given a great deal of care and attention to these issues and has written a letter of some considerable length to him that certainly satisfied me in the arguments put forward.

[Lord Wallace of Tankerness]

My Lords, I certainly understand that my noble friend Lord James of Blackheath has had serious, profound concerns about this Bill which he expressed even before Second Reading. I recognise the persistence and diligence with which he has continued to raise these issues. I am grateful for his kind comments and I think he would recognise that the comments and concerns he has raised have been given proper consideration.

It appears to me that my noble friend is concerned that, in allowing an heir to the Throne to marry a Catholic, this Bill would contravene the promises that each sovereign is required to make to maintain the established Protestant religion and in some way subvert the Bill of Rights or the Act of Settlement. It will come as no surprise to my noble friend that I disagree with his view, as I have made clear on a number of occasions in your Lordships’ House. Again, I want to make it quite clear that we are not amending the provisions of the Bill of Rights or the Act of Settlement which say that the sovereign has to be a Protestant.

My noble friend Lord Eden of Winton put his finger on the point. Indeed, I wrote at some length in my letter to my noble friend Lord James about the sovereignty of Parliament in the case of Jackson v Attorney-General in which the House of Lords considered the Parliament Act 1911. The late Lord Bingham said:

“The bedrock of the British constitution is, and in 1911 was, the supremacy of the Crown in Parliament … Then, as now, the Crown in Parliament was unconstrained by any entrenched or codified constitution. It could make or unmake any law it wished”.

With a former Lord Advocate, the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hardie, present, I had better say that there has been some question about that in some respects in Scotland following the dicta of Lord President Cooper in MacCormick v Lord Advocate. Nevertheless, Lord Bingham expressed that view very clearly in the Jackson case.

Given that the prohibition on the sovereign being a Catholic remains, we do not believe that there is any conflict between the Bill and the Accession Declaration or the promise made by the sovereign to preserve the Presbyterian Church in Scotland. I do not think I can really elaborate on it. My noble friend and I are going to have to agree to disagree because we believe that there is nothing in this Bill which subverts the Bill of Rights, the Act of Settlement or the oath which Her Majesty made on her accession. In the circumstances, I invite my noble friend to withdraw his amendment.