Oral Answers to Questions

Alex Cunningham Excerpts

Tuesday 18th January 2011 Commons Chamber

[The Deputy Prime Minister]

It is the choice of the coalition Government to say that we want to reform politics not in a piecemeal fashion, but in a meaningful way. To introduce both the right for people to have a say over the electoral system and to ensure that constituencies are of roughly the same size seems a perfectly sensible way to proceed. That is what we will do, and I do not think that the hon. Gentleman should be whipping up the dinosaurs in the Labour party in the other place to stop us from doing so.

[Alex Cunningham (Stockton North) (Lab)]

3. What recent discussions he has had with ministerial colleagues on reform of the Act of Settlement.

[The Parliamentary Secretary, Cabinet Office (Mr Mark Harper)]

I have had no recent discussions with ministerial colleagues on reforming the Act of Settlement.

[Alex Cunningham]

I am no monarchist, but does the hon. Gentleman agree with me that, if we must have a monarchy, women should have equality with men in succession?

[Mr Harper]

Ministers have already accepted that the provision in the Act of Settlement might well be discriminatory, and I have already confirmed at the Dispatch Box when responding to a previous debate, not that we are doing nothing, but that discussions are under way with other countries of which Her Majesty is Queen. She is not just our Queen, but Queen of 15 other realms, and those matters have to be taken forward together in a careful and considered way. It is not as straightforward as the hon. Gentleman would like to pretend it is.