Hereditary Titles (Female Succession) Bill

Debate between Chris Clarkson and Philip Davies

2nd reading
Friday 23rd February 2024 Commons Chamber

[Chris Clarkson]

That is not the first time I have been outed. My hon. Friend is absolutely right: I spend quite a bit of time at the other end of the building with their lordships. In fact, the current Chief Whip in the House of Lord was my sponsor for my parliamentary assessment board. I must say that I am not the child of a peer or in line to inherit a peerage. The running joke is that I have been treating the PPS job as an apprenticeship for the past three years. However, I see the immense value of what happens in the other place, and the quality of some of the people there. It is baffling to me that we have a system designed to filter people entirely based on whether they have a Y chromosome.

We have already reached the determination that our royal family does not need to follow that precedent, and we reached it in conjunction with all the other Commonwealth realms. I also have Canadian heritage, so the King is my monarch twice over. I am very happy to know that, at some point, there will be a Crown Princess or a Princess of Wales who will be the substantive holder of that title.

I am very thankful to my hon. Friend for taking on some of the feedback she received about the previous iteration of the Bill on grandfathering in some of these titles.

[Philip Davies]

My hon. Friend the Member for West Worcestershire said that people have said that this is not a retail issue—it does not come up on the doorstep. Does my hon. Friend the Member for Heywood and Middleton agree that it does not matter whether it comes up on the doorstep or not? As she said, women here are being discriminated against simply because they are women, and that should not stand whether it comes up on the doorstep or not.

[Chris Clarkson]

My hon. Friend is entirely correct. However, the idea that saying, “Actually, we shouldn’t bother about women being treated differently in any walk of life,” would not get a reaction on the doorstep is bonkers, especially when it comes to female voters, who we certainly rely on—let’s not kid ourselves—in the Conservative party. I would not be able to justify saying that. I was shocked to hear that my hon. Friend the Member for West Worcestershire was told that the Bill was too much of a faff to carry out.