Succession to the Crown Bill

Christopher Pincher Excerpts

Tuesday 22nd January 2013 Commons Chamber

[Christopher Pincher (Tamworth) (Con)]

I am grateful for the opportunity to speak in this important debate. It has been a great pleasure to listen to it. I have heard some excellent speeches, made by the hon. Member for Newport West (Paul Flynn), with whom I profoundly disagree, and by the hon. Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant), with whom, frighteningly, I find much common cause—it is as frightening for me as it is for him. I was impressed, too, by the speech of my right hon. Friend the Member for Mid Sussex (Nicholas Soames), with whom I very much agree. He does not speak so much for the Conservative party as for the constitution, and we all honour him for that.

I am profoundly pleased that I have had an opportunity to speak before my hon. Friend the Member for North East Somerset (Jacob Rees-Mogg), because I suspect—I shall allow him to speak for himself—that when we hear him speak he will not prove himself to be so much a scion of high Toryism as a dangerous radical. We very much look forward to hearing what he says in the fullness of time.

I am pleased to be able to speak in the debate, because the intention of the Bill is laudable and sensible, as it will update the rules on the succession to the Crown so that they are in keeping with the modern values of our people. A monarch must reign with consent: that is the case now, and it must be the case in future. The Bill removes unnecessary discrimination, and it tidies up what we might call the sinuous tentacles of the Royal Marriages Act 1772, which is welcome. However, I should like to make a couple of points about the Bill’s provisions, which I hope my hon. Friend the Minister, in the absence of the Deputy Prime Minister, will be able to address so that I do not have to make them again in Committee.

In that positive spirit, I shall address the question of retrospection in clause 2. I am instinctively against retrospective legislation, no matter how good the intent might be. Clause 2 attempts to restore to the line of succession those people who have married Catholics down the years. I quite accept that we should remove the disqualification bar preventing people who have married Catholics from succeeding to the Crown, but in making those changes—the Earl of St Andrews, for example, and Prince Michael of Kent will be restored to the line of succession—we are changing the order of succession. Those further away than the Earl and Prince Michael are pushed further from the line of succession by the changes. If we are prepared to make changes to the order of succession by dint of restoring Catholics to that order, is it not right that we make clause 1 retrospective, so that female heirs of the Queen move up the order of succession? Princess Anne, the Princess Royal, is the only living person who would be affected, together with her heirs, so it would not be a massive change to the order of succession, but it would be a logical change and one in keeping with the retrospective nature of part of the Bill.

The second aspect that I wish to address relates to the point made by the hon. Member for Rhondda about the Royal Marriages Act 1772. I find myself, strangely enough, making common cause with him. Although I agree that we should remove the Act or change it so that there are not thousands of people to whose marriage the Queen could technically give or withhold consent, it is odd that clause 3 states that

“the 6 persons next in the line of succession to the Crown must obtain the consent of Her Majesty before marrying.”

Where did the number six come from? Why not three, five or 12? Six is not a prime number, a biblical number or a lucky number.

[Mr MacNeil]

The only thing that springs to mind is that if we add up the number in the Queen’s family and the number in Prince Charles’s family, we get six. That is the long and the short of it, I think.

[Christopher Pincher]

I pay tribute to the hon. Gentleman’s arithmetic, flawed though it may be. Perhaps that is why he is a member of the Scottish National party. I look forward to the Minister explaining what the rationale is.

As the hon. Member for Rhondda rightly pointed out, if we put in place a rule that says that the monarch can and must give consent to the marrying of the six persons nearest in line to the throne, imagine a scenario where a monarch has three children, who each have two or three children. The monarch will soon be in the invidious position where grandchild No. 4, who is fifth in line to the throne, must seek consent of the monarch to marry, but grandchild No. 6, who is seventh in line to the throne, need not seek that consent. That does not seem fair.

[Chris Bryant]

Also, we do not have a capricious monarch at present, but there have certainly been capricious monarchs in the past who might deliberately want to affect the succession and might therefore refuse consent capriciously. There is no means in the Act whereby anybody can prevent the monarch from exercising their judgment capriciously so as directly to exclude a particular person. Surely in the end the monarch should be decided either by straightforward succession or by Parliament.

--- Later in debate ---

[Christopher Pincher]

The hon. Gentleman may well be thinking of capricious monarchs such as Edward II. The 1772 Act, which my hon. Friend the Member for North East Somerset may prove to be a dead Act in any case, allows for any member of the royal family over the age of 25, having sought the approval of the Privy Council, after a year then to seek the consent of Parliament to their marriage. The Bill tightens up the rules significantly. Parliament and the Privy Council play no part in the matter. The monarch can choose or choose not to give consent to the marriage, whatever the age of a member of the royal family within the rules of succession. So the hon. Gentleman has a good point.

I would be interested to hear from my hon. Friend the Minister why these changes have been proposed. If the point is for the monarch to have some control and leverage over those members of the royal family who are active and who are Royal Highnesses, why choose the number six? It is a narrow number. Why not simply say that the heirs of Queen Elizabeth II should have to ask consent of the monarch? That would be a nod towards the present Act, which recognises George II as the fount of all consent, as it were. It would honour Her Majesty in her diamond jubilee year. It would regularise the situation and give that sort of control to future monarchs. The Minister might be about to say that it would mean that in 200 or 300 years there could be hundreds or thousands of people to whom the monarch would have to give consent, but I suspect that no one here will be particularly concerned about that then—if nothing else has crumbled, our headstones almost certainly will have done.

I support the Bill in broad terms and shall vote to give it a Second Reading, but I hope that the Minister will take on board the concerns that I and other Members of the House have raised to ensure that it is robust; will stand the test of time; recognises and can deal with any unforeseen and foreseen consequences; and provides us with a settled settlement.-

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Wallace]

I am not an expert on the other duchies in this land, but my hon. Friend proves the point that interfering with succession and fiddling with titles is easier said than done, especially when the titles are so old that they date back to some of the first interferences in succession and the Crown. When the title is linked so much to assets, the House is owed a clear explanation.

[Christopher Pincher]

Will my hon. Friend invite the Minister to make clear what will happen to the assets and title of the Duchy of Cornwall, which have historically passed through the male line through male primogeniture?

[Mr Wallace]

I stand to be corrected, but my understanding is that there is a difference between the Duchy of Lancaster and the Duchy of Cornwall. My understanding is that the latter comes into existence with the heir to the throne and effectively dissolves when the monarch dies. The Duchy of Lancaster goes back far longer. As far as we can see, it is a separate title and therefore cannot be excluded without excluding the assets that go with it.

I do not expect the Minister to have the 1485 charter at her disposal, or that anyone will be able to produce the answer instantly. I am sure it will take far greater legal brains to produce a clear, concise solution. There might be no problem at all: the charter may make it clear that it does not matter whether the heir is male or female, dealing only with the definition of “sovereign”. That may be the answer, but we need clarity.

As ever, changes such as this are easier said than done. That shows how far back our historical ties go. For 700 years the Duchy of Lancaster has owned some of the land in my constituency. Some of my constituents are tenants of the Duchy of Lancaster and rely for their livelihoods on such things being made clear. They, like Her Majesty the Queen and her assets, deserve that clarity.