Oral Answers to Questions

Baroness Laing of Elderslie Excerpts

Tuesday 10th July 2012 Commons Chamber

[The Deputy Prime Minister]

As the right hon. Gentleman knows, thankfully the embarrassment would be spared if a child were born after the date at which the Perth decision was made. The rights of that unborn child are properly protected by the procedures. Just like him, I would love to wave a magic wand and dispense with such outdated and anachronistic rules governing whom a person in the line of succession can marry and those on male primogeniture, but we must move as a convoy with the 16 other Commonwealth realms. For one reason or another, that takes a bit of time.

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

The House appreciates the progress that the Deputy Prime Minister and the Government have made with the Commonwealth Heads of Government, but does he agree that, surely, during this jubilee year when people not only in the UK, but right across the Commonwealth, have shown that they hold our Queen in extremely high regard, nobody could possibly argue that a woman cannot succeed to the throne?

[The Deputy Prime Minister]

On this if not on other issues we have debated recently, I fervently agree with my hon. Friend. The idea that a younger son should become monarch instead of an elder daughter simply because he is a man is incomprehensible in this day and age.