Succession to the Crown Bill

Lord Beith Excerpts

Tuesday 22nd January 2013 Commons Chamber

[The Deputy Prime Minister]

I want to make progress and quote a statement by the Church of England itself, in a briefing issued to MPs last week. It said:

“The present prohibition on anyone remaining in the line of succession or succeeding to the Crown as a result of marrying a Roman Catholic is not necessary to support the requirement that the Sovereign join in communion with the Church of England. Its proposed removal is a welcome symbolic and practical measure consistent with respect for the principle of religious liberty. It reflects the sea change in ecumenical relations over recent decades.”

I have, therefore, quoted statements from both the Catholic Church and the Church of England and I hope they will provide ample comfort to those who are concerned.

[Sir Alan Beith (Berwick-upon-Tweed) (LD)]

I support the position that my right hon. Friend is taking and I am worried by the argument of the hon. Member for North East Somerset (Jacob Rees-Mogg) that, somehow, the United Kingdom Government and the monarchy would have to ask the permission of the Papacy, which would, in itself, be a deprivation of religious freedom. These are difficult decisions, but what my right hon. Friend is doing is surely not putting us in that situation.

--- Later in debate ---

[Chris Bryant]

No, no—I am not a Calvinist. I merely point out to my right hon. Friend that one of the provisions of the 1706 and 1707 Acts of Union is that the monarch, when accepting the Scottish throne, has to make a separate accession oath that guarantees the protection of the Church of Scotland. That is why I say that several provisions in law relate to the religion of the monarch. Section III of the Act of Settlement states that the monarch

“shall joyn in Communion with the Church of England”.

That is yet another provision.

[Sir Alan Beith]

Surely the position is that although the Church of Scotland is not and never has been established in the sense that the Church of England is, with a degree of parliamentary control, it is a national Church in Scotland and the Queen attends the Presbyterian Church in Scotland and takes communion within that Church. That is where her Scottish allegiance lies, rather than with the Scottish Episcopal Church.

[Chris Bryant]

Absolutely. I was not confusing the Church of Scotland with the Piscies, as it were—

--- Later in debate ---

[Jacob Rees-Mogg]

The hon. Gentleman is making a similar point to mine, which is that there has been a failure to consider the detail of the Bill. Trying to add two further clauses to the major provision that everyone was interested in has created confusion.

[Sir Alan Beith]

Is it not unreasonable, however, to ask a Roman Catholic to become the Supreme Governor of the Church of England—the hon. Gentleman obviously recognises that, given his suggestion of a regency—or to conform to the Presbyterian Church when in Scotland?

[Jacob Rees-Mogg]

I agree with my right hon. Friend. It would be perfectly reasonable to leave the law of the land as it is, or to make provision for a regency, which would address the problem. Under the Regency Act 1937, the regent would be required to be a Protestant and would therefore be able to carry out the functions of Supreme Governor of the Church of England for a period when the Crown was being held by a Catholic.

Again, however, there are issues with the detail. I raised with the Minister the issue of Counsellors of State. Who is eligible to be a Counsellor of State is set out in the Regency Act 1937. It is usually the closest members of the sovereign’s family, including people who are not of the blood royal, so this includes the late Queen Elizabeth, the Queen mother and the Duke of Edinburgh: they both were or are eligible to be Counsellors of State. Once a Catholic is allowed to marry an heir to the throne, it is perfectly possible for the two Counsellors of State—they always act in pairs—to be Catholics. During a brief incapacity of the Crown or during the Crown’s absence abroad, appointments in the Church of England would have to be made by Roman Catholics, which is a felony under the Catholic Emancipation Act 1829. It seems to me that Her Majesty’s Government are simply not aware of the detail of our constitutional settlement, and have pushed this clause through without considering the detailed ramifications.

The bit of the Bill for which I have the most sympathy is the clause abolishing the Royal Marriages Act 1772. I intervened earlier to cite a quotation from it that makes it the most nonsensical Act on the statute book since the marriage of Princess Alexandra, as she then was, to the then Prince of Wales. Princess Alexandra and her descendants were exempt under the section I read out earlier to the effect that royal princesses who married foreigners and their heirs were exempted from the Act. The marriage of Princess Louisa, the daughter of George II, exempted her line, and through Princess Alexandra our current Queen and all the members of her family are exempted. This Act of Parliament has only affected people for whom it did not really matter who they married and it has not affected the people for whom it did matter who they married.

It seems slightly eccentric to update this Act in a more aggressive form than the one currently on the statute book. As my hon. Friend the Member for Tamworth (Christopher Pincher) said, the ability to get an exclusion from Parliament at the age of 25 has been removed, so more onerous legislation has resulted, taking people out of the line of succession rather than simply invalidating the marriage. Provisions have been put in place that are harsher than those of an Act that was completely ineffective against those with whom it was supposed to deal.

I am not going to vote against Second Reading. I am not going to try to cause a Division against the serried ranks of the establishment. Her Majesty’s loyal Opposition and Her Majesty’s Government line up their forces to push through a Bill of political correctness—not gone mad, but simply not thought through. I wish that when we considered, debated and changed our constitution, we did it with plenty of time, thoughtfulness and detail.

Pretty much every speech we have heard today has raised an issue that should have been thought about, but has been ignored. Why has it been rushed through? Because it is convenient. Once the two Front-Bench teams are in agreement, the days of the week could be renamed if they felt like doing it. There is nothing so silly as cannot be done by them jointly. That, I am afraid, is what we find with this Bill. Let us hope that when we come to Report—or more likely, perhaps, in the other place—the technicalities and the detail can be gone through, so that we do not find that the Duke of Lancaster ends up being one person and the sovereign another; so that we do not find that the Church of England is accidentally being run for a week by a couple of Papists who happen to be Counsellors of State; so that we do not find that an onerous charge is put on royal marriages so that the royals cannot marry when they want—or, indeed, so that the more junior members of the royal family cannot marry at all because if they are not subject to the Royal Marriages Act 1772, they are excluded from ordinary marriage legislation, so how are they going to get married? I really think that it is time to have a look at the detail.