Succession to the Crown Bill

Debate between Lord Deben and Lord Carlile of Berriew

Thursday 14th February 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Deben]

As I understand it, the regent is not Supreme Governor of the Church of England, which rather suggests that the noble Lord, Lord Dubs, was right to suggest that there ought to be some simple side-stepping of this to get over the whole problem. Would my noble friend not agree?

[Lord Carlile of Berriew]

I respectfully agree with my noble friend and the noble Lord, Lord Dubs, on this point.

My second point, which I was going to make in greater detail but will not, has already been made by my noble friend Lord Lang about consent to marriage and whether six is an adequate number. I would have taken the opposite view—that six is too large a number—on an entirely different point of principle. However, we should be able to debate this issue and determine it in relation to this Bill. It is a right in modern times for a man and a woman to marry whom they wish. Indeed, according to my rather dog-eared copy, the European Convention on Human Rights did not design that right but it makes clear that that right exists, not just in the United Kingdom but throughout the countries of the Council of Europe.

To prevent people from marrying whom they wish is quite an intervention in their human rights. To extend it to as many as six people is to extend it too far. I say to my noble friend Lord Lang that we live in a different era from the one in which Queen Victoria became the monarch. I have my doubts as to whether what happened then could happen now, or whether it is in the realms of reality given the welcome size of our modern Royal Family.

Thirdly, I suspect that the Government may have forgotten another law. Even before the Royal Marriages Act 1772, the sovereign had a right, and exercised it, not under statute but under the common law, to prevent marriages of other members of the Royal Family—for example, to prevent a dowager Queen from remarrying. It is possible that that right still applies and that, under the common law, the sovereign could enforce his or her consent in the case of the marriages of brothers, sisters, cousins et cetera. Therefore, I respectfully suggest to my noble friend the Minister that any anomaly in the common law should be abolished in this Bill so that we do not have another unforeseen problem.

My fourth point arises mainly from the fact that I was brought up in east Lancashire in the county palatine, where at every dinner I would be shocked if I did not hear the loyal toast made to the Queen, the Duke of Lancaster. Of course, that is a sovereign’s title, but there are other titles which the sovereign’s eldest child inherits, which already have been mentioned by my noble friend Lord Trefgarne. I would have drawn particular attention to the Duchy of Cornwall and, as someone who represented a constituency in mid-Wales, the earldom of Merionethshire, which is regarded with great value in that beautiful, if hard to access, part of rural Wales.

If His Royal Highness Prince William and the Duchess of Cambridge have a girl, she will, thanks to the Bill, be able to become Queen. However, she cannot as of right become Duchess of Cornwall or Countess of Merionethshire. That seems to me to be an anomaly. I understand why the Government do not want to get involved in this Bill and in the hereditary peerage at large—that is a private grief enjoyed by a number of my noble friends in this House into which I would not wish to interfere. But surely we could engage in titles that belong to the heir to the Throne. In that, I support my noble friend Lord Trefgarne.

I raise these issues because, as I was thinking about it, I realised that we are unlikely to return to this subject for a few hundred years. That may be a blink in the evolution of your Lordships’ House—I would add “thank heavens” from my personal position rather than from my political position—but if it is to be a few hundred years before we return to this subject, should we not deal with it now? Should we not take into account these and other difficulties that might arise, sort them out and iron them out?

Finally, I am sure that your Lordships’ House would wish to join me in offering our warmest good wishes for the challenges of parenthood for the royal couple.