Succession to the Crown Bill

Lord Dubs Excerpts

Thursday 14th February 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Dubs]

My Lords, I give this Bill my enthusiastic welcome. The issues have been debated frequently, there has been a succession of Private Members’ Bills, one of which I introduced to this House about nine years ago, and nobody can say that the topic is not pretty well understood.

I shall refer briefly to The Future of the Monarchy: The Report of the Fabian Commission, which came out about 10 years ago. It embodied many aspects of the Bill, but went a bit further. It may well be that this is the first time that the Fabian Society has produced a report that has been taken up by a Government other than a Labour Government. I am sure George Bernard Shaw and the Webbs would have been delighted if they had known that this would happen. The Fabian Commission included two Members of this House and a former Clerk of the Parliaments. Indeed, the right reverend Prelate the Bishop gave evidence to it. So there has been a great deal of discussion about this, but we may need to wait perhaps 30 years to know where the impetus for this Bill came from—whether it came from the Conservative Party or the Liberal Democrats—but perhaps that is not important today.

When I introduced my Bill, the main objection to it was that the issue was too all-embracing and too difficult to be the subject of a Private Member’s Bill, and on the basis of that argument, I withdrew it. Since then, 15 other Commonwealth countries have been consulted and this Government have worked very hard to bring the Bill to the present position. I think we should all be delighted that it is now before us.

The clear point, which has been stated by many Members of this House, is that as a country we are totally opposed to discrimination on grounds of gender or religion. It is wrong that there should be discrimination at the highest level in our country. In the words of the Fabian Society report:

“It should no longer be acceptable for the monarchy to embody what are effectively forms of institutionalised discrimination”.

That is very good. Of course, I fully understand that, given the happy event expected by the Duchess of Cambridge later on this year, it is important that the Bill becomes law before she has a son or a daughter. And there can be no doubt that the Queen herself has clearly demonstrated how ably and effectively a woman can do the job. I believe that history may well judge her to have been our most effective monarch. That is a big statement, but she must certainly be on the shortlist for such an accolade.

In passing, I remind the House of the Queen’s visit to Ireland a couple of years ago. By any standards, her visit was a breathtaking success and further improved our good relationship with Ireland. Although we do not talk about it very much now, in Ireland they still talk about the success and importance of that visit, and how well the Queen handled all the issues that arose.

Another matter that has been referred to in a number of speeches, including in the Minister’s, is the effect of the principle in this Bill on the nobility. I know that newspapers have written about it quite enthusiastically and have interviewed a number of Members of this House. It is clearly not for this Bill, and others may judge how to take it further on a future occasion.

Dealing with gender discrimination in the Bill is absolutely straightforward; nobody has argued with that proposition. The same clearly cannot be said of religion. Indeed, most speeches so far have been concerned with the difficulties caused by the reference to Catholicism in the Bill. Let me therefore tiptoe into areas of controversy.

It is clear that the obvious difficulty is the position of the head of state as Supreme Governor of the Church of England. I am not persuaded that that could not be brought to an end without the Church of England being disestablished. I do not understand why our monarch has to be the Supreme Governor. Surely the Church of England could be the Established Church without that happening? If the head of state were no longer to be the Supreme Governor of the Church of England, many of the difficulties described in the Bill would disappear immediately. That would be a much more sensible position. Obviously, the alternative would be to disestablish the Church of England entirely, but I am not arguing for that. I am simply saying that the position of the head of state as Supreme Governor should be questioned. I am not sure that it does the church any good, and it would certainly make the Bill much more straightforward.

I have absolutely no intention of dealing with that matter at later stages of the Bill. The most important thing is for the Bill to become law as soon as possible, but it is only reasonable that a Second Reading debate gives us an opportunity to float issues. This I have done.

I would like there to be a position in which the monarch herself or himself could in future be a Catholic, or of no faith, if he or she wished. That would be a better outcome than the present one. In any case, although we are talking about the Church of England—I am not an expert on all religions—we are also talking about the Queen as the sovereign in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. All sorts of difficulties arise other than the Queen being Supreme Governor of the Church of England. That is an additional argument for making the change that I have suggested.

These are clearly issues for the future. Today, I repeat my warm and enthusiastic welcome for the Bill, and wish it a speedy passage into law.