Equality (Titles) Bill [HL]

Lord Lucas Excerpts

Friday 6th December 2013 Lords Chamber

Moved by

[Lord Lucas]

That the House do now resolve itself into Committee.

[Lord Trefgarne (Con)]

My Lords, with your Lordships’ permission I would like to say a word about the Motion that my noble friend has just moved. I had understood from my conversations with my noble friend that he had intended to table amendments to make significant changes to the Bill. I am not sure whether they appear on the Order Paper at this stage. If it is the case that I have not understood them fully—and no doubt my noble friend will explain them in due course—I am happy that we should proceed as he proposes.

[Lord Lucas (Con)]

My Lords, it may be that my amendments do not come up to the noble Lord’s standards but I hope that he will find that those I have introduced have the effect of giving certainty to the Bill, in that it will happen to everybody in time and allow those Peers who wish to accelerate the process to do so, rather than it being left as an uncertain process for ever.

Motion agreed.

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[The Earl of Caithness]

My Lords, I do not want to delay the Bill because it is going in the right direction, but it raises a huge point. If I had been present at Second Reading, I would have raised the question of hybridity. I am sure that my noble friend Lord Lucas wants to comment on that.

[Lord Lucas]

My Lords, I am very much in the hands of the House when it comes to whether it wishes to accept amendments or not. I am content with the current scope of the Bill, so far as it goes, but I shall not stand in the way of the House if it wishes to change that. I certainly agree with the intent of my noble friend’s Amendment 4. I think that the Bill should cover Ireland. However, as to whether it should be restricted to peerages or baronetcies, I tend to come at this from the point of view of gender equality, and therefore do not particularly wish to preserve little islands of male supremacy in whatever strange form they may exist. There was certainly a dispute going back in my family as to whether or not they were the hereditary sword bearers in front of the Queen. They lost that argument, but I am aware that these offices exist. As an aside, I am also rather intrigued by the history of the title of my noble friend Lord Caithness. If we could make this measure retrospective, we might have a number of Lord Caithnesses and perhaps they could duel to the death to decide who should succeed. However, other than that, I am content with the Bill as it stands, except that I think Amendment 4 looks quite nice.

[The Lord Speaker (Baroness D'Souza)]

Does the noble Earl wish to withdraw the amendment?

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, I merely wish to say that we are in the process of discovering the sheer complexity of what we are discussing. The Government’s objective is to ensure equality before the law. Therefore, the provisions should appropriately be applied broadly but we are beginning to discover just how complex the slightly different laws of England and Scotland are on this matter. I recall that when I was nominated to this House, the Lord Lyon King of Arms wanted to make absolutely sure that my title did not entrench upon anything to do with the Wallaces in Scotland. It was a very interesting overlap. I shall google St Moluag this afternoon just to check exactly who he was. I intend to use it in the next pub quiz I take part in as a test question.

[Lord Lucas]

My Lords, I am conscious that, as a Private Member’s Bill, this should be kept simple and of defined extent. Much as I am tempted to go into the nature of arms and all the rules that apply, I have to admit that I know so little that I would not detain your Lordships long if I did. It would be wise to keep this out of a Private Member’s Bill, for the same reason that I am quite attracted by the amendment in the name of the noble Earl, Lord Erroll, should he choose to press it. It defines the Bill more closely and makes it clearer.

[The Earl of Clancarty]

This has been an interesting, short debate. I understand the mood of the House on this, so I beg leave to withdraw my amendment.

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[The Earl of Caithness]

My Lords, that is exactly the point. I declared at the beginning that I am no expert on this. The advice that I have been given is from an eminent writer to Her Majesty’s Signet in Scotland, and he advised me that it needs to be put into a Bill of this nature.

Amendment 34 of the noble Lord, Lord Jopling, is identical to the amendment in my name and that of the noble Lady, Lady Saltoun, who sadly cannot be here because of the weather conditions in Aberdeenshire; it has exactly the same effect. Both these amendments are consequential on the amendment we are discussing. It would only serve to confuse the Bill if both amendments were automatically passed. Therefore, when the time comes, I hope that we will accept Amendment 34 of the noble Lord, Lord Jopling, and I will try to remember not to move my Amendment 71.

[Lord Lucas]

My Lords, I have enormous sympathy with the noble Earl, Lord Clancarty, and the simplicity of what he proposes. However, we then need some way back for existing arrangements, such as that suggested by my noble friend Lord Jopling. The difficulty with my noble friend’s amendment is that it does not allow for anything to be done by families who want to change now and who are prepared not to wait until everybody is dead.

I would therefore move my Amendment 46, and consequential Amendments 69 and 70. They adopt the position which would arise from the amendment of the noble Earl, Lord Clancarty, plus that of my noble friend Lord Jopling: the succession to eldest child, irrespective of gender, would start when everyone now living was dead, but families would be allowed to gather together and say, “Actually, we would like this to happen now”, so that we get some sense of change.

My noble friend Lord Trefgarne is quite right that there are a lot of complications in the peerage; sadly, that is not the case with mine—there are no great estates to cause that. However, complications exist, and if we try to trample on those sorts of arrangements we shall only get trouble. We must therefore allow for some mechanism for those to expire over time, although, certainly in respect of my own peerage, I would like to see the change coming as soon as possible.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, I reiterate the Government’s support for equality in its broadest sense, and therefore equality in titles of one sort or another is something which we support in principle. The noble Lord, Lord Jopling, invited the Government to produce at speed a Bill on this issue. Since I have spent the past six weeks consulting on a Bill which the Government produced last summer, and which a number of outside organisations have said should have been subjected very carefully to pre-legislative scrutiny, et cetera, I would not recommend that the Government be in a hurry to produce a Bill on this complex area.

We have heard over the debates on the first few amendments just how complex this whole area is. If we wish to proceed, the way to do so, I would have thought, would be consultation followed by a committee or commission of some sort to make sure that we fully understand what one might be doing.

I have already referred to the previous Government’s attempt to abolish the Lord Chancellorship in one day, and the subsequent discovery that the antiquity of the Lord Chancellorship meant that it had accumulated a great many of the carbuncles to which the noble Baroness, Lady Deech, referred. Therefore, if we are to proceed further on this, we should take our time, look very carefully at the implications—the difference between the English, Scottish, Irish and other dimensions of this—and then perhaps consider further.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Trefgarne]

I am far from an expert in these matters but, as I understand them, these things can be determined by analysis these days. It is therefore perfectly straightforward to satisfy or solve a dispute as to who was the mother or father. The amendment tabled by my noble friend Lord Jopling goes the right way and I support it.

[Lord Lucas]

My Lords, I, too, support my noble friend’s amendment. It would have been very useful to the Lord Bengwill of his day—in 1745 he was on the wrong side, or perhaps the right side, and his title was extinguished for a while before being reignited in Victorian times—if he had been able to save a few frozen Stuart embryos, which the society for the restoration of the Stuarts could pop out into this world at regular intervals as proven children of that line. It might cause some confusion. Perhaps things are not quite as simple, particularly for succession to privileges and powers, as they are in ordinary human reproduction, so we ought to take a little care.

[Lord Jopling]

My Lords, in view of the support that the amendment has received, I hope that it will not be opposed; no one has spoken against it.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Earl of Caithness]

My Lords, this sub-paragraph relates to age discrimination and states that a female heir succeeding to the hereditary peerage—or hereditary title, as it is called now—

“has attained the age of 21 years”.

That is discriminatory and I ask my noble friend why. I beg to move.

[Lord Lucas]

I was going to seek some technical help from the Front Bench on this but clearly my noble friend is unbriefed. This is terrible. My understanding—if I remember correctly—is that Lord Ferrers became an Earl at the age of 14 but that he was not able to succeed to the title properly until he was 21. Is that right? Is one allowed to be—

[The Earl of Caithness]

I succeeded at the age of 16 and was fully entitled to do so but I could not sit in the House of Lords. I took my seat when I was 21, so I have been here for 44 years and my age is still below the average for the House. No other job in the world could ever put one in that position. I think that that is why my noble friend is wrong. The minority in England is 18; in Scotland it is 16. Shall we just drop the “21”?

Equality (Titles) Bill [HL]

Lord Lucas Excerpts

Friday 25th October 2013 Lords Chamber

Moved by

[Lord Lucas]

That the Bill be read a second time.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)]

My Lords, I have it in command from Her Majesty the Queen to acquaint the House that Her Majesty, having been informed of the purport of the Equality (Titles) Bill [HL], has consented to place her prerogative, so far as affected by the Bill, at the disposal of Parliament for the purposes of the Bill.

[Lord Lucas (Con)]

My Lords, I beg to move that this Bill be now read a second time. That I am doing so, with at least some small hope of success, would have delighted the first holder of my title, Mary Lucas, who was a most successful and energetic woman, who took on her husband’s derelict estates and created a basis of great prosperity, which lasted for 200 years—sadly, only 200 years—after her. It would have delighted even more her aunt, Margaret Lucas, later Margaret Cavendish, who was an author, a scientist, and a regular part of the debates around the Royal Society, as it was being founded. She ended up buried in Westminster Abbey. But the dents that they made in the carapace of male supremacy were soon forgotten. It has only been the progress that we have seen in the past 150 years that has made, gradually and steadily, enough of a difference for us to stand today at a position where Margaret Cavendish is in print again, in Penguin. There is an International Margaret Cavendish Society, with professors from more than 70 countries, many of them men. One day—says I, looking firmly to the north-east—we will have a female Lucasian professorship of mathematics.

I find myself looking at my daughters with great pleasure, knowing that they can stand in this world as equal in any way to a man, that they see that in themselves, and that in many parts of our society that is fully acknowledged. But there is a lot left to do. I am conscious of how hard it is for women in particular to return to their careers having taken time out to look after children. At the other end of the spectrum is the old ogre of the Royal and Ancient. One day that will fall—my father played his part in the MCC admitting women. I am sure that we will get around to golf. A fascinating study was done the other day by Harvard Business School on gender equity among its students, which showed how much of a problem we still have. I know that this House concerns itself with the representation of women on boards of major companies.

There is a lot left to do but, as with the past, this will be a slow process of small, persistent but absolutely determined progress. In that context, this Bill has an important part to play, because history, symbols, respect and, to some extent, privilege, go with titles. It is important that we should play our part in the progress of the equality of men and women and should not shrink from following the example set by Her Majesty the Queen in making the succession to titles an equal thing between men and women.

This is a permissive Bill. It does not seek to compel Peers to change the pattern of inheritance of their titles. Peerages are complicated things. In many families, there is a pattern of legitimate expectation that a younger son will be the one to inherit. He may have settled his life on the expectation that he will take on the rights and obligations that go with a particular title. Still in many families there is a pattern of property and the arrangements made for the preservation and succession of that property, which would be disrupted by a Bill that was sudden and compulsory. My noble friend Lord Jopling has written to me saying that he would very much prefer the idea of compulsion. I see the advantage of it, but if it was to be part of a Bill like this it would have to be long delayed. Eventual certainty would be liveable with. If one knew that this Bill would be compulsory in 100 years’ time, people could plan towards it and we would get there in the end. But for the moment, in order not to cause great disruption to already settled lives, we are best to respect the slow march of history and say that making this Bill permissive rather than compulsory is the best way to go about things.

My noble friend also raised the question of whether the arrangements in the Bill would lead to family quarrels. Clauses 3 and 4 require that a Peer apply for permission to make changes to the pattern of inheritance and that he carries his family with him in doing so. Looking at my own family, I can see that we will have some interesting discussions on how the pattern of inheritance should be organised, should this Bill go through. That is not something that we should shrink from. We have a greater responsibility to make the world a more equal place. Having to take a decision is not beyond most of us, even if it is a difficult one. Many of us have taken harder decisions in our lives.

There is also a provision in the Bill for special remainder—that a son with expectations can be allowed to succeed on the basis that, after his succession, any future succession will be to the oldest child. For many families that will provide a way in which the reasonable expectations of living children can be properly accommodated while allowing the whole family to make the change which I think it is time to make.

I am sure this Bill could do with some polishing despite the best efforts of Megan Conway and Simon Burton in the Legislation Office, for whose help I am immensely grateful. I hope for support from the Government and that they will be willing to see this Bill taken forward. In that case, I shall be very grateful for the opportunity that that will provide to gain their expert help in polishing some of the corners of inheritance such as heraldry in a way which will not upset the college too much.

I also have great pleasure in including in the Bill Clause 10, which to my mind rights an old inequity which it is high time we dealt with. Why should the wives of Peers have the right to a courtesy title when the husbands of Baronesses do not? That proposal came from my honourable friend Oliver Colvile in another place. He had his own Bill on the subject and with his permission I have picked up his wording. I am persuaded that it is perfect as it is. However, I should be interested to hear what noble Lords have to say about that. I beg to move.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Lucas]

My Lords, I am very grateful to all who have spoken, with some modification of that as regards the Minister. None the less, I take heart from the guidance he has given on the Government’s aversion to uncertainty in these matters. I think it is possible to look more along the lines that my noble friend Lord Jopling proposed of producing certainty in these matters. It may be useful to consider that in Committee to see whether there is interest on the part of the Government and the House generally in pursuing a Bill which made these matters certain but perhaps took longer to introduce that certainty than this Bill would.

I am interested in what my noble friend said about courtesy titles. I very much hope that he will find the opportunity to encourage change in that direction. It seems to me the right time to make such change. I hope that in giving advice to Her Majesty—or whatever is necessary to bring the matter forward—the Government will not be slow to suggest that this has the general assent of Lords Temporal and Spiritual. They might usefully consider making progress on that. However, for now, I commend the Bill.

Bill read a second time and committed to a Committee of the Whole House.

Government Communications Headquarters

Lord Lucas Excerpts

Monday 10th June 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

I confirm that, and congratulate the noble Lord on asking a question that did not mention the Royal Navy for the first time in some considerable period.

[Lord Lucas]

My Lords, will my noble friend confirm that at least one of the organisations with oversight over the security services would have it drawn to their attention if we started to get a large flow of communications content information from the United States, as opposed to communications data?

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, lawyers have come in at a very early stage in this. I was briefed by FCO lawyers as well as by FCO officials this morning. Oversight is a continuing process, so any unusual change in pattern would naturally feed up towards the scrutiny and accountability process.