Succession to the Crown Bill

Debate between Lord Trefgarne and Baroness Anelay of St Johns

Thursday 28th February 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Trefgarne]

My Lords—

[Baroness Anelay of St Johns]

My Lords, my noble friend Lord Trefgarne will hesitate for a moment or two so that colleagues can leave the Chamber. We will then take his Amendment 1.

[Lord Trefgarne]

My Lords, I have never quite understood, and do not now understand, why it is thought so necessary that this Bill should be driven through with such speed. The plain fact is that the arrangements it seeks to change—I do not disagree with all of them—have been in place in some cases for many hundreds of years. Why we need not only to drive the Bill through swiftly but also to backdate one of its provisions is not immediately obvious to me. I therefore propose that, at the end of the first clause, we should provide that it should come into effect in, say, 50 years’ time, which is a very short time in relation to how long these arrangements have been in place. That would be an appropriate change to the Bill and I beg to move.