Succession to the Crown Bill

John Bercow Excerpts

Monday 28th January 2013 Commons Chamber

[Jacob Rees-Mogg (North East Somerset) (Con)]

I beg to move, That the clause be read a Second time.

[Mr Speaker]

With this it will be convenient to discuss the following:

Amendment 1, clause 2, page 1, line 10, at end insert—

‘(2A) A child of a marriage, which at the time of the marriage disqualified one of their parents from succeeding to the Crown or possessing it, who is at the time of the coming into force of this section of the Roman Catholic faith shall not as a result be for ever incapable of succeeding to the Crown.’.

Amendment 2, clause 2, page 1, line 10, at end insert—

‘(2B) A child of a marriage, which takes place after the coming into force of this section between a Roman Catholic and a person in line of succession to the Crown, who is of the Roman Catholic faith shall not as a result be for ever incapable of succeeding to the Crown.’.

[Jacob Rees-Mogg]

It occurs to me that the Leader of the House must have a sense of humour. Today, as I am sure you know, Mr Speaker, is the anniversary of the death of his late Majesty King Henry VIII, so it seems only appropriate that we should be discussing the Succession to the Crown Bill on such an anniversary. After all, King Henry introduced three succession to the Crown Bills, and some of the problems we are dealing with today originate with his reign. I have proposed two further amendments, which you have graciously said, Mr Speaker, we can deal with in the course of our debate on the new clause, and I shall come to them secondarily.

New clause 1 is the crucial part of what I am proposing. It is a development within the context of the Bill to attend not just to one discrimination but to a second that is inherent within the current rules governing the succession. From time immemorial, the succession has gone to the eldest male heir, but since the Act of Settlement 1701 it has had to go to a Protestant. There has been a religious discrimination as well as discrimination on the grounds of sex. My new clause seeks to amend that to allow for anybody of any faith to succeed to the Crown while making provision for the established Church.

Many countries in the world have a Crown that is only temporal; they do not have a Crown that is spiritual as well. The mediaevalists debated at great length where power should rest in those two spheres, and I do not wish to rehearse the schoolmen’s arguments. There are, however, two distinct and separate powers and authorities: the temporal one that deals with the laws we live by and how we should lead our lives in respect of society; and the spiritual one that looks to the higher plane and the greater authority that comes with religious belief and religious conviction.

In our country, those two powers are merged in the Crown. The Crown is both the spiritual head of the Church and the temporal head of the nation for one part—and one part only—of the Crown. On Tuesday last week, on Second Reading and indeed in Committee, we debated whether that was right and how it applied in a more modern age. It is worth looking, as we did last week, at some of the detail. Because the Queen is Supreme Governor of the Church of England, she is or has under her an established Church in Scotland, but she is not formally head of it. She puts in a Lord High Commissioner to represent her at meetings of the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland, but she is not the Supreme Governor of the established Church in Scotland in the way she is Supreme Governor of the Church of England. There is no established Church in Wales; there is no established Church in Northern Ireland. As far as I am aware, there is no established Church in Antigua and Barbuda, in Australia, the Bahamas, Barbados, Belize, Canada, Grenada, Jamaica, New Zealand, Papua New Guinea, St Christopher-Nevis, St Lucia, St Vincent and the Grenadines, the Solomon islands, Tuvalu or in Her Majesty’s other realms and territories. When we deal with one discrimination but not the other, therefore, we leave a discrimination that applies only to a very small part of the totality of the Crown.