Counsellors of State Bill [HL]

Viscount Stansgate Excerpts

2nd reading
Monday 21st November 2022 Lords Chamber

[Viscount Stansgate (Lab)]

My Lords, this is a necessary Bill, and it should pass. It is also the case that we know why it is necessary. It is a pleasure to follow the noble Lord, who speaks with such experience and authority in this area.

The monarch cannot always be available to perform his or her duties, and by long tradition over centuries, enshrined most recently in statute, others have been appointed from within the Royal Household to assist the sovereign. The duties cover things such as those listed by the noble Lord, including Privy Council meetings, signing relevant documents, receiving ambassadorial credentials and so on, but they do not include appointing Prime Ministers, dissolving Parliament or conferring peerages.

Under the existing Regency Act 1937, as the Leader of the House outlined, there are currently five who hold the position of Counsellor of State: the Queen Consort, the Prince of Wales, the Duke of York, the Duke of Sussex and Princess Beatrice. I think that there are many people in this country who would find this current list a curious mixture. Many would say, “Well, why isn’t Princess Anne and Prince Edward on it?”, which of course is why we are here today. That is because the current list, under the formula of the 1937 Act, bases Counsellors of State on the next four adults in the line of succession. It is clear that neither the King nor the Government want to change the definition of the line of succession to the Crown, or its relationship to those who are eligible to serve as a Counsellor of State. Yet, for reasons that we know, the current system is untenable, which is why we have this Bill.

When I first raised the issue at the beginning of the year, it was already clear that there were elements of Her late Majesty’s reign that had a regency about it. Her Majesty had reached a great age and was increasingly unable to fulfil some of the constitutional functions that she had performed with such distinction for decades. Earlier this year, the Government announced that they had no intention to change the Act, but events unfolded—the Leader of the House referred to the single most decisive occasion, which was the opening of this current Session of Parliament—which were only made possible by virtue of the operation of the Regency Act. We know that Her Majesty’s final constitutional act was to appoint a new Prime Minister, something that only a monarch can do. I am one of those of the opinion that she deliberately held on because she knew that that duty lay ahead of her.

As the House knows, I raised the matter on the Floor of the House on 24 October, and my Question swiftly unearthed the news that the King—and, by all accounts, Her late Majesty as well—had also begun to realise that, in future, the existing arrangements would not work because they would not be publicly acceptable in the case of two of the existing Counsellors of State, one of whom has left public life and one of whom has left the country. So, when the King sent his message to your Lordships’ House a week ago, I think it reflected his own recognition that the current position is untenable. He has shown an important sensitivity to public opinion and is to be commended for it.

Over the centuries, Parliament has passed Regency Acts to deal with all manner of circumstances, and the Leader of the House alluded to some of them. The regency Act 1811 provided that Prince George could act for his incapacitated father, King George III; the Regency Act 1830 provided for what would happen if the King died before Victoria had reached the age of 18; the Lords Justices Act 1837 provided for what would happen if Queen Victoria died without legitimate children succeeding her; the Regency Act 1840 provided for what would happen if Queen Victoria died so that Prince Albert would, in effect, take over until such time as their eldest child reached 18; the Regency Act 1910 provided that, in the event of the death of King George V, Queen Mary would rule as regent. In fact, the Regency Act 1937 broke this pattern, because it established, as it were, a mechanism for defining who Counsellors of State would be in relation to the line of succession to the Crown, which we know.

There is a long history of Parliament taking pragmatic action, and the Bill before us today, as has already been said, does the simplest possible thing to address the problem: it simply adds two names to those defined under the Act. I think that it will be widely supported; it is the easiest and most straightforward thing to do. It is, however, a quick fix, and it does not entirely provide a solution to what may happen in the future. If, for example, Princess Anne or Prince Edward were themselves to become unavailable, through circumstances such as illness or worse, the law would immediately need to be looked at again and we would have another Bill before the House. Would it not be better if the Bill provided a sort of updated formula for identifying who can become Counsellors of State depending on circumstances, which is, in effect, what the 1937 Act tried to do?

The Leader of the House said that the start of a new reign is an appropriate time to reconsider the resilience of our constitutional arrangements in support of the monarch, and he is right. But it may be possible that we can spend a short time in Committee exploring an alternative approach, especially in relation to what happens if something happens to the two Counsellors of State that the Bill proposes we add today. In the meantime, I hope the House will give the Bill a Second Reading.