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Royal Marriages and Succession to the Crown (Prevention of Discrimination) Bill

I am glad that the hon. Gentleman mentions Kevin McNamara. I was going to come on to him next, but the hon. Gentleman has put it far better than I could. I had my disagreements with Kevin McNamara about discrimination in the school system against people who were not of the right religion, but he was clear on this issue and I shall quote him later. The hon. Member for Ealing, North (Stephen Pound) invites me to refer to Lord Archer of Weston-super-Mare, and it is appropriate to recognise that he tried twice in the House of Lords to address these issues, especially the unfair treatment of women in the line of succession. That is another example of the opportunities that the Government have had to hear the argument in both Houses and to take action. The case that I put in my Bill can be found in a book by Professor Vernon Bogdanor, who is, I am pleased to say, one of my constituents. In "The Monarchy and the Constitution", published in 1995, he says at the end of chapter 2:""The rules relating to succession, being a product of the religious struggles of the seventeenth century, are now ripe for reform. The statute specifically prohibiting a Roman Catholic or someone married to a Roman Catholic from occupying the throne is deeply offensive to Catholics, not only in Britain, but also in those Commonwealth countries with large Catholic populations such as Canada and Australia. It should be repealed."" I think that we will hear more about the Commonwealth later in the debate. Professor Bogdanor goes on:""In an era of equality of opportunity, moreover, it will appear increasingly anomalous for male heirs still to take precedence over female. There is at the time of writing a male heir apparent with two sons. Therefore, the succession is unlikely to be affected by any alteration in the law allowing for it to be passed to the eldest child of the sovereign irrespective of gender, as in Sweden. The time is ripe, surely, for such a reform.""Most urgent of all, however, is a reform of the Royal Marriages Act. There are, perhaps, few more absurd pieces of legislation on the statute book. The purpose of the Act, as stated in its preamble, that 'marriages in the Royal Family are of the highest importance to the state', can…easily be achieved without needing to invoke its complicated paraphernalia.""There is no reason why a marriage made in contravention, perhaps unconscious contravention, of its provisions by someone who was unaware of his or her descent from George II"—" I am reminded of a recent television programme which showed that there was a notable descendant of that line in a relatively high office in this country—""should be void. It would be better simply to deprive the person concerned of the right to succession, as would occur if he or she married a Catholic."" He goes on to say:""The fundamental weakness of the Act, however, is that it applies to many who are quite remote from the throne and who are never likely to succeed. Conversely, someone who may well succeed—for example, an heir presumptive whose mother has married into a foreign family—would fall outside the provisions of the Act. An obvious reform would be to make provision for the sovereign's approval to be required for the marriages, of the descendants not of George II, but of George VI, or, better still, simply for the first five people in the line of succession."" Professor Bogdanor concludes:""Any member of the royal family to whom it applied would still, of course, have the right to renounce his or her rights of succession and contract a civil marriage, as Princess Margaret could have done in 1955. The second route provided for in the Royal Marriages Act, the declaration at the age of 25, is otiose and should be removed.""