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

I am asked to resist that suggestion. I do not want to get ahead of myself by thinking about the Committee: that is a distant dream at 10 o'clock in the morning on a Friday, discussing a private Member's Bill. I shall deal first with the discrimination against women. Princess Anne, the Princess Royal, whom I have had the pleasure and the privilege to meet, is one of the members of the royal family whom I hold in the highest regard for her work and her sense of duty. She is the second-eldest child of the Queen, yet she is tenth in line to the throne. That is not acceptable in this day and age. It does not require her to complain; it is just obvious that that is unacceptable. It is no slight to her younger brothers to say that; it is just wrong that a woman should have to give way. To encourage the hon. Member for Ealing, North, I shall cite the words of Lord Archer of Weston-super-Mare, in the 1998 House of Lords debate on his Bill. He is, after all, a Member of the House of Lords and the Government have not seen fit to change his status. He said that his Bill, which is equivalent to mine in this respect,""would have no effect on the present Royal Family, making no difference to the status of the Princess Royal, so it could hardly be described as a revolutionary concept. While I am on the subject of the Princess Royal, I would suggest that had she been the first born, this debate would not be taking place in a half empty House of Lords on a Friday afternoon, but in every household in the country. Although I am delighted by the prospect of King Charles III, I am not fearful of Queen Anne II."—[Official Report, House of Lords, 27 February 1998; Vol. 586, c. 909.]" That is the point, is it not? It simply seems unfair, especially in the light of the historical contribution made by female monarchs. There is no evidence that the present arrangement is in any way justified. I am surprised that the Government have taken so long to deal with the matter. I shall deal now with the bar on Catholics marrying into the royal family. That is a specific, singled-out discrimination and the language of the statute on which it is based is offensive to Catholics and, indeed, to people who are offended by other people being offensive. It was a product of its time, but it is not a product of this time. The Prime Minister said this morning that he thought that, in the 21st century, people would not expect those provisions to exist. I think that that is an understatement: such provisions would be surprising in the 20th century or the 19th. I have my differences with the hierarchy of the Roman Catholic Church, but at least no one—although some have tried—could accuse me of being a Vatican stooge in proposing the Bill. I can be cleared ab initio of such a charge.