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

It is one of the unwritten rules of Fridays that the more one supports a Bill the less one should say. I shall therefore speak briefly, because I strongly support the Bill. The only thing that I shall say about the speech that we have just heard from the hon. Member for Ealing, Acton and Shepherd's Bush (Mr. Slaughter) is that it seemed to combine, in a very unstable way, the argument that this measure should be opposed because it might block the way for more radical reform later and the argument that it sets a dangerous precedent and might actually lead to that reform itself, thus producing an overall argument of breathtaking incoherence. The main point of the speech of the hon. Member for North-West Norfolk (Mr. Bellingham) was that he felt that the Government should do more about the economy, rather than thinking about a measure of this sort. In fact, experience seems to show that the more the Government do, the worse the economic crisis becomes, so I think that, rather than doing any more to make things worse, it would be better for them to concentrate on measures of this kind. The Bill contains three proposals, all of which I strongly support. The first is to end sex discrimination in the order of succession; the second is to end the disabilities that are attached to members of the royal family who marry Catholics; and the third is entirely to repeal the absurd Royal Marriages Act 1772. No substantive reasons have been given for not doing any of those things. The sex discrimination in the order of succession makes no sense whatsoever, given that we abolished feudalism three or four centuries ago, and if there is a lesson of history to be learned from the monarchs that we have had in recent centuries, it is that, on average, the public seem to be served much better by our queens than by our kings. The only objection to the measure that has been advanced is a procedural one to do with the idea that the 15 Commonwealth member states that share our Head of State might block it. I do not see how that could happen. Many of the countries concerned are far more progressive than we are on the matter of sex equality. That is historically the case as well: I believe that New Zealand was the first country to give women the vote, so it hardly seems likely that it would block the measure. As for the Pandora's box idea that was mentioned by the hon. Member for Thurrock (Andrew Mackinlay), the notion that opponents of the monarchy in the Australian Parliament would stand up to block its assent to the measure on the grounds that they did not want to see equality for women is too bizarre to contemplate. First, they will not do it. Secondly, they probably cannot do it, because the Statute of Westminster probably does not have the legal force that has been claimed for it. It is a treaty obligation, but it is not a domestic legal obligation in this country. There are various ways in which other countries could respond. They could say "You get on with it: we do not care what you do." They could also say "You get on with it: we will agree with what you do." Those varieties of response are dealt with in my hon. Friend's Bill, which states simply that Ministers should consult with the relevant countries and then decide what to do on the basis of what they discover. I therefore see no reason not to support the part of the Bill that removes discrimination in the order of succession.