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

I certainly intend to do so. The point has been well made during the debate that we have seen fine examples of women leading the country, whether it be Betty Boothroyd as Speaker, Margaret Thatcher as Prime Minister, or indeed the present Queen. In the debate in the House of Lords in 2005 on this issue, Lord Strathclyde made the point especially well when he said:""After all, I have not lived all my life in the reign of Queen Elizabeth II to hold some antiquated view that a woman cannot rule equally well. Indeed, I suspect that there is not a single Englishman who has held that view since the time of the first Elizabeth—surely one of England's greatest monarchs".—[Official Report, House of Lords, 14 January 2005; Vol. 668, c. 506.]" He went on to point out that the present system had given us Queens for 117 of the past 168 years. One might conclude that the Bill is therefore a solution looking for a problem.