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

The hon. Gentleman will be aware that quite a considerable part of relations with other states is confidential. Let me put it this way: we have not been unaware of the views of the Heads of Government of relevant countries, but I will deal with the Statute of Westminster in a moment. I want to put on record two things, the first of which is this Government's commitment to the elimination of discrimination. That is something about which I and everybody on the Labour Benches feel passionately. The hon. Member for Oxford, West and Abingdon applauded this Government's work over the past 12 years in removing discrimination in one area after another. He said, however, that he thought that perhaps the period when Roy Jenkins was Home Secretary in the '60s was a period that was even more radical, because of the inherent difficulty of dealing with some of those issues at the time. I am not going to have a competition over the benefits of one Labour Government as against those of another Labour Government. It is, however, a fact that only Labour Governments have ever introduced any legislation to root out discrimination in any area of our public life. Some of us remember the Smethwick election in 1964. My right hon. Friend the Member for Warley (Mr. Spellar), who now sits for that former constituency, knows of the searing pain that was caused by the words used in that election by the Conservative candidate, who later became the Member of Parliament, which were so disgusting that I shall not repeat them in the House. At the time, those on the Conservative Benches said that there was no need to legislate, because people should be free to express whatever views they wanted. I remember at that time seeing notices in windows on the sides of lodging houses in London saying: "No blacks, no Irish, no dogs". That was very straightforward discrimination. Those desperate insults and worse were allowed in the interests of freedom of speech.