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Estates of Deceased Persons (Forfeiture Rule and Law of Succession) Bill

I, too, congratulate my right hon. Friend the Member for East Yorkshire (Mr Knight) on his success in last year's ballot on private Members' Bills and, indeed, on his good judgment in deciding to introduce the Bill before us. I am happy that he went for, as he put it, the worthy and uncontroversial option. Let us hope that that remains the case. It is uncontroversial but certainly not uncomplicated. In presenting the Bill, my right hon. Friend was supported by the Chairman of the Justice Committee, my right hon. Friend the Member for Berwick-upon-Tweed (Sir Alan Beith), who it is good to see here today, the hon. Members for Cardiff West (Kevin Brennan), and for Birmingham, Yardley (John Hemming), my hon. Friends the Members for Stone (Mr Cash), for South West Devon (Mr Streeter) and for Bridgwater and West Somerset (Mr Liddell-Grainger), the hon. Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant), my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch (Mr Chope), the hon. Member for Mansfield (Mr Meale), and my hon. Friends the Members for Croydon South (Richard Ottaway) and for Shipley (Philip Davies)—a good cross-section of the House. Today, we have thoroughly debated an unusual but important aspect of succession law, and we had strong contributions—from my right hon. Friend the Member for Berwick-upon-Tweed, my hon. Friends the Members for Christchurch and for North East Somerset (Jacob Rees-Mogg), and the lawyer's eye of my hon. Friend the Member for Bury North (Mr Nuttall)—that brought out many of the complexities of the succession law, even though the principle seems relatively straightforward. My right hon. Friend's Bill, as has been mentioned, will implement the main recommendations of the Law Commission in its 2005 report, ““The Forfeiture Rule and the Law of Succession””, making the law of succession simpler and fairer. The purpose of the law of succession in this context is to decide who should get what from the estate of a deceased person. The Law Commission reached its conclusions after a public consultation in 2003, and its recommendations were accepted by the then Government in November 2006, subject to minor modifications. Those proposals were then included in the draft Civil Law Reform Bill, which was published for public consultation and pre-legislative scrutiny in December 2009. The pre-legislative scrutiny was conducted by the Justice Committee, which published its conclusions in its sixth report of the 2009-2010 Session of the previous Parliament, under the title ““Draft Civil Law Reform Bill: Pre-legislative Scrutiny””. Before the previous Government could reply to the Justice Committee, the general election was called. We all know the events that followed, but for the purposes of our debate today what matters is that my right hon. Friend was returned as the Member for his newly formed constituency of East Yorkshire. When the ballot for private Members' Bills was subsequently held, he was fortunate enough to draw 20th place.