House of Lords (Members’ Taxation Status) Bill [HL]

This is a perfectly reasonable statement to make. This is not a long speech; this is a long amendment, which covers a whole range of countries. I will not repeat what I said last time. My point is that, if you are a British citizen, you should be allowed to be a British citizen. Everything that I have down here is correct; it has been checked again and again. The suggestion is that any residents of Commonwealth countries—the Queen is also the head of the Commonwealth—should be entitled to be a Member of the House of Lords if they are invited to be so. Noble Lords should know that several people in this House are not British subjects in the full sense of the word but come under this heading. My noble friend Lady Gardner of Parkes, is partly domiciled in Australia. She is a very honourable woman indeed, and has disclosed all this. Why should she be forced to change? You cannot change your domicile of origin unless you surrender all relations with that country, including membership of your clubs. That is an unfair imposition and totally wrong. Domicility is a very difficult issue—I mentioned this when some noble Lords were not here—but domicile of origin is a clear matter. Another scenario is even more worrying. Domicile of origin should relate to your taking the domicile of your father at birth, with the right to change at the age of 16. Not so long ago, there was a case in which a woman went to court to say that your domicile of origin should relate to the domicile of your mother as well, and she won. In the case of domicility, are we saying that domicile of origin relates only to the domicile of the father, or can it also relate to the domicile of the mother? These may be tiny issues, but they should be raised in Committee, otherwise you have a completely imperfect Bill. It is, in fact, a useless Bill. I have used that phrase before. It does not mean that it has no use, but it has less use than anything that anyone else can think of. I may have made a hopeless speech, but I make the point that we should deal with people who are British. The British and citizenship should come first. I beg to move.