Succession to the Crown Bill

I am afraid to say to the hon. Gentleman, who I hope is not in that unhappy state, that an excommunicated Catholic would be excluded from succession to the Crown because that person would have been in communion with Rome at some point. It is an absolute. If at any moment in their whole life they were in communion with Rome, they are excluded from the throne, deemed to be dead. That cannot be the intention of the clause that allows a Catholic to marry an heir to the throne. That will simply create confusion and we will not know who the monarch is going to be.