I wish to speak to amendments 1 and 2, which raise an important point.
It was a bit much for the hon. Member for Newport West (Paul Flynn) to lambast the Government for introducing a Bill that removes gender discrimination in the royal family—something that the last Labour Government said they wanted to do but never got around to completing—and deals with the Royal Marriages Act 1772 and the limitation on sovereigns being married to a Roman Catholic. Were the Bill to cover the much wider issues of disestablishment or of whether the sovereign should no longer hold the position they currently hold in the Church of England, it would be a different Bill and a much wider consultation would have taken place.
The intention of the Bill might be frustrated, however, if the hon. Member for North East Somerset (Jacob Rees-Mogg) is right, because the wording of the Act of Settlement about who is a Catholic is very detailed and picks up on almost any evidence of any connection with the Catholic Church at any time in the person’s life. As we discussed earlier, it is highly likely that the child of a mixed marriage will have experienced both denominations —and perhaps the Church of Scotland as well. Many parents offer their children the opportunity to see what different Churches have to offer.