My Lords, I enter the forum with some trepidation. These are very complex and sensitive matters. Until about halfway through I thought that I would probably scratch. After that, I thought it was too late. I hope your Lordships will bear with me for a few moments.
I start off in a dilemma because I am not aware of any Bill that I have encountered in which the Government have consulted so extensively and for so long around the world and, no doubt, between the two palaces—Lambeth Palace and Buckingham Palace—but they have not actually consulted Parliament at any great length. Of course, the constitution of this kingdom
rests on two foundation stones: the Crown and Parliament. One had to listen with sympathy to my noble friend Lord Lang when he complained, in a powerful and important speech, about the haste with which this is being done here.
I am searching for reasons. I think the reason adduced so far has been the impending happy event for the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge. This Bill already has retrospectivity in it in the amendment to the Royal Marriages Act 1772. That principle can be used in this case so there is no hurry for that.
Then the question is: would the danger of an amendment here delay the Bill, making the rest of the Commonwealth unsettled and impatient? But the Bill has already been amended, at Second Reading in the other place. It is a small amendment but quite an important one, which proposes that,
“after ‘descendants’ insert ‘from the marriage’”—
otherwise the principles of illegitimacy would have to be addressed. I do not know if that is being agreed around the Commonwealth but if it is, there is clearly not tempestuous haste needed.
I am sure that will all be explained, and the purpose of a Second Reading is not really to unpick the detail but to address the general principles. The first principle, on which I agree with my noble friend Lord Lang, is that certainty is better than flexibility when it comes to matters of this sort. Secondly, one’s mind is focused, as was the mind of the noble Lord, Lord James, by the bringing to the table of the royal prerogative at the start of this process.
We are at the heart of history here, and many of your Lordships have looked back through history and seen various conflicting things. I see a constitution that has emerged from the power of the Crown being fought over by families and then by dynasties; then the struggle between the wish to be totally sovereign and the wish of the papacy to influence if not guide what happened here, and finally being domesticated after the Civil War in the settlement of 1688. The Crown then became the central focus of the national identity, but it was within the restraints of Parliament.
We have been on that subject for a very long time in this House, because the power of the Crown, which was severely limited by the invention of Parliament, is now being put back into it—but the Crown has changed: the Crown is not an individual; it is not a family; it resides in the Government, all except the very top. The Government do not consist of a thin band of ambitious politicians; they are a vast machine of civil servants, many with a good sense of history, many of them very pragmatic and many of whom regard Parliament as an unnecessary constraint—I have encountered some of them and been told this in terms. We are therefore the trustees of something which is already at risk.
We now look at the functions of a Queen, the person of the Crown, as opposed to the institution of the Crown. That is important in that it is spiritual. There is a withering of the spiritual in contemporary western society, not only in Christian spirituality but in other faiths. A secular society does not have the moral stability of one which has faith at its heart. The combination of the Crown being both the head of state and the head of the established church has an
enormous and important symbolism and gives the monarch access to the church and vice versa. That is part of our national identity.
The other great change has been in the demographic composition—I would probably more correctly say the ethnic composition—of the country to which we all belong. That change has been dramatic in my lifetime. Not everybody adapts so quickly and completely as the noble Lord, Lord Carlile, to the culture and ethos of this country. What attracts is not just the permanence, the longevity and the historical continuity to which he referred but also the person of the sovereign. It is a happy coincidence that this issue has arisen during the reign of the present Queen, who I think is closer to the heart and the understanding of the country than almost any monarch in historic memory, and for that we owe her a great debt.
The nature of the monarchy is to evolve, to bend and to change to the needs and necessities of the time and the social pressures on government and on the Crown. It keeps the sympathy of the people by looking after, tuning into and being in sympathy with basic fundamental and moral understandings of the people. One thing is fairness. The introduction of this equality will be widely understood as an element of fairness which is needed in the structure of a country which seeks to be both profoundly democratic and a monarchy.
For those reasons, I bury my doubts and difficulties—quite a lot of them have been dug up during this debate. Some of them will be answered by my noble and learned friend Lord Wallace. As I can see that he is writing something about me, I shall extend my words for a moment or two by saying that the rest of the difficulties will come out in the wash in Committee. I hope that the Committee stage will be as long as is necessary to address the question. That at least is required as a gesture towards those of us who feel that the timetable at the moment is far too fast. I have bored your Lordships too long. I hope that I have reassured you a little; I have certainly reassured myself quite a lot.
2.34 pm