My Lords, I support the objective of the amendment moved by the noble Lord, Lord Cormack, although I have reservations about its wording. I should say hastily that I am speaking for myself and not as a former member of the Royal Household. The House may have noticed that earlier there was a small cluster
of former members of the Royal Household, but we have now widened the gaps between each other.
My view is based on the limited scope of this Bill and the assumption that we are not talking about the establishment of the church or about changing the position of the monarch being the Supreme Governor of the Church of England, and thus the requirement that the Supreme Governor should join in communion with the Church of England. That, to my mind, is not the issue, rather it is much more limited to the proposal in the Bill. At Second Reading, I asked the Minister whether we could seek greater clarity on the requirement that those in the line of succession must be brought up within the Anglican faith. All I am seeking to do is to minimise misunderstandings that otherwise could arise from the passing of this Bill in connection with Clause 2.
There is a disparity between what the then Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, said, and what the Archbishop of Westminster said at the time of the Perth agreement in October 2011. Archbishop Rowan Williams said that,
“there needs to be a clear understanding that the heir is brought up in”,
the Church of England environment. The Roman Catholic Archbishop of Westminster said:
“I fully recognise the importance of the position of the established church … in protecting and fostering the role of faith in our society today”.
That is a helpful message, but the two are not clearly in line, and in my view there is something of a lack of clarity in this. Of course, this is something that may never happen in our lifetime, but nevertheless it could happen. It is in order to minimise the risk of misunderstanding that I believe the noble Lord, Lord Cormack, is moving the amendment.
In my Second Reading speech I suggested that the Minister should agree to have some further discussions with the Roman Catholic leadership in this country to see whether we cannot get a clearer understanding, and I would be grateful if, when he comes to respond to the debate, he would let us know if he has anything to report at this stage.