My Lords, I thank my noble friend Lord Elton for his amendment, which gives me a welcome opportunity to explain why the amendment that he is seeking to delete was inserted in Committee in the House of Commons.
The effect of the Bill as originally presented, as indeed would be the effect of my noble friend’s amendment, would be to disqualify all descendants from any marriage of a person when a marriage of that person was not consented to. For example—and in fact the other way round from what my noble friend suggested—if a person in the line of succession married with consent and had children, their spouse died and they remarried without consent and had children, the children of the first marriage, which had been consented to, could be disqualified.
The intention of subsection (4) is to disqualify from the line of succession any royal descendants from a marriage not approved by the sovereign. It would go too far also to disqualify descendants from a previous marriage for which consent had been obtained. For these reasons, the amendment to include the words “from the marriage” was tabled and accepted in another place. That is entirely consistent with the agreement that was reached with the other realms and removes a possible ambiguity. The other realms were fully informed of this drafting change before it was proposed.
We will come later to an amendment in the name of my noble friend Lord Trefgarne that relates to the bringing into effect of the Bill. There is no date set. I do not want to pre-empt that amendment and that discussion, but if my noble friend Lord Elton looks at Clause 5, “Commencement and short title”, he will see that provision is made for it to come into force,
“on such day and at such time as the Lord President of the Council may by order made by statutory instrument appoint”.
The purpose of that is so these measures can all come in together on the same date and, I think, at the same time, in the 16 different realms.
Some realms are dealing with this in different ways. Some, such as New Zealand and Canada, will legislate to ensure that the changes take effect in their country. I believe that the Bill was brought into the New Zealand Parliament last week. Other realms, such as Papua New Guinea and Jamaica, have found that they do not need to legislate. The intention is that when all realms have done what is necessary regarding their arrangements, the measures will be brought into effect at the same time. There is no date set.
It has been said that the Bill was rushed through the other place. As I have said on more than one occasion, the Bill did not even take up the time allocated to it in the other place, so I am not sure what could have been done if more time was allocated. It is a simple fact that the time was not taken up.