Concern as MPs back changes to succession

Wednesday 23 January 2013

NEW laws to modernise the rules of succession to the throne were backed by MPs despite warnings of "unwanted, unintended consequences".

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Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg said the current rules, which discriminate against women and ban royal heirs from marrying Roman Catholics, were from a "bygone age" and sent out the wrong message about modern Britain.

The changes will mean the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge's first child, expected in July, can become monarch even if it is a girl who later has younger brothers.The legislation, which is being rushed through the Commons with just two days of consideration by MPs, was given an un-opposed second reading.However, a number of MPs raised concerns about the way the Bill was being pushed through the House and there were also questions about whether children of a royal who married a Roman Catholic would be brought up in the church, therefore losing their place in the line of suc-cession as Catholics remain barred from the throne.North-East Somerset Tory MP Jacob Rees-Mogg said the Bill was being "treated as if it was terrorism legislation" and it was an "insult to the nation and to our sovereign and indeed to Parliament".The Prince of Wales has reportedly expressed his concerns about the Bill and his friend Conservative MP Nicholas Soames has warned of the "unwanted, unintended consequences that often flow from tinkering with legislation of this type and could damage the crucial relationship between church and state, as well as peerage law and quite possibly interfere with accepted conventions and laws reaching back down the times".Mr Soames said the Government was acting "out of consideration ... of political correctness on one hand and the European Convention on Human Rights on the other".Setting out the case for change, Mr Clegg told MPs: "The current rules of succession belong to a bygone era. They reflect old prejudices and old fears."Today we don't support laws which discriminate on either religious or gender grounds, they have no place in modern Britain and certainly not in our monarchy, an institution central to our constitution, to the Commonwealth and to our national identity too."

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Concern as MPs back changes to succession

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