My Lords, I suppose you could call that a Duchy original. I know that the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, is a very genial man outside this Chamber, but I have to say this morning he reminded me of that wonderful character from ITMA, Mona Lott, in that it is being so cheerful as keeps him going. What we have had this morning is an extraordinary series of disconnected accusations and observations. He referred to Clause 3 of his Bill and said that legislation was not needed. I would say that legislation was not needed on this particular subject, full stop. While I yield to no one in my admiration for the noble Lord and recognise that he is the last person that anyone would dare to call obsequious, nevertheless I think that today he has got it wrong.
The noble Lord has a reputation for being a fine engineer. I am sure that he is. As a fine engineer, though, he knows that precision is very important. He knows that if you are called out to repair something, you do not go along to repair modern machinery with a bag of wooden tools. That is in fact what he has been doing today.
I would just make a few points to your Lordships in opposing the Bill, which I am delighted to do. Yesterday we were debating Magna Carta and the importance of the rule of law. Earlier, my noble friend Lord Norton of Louth had an interesting debate in the Moses Room on commencement orders, to which my noble friend Lord Gardiner, sitting on the Front Bench, gave a most excellent reply. The theme of that debate was
that legislation must be demonstrated to be necessary and designed to solve a specific problem or provide a proper remedy, and then it must be properly enforced. One of the underlying themes of that debate, particularly emphasised by the noble Baroness, Lady Royall of Blaisdon, was that pre-legislative scrutiny was really a necessary precondition wherever possible—one accepts terrorism legislation sometimes, and things like that—for all legislation. If ever there was a need for pre-legislative scrutiny, it is here.
I do not believe that legislation is necessary, and I certainly do not think it should be embarked upon without the most careful examination. I suggest to the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, that what we should be doing is referring some of the matters that give him concern to the Constitution Committee of this House and there should be a proper, thorough and objective examination. Merely to base one’s case on a number of isolated examples, as happened towards the end of the noble Lord’s speech, is no way to proceed to legislation in this House, particularly on a very sensitive matter.
I refer again to the noble Lord’s career as an engineer—a very illustrious and successful one. He knows as an engineer that a delicate mechanism can be thrown completely out of gear by the removal of one apparently insignificant part. One often finds this quoted particularly in the case of clocks and watches. If there was ever anything that was delicate and needed the most careful handling, it is our British constitution. It is not a written constitution. Some may wish that we had one, as some did in last night’s debate, but we do not. We therefore have to look very carefully at what we are doing when we come to constitutional reform.
This Bill is, in a sense, the son of the Succession to the Crown Bill, because during the passage of that Bill the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, moved amendments, referred to his concerns about the Duchy of Cornwall and advised the House that, at some stage in the future, he would seek to introduce legislation. On 14 May, he was as good as his word when he produced a Bill which had its First Reading on that day.
Many of us were concerned about the Succession to the Crown Bill because we believed it had not been sufficiently thought through. There were implications for the Church of England—the established church—which concerned the Bench of Bishops. Indeed, the Minister, the noble and learned Lord, Lord Wallace of Tankerness, who had charge of that Bill in this House and handled it with great skill and sensitivity, was at pains to ensure that, in answer to a Parliamentary Question, certain correspondence with the Roman Catholic church was published.
Those of us who felt that that Bill had perhaps been a little rushed were not against the essential principle about the succession of a woman—of course, not—but we were concerned about some of the implications. It was suggested that because the Duchess of Cambridge was with child, it would be as well to get this Bill through quickly. Of course, the child arrived, the child was a boy, there was great rejoicing, and the sense of urgency—if ever there was one—disappeared, so there is no urgency about this. That underlines the point I made a few moments ago, that if these subjects are to be looked at, they need to be looked at carefully and
deliberately, and if there is to be legislation of any sort, it needs the most careful pre-legislative scrutiny. The whole issue would benefit very much from the considered observations of the Constitution Committee of this House.