My Lords, although I am no expert on the hereditary peerage, I entered into a correspondence with the Ministry of Justice—in fact with the Crown Office—on this matter. The noble Lord, Lord Wallace, told the House at the end of Second Reading that my specific point about husbands—and, indeed, the whole Bill—is a matter for the royal prerogative. According to the Crown Office’s letter, hereditary peerages are a matter of property.
It therefore seems to me to be very simple. Under the European Convention on Human Rights, we may not discriminate on grounds of property. Article 14 says that there shall be no discrimination on, inter alia, grounds of status; it is absolutely straightforward. If hereditary titles are property, we simply cannot discriminate. Under own Equality Acts—we have not yet got to those amendments—we cannot attach conditions to women that we do not attach to men, and vice versa.
The whole Bill therefore boils down to the fact that where there is a title, which is property, there must be equality—no “ifs” or “buts”, no petitions, no waiting for this, no waiting for that. Where people have a title which attaches only to one sex and not to the other, it is against our equality law.
Our only hope of getting this legislation through the House of Commons is to have a straightforward, simple Bill that applies the principles, which we cannot
avoid, of the European Convention on Human Rights and our own equality law. We should strip away all the carbuncles and just get down to what has to be done under our law.