Royal Marriages and Succession to the Crown (Prevention of Discrimination) Bill

Part of Prayers – in the House of Commons at 10:58 am on 27 March 2009.

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Photo of Edward Leigh Edward Leigh Chair, Public Accounts Committee, Chair, Public Accounts Committee 10:58, 27 March 2009

The hon. Gentleman is obviously an expert on this, and perhaps we need to find out about and debate such matters. The absurdity is shown by the fact that everybody is prepared to be very liberal and broad-minded, and say that nobody was going to prevent the Duchess of Cornwall from becoming the wife of the Prince of Wales if he wanted to marry her for whatever reason. It is all rather ludicrous. Lord Forsyth put it quite well in the other place when said that this is the constitution's "grubby little secret". It is, and we should get rid of it. It is wrong because it perpetuates the notion that Catholics are somehow disloyal. They were considered disloyal in the 17th and perhaps even the 18th century. I agree that we did have a slight problem with the gunpowder plot, for which I do apologise. I should like now to set history straight and declare a formal apology to the House of Commons, but I say in our defence that that was 400 years ago.