Conger

The Rt Hon. Jack Straw MP, Secretary of State for Justice & Lord High Chancellor of Great Britain

THE GOVERNMENT of Prime Minister Gordon Brown is ready to review the terms of the Act of Settlement and end the ban on Roman Catholics ascending the throne.

While a repeal of the 1701 Act’s ban on a Catholic monarch was not part of the white paper on constitutional reform, in response to a question Justice Minister Jack Straw said the government was ready to examine this “antiquated” law.

Passed by Parliament in 1701 to govern the succession of the monarch, the Act required the sovereign to “join in communion with the Church of England” and settled the throne on the Protestant descendants of Sophia of Hanover — a granddaughter of Charles I, and to exclude the Roman Catholic Stuarts from the throne.

The Act states that all who “shall or may take or inherit the said Crown” may not be “reconciled to, or shall hold communion with, the See or Church of Rome, or shall profess the popish religion, or shall marry a papist.”

In 2001 former Prime Minister Tony Blair raised the issue of repealing the Act of Settlement but did not take the matter forward.

In the Commons debate on the government’s white paper, the member for Livingston, Jim Devine, one of 13 Scottish Labour members who are Roman Catholics, welcomed the statement, “particularly his comment that this is not the final blueprint. I ask him to include provision for the abolition of the Act of Settlement, because it discriminates directly against Roman Catholics. That is legalised sectarianism, which has no role to play in the 21st century.”

Mr Straw responded that “I speak on behalf of the Prime Minister. Because of the position that Her Majesty occupies as head of the Anglican Church, this is a rather more complicated matter than might be anticipated.”

However, “we are certainly ready to consider it, and I fully understand that my hon Friend, many on both sides of the House and thousands outside it, see that provision as antiquated,” Mr Straw said.

Other proposals raised in the government’s white paper include a diminution in the Prime Minister’s powers to appoint bishops and ending the Prime Minister’s authority to dispatch troops to war without parliamentary approval.

Mr Straw said the latest measures were not a “final blueprint”, but part of a much wider programme of building a “new constitutional settlement.”

Published in The Church of England Newspaper.