The British House of Commons voted to legalize gay marriage by an overwhelmingly majority of 400 to 175 despite a major rebellion by Conservative MPs.
Although Britain has allowed same-sex couples to enter into civil partnerships since 2004, Prime Minister David Cameron has long stated his belief that they should be entitled to full equality before the law.

In late January, the government introduced the Marriage (Same-Sex Partners) Bill into Parliament’s lower house. The legislation would allow same-sex couples to marry in religious as well as civil ceremonies, though a much-vaunted “quadruple lock” would ensure that no religious organization would be forced to solemnize same-sex unions. The Church of England was particularly anxious about the bill, fearing that since it is the state church, it could be forced to host gay weddings. However, the bill specifically states that the church can continue to pass legislation that defines marriage as the union of a man and a woman (under the terms of an act passed during the reign of Henry VIII, ecclesiastical laws must always yield to secular law).

But while the move to legalize gay marriage proved popular with his Liberal Democrat coalition partners, it exposed bitter divisions within Cameron’s own party. Last weekend the chairs of 20 local Conservative groups presented Downing Street with a letter urging the Prime Minister to delay the vote, claiming that the government had no mandate to redefine such a key institution.

They also claimed that Cameron’s support for gay marriage would lead to an exodus of local party members, a finding echoed by a recent poll commissioned by opponents of gay marriage that reported that 20 percent of Conservative voters would vote against the party in the next election due to its stance on the issue.

As is typical with matters of this sort, the leaders of all three major parties allowed their MPs to vote according to their consciences. Over the weekend, the British media reported that up to 180 Conservative MPs might ultimately vote against the bill. In the end, 139 voted against and 30 abstained. The dissenters included two Cabinet ministers (Environment Secretary Owen Paterson and Welsh Secretary David Jones), as well as three junior ministers. Defense Secretary Philip Hammond and Attorney-General Dominic Grieve both abstained.

The debate on the bill was often quite emotional. Openly-gay Conservative MP Mike Freer urged his colleagues to support the bill. “I am not asking for special treatment. I am simply asking for equal treatment.

Speaking in opposition to the bill, Conservative MP Sir Roger Gale claimed that the government was entering “Alice in Wonderland territory.” Instead of redefining marriage, he called on ministers to “withdraw the Bill, abolish the Civil Partnership Act 2004, abolish civil marriage and create a civil union Bill that applies to all people, irrespective of their sexuality or relationship. That means that brothers and brothers, sisters and sisters and brothers and sisters would be included as well.”

Meanwhile, his colleague Matthew Offord warned that the bill represented a slippery slope that could lead to the legalization of polygamous relationships. Referring to the law on marriage, he said that “another government can simply change the definition to include as many partners as they want.”

The bill will now receive clause-by-clause scrutiny from a Public Bill Committee, and when it returns to the full House, MPs will have another chance to vote on it. Then it goes on to the House of Lords, where it may face stiffer opposition. While it is highly unlikely that peers would reject the bill outright, they may try to kill it by passing amendments that the Commons are unlikely to accept. If that happens, there could be a lengthy period of ‘ping pong’ as the two houses try to iron out their differences. If agreement cannot be reached, the government may have to reintroduce the bill in the next parliamentary session and use the Parliament Acts 1911 & 1949 to override peers’ objections.

Image Courtesy :  Robyn Ramsay

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The British House of Commons has voted in favor of legislation that would allow women to succeed to the throne on equal terms with men.

As the law stands now, a woman can only ascend the throne if she does not have any brothers. However, in 2011, David Cameron announced that the prime ministers of the sixteen Commonwealth Realms where Queen Elizabeth II is Head of State had agreed to let daughters inherit on an equal basis. From henceforth, the Crown would go to the eldest child, regardless of sex.

After lengthy negotiations with the various Commonwealth governments, Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg introduced legislation to make the change official. But in addition to doing away with male-preference primogeniture, the Succession to the Crown Bill also makes other adjustments to the law of succession. Notably, members of the Royal Family will no longer be barred from succeeding to the Crown if they marry a Roman Catholic. Also, the requirement to seek the monarch’s consent before marrying will be limited to the first six people in the list of succession. Presently, every descendant of George II is supposed to obtain the sovereign’s permission to marry; if they fail to do so, their marriage is null and void. Under the new law, those who marry without the monarch’s consent will only forfeit their claim to the throne.

Before the Commons began their debate on the general principle behind the bill, MPs expressed frustration at the government’s proposed timetable for the law’s journey through Parliament.

“We spend hours debating the taxation of lorries and other such matters, which get a full day allocated for Second Reading, whereas the succession to the Crown is to be dealt with in a truncated Second Reading debate, a brief Committee stage, and then one day for the remaining stages,” said Tory MP Jacob Rees-Mogg. “That seems to me to be an insult to the nation, to our sovereign and, indeed, to Parliament.”

Rees-Mogg also argued that the Commons should be able to extend the scope of the bill. He pointed out that if an heir to the throne were to marry a Roman Catholic, he or she would be expected to promise to do everything in their power to see that their children were raised in the Roman Catholic faith. But the sovereign is also Supreme Governor of the Church of England, so they cannot be members of the Roman Catholic church. Rees-Mogg maintained that, if a Roman Catholic ascended the throne, it would be best to allow an Anglican regent to handle ecclesiastical matters.

“That is an entirely logical extension of what is proposed in the Bill and time ought to be allowed to debate it, because when we start these changes and decide that in this modern age we need to be more politically correct and allow Catholics to marry into the throne, we have to consider the consequence.”

But despite the misgivings of a number of MPs, the government’s timetable was ultimately agreed to by a voice vote. Since the opposition Labour Party also backed the timetable, there would be little chance of defeating it.

During the actual debate on the bill itself, the vast majority of speakers declared their support. However, some MPs questioned the government’s decision to require the first six heirs to the throne to obtain the monarch’s consent before marrying. “I simply do not understand why the monarch would want to retain the right to forbid somebody to marry and to declare their marriage null and void because consent was not granted,” said Labour MP Chris Bryant.

“On what basis would they refuse to grant consent—because someone involved was illegitimate, not wealthy enough, a commoner or an actress?” he continued.

But Clegg defended the government’s decision, saying that it was right for the monarch to have a say in the marriages of those who were most likely to inherit the Crown. “Having been in consultation with the royal household over a prolonged period, we feel that that strikes the right balance.”

Conservative MP Ben Wallace expressed concern about the bill’s effect on the Duchy of Lancaster. He claimed that the duchy would continue to be governed by male-preference primogeniture, so a female heir to the throne might not inherit its multi-million pound property portfolio. But Clegg dismissed his concerns, saying that the bill was only concerned with succession to the Crown and Parliament could deal with the issue of other titles later.

Several MPs also voiced concern that, although the bill allowed members of the Royal Family to marry Roman Catholics, Roman Catholics would still be prohibited from ascending the throne. But given the lack of political will to disestablish the Church of England, it seems likely that the religious requirement will remain for the foreseeable future.

After giving the bill a second reading, the House immediately resolved itself into a Committee of the Whole House to discuss the bill in detail. Although several backbench MPs moved amendments based on concerns raised during the second reading debate, the only amendment that was actually passed was a minor technical change moved by the government. But MPs will have another opportunity to propose amendments during the bill’s report stage on January 28.

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Martin McGuinness, the Sinn Fein politician, has decided to step down as MP for Mid-Ulster despite never actually taking his seat in Westminster. There is just one problem: members of Britain’s House of Commons are not allowed to resign their seats.

The prohibition against voluntary resignation is based on a resolution that the Commons passed in 1624. Back then, parliamentary service was often seen as more of a burden than an honor. MPs did not receive a salary, and traveling to Westminster was no easy task. And since Parliament was still more of an event than an institution, MPs would rarely be expected to sit for more than a few weeks anyway.

Several decades later in 1680, the Commons passed a resolution forbidding MPs from accepting offices or ‘places of profit’ under the Crown. Anyone who contravened the resolution forfeited his seat. At the time, MPs feared that having colleagues on the Crown’s payroll would undermine Parliament’s independence.

Similarly, because government ministers were technically servants of the Crown, they had to resign from the Commons and seek re-election upon taking ministerial office. The practice of forcing ministers to seek re-election was not done away with until 1926.

In the eighteenth century, Crown stewardships became a legal fiction that allowed MPs to resign from the Commons. Although there were originally a number of these minor offices, the House of Commons Disqualification Act 1975 whittled the list down to two: the Crown Steward and Bailiff of the three Chiltern Hundreds of Stoke, Desborough and Burnham and the Crown Steward and Bailiff of the Manor of Northstead. However, these offices now exist only on paper, and their holders do not receive any sort of salary.

So now when an MP wishes to resign, he or she must write to the Chancellor of the Exchequer (Britain’s finance minister), who then signs a warrant appointing the person to one of the two stewardships. The ex-MP will hold their new ‘office’ until it is needed to allow someone else to resign. In some cases, the tenure can be quite brief: on December 17, 1985, fifteen MPs resigned at once!

Given that Martin McGuinness is a staunch republican, it is ironic that he is now technically one of the Queen’s servants. A spokesman for Sinn Fein was typically dismissive of his new appointment: “as Irish republicans we gave no time for antiquated and ridiculous titles of the British parliamentary system.”

Image Courtesy : UK Parliament

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After two days of grueling debate, the House of Commons voted to give the controversial House of Lords Reform Bill a second reading, but the bill faces an uncertain future after ministers were forced to scrap their proposed timetable for further debate.

The House of Lords Reform Bill would transform the chamber into a 450-member body whose members are 80 percent elected/20 percent appointed. The Church of England’s General Synod would also elect 12 bishops to sit in the reformed House of Lords as Lords Spiritual. Members who are not Lords Spiritual would serve for a single 15-year term.

The House of Commons spent two days debating whether or not to give the House of Lords Reform Bill a second reading. A second reading debate is concerned with the general principles behind the bill, and an affirmative vote allows the bill to progress to committee stage. Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg began the debate by saying that the bill was about “fixing a flawed institution.”

“We believe that the people who make the laws should be chosen by the people who are subject to those laws,” he continued. “We are only one of only two countries in the world —the other being Lesotho—with an upper parliamentary chamber that is totally unelected and instead selects its members by birthright and patronage.”

“At the heart of the Bill is the vision of a House of Lords that is more modern, more representative and more legitimate—a Chamber fit for the 21st century,” he said.

Speaking for the opposition, Labour MP Sadiq Khan endorsed the broad principles behind the bill. “The Labour party remains very much in favour of reforming the second Chamber and will support the Bill on Second Reading,” he said. However, Khan went on to warn that “our support for giving the Bill a Second Reading should therefore not be taken as a blank cheque.”

He went on to identify a number of areas where Labour felt that the bill needed major work. He felt that clause 2, which declares that the Parliament Acts 1911 and 1949 will continue to apply to the reformed House of Lords, would not be a sufficient safeguard to ensure the Commons’ primacy.

The Parliament Acts to which Khan referred prevent the Lords from blocking legislation indefinitely. They can, however, still delay it for a year. A year is an eternity in politics, and few governments would want to wait that long to see their proposals become law. In practice, it is usually a moot point since the House of Lords usually defers to the Commons before the Parliament Acts come into play. But it is far from certain that a predominantly elected chamber would feel the need to show the same deference. “Why should elected Members of the second Chamber be bound by conventions that bind a Chamber of hereditary and appointed peers?” asked Khan.

“The Bill recognizes that conventions may evolve, and assumes this will happen of its own accord during the transition phases. We believe that that is too passive and is a dangerous position. The obvious questions requiring clarification include the following. What is the position on the Salisbury-Addison convention about Bills and the prevention of manifesto commitments? What about the convention that the Lords does not usually object to secondary legislation? More than 1,000 pieces of secondary legislation go through Parliament each year; the Parliament Acts do not cover this,” Khan continued.

Khan also objected to the fact that the reformed House of Lords would still have appointed members. “By allowing some Members still to be appointed, the Deputy Prime Minister is weakening his own arguments for having elected Members in the second Chamber.”

In addition, Khan castigated the government for its refusal to allow a referendum on its proposed changes. “[Nick Clegg] said a referendum was not needed because proposals to reform the House of Lords were in all three main parties’ manifestos. The manifestos said very different things, however. While Labour and the Lib Dems called for a wholly elected second Chamber—albeit Labour wanted a referendum as well—the Conservatives sought only to find consensus.”

As the debate wore on, the scale of Conservative discontent became increasingly apparent as backbencher after backbencher rose to voice their opposition to the bill. Conor Burns, a ministerial aide to the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, went so far as to quite in order to vote against the bill. Another ministerial aide, Angie Bray, was sacked when she too voted against the bill.

Although the bill ultimately received a second reading by a vote of 462 to 124, the government chose not to move the program motion that would have set out a timetable for its future progress. Labour had announced that it would not support the motion because it did not allow enough time for debate, and there were enough Conservative rebels that the motion would have failed without Labour’s support.

According to the Daily Telegraph, Downing Street has set up a special team to negotiate with the rebel backbenchers over the summer. Prime Minister David Cameron is said to have told his MPs that he is willing to consider a range of concessions, from reducing the number of elected members to allowing more time for debate. If he cannot win over more of his backbenchers, he is said to be willing to completely scrap the bill when Parliament returns from its summer recess.

Image Courtesy of  The Prime Minister’s Office

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Britain’s Conservative/Liberal Democrat government faced a humiliating setback on July 10 when ministers had to cancel a key vote on their flagship plans to reform the House of Lords.

The government wants to replace the present appointed chamber with a chamber whose members are 80 percent elected/20 percent appointed. The legislation is widely seen as the Liberal Democrats’ baby, and it is bitterly resented by many backbench Conservative MPs. Over the last few weeks, more and more Conservative MPs have announced their intention to vote against the bill, and the number of rebels eventually reached 100.

The Labour opposition has committed itself to voting for the bill’s second reading, which is when the Commons endorses the general principles behind the legislation. Because the government controls the timetable in the Commons, a vote on second reading is usually followed by a ‘program motion’ that sets time limits for the remaining legislative stages. But Labour objected to the amount of time that the government proposed to allocate to the bill, and the party decided to instruct its MPs to vote against the program motion.

Without Labor’s support, it seemed highly unlikely that the program motion would pass. In the absence of a timetable, opponents of the bill would be able to filibuster it. Back in 1968, an earlier attempt at House of Lords reform foundered because of just such a filibuster.

The government whips must have gotten spooked, for when the Commons began the second day of the debate on second reading, the Leader of the House, Sir George Young, announced that the program motion had been withdrawn. “For Lords reform to progress, it needs those who support reform to vote for reform and to vote for that reform to make progress through this House. It is clear that the Opposition are not prepared to do that, so we will not move the program motion tonight.”

“We remain committed to making progress on Lords reform, and with second reading behind us we will then consider how best to take this agenda forward and how best to secure progress through the House for reforms that have the backing of this House,” he continued.

In the absence of a program motion, the bill will be in legislative limbo even if it receives a second reading. The government leadership in the Commons face a dicey situation. Finding a timetable that will please Labour could be difficult, but if they decide to go ahead and commit the bill to a Committee of the Whole House without any sort of time limits, it is almost certain that rebel Conservative MPs will do their best to filibuster it. Newspapers are already reporting that the rebels have drawn up extensive plans to table wrecking amendments and fight any subsequent attempts to curtail debate.

If the House of Lords Reform Bill ultimately fails, the coalition will be placed under incredible strain. Bad blood between the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats seems to be growing by the week, and many Liberal Democrats would probably see the bill’s loss as a Conservative betrayal. There are already rumblings that, if there is no Lords reform, the Liberal Democrats will retaliate by blocking forthcoming boundary changes that could help the Conservatives at the next election. If the coalition descended to that level of infighting, it is hard to see how it could continue until the next scheduled election in May 2015.

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The tower that houses Big Ben at the Palace of Westminster is likely to be renamed in honor of Queen Elizabeth II after a majority of the Members of Parliament (MPs) gave their backing to the change.

The proposal was first made by Tobias Ellwood, a Parliamentary Private Secretary in the Foreign Office. He tabled an Early Day Motion requesting that the clock tower be renamed the Elizabeth Tower in honor of the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee.

“Commemorating an iconic landmark as famous as Parliament is indeed a truly exceptional tribute and I am grateful that the majority of MPs believe the Queen deserves such an outstanding accolade,” he said.

“It therefore seems entirely appropriate for Parliament to pay tribute to Her Majesty with a similar honor, and in symmetry, to that bestowed upon Queen Victoria, by dedicating part of the iconic Parliamentary estate in her name,” he continued.

Forty MPs signed their names to the motion, and 331 MPs signed a formal letter of support, including the leaders of the three major parties. Prime Minister David Cameron said that “it is great news that so many MPs from across the House are backing what would be a fitting tribute to the Queen. I hope it will now move ahead.”

Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg said that “the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee is an occasion that the whole country is keen to celebrate, and Members of Parliament are no exception. I hope the House applies [to Buckingham Palace] to name this historic tower after Her Majesty.”

Echoing the Prime Minister and Deputy Prime Minister, Labour Party leader Ed Miliband said that “Queen Elizabeth has dedicated herself tirelessly and constantly to the people of Britain and the entire Commonwealth. Parliament has agreed that this is a fitting tribute to her life of service and I hope it can be confirmed as soon as possible.”

In addition to the party leaders, the proposal has received the backing of Theresa May, the Home Secretary; William Hague, the Foreign Secretary; Iain Duncan Smith, the Work and Pensions Secretary; and Danny Alexander, the Chief Secretary to the Treasury. They are joined by other prominent MPs, including former Foreign Secretary Jack Straw, former Home Secretary David Blunkett, and Shadow Chancellor Ed Balls.

The honor mirrors that given to Queen Victoria when she celebrated her Diamond Jubilee in 1897. The King’s Tower which stood at the southwest end of the Palace of Westminster was renamed the Victoria Tower.

The House of Commons Commission, which is responsible for Parliament’s administrative affairs, will meet in a few weeks’ time, at which point it is likely to approve the proposal in light of the strength of cross-party support. Once the commission has given its stamp of approval, the proposal will be formally presented to Buckingham Palace. If the Queen agrees, a renaming ceremony would be held, which she would likely attend.

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