Disestablishment raises its head again

In a move that could ultimately lead to the disestablishment of the Church of England, the Government has drawn up plans to abolish the Act of Settlement.

The 300-year-old Act excludes Catholics (or any non-Protestant Christian) from taking the throne. The reform would also remove the requirement of succession to automatically pass to a male (the Queen succeeded because she had no brothers).

The proposals also include limiting the powers of the Privy Council, in particular its role as arbiter in disputes between Scotland or Wales and the UK government.

The Prime Minister gave Chris Bryant, MP, the job of considering constitutional reforms, and Mr Bryant has taken into account the widespread feeling that the Act of Settlement is discriminatory and at odds with the Human Rights Act. The Government says it wants to pass the legislation as soon as possible, but that wouldn’t be during this Parliament.

The 1688 Bill of Rights, the Act of Settlement in 1701 and Act of Union in 1707 — reinforced by the provisions of the Coronation Oath Act 1688 — is to exclude Catholics or their spouses from the succession and provide for an exclusively Protestant succession. Catholics, or those who marry them and those born to them out of wedlock, may not be in the line of succession. The law also requires the monarch on accession to make before parliament a declaration rejecting Catholicism.

Geoffrey Robertson QC, the constitutional lawyer, told the Guardian: “I welcome this as two small steps towards a more rational constitution. The Act of Settlement determined that the Crown shall descend only on Protestant heads and that anyone ‘who holds communion with the church of Rome or marries a Papist’ — not to mention a Muslim, Hindu, Jew or Rastafarian — is excluded by force of law. This arcane and archaic legislation enshrined religious intolerance in the bedrock of the British constitution. In order to hold the office of head of state you must be white Anglo-German Protestant — a descendant of Princess Sophia of Hanover — down the male line on the feudal principle of primogeniture. This is in blatant contravention of the Sex Discrimination Act and the Human Rights Act."

The Coronation Oath Act requires the monarch to "maintain the Laws of God the true profession of the Gospel and the Protestant reformed religion established by law [...] and [...] preserve unto the bishops and clergy of this realm and to the churches committed to their charge all such rights and privileges as by law do or shall appertain unto them or any of them".

Any change in legislation would, among other things, require the consent of member nations of the Commonwealth. Constitutional experts have argued that reform of the Act of Settlement and its related statutes would set in train an inevitable momentum towards disestablishment, and disestablishing the Church of England would automatically remove the rationale for the religious provisions binding succession to the crown.

Terry Sanderson, president of the National Secular Society, said: “Any move that brings us nearer to the disestablishment of the Church of England is to be welcomed. But this is only the beginning. To actually complete the process would take several generations and an extraordinary act of political will. I am not sure that either the Labour or Conservative parties feel strongly enough to bring this to fruition.”

Mr Sanderson said that the changing demographics of Britain made the establishment of the CofE untenable. “The Establishment makes Britain look like something out of the 18th century rather than a modern nation with a religiously diverse population and a modern outlook.”
See also: Constitutionally flawed
Constitutional experts support reform
Undermining faith in the monarchy
Reform could backfire
Terry Sanderson has a Comment is Free blog on the topic of secularism running in the Guardian at the moment – why not add your opinion?

26 September 2008