My Lords, the Church of Scotland (Lord High Commissioner) Bill is a short but important piece of legislation that removes a legal barrier preventing Roman Catholics holding the office of the Lord High Commissioner to the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland. This historic legal restriction applies specifically to Roman Catholics and not to people of different or no religious faith.
For noble Lords who may not yet be acquainted with the role of the Lord High Commissioner—although I suspect from looking around the Chamber that most noble Lords know more than I do, even though my mother is Scottish and Church of Scotland—I shall try to shed light on the position. I note that the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hope of Craighead, who will speak later today, held that office between 2015 and 2016, being appointed by Her late Majesty Queen Elizabeth II. I hope he will bear with me while I provide a brief explanation, and I look forward to his contribution.
The Lord High Commissioner is the sovereign’s personal representative to the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland. The General Assembly is the governing body of the Church of Scotland. It meets each May in Edinburgh, to hear reports, make laws and set the agenda for the Church of Scotland. The Lord High Commissioner is appointed as an observer to attend proceedings and to inform His Majesty the King personally about the business of the assembly. The Lord High Commissioner also undertakes important ceremonial duties, including addressing the General Assembly at its opening and closing sessions and attending the daily business on the sovereign’s behalf. The Lord High Commissioner undertakes official visits in Scotland, as well as hosting engagements at the Palace of Holyroodhouse.
Historic legislation currently prevents the appointment of Roman Catholics to this role. The Claim of Right 1689 sets out restrictions against Roman Catholics being appointed to public offices in Scotland, which include the Lord High Commissioner. The Roman Catholic Relief Act 1829 removed many legal restrictions on Roman Catholics. Crucially, however, it explicitly did not remove the restrictions against Roman Catholics holding the post of Lord High Commissioner. Therefore, there remains a legal barrier that prevents Roman Catholics undertaking this role. This Bill is concise and narrowly focused, and will deliver a straightforward but important change by enabling Roman Catholics to undertake the post of Lord High Commissioner.
My Lords, I am very grateful to the noble Baroness the Leader of the House for introducing the Bill. As she says, it is a simple and straightforward Bill which will enable a most distinguished Scottish lawyer, Lady Elish Angiolini, to take up her appointment as His Majesty the King’s Lord High Commissioner to the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland. I can assure the House that it has the full support of His Majesty’s Opposition and we were very grateful to be able to consent to accelerated consideration through the usual channels.
As my honourable friend the Member for West Aberdeenshire and Kincardine said in another place, this Bill is an important step towards full equality for Roman Catholics under British law. There is in fact a long Conservative tradition of supporting Catholic emancipation, which the noble Baroness alluded to. In fact, the first Duke of Wellington risked the future of his own Government to secure the passage of the Catholic Relief Act in 1829, which granted Roman Catholics the right to take up positions of trust and responsibility in public life. There were some objections from some quarters in Scotland at the time, which might be why we are here today. The passage of that 1829 Act led Britain out of shameful centuries of penal laws against Roman Catholics. The Bill before us today shows how far we have come since 1829.
I remember it was Sir Keir Starmer who in 2002 wrote an important article calling for an end to another disqualification of Roman Catholics—of people who married Catholics from succession to the Crown. It was good that the coalition Government took that up and passed the Succession to the Crown Act 2013, which ended that disqualification of Roman Catholics. We are always ready to support Sir Keir in good ideas and the attempt to reduce any element of discrimination in public life has universal support. I hope we can continue to foster greater acceptance and a stronger tradition of ecumenism for the future. This Bill achieves that. We are absolutely united across this House in opposition to discrimination. In government, we worked to foster stronger relationships between all communities, whatever differences of religion they may have had, and we will work with Ministers in this Government to continue that work, as we are doing today.
My Lords, I am happy to follow the Lord Privy Seal and the noble Lord, Lord True, in welcoming the Bill. I shall start by declaring interests: I am a member and elder of the Church of Scotland and a former moderator of the General Assembly.
I have known Lady Elish. We served in government together in Scotland in the early 2000s and then, when she was Lord Advocate, I was the Advocate-General for Scotland, so we had a lot of dealings with each other. I certainly consider Elish and her husband Dominic to be good personal friends. I should probably also declare another interest: she has invited me to stay overnight at Holyrood Palace during the General Assembly—assuming, of course, that the legislation has passed.
I congratulate the noble Baroness the Lord Privy Seal on giving a very good analysis and description of the role of the Lord High Commissioner, which I am sure the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hope, will be able to elaborate on. It shows, as I said last week in one of our debates, that you can have a national Church that enjoys a positive and assertive relationship with the sovereign without the need for its senior clergy to be in the legislature. Maybe there are lessons to learn from that in other ways.
Repealing the provision in the Roman Catholic Relief Act 1829 brings us into the 21st century. Like the noble Lord, Lord True, I am pleased that the noble Baroness has indicated that the Government will look at other religious discrimination that still exists, with a view to bringing forward some consultation. If she could elaborate on that, that would be very welcome.
I noted too that the noble Baroness made the following statement under the Human Rights Act:
“In my view the provisions of the Church of Scotland (Lord High Commissioner) Bill are compatible with the Convention rights”—
My Lords, I very much welcome this Bill and it is a great pleasure to follow the former moderator, the noble and learned Lord, Lord Wallace of Tankerness. This is indeed a necessary reform which, as the Lord Privy Seal has told us, clears the way for Lady Elish Angiolini to take up her appointment in just a few weeks’ time. It will also settle the issue for the future, which in itself is very much to be welcomed.
This amendment could not, of course, have been achieved without the full support of the Church of Scotland, to whose wisdom I wish to pay tribute. As the noble and learned Lord, Lord Wallace, has reminded us, we do not have to look all that far back into our history to a time when its response might have been very different.
My reason for contributing to this debate is that I had the immense privilege of serving as the Lord High Commissioner on two occasions, in 2015 and 2016. That experience enables me to assure your Lordships that the question as to which denomination of the Christian faith the person belongs is wholly immaterial to his or her ability to perform the duties of that office, so I should like to say just a few words about what the office involves.
The duties of the office will be defined in a commission under His Majesty’s sign manual that Lady Elish will receive when she presents herself at the opening of the General Assembly. It will commission and warrant her to represent His Majesty at the General Assembly as his High Commissioner specially appointed to that office, no more and no less than that. It will authorise her
“to do all and everything belonging to the power and place of a High Commissioner to a General Assembly as fully and freely in all respects as any other in that High Station hath done or might have done in any time heretofore and as We Ourselves might do if Personally present”.
She will, in short, be His Majesty’s personal representative to do what he would have done if he had been there himself.
My Lords, it is a great pleasure to follow the noble and learned Lords, Lord Wallace and Lord Hope. We on these Benches welcome this Bill and, as we have already heard, so does the Church of Scotland.
The Columba declaration was signed in 2016 between the Church of England and the Church of Scotland, which means we work closely together in mutual respect and appreciation. We are both established churches of this United Kingdom, though how the establishment is manifested in our national life is, of course, different.
We have heard that the Bill will amend the Roman Catholic Relief Act 1829, which still prohibits Roman Catholics from holding the role of the Lord High Commissioner. Given the prohibition does not exist for those with other faith or belief, or for those of no faith, this is a welcome and long overdue change. Indeed, previous officeholders have been Episcopalians, Free Church and from other Christian denominations, so this Bill will remove a legal discrimination that is no longer relevant or required. That it is long overdue for repeal is obvious by the fact that I believe its continuing effect came as a surprise to those making the most recent appointment, so the speed at which this short and straightforward Bill needs to go through is both understandable and entirely justified.
As we have heard, Lady Elish has already contributed significantly to Scottish national life and is clearly well qualified. On these Benches, we support this important change to ensure that the role of the Lord High Commissioner can function as it needs to and to remove a long-standing prohibition whose time is long past.
My Lords, I join others in welcoming this Bill and will briefly touch on three connected points: the positive, and fortunately prevailing, attitude towards religious tolerance; that also towards human rights; and, in regard to ecumenism, free thinking and free speech, the significant contributions to each of these made by all parts of the United Kingdom, including Scotland.
All of us are delighted that His Majesty the King has appointed Lady Elish Angiolini to be Lord High Commissioner this May at the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland, that appointment enabled once this Bill has amended the Roman Catholic Relief Act 1829.
Nevertheless, while the present Bill deals with this purpose, when she comes to wind up, can the Leader of the House agree that to avoid confusion and give further clarity at least two more related aspects have to be addressed in due course? My noble friend Lord True referred to yet another.
For, to manage conformity with the Lord Chancellor (Tenure of Office and Discharge of Ecclesiastical Functions) Act 1974, the reference to the Lord High Chancellor should be removed from the 1829 Act. Equally, to align with the Equality Act 2010 and Article 9.1 of the European Convention on Human Rights, the Roman Catholic Relief Act 1829 and other legislation relating to Roman Catholics ought to be carefully re-examined, along with the Jews Relief Act 1858.
Your Lordships will know that the assembly week is of two separate parts. First, chaired by the new Moderator in the Church assembly itself, come relevant Church business discussions; yet they do so alongside transparent and topical debates on issues such as those taken recently on the assisted dying controversy and the current European crisis in Ukraine.
Secondly, as the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hope, has just indicated, at the same time, and away from the General Assembly having opened it, the Lord High Commissioner gives useful encouragement and support by visiting Church and social care projects in Scotland.
My Lords, like other noble Lords, I welcome this Bill and look forward to Lady Elish opening the General Assembly in May. By any measure, this is an overdue Bill. We have just five minutes each to canter through a history that began five centuries ago. It began in the 16th century with the declaration of Scotland as a Protestant nation, and continued into the 17th century, with the passing of the Claim of Right Act, which restricted Catholics’ access to public office; the 18th century, and the Act of Union; the 19th century, and the relief Act that swept away most of the anti-Catholic restrictions, but not this one; and the 20th century, when ugly sectarianism scarred Scotland. Today, we are repealing only this specific anti-Catholic prescription. The narrow scope, as my noble friend the Leader of the House has made clear, is because of the imminence of the General Assembly in May.
Lady Elish will be an outstanding Lord High Commissioner. She is only the fifth woman to hold the role in almost 500 years. Let us hope those odds also improve. As we have heard, the Lord High Commissioner attends the assembly as the monarch’s representative, because the monarch is not head of the Church of Scotland but simply a member. This reflects the core tenet of Presbyterianism, and the broader reformed tradition, that everyone is equal in the sight of God.
I have just three minutes left to raise a trinity of issues: the Churches, Scottish society and the future. First, the Churches: as we have heard, the Lord High Commissioner is a Crown, not a Church, appointment, but as my friend, the noble and learned Lord, Lord Wallace of Tankerness, has noted, it is right and proper to acknowledge how sectarianism scarred the Kirk and Scottish society, most egregiously in the interwar years.
The journey to ecumenicalism has sometimes been a long one. I grew up in an ecumenical community dedicated to interfaith dialogue, and I recognise the continuing work and witnesses of the Church and faith groups of all kinds. Today’s mainstream churches want nothing to do with sectarianism. In our secular age, church people of whatever denomination invariably have more in common than anything that divides them. Sectarianism has been pushed to the fringes and is now a cultural phenomenon rather than a religious one.
My Lords, I rise with a certain nervousness to contribute to this debate. One might assume that, as an Englishman, albeit with Scottish ancestry on my late father’s side linked to an area near Selkirk in the Borders, I would have only a passing interest in this measure. I am neither a Catholic nor a practising Presbyterian, nor a member of the Church of Scotland, although in my teens I was a regular attender at the fellowship of youth at my local Presbyterian church in Newcastle upon Tyne—more linked, I think, to the facilities for table tennis than anything to do with my religious denomination. I happen to live in a village in Yorkshire which was a recusant community and the home for a long time of Guy Fawkes and his family.
None of that is enough to compel me to speak but, in strongly supporting this short but important measure, I would like briefly to draw on my experience as the Government’s Scottish Whip in the House of Commons between 1990 and 1994—an interesting experience, to say the least. Apart from duties entailing the encouragement of some real personalities of whom I had the care, who will today remain nameless, to join me in the same Lobby at least occasionally, I had the important but pleasant duty of entertaining the Moderator of the Church of Scotland soon after appointment each year on their visit to the United Kingdom Houses of Parliament. I was able to provide a suitable pot of English breakfast tea—I do not think there is a Scottish equivalent—in the House of Commons Dining Room and a meeting with the Speaker in his rooms, with perhaps a visit to the chapel to round things off. It was all very congenial.
After a year or two of this, I suddenly had an inspired thought: why not invite the visiting Moderator to offer the Prayers at the commencement of proceedings in the House of Commons on the day he was with us? After all, he was a Christian. I rushed to arrange this with the authorities. Little did I realise that what I was proposing was not only totally unacceptable but apparently an affront to our constitutional and spiritual conventions. If my idea was adopted, what next? Might I even come to suggest that a similar function be performed by a senior Catholic priest on a visit from Rome? I was strongly reprimanded and withdrew what I had thought a seemingly innocent and even helpful proposal. Such a precedent was clearly not welcome here. I refrained from suggesting it again during my remaining term as Scottish Whip. I say all this because it shows how there are still impediments to ecumenism, even in our Parliament. I hope that, when we carry out further reform of this House, we might consider extending the hand of unity in religion a little further than at present.
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The immediate impact of the passing of this Bill will be to facilitate the appointment of Lady Elish Angiolini, who is a Roman Catholic, as Lord High Commissioner for 2025. Lady Elish’s distinguished career encompasses law, justice and academia. In 2011, she was honoured as a Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire for her outstanding contributions to the administration of justice. Since 2012, she has served as principal of St Hugh’s College, Oxford, and she was appointed pro-vice-chancellor of the University of Oxford in 2017. In 2022, Her late Majesty the Queen appointed her to the Most Ancient and Most Noble Order of the Thistle, and she participated in the Coronation in 2023. Should this Bill pass, she will make history as the first Roman Catholic to be appointed Lord High Commissioner.
Lady Elish’s appointment would be a historic gesture of unity, good will and collaboration between the Church of Scotland and the Catholic Church in Scotland, following the St Margaret declaration signed in 2022, as well as a continuing declaration of friendship between the two Churches. This combined effort between the two denominations is a welcome demonstration of how people from different religions and backgrounds in our society can unite to emphasise the values and issues that unite us all and can acknowledge our differences with respect and dignity. I note that the appointment of Lady Elish to the role of Lord High Commissioner has been warmly welcomed, including in the other place when this Bill was debated, taking note of her distinguished career and personal achievements.
The legislation is before the House today on an accelerated timetable, which is necessary to ensure that Lady Elish’s appointment can be made ahead of the General Assembly in May. Subject to Royal Assent, the formalities of the appointment will begin. This process will include a formal commission for the office, accompanied by a royal warrant.
I can reassure the House that the UK Government have worked closely with key stakeholders in the development of this legislation. While the Bill concerns a reserved matter, my right honourable friend the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster spoke to the First Minister of Scotland and representatives of the Church of Scotland in advance of bringing forward this legislation. We thank them for their constructive and collaborative approach to this issue. The Government also engaged with the Catholic Church to ensure that it was kept informed ahead of the introduction of the legislation. My right honourable friend the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster also discussed the matter with Lady Elish directly and we have absolutely no doubt that she will be an excellent Lord High Commissioner.
I will briefly summarise this two-clause Bill. Clause 1 makes provision to allow a person of the Roman Catholic faith to hold the office of the Lord High Commissioner to the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland. Clause 2 sets out the territorial extent of the Bill and the commencement of the Bill, including that it will commence on Royal Assent.
To conclude, this Bill has a welcome aim and delivers a concise, albeit narrow, objective. I hope the Bill will receive support from all sides of the House. In that spirit, I commend it to the House. I beg to move.
As the noble Baroness said, the Lord High Commissioner to the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland is one of the most significant roles in Scottish public life. Our sovereign has appointed Lord High Commissioners as representatives since 1690, for only rarely have sovereigns attended the General Assembly in person. The King is not the head of the Church of Scotland, so the Lord High Commissioner is a representative to the General Assembly, not a member of the Assembly itself, and it is therefore not a requirement for them to be a Presbyterian or a member of the Church of Scotland.
Lady Elish Angiolini has an impeccable record of public service, having served as Scotland’s first female Lord Advocate, and she has had a distinguished legal and academic career. We on this side also welcome her appointment. Indeed, the decision to appoint Lady Elish, the first Roman Catholic to receive the King’s commission to be his representative to the General Assembly, is a momentous one. As the noble Baroness rightly said, it builds on the St Margaret Declaration of November 2022, in which the Church of Scotland made:
“An historic declaration of friendship between the Church of Scotland and the Catholic Church in Scotland”.
We welcome this continued commitment to friendship between those two great Churches.
Before I conclude, I note that the Government say they are looking also to make changes to other, similar areas of law. In her letter to all Peers of 5 March 2025, the noble Baroness the Lord Privy Seal wrote that the Government were considering how to address historic restrictions on Roman Catholics and Jews advising the Crown on appointments in the Anglican Church. Perhaps she will take this opportunity, either now or in a letter, to set out in further detail what is intended. It might be helpful to know when the Government intend to bring such proposals forward, which I am inclined to think that we on this side would want to support.
In conclusion, we wholeheartedly support the Bill. We wish to see it pass swiftly through your Lordships’ House ahead of the next meeting of the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland in May this year, as the noble Baroness told us. We have absolutely no doubt that Lady Elish Angiolini will fulfil her duties assiduously and we wish her well as she prepares to take up her important role as Lord High Commissioner.
which of course they are. Indeed, they help to implement convention rights. The noble Baroness’s equivalent in 1829 would not have been able to make such a declaration, which is a sign of the times. I am not quite sure what happened then—whether it was the fact that the Church of Scotland and others in Scotland made representations to the Duke of Wellington for the exclusion, or whether it was just that, knowing the slightly febrile situation in the religious atmosphere of Scotland in the early 19th century, the Government took the view that it was probably better to avoid such a controversy. But controversy there would have been and there was no way it would have been acceptable in 1829.
Nor, I am ashamed to say, would it have been acceptable in 1929. During a shameful period in the Church of Scotland’s history in the 1920s and early 1930s, General Assemblies often became obsessive about Irish immigration into Scotland. They perceived a threat to our cultural identity and that the people coming in would take Scottish jobs, and some Scots demanded immediate repatriation. Now, we may have echoes of some things that are going on today, but we should remind ourselves that these attitudes were there. I think it says something that the person we are discussing today, Lady Elish, is of Irish descent, and a female Roman Catholic of Irish descent becoming the Lord High Commissioner shows the progress that we have made. In 1935, thousands demonstrated violently in Edinburgh when the freedom of the city was granted to the Prime Minister of Australia, Joseph Lyons, because he was a Roman Catholic. That was less than 90 years ago and it shows just what we have to do.
Progress has been made. Ecumenical links have been strengthened over the years and, as has already been referred to, the St Margaret declaration of friendship between the Church of Scotland and the Roman Catholic Church in Scotland, in which as moderator I was pleased to play a part, was delivered and achieved on the back of much mutual respect and good will, not least on the part of the Scottish Catholic Bishops’ Conference by Archbishop Leo Cushley. It was signed in November 2022 and was seen as a landmark and, I hope, as a signal to the rest of Scotland.
However, to say that everything in the garden is rosy would be wrong. When my predecessor as Moderator of the General Assembly, the very reverend Dr Martin Fair, made his valedictory address to the General Assembly in 2021, among the things he said was the Kirk’s mission. He said:
“For as long as anti-Catholic, anti-Irish bile is spewed onto our streets by so-called football fans - there is work for us to do”.
I think we would certainly endorse that.
The St Margaret declaration says in its very first paragraph:
“We recognise each other as brothers and sisters in Christ, and we wish to express our friendship and respect for one another as fellow Christians, citizens and partners in announcing the kingdom of God in our land”.
I would say amen to that. This Bill is in the spirit of that declaration.
It will not be her function to participate in the work of the assembly or to perform any religious duties. She will sit high above in the Royal Gallery as an observer, from where her only function will be to deliver two speeches, one at the opening and the other at the closing sederunt. Her opening speech will, as tradition requires, begin by stating that His Majesty the King has commanded her to assure those attending the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland of his great sense of their steady and firm zeal for his service and to assure them on his behalf of his resolution to maintain the Presbyterian Church covenant in Scotland. She will also offer to the incoming moderator warmest congratulations on her appointment and wish her a most happy and successful year in office. Her final speech will end by, in the King’s name, bidding everyone farewell and, in between, she will attend the General Assembly’s morning services throughout the week and a Sunday service in St Giles’ Cathedral, where she will sit in a place of honour as the King’s representative.
Those are the formal requirements. As for the rest, there is an immensely busy programme of ceremonial: of receptions, of lunches and dinners which she must host, and of visits to organisations and places of the kind that His Majesty would have wished to do had he been there. She will travel everywhere in a car with no number plate, with a police escort to speed her through the traffic. She will reside, throughout the week, in the Palace of Holyroodhouse, where a large and rather beautiful fountain will always play in the courtyard. A guard of honour will be on parade and the full national anthem will be played whenever she appears at the door of the palace to carry out her duties elsewhere on the King’s behalf.
All good things must come to an end of course. The police escort will have disappeared when she returns to her car at the end of the closing sederunt. When she returns to the palace, she will find, like Cinderella, that the guard of honour has disappeared and the fountain has been turned off. She will then have to use her own car when she drives herself home. But she will have an audience with His Majesty some weeks later, to report to him on her week as his High Commissioner, and there is the possibility that, all being well, she will be invited to do the same next year. For all this, she has my very best wishes.
We are indeed fortunate to have heard participate in our debate today the noble and learned Lord, Lord Wallace of Tankerness, who is a recent Moderator of the Church of Scotland, as we also are to have heard from the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hope of Craighead, as a previous Lord High Commissioner to its General Assembly.
As standard-bearer for Scotland, it is a great honour and privilege for me to carry the royal banner of Scotland at the opening of the General Assembly every May, and, among the large gathering of those attending, to be able to witness an unequivocal solidarity of good purpose and good will.
Not least does this attitude, and that of the Church of Scotland, also reflect a positive approach towards those of other faiths. For, as the noble and learned Lord, Lord Wallace of Tankerness, has said, the Church of Scotland already works with other churches in Scotland and across the world to form ecumenical partnership bodies, such as ACTS, or Action of Churches Together in Scotland; CEC, the Conference of European Churches; and WCC, the World Council of Churches.
To some extent, this achievement of the Church of Scotland is perhaps mirrored here by the Lords spiritual, mentioned in a moving Committee stage tribute last week by the noble Lord, Lord Moore of Etchingham, who himself has converted to Catholicism. For, in the context of ecumenism, he eloquently explained how and why two otherwise different objectives become consistent with one another instead.
The first is that within a reformed House, yet on their same Bench and under their existing statute, the Lords spiritual would continue to speak for all Christian faiths as they anyway naturally do, rather than just for the Anglican faith.
However, the second is that HOLAC should in any case separately appoint to this House some different faith representatives, to sit here on the same Bench as our existing independent non-political Cross-Bench Peers.
The parallel to that is the way in which Scottish Presbyterianism, while remaining the established form of church government in Scotland, already reaches out to welcome and respect other Christian faiths and their different forms of Christian worship, thereby also embracing free speech, free thinking and free worship: the cornerstones of the European Convention on Human Rights, which we debate tomorrow, in a debate introduced by the noble Lord, Lord Alton. In commemorating its 75th anniversary, we give thanks for what this convention has done and will continue to do.
For that is not just to heal the wounds of Europe. It is also to provide soft power direction and stability throughout the world.
So where does Scottish society stand? In the other place, it was the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster who piloted this Bill. He, like me, attended a west of Scotland secondary school 40 years ago, but on a different side of the divide. Later, as fellow students, we talked about sectarianism. Therefore, as a daughter of the manse, I learned about Irish music, the bookies and Guinness. These were stories that I did not share with my teetotal granny, who, like Keir Hardie, has signed the pledge at 17 and celebrated Hogmanay with ginger wine.
This enrichment from getting to know other communities and traditions has since accelerated. My children have just completed 12 years in Glasgow schools and witnessed little of the past tensions. As a Glasgow friend pithily summed it up to me last weekend, “Wendy, in our youth there were 50,000 people singing sectarian songs on the terraces; now it’s just 10,000”. The data bears this out. Today, religious hate crimes number 500 a year in Scotland, while race hate crimes hover around a shameful 4,000. Therefore, the best verdict on sectarianism is perhaps, “Down, but not yet out”.
My final word is about the future. This Bill—very belatedly—enshrines tolerance. We should all take pride that last year, Scotland had a Muslim First Minister and the UK had a Hindu Prime Minister. As we look around our world today, we must not only defend but celebrate difference.
There is something else to be proud of: this is a Scottish Bill—an exceptionally rare thing in Westminster these days. The passing of power to Holyrood a quarter of a century ago ended the era where Scottish legislation piled up at the end of a very long Westminster queue. Holyrood, of course, was the stage on which Lady Elish first shone. I wish her godspeed; we look forward to her Sermon on the Mount, and I hope the General Assembly impresses this most able of Lord High Commissioners with its wisdom, kindness and compassion.
Back to Scotland: from what I have heard, it seems as though this anomalous situation arising never occurred to anyone before the decision to appoint the new Lord High Commissioner was well advanced. Hence the need for speed in these legislative changes, which need to be in place before the General Assembly meets in May. If true, that seems rather extraordinary. I hope there will now be a re-examination of the Roman Catholic Relief Act 1829 and all other legislation relating to religious discrimination which may remain on the statute book to ensure that we do not have to carry out such an exercise again. I am encouraged to know that the Government seem to have agreed to consider this.
In the meantime, I find the monarch’s appointment of the Lord High Commissioner very refreshing. With understanding and diplomacy, it must surely be a very positive and progressive initiative. Of course, there is one remaining area of discrimination. I hardly dare mention it, but what if the monarch or a successor were to adopt the Catholic faith? That would be a totally new and mighty challenge, even to the most reasonable minds in this House.
I wish the new Lord High Commissioner all the very best in her new role. I just hope that she will have enough time to attend matches at both Ibrox and Celtic Park.