Examining a number of government documents and reports from the British National Archives, reporters from the Guardian found that in the United Kingdom, during the reign of Elizabeth II, more than a thousand bills were subjected to a particular parliamentary procedure called the “Queen’s consent” (Queen’s consent). It is a procedure that allows the sovereign to examine and possibly block – but not modify – the bills that could interfere with her private interests. According to what the journalists have reconstructed, however, in some cases the “Queen’s consent” was also used by Elizabeth II to put pressure on parliament to change some laws to protect her.
The site of the royal family there describes as “a custom in force for a long time with which the parliament asks the Queen to give her consent for the discussion of bills that would affect the prerogatives or interests of the Crown”. The sovereign is consulted only if the laws could affect the ability to exercise his powers or concern all his assets and properties (“Crown estate”): in this case he can review the text of the law together with his lawyers and give or minus your consent.
The Guardian explained that this is a traditional procedure and that it is widely accepted: while the so-called “royal assent” procedure is a step that establishes the entry into force of a law, that of the “Queen’s consent” provides that ministers are required to inform the sovereign in a private manner, before the law is approved by members of parliament. Recourse to consent is reported in the official register of parliamentary debates, before the third reading of a bill, which is normally proposed by the House of Commons and then discussed and approved by the House of Lords. If the proposal does not get the consent of the Queen – a scenario that nevertheless occurs in very rare cases – it is not possible to proceed with the third reading.
The “Queen’s consent” procedure has been used on several occasions. In 2013, consent was sought to examine 11 rail-related bills, as the construction of the high-speed line between London and Birmingham would cross land owned by the sovereign. The procedure was also used between 2012 and 2014, when Elizabeth II and Prince Charles examined the bills relating to trust funds and those relating to inheritances and the role of trustees (both the Queen and other members of the royal family do part of several charitable organizations and associations).
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According to the investigation, from the beginning of Elizabeth II’s reign (1952) until today, at least 1,062 bills have been submitted to the consent of the Queen, and then examined by the sovereign or by Prince Charles. The data collected by Guardian indicate that this procedure was used much more often than had been believed and above all that in some cases the Queen would have put pressure on the government to partially modify the proposals.
In other cases, he wrote the Guardian, the Queen’s advisors would have called for the exclusion of Crown properties from laws affecting road safety, or pressured to change the guidelines on historic sites.
The bill that journalists have given the most attention to is the one on transparency of 1970. According to what has been reconstructed on Guardian, the Queen allegedly used the consent procedure to persuade parliament to change the law, with the aim of hiding the extent of the Crown’s private wealth from the public. The journalists noted that after the Queen’s intervention, parliament had inserted a clause in the bill that allowed all companies connected to the “heads of government” to be exempted from transparency obligations. This wording, according to the Guardian, it was explicitly about the Queen and was introduced to maintain secrecy about what her investments were, who was involved in her affairs and how much her properties were worth.
As the then official of the Department of Commerce and Industry, CM Drukker, who was involved in the discussion of the transparency law, explained, the Queen’s lawyers were interested in containing “the risk of inadvertent or indiscreet disclosure” of this information to the public. public, because the disclosure of these data would have been “embarrassing”.
Even today it is not known with certainty how much the Queen’s assets may be worth and among other things the members of the British royal family may not communicate their will to the citizens. For this reason, it is even more difficult to establish how much these riches amount to: according to some estimates, there are several hundred million pounds.
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The inquiry into the Queen’s consent has opened a new one debate on what significance this procedure has in the country’s democracy, given that according to the system of the constitutional monarchy the sovereign should not interfere with the legislative process in parliament.
Some laws that have been submitted to the Queen’s consent seem to be of little relevance to the Crown, for example that of 1986 on salmon fishing and that of 2019 on rules in private parking and on the regulation of the use of jaws. Consent was used in at least 10 housing policy bills, 5 pension laws, 7 on the National Health System (NHS) and at least 2 bills against animal abuse: in the case of a 2006, the Queen’s private residences were exempted from inspector controls to certify animal welfare.
According to Guardian it is still “unclear” why laws that do not appear to directly involve the Queen have been submitted to her consent. Some constitutionalists cited in articles about the investigation, such as Adam Tucker of the University of Liverpool, have said the procedure is anachronistic, especially when inserted into a democratic legislative process. For Robert Blackburn, a professor at King’s College London, consent would also bring with it the “inherent danger” that Prince Charles or “a future monarch” may “believe they have the right to impose their opinion on a certain bill. “.
The journalists of the Guardian they asked the Queen’s office how many times Elizabeth II had resorted to consent to ask the government to change the laws, but got no response. A spokesperson for the office, however, specified that the mechanism is used only in the event that the proposed laws concern the Queen personally, as a sovereign or as the owner of land and properties and employer. He then added that consent is “always guaranteed when requested by the government” and that “any assertion that the sovereign has blocked the legislation process is simply wrong.”
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