The Regency: The Contemporary Record

ALCOTT: Parliament at Westminster has been recalled, and ABC World News has the BBC’s Jonah Feld outside the House of Commons. Jonah, it is twenty to seven in the morning there.

FELD: It is, Stephen, and the Members have been ringing each other since a little after six, because they have been told to be here by eleven and most of them are in the country.

Downing Street put out two lines. Both Houses are recalled today, and the business is a bill to make provision for the performance of the royal functions. That is the language of the regency legislation, and it is what was used on the twenty-sixth of September when the delegation to the Queen was made.

ALCOTT: What do we not know.

FELD: We do not know the text, and I would not guess at it. We do not know who the bill names, if it names anyone. We know that the delegation of the twenty-sixth was under the existing legislation, which allows the King’s functions to be delegated when he cannot perform them and allows nothing beyond that. It does not provide a Regent. If the government wants a Regent, it needs an Act, and that is what a recall of both Houses on a Monday morning means.

ALCOTT: And the evidence.

FELD: I am told that evidence will be laid before the House with the bill. I have not been told what. I would think it is the evidence of the King’s physicians, which is what the Realm acted on on Saturday, but I have it from nobody and I am saying what I think.

ALCOTT: And the Queen.

FELD: The Palace in London says that it is a matter for Parliament, and the British High Commission in New Westminster has not said anything at all.

ALCOTT: Jonah, thank you. We will be back at Westminster when the House sits.

ALCOTT: The bill has been introduced. The BBC’s Jonah Feld is in the press gallery.

FELD: Stephen, the Prime Minister, Alistair Rennie, rose at ten past eleven and introduced a bill of four sections. I have the text in front of me, and I am going to read the first section, because it is the one that matters.

“Parliament declares that it is satisfied, upon the evidence of physicians, that His Majesty is by reason of infirmity of body incapable for the time being of performing the royal functions. Those functions shall be performed in the name and on behalf of His Majesty by Queen Christina as Regent.”

The Queen is named. Section two provides that she may not act as Regent until she has taken an oath before not fewer than three members of the Privy Council, and it says that she may take it whether within the United Kingdom or elsewhere, which is the part that will be asked about. Section three says that she acts on the advice of His Majesty’s ministers in the United Kingdom and may not assent to any bill changing the order of succession. Section four ends the regency when each House resolves that the King is again capable, or on the demise of the Crown.

ALCOTT: And the evidence.

FELD: It was laid with the bill, a single sheet, and I am going to read it, because it is short and I think it should be heard whole.

FELD: Two things about that. It is the certificate on which the Realm acted on Saturday, the same document, signed in the small hours of the thirtieth. And the phrase in it is “incapable for the time being”. It does not say permanently, and the physicians say in the last paragraph that they are not saying what comes afterwards.

ALCOTT: Is the Queen in the House.

FELD: No, Stephen. She is in New Westminster. The three privy counsellors the Act envisages are in the air. The Lord President of the Council, Dame Imogen Fairweather, the Foreign Secretary, Gethin Marlowe, and the Attorney General, Sir Anand Deshmukh, left Northolt at ten to nine this morning, our time, on an aircraft of the Royal Air Force, which is two hours and twenty minutes before the bill was introduced. They are going to New Westminster to swear her.

ALCOTT: Before the Act.

FELD: Before the House had seen it. A minister said to me in the lobby that they were being sent in order to be there when it was needed, and that nobody had said it might not be.

ALCOTT: Jonah, thank you.

ALCOTT: The House of Commons has passed the bill without a division. The BBC’s Jonah Feld.

FELD: It has, Stephen, at about ten past two, after three hours. Nobody voted against it, and nobody was asked to.

There was one question that was the one I expected. A member from the back benches asked whether it was right that the reigning Queen of another state should be Regent of Great Britain. The Attorney General is on the aircraft, so the Solicitor General, Fiona Brathwaite, answered it, and said so. I wrote down what she said:

“The Act names her. Parliament may choose a Regent from whom it likes, as it chose the Prince of Wales in 1811. What Parliament may not do is give the choice to anyone else, and it has not. She acts on the advice of this Government and no other, and she may not assent to a bill changing the succession. The Queen of Sweden is the Sovereign’s consort. She is Regent of Great Britain in nothing but what this Act makes her.”

The member sat down. That was the only objection to the substance of it.

ALCOTT: And the Opposition.

FELD: Sir Hugh Lennard, the Leader of the Opposition, spoke at about one. He said, and this is the whole of his support, one sentence: “We support the bill, because the Crown must not be left without a hand.” And then he said that he wished to put one question to the Prime Minister, and he did. He asked what happens if the Queen of Sweden’s two offices should ever pull in different directions, as head of state of one country and Regent of another, and whether the Government had thought what happens on the day they do.

ALCOTT: The Prime Minister’s answer.

FELD: There was none, Stephen. Mr Rennie stood, thanked the Leader of the Opposition for his support, and sat down. He did not mention the question. Nobody pressed him, and the Speaker put the Question.

The line he did say, earlier, in moving the bill, is the one you will hear quoted. He said that Britain was making provision for its own Crown in its own Parliament and was following nobody.

ALCOTT: Jonah, thank you.

ALCOTT: First, the King. New Westminster General Hospital issued a bulletin at eight o’clock this morning. Grace Ebanks.

EBANKS: Stephen, it is four lines. His Majesty’s condition is unchanged, he remains unconscious and stable, and there will be no further statement today. The hospital has said nothing since. I would add that there is nothing to add, and I am not going to make something of the silence, because it is what a hospital says when there is no change.

ALCOTT: And Prince Frederick.

EBANKS: The Prince of Columbia went back to Ellicott High School this morning, as he did on the twenty-eighth. The school has said nothing, as before. The corporation is reporting that he went, because it has been reported everywhere and is not in doubt. It is not showing the photograph that other outlets have used, and it will not. He is fifteen, and he went to school.

ALCOTT: Thank you, Grace. At eleven o’clock the House of Commons met, and the Speaker made a statement. Delia Moreno.

MORENO: Stephen, Mark Kelly was on his feet at one minute past eleven, and he spoke for about three minutes. He said that he was reporting, as he had undertaken to report, an exercise of the power in the Regency Act 1811. He said that on Saturday the thirtieth of September the five officers named in the Act, the Governor-General, the Chief Justice, the Lord Speaker, the Prime Minister and himself, had met at ten o’clock and declared the King incapable, on the evidence of physicians, and that all five had signed.

ALCOTT: And the note.

MORENO: He read the note. He said that he had written beneath his signature that he signed because the King is unconscious and for no other reason, and that the declaration should end when the King wakes. He said that it had no force in law and that he meant it anyway. He said that the rule had been written down for Gabrielle Giffords and that the King was owed it too. Nobody said anything, and the House moved on.

ALCOTT: The Prime Minister was in the House.

MORENO: He was, and afterwards he was in the Members’ Lobby, and I asked him about London. I said that Britain’s Act would be passed today, on the same medical evidence the Realm had acted on, and I asked him what he made of that. He said: “It is Britain’s arrangement, made in Britain’s Parliament, and I welcome it.” That is the whole of it.

ALCOTT: Is that a statement from Charter House.

MORENO: No, Stephen, and I have been asked by his office to say so in as many words. Charter House has issued no statement. The Prime Minister answered a question in a corridor.

ALCOTT: Delia, thank you.

ALCOTT: The House of Lords has passed the bill. The BBC’s Jonah Feld.

FELD: It has, Stephen, at about twenty past five, without a division. It took them fifty minutes. A hereditary peer, Lord Hexworth, asked whether the House was content that the Regent of Great Britain should be sworn in a foreign country, and the Leader of the House, Viscount Cranmere, said that section two provided for it, that the Queen would not leave the King’s bedside, and that it was the same oath. Lord Hexworth said that he had wished it said and that he was content. The House passed the bill and then the business of the House showed the royal assent as its next item.

ALCOTT: Jonah, thank you.

ALCOTT: That is the last stage. The Regency Act 2028 has received the royal assent, and Queen Christina is Regent of Great Britain in law, though she has still to take the oath. We will bring you the oath when we have it.

ALCOTT: I have a correction, and I am making it before anything else. At twenty-five past twelve I told you that the Regency Act 2028 had received the royal assent. That was wrong. The House of Lords had passed the bill. The assent had not been given. I took the next item on the Lords’ business paper for something that had happened, and I did not put it to Westminster before I said it.

The Queen signed the commission at one o’clock, our time, and the assent took effect when the Clerk of the Parliaments signified it in the House of Lords at four minutes past. For thirty-nine minutes, what I told you was untrue. For twenty-one minutes after that it was true, and we did not know it, and I am telling you now. Jonah Feld.

FELD: Stephen, the Clerk of the Parliaments rose at four minutes past six, our time, and read the notification. The commission has been signed, and the Act has the royal assent. The Lords’ business was resumed for that and has now risen.

ALCOTT: Signed where.

FELD: Signed in New Westminster, and I will leave that to Grace.

EBANKS: Stephen, it was signed at one o’clock at Columbia Palace, by the Queen, under the delegation of the twenty-sixth of September, which was still in force. She came from the hospital to sign it. The Private Secretary’s deputies told me that she signed it in a few minutes and went back. It is the first Act of the British Parliament to have been assented to in America. She has given the royal assent, as the King’s delegate, to the Act that makes her his Regent.

ALCOTT: She assented to her own regency.

EBANKS: She signed the commission that assents to it, yes. The delegation under which she did it ends when she takes the oath, and not before.

ALCOTT: Grace, thank you. Jonah, thank you.

ALCOTT: The BBC’s Jonah Feld is in Whitehall, where it is dusk, and where the Prime Minister has been speaking.

FELD: He came out of Downing Street at about a quarter past six, Stephen, and spoke on the step for a little under two minutes, and I put it to him that Britain had passed an Act in a day to do what the Realm did on Saturday under its own, on the same evidence, and that people were saying Britain was following the Realm.

His answer was: “I said in the House what I will say here. We are making provision for our own Crown in our own Parliament. We are following nobody. I would be grateful if that were reported as I said it.”

I said that I would report it as he said it. He then said it a second time, to the camera, in exactly the words he had used the first time, and a little louder. He is a man who is saying that nothing follows from anything, and it is not helping.

ALCOTT: Is it true.

FELD: That Britain is following? I do not know, Stephen, and I do not think he does. The Realm acted on Saturday. Britain acted today. The evidence is the same and the Realm’s came first. What I can say is that nobody on the step believed him, and that he knew it.

ALCOTT: And the street.

FELD: I walked up to the Abbey and asked three people. A woman who had been in the public gallery of the Lords said it had been the quickest thing she had ever seen and that she had expected more. A man with a dog said he had not known there was a Regent in Sweden. And a retired schoolmaster, Mr Robert Pyke, who is seventy-eight and was crossing the road, said that he had taught the Regency of 1811 for forty years and that it had finally become current events. He said he was sorry to see it, and glad it had been done properly.

ALCOTT: Jonah, thank you.

ALCOTT: Britain has made the Queen of Sweden its Regent. We have not heard from Stockholm. Anders Halvorsen is there.

HALVORSEN: Stephen, I have not got much, and I want to say so first. I have spoken to officials in two ministries and to a member of the Riksdag’s committee on the constitution, and none of them will be named.

The Swedish government has issued no statement. What they said to me, and they said it in almost the same words, was that they have not decided what the question is. Whether the Queen of Sweden may lawfully exercise the functions of the British Crown, from outside Britain or from inside it, has not been put to anyone in the Swedish government for an answer. It is a question about Sweden’s law as well as Britain’s, because the Queen is a Swedish sovereign. Nobody in Stockholm has answered it, nobody has been asked to, and nobody I have spoken to seems to think that anyone should be.

ALCOTT: Is that a refusal.

HALVORSEN: It is not a refusal, Stephen. It is the honest state of it. They are waiting to see if anyone asks.

ALCOTT: Anders, thank you.

BARROW: Good evening. The Queen has been sworn as Regent of Great Britain. Grace Ebanks is at the British High Commission. Grace.

EBANKS: Naomi, I want to tell you what I saw and no more, because I saw very little.

The three British privy counsellors arrived at the High Commission at about twenty to six. They landed shortly before noon and have been at the High Commission most of the afternoon. They were the Lord President of the Council, Dame Imogen Fairweather, the Foreign Secretary, Gethin Marlowe, and the Attorney General, Sir Anand Deshmukh. They went in together. At five to six the Queen’s car came up to the High Commission and went in. It was the only car. She had come from the hospital. At twenty past six the car came out and went back the way it had come.

I saw nothing of the ceremony and neither did anyone, and the ABC has nothing from inside.

BARROW: The statement.

EBANKS: At twenty-five to seven the High Commissioner, Sir Duncan Maitland, came out onto the steps and read two sentences. “The Queen has this evening taken the oath of Regent of Great Britain before three Privy Counsellors, in accordance with the Regency Act 2028. Her Majesty has returned to the King’s bedside.” He took no questions.

BARROW: And Prince Frederick.

EBANKS: The Prince was not there, Naomi. Britain’s law gives the heir no part in this, and he is fifteen. He went home after school.

BARROW: Grace, thank you.

BARROW: London’s first editions are out. The BBC’s Jonah Feld has them. Jonah, it is half past three in the morning there.

FELD: It is, Naomi, and I have four of them on the desk. Every one of them has the Regency on the front page, and every one has the same photograph, which is the Prime Minister on the step.

I will give you the headlines that matter. One of them says that Britain made the Queen Regent in a day. One says that Parliament made provision for the Crown. Two of them put the same word in the headline, and I will say it: they say Britain followed the Realm, and one of the two says by two days.

A senior official at Downing Street, who would not be named, said to me that the Government does not accept that description. He was asked if it was wrong. He said that it was not the Government’s description, and that the Government would not be changing its own.

BARROW: Is that what London thinks.

FELD: I think it is what London reads, Naomi. The officials I have spoken to say that the Government wished the Act to look as though it was made in Britain by Britain, and the Act was, and the newspapers have written the story that the Government wished to avoid. That is a thing the Prime Minister cannot answer, and he has not tried to.

BARROW: Jonah, thank you.

The Parliament at Westminster declared King Ernest V incapable on Monday and made Queen Christina Regent of Great Britain, by an Act that passed both Houses in a single day without a division. The Queen was sworn at the British High Commission in New Westminster in the evening, by three British privy counsellors, and the delegation of the King’s British functions that she had held since 26 September ended with her oath.

The Prime Minister, Alistair Rennie, introduced the four-section Regency Act 2028 in the House of Commons at about eleven in the morning, London time, and laid with it the certificate of the King’s physicians at New Westminster General Hospital, which is the certificate on which the Realm declared the King incapable on Saturday. The bill passed the Commons at about ten past two and the Lords at about twenty past five.

The Queen signed the commission for the royal assent at Columbia Palace at one o’clock Eastern, under the delegation of 26 September, and the assent took effect when it was signified in the House of Lords at four minutes past six London time. It is the first Act of the British Parliament to be assented to in America.

The Lord President of the Council, Dame Imogen Fairweather, the Foreign Secretary, Gethin Marlowe, and the Attorney General, Sir Anand Deshmukh, left London in the morning and swore the Queen at the High Commission at six o’clock Eastern. The Queen came from the hospital and returned to it. The ceremony was private and nothing was recorded.

The King’s condition is unchanged. The hospital said at eight o’clock that he remains unconscious and stable.

Stockholm has said nothing. Officials there told the ABC that they have not decided what the question is.

The ABC reported at 12:25 p.m. that the Act had received the royal assent. It had not taken effect at that time. It took effect at four minutes past one. The corporation corrected the report at 1:25 p.m.