Counsellors of State Act 2022

2022 CHAPTER 47

An Act to add His Royal Highness The Earl of Wessex and Her Royal Highness The Princess Royal to the persons to whom royal functions may be delegated as Counsellors of State.

[6th December 2022]

Whereas Your Majesty, by Your Majesty’s Royal Message to both Houses of Parliament, has confirmed that Your Majesty would be most content, should Parliament see fit, for the number of people who may be called upon to act as Counsellors of State under the terms of the Regency Acts 1937 to 1953 to be increased to include Her Royal Highness The Princess Royal and His Royal Highness The Earl of Wessex and Forfar, both of whom have previously undertaken this role;

Now, therefore, we, Your Majesty’s most dutiful and loyal subjects, the Lords Spiritual and Temporal, and Commons, in this present Parliament assembled, do most humbly beseech Your Majesty that it be enacted, and

Be it enacted by the King’s most Excellent Majesty, by and with the advice and consent of the Lords Spiritual and Temporal, and Commons, in this present Parliament assembled, and by the authority of the same, as follows:—

1 Additional Counsellors of State

(1) Section 6 of the Regency Act 1937 (power to delegate royal functions to Counsellors of State) has effect as if the persons required by subsection (2) of that section to be the Counsellors of State for the purposes of any delegation of royal functions under that section included—

(a) His Royal Highness The Earl of Wessex, during his lifetime, and

(b) Her Royal Highness The Princess Royal, during her lifetime.

(2) Any requirement imposed by subsection (1) is subject to the proviso in subsection (2) of section 6 of that Act and to subsection (2A) of that section (powers to except a person who is absent from the United Kingdom and disqualification from being a Counsellor of State).

2 Short title and commencement

(1) This Act may be cited as the Counsellors of State Act 2022.

(2) This Act comes into force on the day after it is passed.