Government backs down on changing royal succession

11.26.00am BST (GMT +0100) Mon 12th May 2008

In a newspaper interview earlier this month, Solicitor General Vera Baird said the male right to succeed ahead of an older sister was "unfair" and it was reported that MPs would use new equality legislation to change the law. The government has now said it has no immediate plans to scrap a 300-year-old law that gives males precedence in the royal line of succession.

The current law, the 1701 Act of Settlement, means male heirs take precedence over the British throne. When Princess Anne was born in 1950 she was third in line to the throne, behind her mother the Queen - then Princess Elizabeth - and her older brother Prince Charles. As her brothers Andrew and Edward were born, she dropped down the line of succession behind them and their children and is now currently 10th.