Labour's claim that Prince Andrew's titles are nothing to do with them​ is nonsense, says Jacob Rees-Mogg

A peerage has always been different. Titles offered specifically by the Crown are in a higher category, and they can be taken away in one of three ways.

The most extreme way is an act of attainder, and this was used against one of the more difficult brothers of Edward the Fourth.

You will remember that Clarence was attainted and then drowned in a but of malmsey, and I think even Prince Andrew's fiercest critics would not be suggesting that he be taken to the tower and drowned in a but of malmsey.

The second way is an act of pains and penalties, and this is a way that has not been used, not tried since 1820, when the aim was to take away the title of Queen from Queen Caroline in a very messy divorce case between her and George the Fourth, but the pains and penalties allows titles to be removed, taken away, downgraded. But it does require parliamentary time.

What happened with Queen Caroline was that it became a trial in the House of Lords, and it became very grubby. Lots of details came out. It was damaging both to the Queen and to the King. And after the majority in the House of Lords withered away, they decided not to put it to the House of Commons. So it never went through.

But it would deal with the specific point of taking away the dukedom, and indeed, if necessary, the title of prince, which comes under the letters patent of George V, issued in 1917.

The Garter can be taken away by degradation, and I think the last person to have the Garter removed was the Emperor Hirohito, who then got it back again when he came on a state visit some years after the war. So that's relatively routine in the scheme of things.

The third way of doing it is a general act, not a specific act for Prince Andrew, but one that would allow peerages and titles of honour above the ordinary rank to be taken away by the King on the advice of his ministers, and this was done in 1917 under the Titles Deprivation Act, to take dukedoms and indeed a viscountcy away from people who had been fighting for the enemy.

It was limited, it only applied to the current war, and it had a Privy Privy Council committee that would be set up to determine whether titles should be removed.

This is a way of doing it without making it absolutely specific, without getting into issues of fairness. But it has the difficulty of where do you stop? Who else would you like to see titles taken away from?

In 1917, it said enemies of the country and the Current War. And that was pretty obvious. But would you now have a bill that suggested titles should be taken away from friends of Epstein? And therefore, would you put Peter Mandelson on the list, or would you have a more general act?

Do you start going into Baroness Mone and looking at people who you don't particularly like, and what conditions do you have to set?

Because it's very easy to say somebody has behaved badly, but not to a criminal extent, and therefore we should punish them. But how fair is it to have punishment without criminal action?

So it seems to me, if the Government wants to deal with this, and the Government is saying it's nothing to do with them, it's all the Royal Family is nonsense. The King and a constitutional monarchy cannot act except with the advice of his Prime Minister.

The Prime Minister has a direct role in this. But if the Government wants to deal with it, I think 1820 precedent, an act of pains and penalties, should be introduced to remove the titles of the Prince Andrew. And that would be the neatest way of dealing with it. But it's not risk free, as Parliament could get bogged down much longer than would be intended.