Marriage (Same Sex Couples) Bill

Debate between Baroness Williams of Crosby and Lord Waddington

Monday 17th June 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Waddington]

I am afraid that the noble Lord is wrong about that. It was certainly true that in Spain there was a relaxation in divorce at the time of the introduction of same-sex marriage, but I am talking about new marriages. There was a big decline in new marriages in Spain since the change came about. So it seems obvious that if marriage between same-sex couples is to be allowed, at the very least it should be made clear that it is very different from traditional marriage.

[Baroness Williams of Crosby]

My Lords, political decisions are often influenced by issues of conscience. Speaking for myself, I have never confronted a more difficult decision than the one about equal marriage in the Bill that confronts us today. I voted against the amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Dear, because I believe that the House had a duty to look scrupulously at and scrutinise carefully every detail of this complicated Bill. I also believe that it was wrong to try to nullify a decision made in the other House as a result of a substantial majority on a free vote. Since then, I have had to confront the outcome of that and, with others in this House, consider very carefully the proposals before the Committee.

In my view, marriage has been for a long time the foundation of family life in this country and elsewhere. In that case, I believe that it is indeed a framework for procreation and the raising of children. As we all know, among mammals, human beings take longer to reach maturity than virtually any other creature on the planet. It takes between 15 and 18 years for a child to mature—if one takes an optimistic view—and I think many of us recognise that nowadays the actual figure may be well over 20. What that means is that we are looking at a very different proposition from other mammals. We are looking at what has to be a very large part of a life’s commitment to raise children properly, which is a very substantial factor that we have not yet considered sufficiently.

As my noble friend Lord Alderdice has pointed out, the evidence from social workers and psychiatrists suggests—I will not put it more strongly than that—that it looks as if a marriage between a man and a woman is probably the best and most stable basis for raising children that we have so far invented. I would also suggest that there is another factor than simply the biological one. Of course, we know that there is a biological difference between the genders but it is also critical to say that there is a difference between the approaches of the genders to a whole range of issues. As the famous American writer Carol Gilligan pointed out in her book, In a Different Voice, women and men approach relationships, and very often their relationships with the whole of society, rather differently; above all, they complement one another. That is the basis of what is known in the churches as holy matrimony and something that we have to consider very carefully indeed.

Traditional marriage also gives equal value to parents of both genders. In a moving statement yesterday, Mr Lammy, the Member of Parliament for Tottenham, pointed out that there had been a serious devaluation of the role of fathers in our society, citing his own experience as the child of a single-parent family. Today hundreds of thousands of children—more than 1 million—are being brought up without fathers or mothers or another permanent, loving or male presence. Single-parent families often display truly amazing—indeed, nearly miraculous—commitment to their children. Many of them are the breadwinners as well as the main carers for their families. I am often breathless with amazement at the extraordinary courage and dedication that the heads of single-parent families bring to that duty. But often they find it utterly exhausting to try to handle the whole burden on their own. That is not to condemn in any way single-parent families but to say loudly and clearly that the role of fathers should once again be sustained by the state and by society because they are such a crucial element in sustaining a long-lasting and loving family between two parents.

However, of course there is a different side to the argument. The most reverend Primate the Archbishop of Canterbury said that he had been stunned by the quality of some of the relationships between gay men and lesbian women that he had come across. I accede to that completely. Among my own friends, some of the most remarkable examples of human union that I have ever come across are between my gay and lesbian friends and their partners. Therefore, why should there be any difference in the nomenclature? The distinction is perhaps best made by pointing out the very different roles, as has been done already by several speakers in this debate, of a marriage that is based on the outcome of procreation—the long-term maturing of children—and a relationship that is based on the huge, total and intimate relationship between two people who wish to live their lives together.

Quite straightforwardly, the churches have a great responsibility in being asked to be forgiven for some of the attitudes taken towards gay people in the past. The Christian churches are fundamentally about forgiveness—not about vengeance, but about forgiveness. Jesus Christ asked not only that human beings be forgiven but that human beings forgive one another for their mutual and reciprocal sins. I say loudly and clearly that the Christian churches, believing as they do in forgiveness, should ask forgiveness for the long, abusive and often cruel treatment of gay people over many years. I hope that that is something they will address now that they are under charitable and understanding leadership.

Estates of Deceased Persons (Forfeiture Rule and Law of Succession) Bill

Debate between Baroness Williams of Crosby and Lord Waddington

Wednesday 15th June 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Waddington]

My Lords, as usual, my noble friend Lady Falkner hit the nail absolutely on the head. One effect of the amendment would be that at every general election all parties would be asked to pledge themselves to revive the Act. That is the effect of this amendment. They will so pledge, at their peril, because, make no mistake about it, this Bill will be popular with the public as the public want more say over what is happening in Europe. The public are fed up with Parliament ceding more and more powers to Europe without any consent from the people whatever.

The only difficulty is that there will be a period at the beginning of each Parliament when the Act will not operate. That could cause difficulties and it will certainly not increase confidence in British Governments’ handling of European matters. I would have thought that that was one of the most important matters with which we are concerned in this legislation. We want to increase confidence and not destroy it. I cannot imagine anything more likely to destroy confidence than having a period at the beginning of each Parliament when the safeguard for the British people did not operate. In practice, of course, it will not happen because every single party, as a matter of self-preservation, will say, “Of course we will renew the Act”.

[Baroness Williams of Crosby]

My Lords, I would like to follow the noble Lord, Lord Grenfell, because he has been correct in what he indicated. In debates in this House, we have had a great deal of speculation because we live in a world where we cannot be sure what the future will look like. Increasingly, that is the kind of world in which we live. The noble Lord, Lord Grenfell, who has profound experience, having been, for many years, the chairman of the European scrutiny committee, is absolutely correct in what he says. We are passing legislation which is likely to be tested by coming events in future years and yet we are doing it without giving ourselves any provision for insisting on a review of what we do over the next decade or so.

I shall mention one or two of the speculations that we have discussed in these debates and not agreed upon. One is the proposition which has been advanced on several occasions by the noble Lords, Lord Kerr and Lord Hannay, which is about the possibility that our representatives in Brussels ministerial meetings will find it extremely difficult to support even those things that they profoundly and sincerely believe are in the British national interest because of a fear of setting off a referendum. The noble Lord, Lord Kerr, may be right in that and he may be wrong, but the only way to find that out is by experience over the next few years.

Secondly, there has been a great deal of speculation about whether there will be major new issues that might require an amendment to the treaties. Curiously, the noble Lord, Lord Howell of Guildford, hinted at one such when he talked about the possible major revisions of the European Union Stability Pact. Of course, that applies only to eurozone countries, but anyone who believes that it will have no implications for the United Kingdom must be living in a world a very long way away from the global financial world of which we are a part today.

We are talking about speculations, but that does not mean that we should not pass Acts of Parliament; it means that the case for looking at them and requiring them to be looked at is extraordinarily strong, and stronger than the case for almost any other kind of legislation that one can think of. I differ a little from the noble Lord, Lord Lamont, much as I respect him, because I can think of quite a few bits of legislation, with domestic implications, that would have gained from a sunset clause. There are one or two pieces of legislation all of us today would be only too happy to have seen off the statute book if there had been an opportunity to revisit them, which there so rarely is.

My next point is with regard to the coalition agreement. On this, I address specifically my friends in the Liberal Democrat and Conservative parties. The coalition agreement, in its wisdom, made it absolutely clear that we should be willing to accept a referendum lock on major amendments to treaties. That is what it says. The major amendments to treaties that we talked about in these meetings, and here in debates in the House of Lords, have ranged from changes to the Schengen agreement, changes to the original euro agreement, and changes that might introduce a common foreign policy or a common defence policy. I freely admit that in this Chamber, we are all agreed—I congratulate the Government on persuading us on this—that there should indeed be a referendum lock on this limited number of crucial issues.

It is also clear that many Members of this Chamber are profoundly concerned, as my noble friend, Lord Taverne, pointed out, about the thought that that group of very tightly disciplined and described referenda might drift into a general practice of referenda of a kind that will destroy parliamentary government; to put it in a non-abstruse phrase: adding a kind of Berlusconi sauce to the solid pasta of British parliamentary practice. I, for one, would be most reluctant to go along that track. My noble friend Lady Falkner is quite right to draw our attention to that, but at no point does the coalition agreement come to terms with the idea that now we will be imposing every change in the passerelles to a referendum—not just an Act of Parliament but a referendum. No one in the coalition is obliged to support that because it is not part of what was agreed in that original agreement.

My third and final point is precisely the one made by the noble Lord, Lord Waddington, and my noble friend Lady Falkner and I take exactly the opposite view. It seems to me that one of the great advantages of proposing that there should be a review at the beginning of each Parliament is exactly that that will drive the debate back in the general election itself. What more democratic a structure could one choose to find, one where people would be likely to vote, likely to show an interest, likely to debate the issues before them in television, radio and in the street, than a general election? There is the fact that we would have to agree this legislation again at the beginning of each Parliament, in its very simple and short way, as has been pointed out—the statutory instrument agreed by both Houses. It would take no more than 24 hours, if one wanted to do it that way. The essential point is that no more democratic a process could be found than a general election, in which we should reach a decision on whether we want to continue with this legislation. That is far better than suddenly plucking a referendum out of the air at some point in the Parliament, when most people would be interested in other things and its salience would be low.

So on the grounds of the speculative basis on which we are passing this legislation, of extension of referenda far beyond what our Parliament would want to see and of forcing the general elections to take on a major debate of our relationship with Europe and all the trust that would flow from an election result, I believe that the case for a sunrise and sunshine amendment—I say sunshine deliberately—could not be better argued. I strongly support the amendment in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Kerr, and his colleagues.