Marriage (Same Sex Couples) Bill

Debate between Lord Anderson of Swansea and Lord Baker of Dorking

Monday 24th June 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Anderson of Swansea]

My Lords, the purpose of the Committee stage, as I understand it, is to scrutinise draft Bills, to propose amendments and to seek, where possible, the concurrence of the Government with those amendments. It is sad that throughout this Bill the Government have taken the view that they were right from the start and that any amendments which have been proposed are either otiose, excessive or outwith the purpose of the Bill. Here is an occasion where the Government can perhaps show a little magnanimity and say that there is serious concern, as a number of noble colleagues have said. Although one might have some confidence in the guidance issued by the department, it is only guidance. It does not need wild speculation about what future Secretaries of State may or may not do. The wording in the Bill gives some assurance which I believe is proper.

Some of us in this House still consider ourselves to be politicians, even if lapsed ones. Surely one factor we should recognise from the start is that there is a clamour in this country to send children to religious and church schools. It is certainly my experience. Why is this so? The view of the great populace is to favour the discipline and ethos of those church schools for their children. I was interested a few years ago to have a friend who was a headmistress of a Church of England school in the East End and almost 100% of her pupils were Bangladeshi. Why did they choose the church school? Because that community recognised the value of church schools.

I am not a Roman Catholic—in fact I am a nonconformist—but I know from my experience as a constituency Member the quality of the Roman Catholic tradition. Perhaps I might say in passing to the right reverend Prelate, I endorsed all that he said. He spoke well, not only on behalf of the Church of England, but also on behalf of the Roman Catholic Church. I was musing to myself as he spoke; would it not be good, from the point of view of the quality of legislation in this House, if we had some senior members of the Roman Catholic faith who could put their own views forward directly and not rely on the good will of someone who is part of a separated brethren?

Be that as it may, we are where we are and have to accept that a vast number of people want to send their children to those schools. They approve of the ethos of those schools. The Government purport throughout that they have provided adequate protections—the quadruple lock in relation to the Church of England and the protections in respect of teachers and parents. If they are so keen to provide those protections, let it be absolutely clear that here on the face of the Bill is the opportunity to do just that. In my judgment it is not otiose. It will have widespread acceptance from those who really value the ethos and values of our church schools. It is a test of how serious the Government are when they talk so much not only about the core principles of this Bill but the counterpart—a readiness to provide adequate protection for those who wish to continue in their own ethos, who accept the new legal basis but wish to continue to put forward the traditional views of marriage.

[Lord Baker of Dorking]

My Lords, I did not intend to speak in this debate but I have been referred to a few times, due only to the fact that I think I am the only living person in the Chamber who has been Secretary of State for Education.

I feel that this amendment is unnecessary for a variety of reasons. I speak as an Anglican and was rather surprised that my church had taken the view that it has on same-sex marriage. The law of the land will be changed on same-sex marriage, and for the established church to say in effect that it is contracting out of it and not to allow its churches to be used for it is not, I would have thought, in the tradition of Anglicanism—not the Anglicanism that I favour. The history of the Church of England from 1533 onwards shows that it is not so much a question of the tenets or the 39 articles but of what happened with individual vicars in their parish churches. If you look at how English vicars interpreted Anglicanism in the 17th and 18th centuries, there is an infinite variety of activity. I should have thought the Anglican church would have done much better to have followed that practice than the one that it has followed.

That aside, on this particular matter, the position is in fact exceedingly clear. Where the state has provided birth control and various government agencies promote it, teachers in the Catholic Church will make it very clear that this is something which they object to and they think is fundamentally wrong. It is not a tenet of their faith but a practice, and the same is true of divorce. A great deal of discretion is already happening every day in our schools. I think it would happen in this case with the Anglican Church regarding sex education. I went to a primary church school in Lancashire and we did not have any sex education at all. I suppose that sex had not been discovered so much in those days. I even went to a secondary grammar school in Lancashire for two years and we did not have any sex education there either. I know we were very repressed sort of people—limited and all that—but it was alien to us.

Today it is clear that when sex education is taught in schools—I promoted it when I was Secretary of State—it is very much in the context of a loving relationship. It was the point that the noble Lord, Lord Pannick, made. It was not just the act of physical gratification—immediate and then finished with. It was to establish a loving relationship and that was a very essential part of all sex education. So when the matter of marriage comes up, it would be quite possible for any teacher, even a clergyman teacher at a Church of England school, to say they believed very strongly that marriage should be between a man and a wife and the purpose is to create a family. Even when he is talking to 12 and 13 year-olds, they will know a lot about other people who do not live like that. It has all changed today. It will not be a matter of teaching but of discussion—that is what it will be more like in actual practice. The teacher will be able to say, without fear of persecution and quite clearly, “This is the view that we believe in the Anglican Church at the moment, and we think that is the position”. So I believe that this amendment is not necessary.