Registration of Marriage Bill [HL]

Lord Desai Excerpts

2nd reading (Hansard): House of Lords
Friday 26th January 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Desai (Lab)]

My Lords, I speak as someone who in his youth thought marriage would become obsolete by the time he grew up, but that was not to be. I welcome the Bill, especially the fact that the mother’s name will be added to the father’s name, but I wonder, in the days of IVF and such things, whether the concept of mother and father would be applicable with such certainty everywhere. Perhaps we will need another Bill in another 10 years to clarify that.

I speak as a humanist, and practically all that I wish to say has been said by my noble friend Lady Bakewell. I shall therefore say just that I welcome the introduction of the mother’s name, I welcome the conversion to online registration, and I wish that the noble Baroness’s amendment receives as much support as the Bill.