Marriage (Same Sex Couples) Bill

Debate between Lord Dobbs and Lord Stoddart of Swindon

Monday 24th June 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Dobbs]

My Lords, I will attempt to be very brief, I promise that. We have a flexible and unwritten constitution, which means that proposing a referendum in these circumstances is unusual, irregular but not improper. However, in my view, it is wholly wrong. I endorse almost every word that the noble Lord, Lord Fowler, said in his objections to the amendment. I add that there is something strange. I do not understand why the amendment insists that Peers would be denied a vote in this referendum. It is restricted to those entitled to vote at parliamentary elections. However, that is not my fundamental objection to the amendment. The noble Baroness, Lady Thornton, is as outraged as I am about it.

At the heart of the Bill is that we will no longer discriminate against individuals because of what they were born. If the noble Lord, Lord Anderson, believes that that is revolutionary then so be it. I would not resile from that description. We would not be considering the amendment if we were changing the law to give women equal rights with men or black people equal rights with whites. Would we throw the entire principle of equal rights into doubt in those cases by insisting on a referendum? I think not. I suspect we would find such a suggestion appalling.

I asked myself a very simple question about the amendment, as with so many amendments that we have discussed. If we were to strip the word gay or same-sex from it and replace it with black, women or, indeed, Welsh, what would happen? There would be rivers of outrage flooding throughout the country. That is why I believe the amendment to be entirely misconstrued. To discriminate against people for the way that they were born is wrong. In my view, it is indefensible. No amount of referendering could ever make that right.

[Lord Stoddart of Swindon]

I support the amendment moved by the noble Lord, Lord Anderson. Together with him, I suggested this solution at Second Reading. The fact is that this bit of legislation has undoubtedly split the country. All of us have had very abnormal postbags and e-mails in this context. Indeed, I have had the biggest postbag since I proposed, promoted and got through this House a Bill to ban same-sex wards. It is quite obviously something that the public think very strongly about. It can only really be tested through a referendum because it not only makes such a difference to an institution that has been around for some thousands of years but has constitutional implications. Those are some of the reasons why there should be a referendum.

The political parties have had their say and are virtually unanimous. The Cabinet has had its say; whether that was unanimous I do not know. The wider Government have had their say. The House of Commons, albeit with a so-called free vote, has had its say, and has made a decision. The House of Lords is having its say. The only people who are not having a say—because they have never been given the opportunity—are the wider public and the people who are going to be affected by the Bill. That is why I believe that there should be a referendum.

There is another reason: I am not satisfied by the way that the Bill has been gestated. The noble Lord, Lord Anderson, asked, “Why the speed? What do the Government want to go so fast for?”. As it so happens, I have a newspaper cutting here, from the Sunday Telegraph, of a very interesting article by Mr Christopher Booker. I am not going to read the whole article out, as it is a bit late for that, but I will read a part of it. He writes:

“As I recounted here on February 9, the drive to get same-sex marriage into law was masterminded from 2010 onwards by an alliance between Theresa May, the Conservative Home Secretary, Lynne Featherstone, the Lib Dem equalities minister, and gay pressure groups, led by one called Equal Love. They pushed the issue forward, not in Westminster, but through the Council of Europe, culminating in March last year with a day-long ‘secret conference’ chaired by Miss Featherstone in Strasbourg. With the public excluded for the first time in the Council’s history, it was here that—with the active support of Sir Nicolas Bratza, the British president of the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR)—a deadline was set for their planned coup of June 2013. If, by this date, ‘several countries’ had managed to put gay marriage into law, Sir Nicolas pledged that his court would then declare same-sex marriage to be a Europe-wide human right”.

It seems to me that that was the gestation, or part of it, of this particular Bill. It almost sounds like a conspiracy, but I do not like using that word. Nevertheless, that is the article by Mr Christopher Booker, or part of it. I think it is good for this House to have heard it, because it gives the Government the opportunity to say whether Mr Booker’s article and his findings are correct. I therefore hope that that will help the noble Lord, Lord Anderson and of course, as I have already said, I will be delighted to support his amendment.