Marriage (Same Sex Couples) Bill

Lord Elis-Thomas Excerpts

Tuesday 4th June 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Elis-Thomas]

My Lords, I agree with the last point that the noble Lord made. As for the rest of it, I understand the division between legislatures and the people in a rather different way. If I have one perspective, it is from First Great Western. As a commuter to this House from Cardiff Central, I have the opportunity to reflect, as I did last evening, as I did this morning and as I will do again tonight. I am still a working politician, elected to the National Assembly for Wales and representing part of a constituency that I also represented in the other place. Therefore, I have the dubious benefit of a dual mandate, although it seems to me that in this House a number of us have had that experience and a number of us have forgotten it or never had it. It seems to me that this House is in great danger of ignoring at its peril the realities of political and social change that is happening outside. That is what I want to address. I am not going to argue about the level of opinion polls, but I am going to argue about the significance of the size of the free vote and the majority in the House of Commons on this matter.

The second point which I am concerned about, as a former presiding officer in Cardiff, is that we are faced this evening with a device of a procedural Motion. Of course it is in order. This is a self-regulating House and we are very well advised by distinguished officials. I am not arguing with that. What I am saying is this: what is the logic of voting today to deny a Second Reading to a Bill, while at the same time continually defining ourselves as a revising Chamber? By what logic can one revise a text of draft legislation, or anything else, by deleting it? It is like pushing the delete button before you have read the e-mail. That seems to me what this House is in danger of doing. It leaves no opportunity for proper scrutiny or amendment.

My noble friend Lord Aberdare has already referred to Clause 8. Clause 8 is very important to me. It is the devolution clause. It was brought to us from the Commons. It will enable the governing body of the Church in Wales—to which I was once nominated by the current Archbishop of Wales, and no doubt he regrets that; I no longer serve on that body—to resolve that the laws of England and Wales could be changed to allow for the marriage of same-sex couples according to the rites of the Church in Wales, were that body to agree.

This is a resolution for which I devoutly wish, along with my other noble friends on these Benches. If this Bill, including this clause, is to be derailed this evening, the opportunity for us Welsh Anglicans to determine our own rights, in a church disestablished since 1920, will be denied, and we will remain mere altar servers at the Bench of Bishops of the Church of England. If this happens, I can promise you that this issue will not go away. We will continue to campaign with Stonewall Cymru, gay Christians and others for the law of marriage to be devolved in Wales as it is in Scotland, and of course as it was in the golden age of medieval Welsh law under Cyfraith Hywel.

For all these reasons, I appeal to this House, and even to those of your Lordships who oppose the principle of this legislation, to allow us who want to debate it to debate the Bill further, because that debate will not go away until the equal relationship enjoyed by my son and my son-in-law can be free for everyone.