Marriage (Same Sex Couples) Bill

Debate between Chris Bryant and Ian Paisley

Tuesday 5th February 2013 Commons Chamber

[Ian Paisley]

I appreciate the hon. Lady making that point, because it echoes one made by those on the Government Front Bench. According to those on the Front Bench, the Bill is all about love, but marriage is not defined anywhere in law by love. It is exemplified by love—I love my wife passionately—but that is not what marriage is. That is an expression of a relationship. There are many arranged marriages and many marriages are loveless, but those people are still in law and by law married. Marriage is not defined by love itself. The vow that we take when we get married is there to sustain marriage, even after love wanes, if it wanes at all.

We should accept that the state cannot create a situation in which people are in love, and neither can it legislate for that. There is no passionometer with regard to legislation. In fact, for those on the Government Front Bench to pretend that this is about some dewy-eyed concept of love is wrong. The fact is that the Bill does not create love for homosexuals and gay people; they create love for themselves. It is absolute nonsense to pretend that we are involved in legislating for love—we are not.

[Chris Bryant]

I do not think that homosexuals are looking for the law to provide love for any of us. The hon. Gentleman is making a fundamental mistake by trying to say that love is of necessity about romantic love. It says in law and the Book of Common Prayer that it is about mutual society. Surely that can be enjoyed by two people of the same gender, just as it can be by anybody else.

[Ian Paisley]

The hon. Gentleman makes my exact point. Both the Government and the Opposition have claimed, as has the hon. Member for Oldham East and Saddleworth (Debbie Abrahams), who intervened on me earlier, that this is all about love. It is not. It is about a relationship, and love comes as part of that relationship. This is not about giving love to homosexuals, or about allowing or denying them love. They have that anyway—that is the point.

The Government do not have a mandate to introduce this legislative change. When many millions of married couples got married, they settled on a legal position, which is that marriage is a voluntary union of one man to one woman, to the exclusion of all others. That is the settled legal position that they swore to and agreed to. We now have a situation where that has to be set aside, because this House believes that it can change nature. I believe that this House is wrong.

Unfortunately the right hon. Member for Tottenham (Mr Lammy) is not in his place, but he made some comments that fall into what I can only describe as the not-so-new phenomenon—which will now develop—of Christophobia. Anyone who expresses a Christian view is now going to face the allegation that they are by nature homophobic. The hon. Member for Peterborough (Mr Jackson) said that those with Christian views are compared to white supremacists.

Any rational debate is being pushed to the side, slowly but surely, by this corrosive attempt to redefine the meaning of a word. That is a shame on this nation and we should guard against this change. That is why I will not support the Bill.

Legislation (Territorial Extent) Bill

Debate between Chris Bryant and Ian Paisley

Friday 11th February 2011 Commons Chamber

[Ian Paisley]

I do not think that the view is necessarily commonly held, but we should caution ourselves. When we speak in this place on behalf of the Union and such points are made—not in jest, but seriously—that seriously undermines the standing of the House and its Members. That is not what we should be about. We should bear that in mind.

[Chris Bryant]

Has the hon. Gentleman had the following experience, as I have had in the past couple of weeks? As a Welsh Member of Parliament, I have had a lot of e-mails and correspondence from my constituents on the issue of selling off forests. That does not apply in Wales, but the issue is deeply felt by many in my constituency.

Voting by Prisoners

Debate between Chris Bryant and Ian Paisley

Thursday 10th February 2011 Commons Chamber

[Chris Bryant]

If the hon. Gentleman will forgive me, I would like to make a bit of progress and give way later.

Secondly, it is not the role of the European Court of Human Rights to legislate on who gets to vote in the UK. As the President of the Court and others argued in their dissenting opinion on Hirst,

“it is essential to bear in mind that the Court is not a legislator and should be careful not to assume legislative functions.”

That is why we argued in the Grand Chamber that the Court was acting ultra vires and why we believe it is for Parliament—and Parliament alone—to legislate on this for the UK.

Thirdly, the Government’s proposals that prisoners sentenced to custodial sentences of less than four years should retain the vote—if indeed they still are their proposals; they might not be, given what we have just heard—are far too generous and will not be acceptable to the vast majority of the British public. That is not to say that prisoners should be deprived of all their rights. Of course not—prisoners are humans. Torture and degrading treatment are repugnant. We abhor it when prisoners are treated as less than human in jails in Latin America, in Turkey or in Russia. In depriving someone of their liberty, however, the state should be able to decide that someone has also forfeited other freedoms. Prisoners retain a right to family life, as the European Court of Human Rights has rightly adjudged, but while in prison they cannot pick their children up from school or kiss them goodnight. They retain the right to freedom of expression and, for that matter, freedom of religion, but, by definition, they lose the right to freedom of assembly.

[Ian Paisley]

The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right to say that choosing four years as the threshold is far too generous. I wonder whether Members have reflected on what that really means. It means 4,370 drug dealers getting the vote; it means almost 10,000 people involved in theft, burglary or robbery getting the vote; it means 1,753 rapists or people involved in serious sexual crimes achieving the vote; and it means 5,991 people involved in crimes against a person getting the vote. Does the hon. Gentleman accept that although we do not get a lot of letters from prisoners demanding the vote, we will get a heck of a lot of letters from victims and their families if we give those people the vote?

[Chris Bryant]

The hon. Gentleman has made his point extremely well, and I think that it has been taken by many Members.