Marriage (Same Sex Couples) Bill

Pete Wishart Excerpts

Tuesday 5th February 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr William Bain (Glasgow North East) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Battersea (Jane Ellison).

Today’s debate is essentially about civil rights and equality—about whether we believe that inequality under the law can still be justified in our society or whether we believe that, as Martin Luther King once reminded us,

“the arc of the moral universe is long but it bends toward justice.”

We have an opportunity today to join countries such as Argentina, Spain, Iceland, Denmark, Belgium, Portugal, Norway, Canada, the Netherlands and South Africa—nations that have strengthened the institution of marriage by removing the inequality before the law that existed for loving, same-sex couples.

Although many parts of the Bill deal with areas devolved to the Scottish Parliament, where an equivalent Bill will be considered shortly, with similar cross-party support, important parts of this Bill deal with the civil rights of my constituents and those throughout Scotland, with provisions that pave the way for the mutual recognition of marriages, marriages of service personnel and consular staff, and marriages entered into overseas, along with important provisions for the transgender community. There is great support in Scotland for the idea that the institution of marriage should be open to loving couples of the same sex and that the injustices faced by transgender people should be ended too.

The breadth of those in favour in Scotland shows how much society there has moved on from the days in the 1980s of the hated section 2A and the social divisions over its abolition a decade ago. The most recent surveys of public opinion show that 64% of people believe that same-sex couples should be able to marry and that 68% believe that religious organisations that wish to conduct same-sex marriages should be able to do so. The support across Scotland includes 70% of women, 75% of under-55s and three quarters of households with children. It is the settled view of the Scottish people in wealthy Scotland and deprived Scotland, and in urban and rural Scotland. It was endorsed by a full 65% of those who made full responses to the Scottish Government’s consultation on the issue. That view is also supported by ordinary Catholics and worshippers in the Church of Scotland—by 54% and 50% respectively—according to the Scottish social attitudes survey. It is a view also backed by a huge coalition across civic society in Scotland.

[Pete Wishart (Perth and North Perthshire) (SNP)]

The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right that there is massive support for the legislation in Scotland among all sectors of the community, but none of the measures we are debating today affects the Scottish people. It does not affect his or my constituents. It does not affect anybody in Scotland; we have our own legislation in Scotland.

[Mr Bain]

I am grateful for that intervention, but I urge the hon. Gentleman to check clause 10, parts 2 and 3, and schedules 2, 5 and 6. He is sure to find that they apply to his constituents and mine in Scotland.

The Bill will achieve a great deal in equalising the marriage laws in their own right, but it will also have the effect of challenging and reducing the discrimination that same-sex couples and other LGBT people still face in our society. The Bill will strengthen marriage as a social union, but it will also strengthen our society as a whole, reflecting our values of diversity and freedom. This measure is about freedom. The right to marry is set out in article 12 of the European convention on human rights, drawn up by a Conservative Home Secretary and made part of our law in the United Kingdom by a Labour Government in the 1990s.

Sometimes equality is delivered in huge leaps, on other occasions in small steps. Our society has made huge leaps to end the intolerance and, often, the persecution it inflicted on the LGBT community in our chequered past. Today is a small step, but a hugely significant one. By extending the civil right to marry to millions of people across the country, we send a powerful signal to the world about who we are and what we stand for. Let us join a dozen progressive countries that have already done just that and stand tonight united as a House on the right side of history.