Marriage (Same Sex Couples) Bill

Susan Elan Jones Excerpts

Tuesday 21st May 2013 Commons Chamber

[Kate Green]

I am grateful for that welcome and helpful intervention and for the intervention from the hon. Member for Redcar (Ian Swales).

Concerns and doubts have been expressed about the quality of the service, if I may call it that, that humanists would offer, but the British Humanist Association runs a long-established ceremony service. We have already identified that many people, including many of us, have already attended humanist weddings and some of us might have attended humanist funerals or baby-naming ceremonies. There is a very long and extensive experience in this country of participation in such ceremonies and to my knowledge no adverse comment or criticism of them has been made at all—indeed, quite the reverse.

It is also important to note that the British Humanist Association is extremely concerned about maintaining the highest quality. It trains, accredits, insures and provides a form of continuing professional education for its hundreds of celebrants throughout the country. Perhaps we should therefore not be surprised that the ceremonies attract high satisfaction as a result; more than 95% of clients, if I may call them that, give them a five-out-of-five rating. That is not an experience that all people report from their registry office or other wedding.

Humanist weddings, in particular—this is based on the testimony of those couples who have had one—are greatly valued as reflecting those couples’ beliefs and allowing the ceremony to be devised, in collaboration with the celebrant, in a way that meets their own wishes. I have read some letters over the course of the past few weeks from couples who write eloquently about how much the ceremony has meant not only to them but to their relatives and friends. I am sure that over the past week or so, many right hon. and hon. Members will also have heard from the 3,000-plus humanists in this country, including many couples who have had a humanist wedding, about the importance of the ceremony to them. It is clear that we already have in this country a precious form of ceremony that is highly valued by many couples, and my new clause would simply seek to recognise and acknowledge that in law.

[Susan Elan Jones (Clwyd South) (Lab)]

I have one fairly fundamental disagreement with the British Humanist Association, which is that I think they are wrong about God, but I fully believe that we need to acknowledge humanist weddings. Two generations ago, the established Church did not allow nonconformist Churches to hold burial rites in their churchyards. This is a dangerous precedent. As an Anglican, I do not feel in any way offended in my faith by knowing that humanists can celebrate weddings in such a way.

[Kate Green]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for that intervention. The Secretary of State has been extremely eloquent throughout the passage of the Bill about the importance that she personally attaches to marriage, so I say to her that my proposal goes with the grain of her position by seeking to extend marriage to more couples precisely because they share that sense of its importance and want to value it.

The whole Bill is about equality, although I recognise that it is predominantly about equal marriage for lesbian, gay, transsexual and, indeed, bisexual people. My new clause is also about equality; it is about the equal recognition of humanist marriages. We should remember that they are already legal in many countries, where they contribute to an increase in the number of marriages, going with the grain of the Secretary of State’s ambitions to strengthen and extend marriage in our society. In Scotland, for example, the number of marriages has been rising in recent years, with an increase of more than 1,500 between 2009 and 2011, more than half of which are accounted for by humanist marriages.

There is plenty of evidence of public demand for reform. I believe that this proposal is a reform that disadvantages no one and costs the public purse close to zero. In an age of equality, it removes an unnecessary injustice based on religion or belief, and it will strengthen the institution of marriage, going with the grain of Ministers’ intentions for the Bill. I believe that today we need to move forward to introduce legal humanist marriages in our country, as they have been successfully introduced in other countries across a range of legal jurisdictions. If the Government have concerns, we need to see a written view from the Attorney-General about those objections, so that they can be scrutinised not just by amateur Scottish lawyers such as me, but by properly qualified expert human rights lawyers and others. That would allow us to see in detail the reasoning behind the view that he has expressed at the Dispatch Box.

--- Later in debate ---

[Simon Hughes]

If my hon. Friend will bear with me, I do not believe that and I am not arguing that. They should of course be entitled to hold that view.

This group of amendments seeks to give humanists the right to have humanist weddings. I support that proposal. I understand the objection to the technical drafting, and perhaps that needs to be considered. However, the principle—my hon. Friend the hon. Member for Reigate (Mr Blunt) made the point—of allowing humanist weddings seems to me to be the right one. The hon. Member for Foyle argued that that is what happens over the border in Ireland. Humanists have a belief, and therefore they should be entitled to have weddings according to their belief. Constituents have argued for that, it happens already in Scotland, and, like other people, I too have been to a humanist ceremony—not a wedding, but a funeral.

As a light intervention, we should not be overly afraid of the word “pagan”. My dear late mother, who lived in a village in Herefordshire, in her latter years went to a pagan wedding in the orchard in Hampton Bishop. She said it was one of the most enjoyable weddings she ever attended. Of course, there was a civil ceremony beforehand. People should be allowed to have the practice they want, including humanist weddings.

[Susan Elan Jones]

Will the right hon. Gentleman tell me what his proposal would mean to a Nigerian couple on Old Kent road who want to get married in their large, African, black majority church? Would they have to have a separate civil wedding?

[Simon Hughes]

That is a good question. The hon. Lady, as a former Southwark councillor, knows well the communities I represent. The short answer is that we could do it one of two ways. We could either do what is done in many countries on the mainland of Europe, which is to require everybody to have a civic ceremony first. In France or Belgium, people go the town hall, have the civil ceremony and then go to their church, mosque, temple or synagogue and have their faith ceremony. Secondly, one could separate, in the place of worship—the black-led church on the Old Kent road, my own church or any other—the civic part of the ceremony from the faith part. That is not done in the same way at the moment. In my church in Bermondsey people do not see clearly the distinction between the two parts. The couple going to the church on the Old Kent road would believe they were being married in the eyes of God. They would also want to be married in the eyes of the law. It could be done in either of those ways.

What do I want new clause 18 to achieve? For heterosexual couples, I want us to allow a humanist wedding, a civil marriage or a civil union, and civil partnerships. For same-sex couples, I want full, equal civil rights as a married couple, to be called either a civil marriage or a civil union. I want them to have civil partnerships, too. I hope also that we will not allow the easy transfer between civil partnerships and civil marriage, going from one to the other by signing a form, which is the weakness of clause 9.

New clauses 18 and 14 seek to address an issue that the House has not so far wrestled with: would it not be better to seek to address the need to separate, for these purposes, the faith and belief of people of faith that marriage is ordained by God, and the civil responsibility of the state to provide a place where people can come together and perform a ceremony in the eyes of the law? It is pity that we have not addressed it. I will judge the mood of the House on whether to put that to a vote. I am sure it will be addressed in the other place. I hope we can give everybody equal status in the eyes of the law, and, coming back to the intervention from my hon. Friend the Member for Cambridge (Dr Huppert), the right for each faith group to decide whether to regard heterosexual couples and same-sex couples as able to be married in the context of their faith, which we should allow to all faiths, as well as to those with no faith at all.