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Marriage (Wales) Bill [HL]

My Lords, I commend the noble Lord, Lord Rowe-Beddoe, for introducing this Bill which would make the provision that we enjoy in England exactly the same in Wales. I speak only in order to make abundantly clear that the Church of England offers nothing but the strongest support for the Bill. That is partly because there are places along the border between England and Wales where the national boundary and the ecclesial boundaries of dioceses are not exactly coterminous. We could have the extraordinary situation that somebody who lives in the Church in Wales by diocese and boundary finds themselves in an English county and subject to one set of rules, and somebody who lives in the diocese of Hereford, which we would normally count as part of the Church of England, in spite of the fact that there is a Hereford East and a Hereford West, would, if they lived on the other side of the boundary, find themselves subject to an entirely different set of rules. We know how important it is to have that kind of parity. Nothing in the Bill is the slightest bit contentious. Rather than read noble Lords a homily on the nature and goodness of marriage as an institution, which I hope we all support, I simply say that we should pass the Bill with the greatest expedition we can muster, because the longer we delay, the more confusion there is. One of the reasons that people often do not seek to marry in church is simply that they think that there are so many complicated rules and regulations that the Church will in the end say no to them. That is not the intention of the Church of England or, I believe, of the Church in Wales. We should do all we can to make the legislation exactly parallel. As my noble friend has said, there are, of course, one or two references to the Church of England’s way of doing things or to the Church in Wales’s statutory authorities which need to be different, but all the important regulations about who can be married where and when and under what conditions are exactly the same. Therefore, I hope that we can proceed with due expedition.