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Equality Bill

My Lords, I support the noble and learned Baroness as far as these amendments are concerned. It seems grossly unfair to require a person who has been recruited as a registrar of marriages to do something rather different, which is contrary to his or her religious convictions, and register a civil partnership. Yet that is what happened to a local authority employee recently. It seems that the local authority was just trying to make a point at her expense, because it was never suggested that there were not other registrars in the borough with no religious objection to registering civil partnerships who would be prepared to do that work. It was an act of gross unfairness. Here is an opportunity for us, in a Bill that is supposed to be about fairness, to remedy a very obvious wrong. As for Amendment 21, it seems absolutely tragic that adoption agencies should have been driven out of business simply because of the obduracy of the Government a year or two ago. What possible damage is done if an adoption agency that is unwilling to place a child with a gay couple directs that couple to an agency that is perfectly happy to place a child with them? Here again is an opportunity to put right a very obvious wrong.