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Equality Bill

My Lords, in the light of the noble Baroness’s introduction of herself, I too must declare that I am Anglican. The fact that the sexual orientation goods and services legislation was introduced by secondary legislation in 2007 placed parliamentarians concerned about its implications for Catholic adoption agencies in a very difficult position. As unamendable regulations they could vote against the regulations as a whole, vetoing the many good provisions in them, or they could accept them knowing that they would be confirming the demise of Catholic agencies. Today, I very much welcome the fact that we can have a sensible debate about the sexual orientation goods and services legislation, affirming all that is good about it, but highlighting the need for this amendment to make space for Catholic agencies and others. If we want to create a diverse society in which people with sometimes very differing views happily live alongside each other, we must have equality laws that make space for difference. There should be space, for example, for lesbian, gay and bisexual organisations to operate in line with their ethos. Regulation 18 of the sexual orientation regulations, now replaced by Clause 19 of the Bill, provides for this. There should be space for Catholic adoption agencies and for other faith-based bodies to operate according to their ethos. Surely, in relation to the adoption of children, it is the well-being of the children that is primary. I believe that their needs are best served if the options are not reduced: if they are not reduced to eliminate lesbian and gay couples; if they are not reduced to eliminate Catholic couples. We must avoid developing equality laws for one strand in a way that makes life very difficult for another strand, thus vulnerable to exploitation by others, whose purpose is to make life difficult for the negatively affected strand and for their own different purposes. Between January and March 2007, when the sexual orientation rights were being debated, Stonewall, which has already been mentioned and commended and which has a legitimate interest in sexuality, issued just three press releases on the subject, while the National Secular Society, whose raison d’être does not pertain to sexuality at all, issued 10 strongly worded press releases championing the unamended regulations. We must understand, as others have observed, that in the same way a law designed for a majority can have a negative and destructive effect on minorities, from which they must be protected by different treatment under the law, so, too, can laws designed for one equality strand have negative and destructive effects on other equality strands, for which they should also be provided with different treatment under the law. Many people have mentioned registrars. I sometimes wonder whether the small town of Settle is rather like the village from which Miss Marple comes, where everything happens. That village happens to have a registrar who spoke to me and was very distraught. At the time of speaking to me, she was able to carry on her work because others would cover during the registration of lesbian and gay couples’ civil partnerships. She was quite happy with that and they were happy, but she was thinking of retiring early because of the pressure upon her by the expected regulations. It seemed a shame. I hope that now that the Government have an opportunity to right this wrong, they and we will support the amendments of the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Butler-Sloss.