---

Marriages and Civil Partnerships (Approved Premises) (Amendment) Regulations 2011

I entirely accept that, but it is the Equality Act that addressed this very question of the circumstances in which religious bodies may, but have no obligation to, conduct civil partnership ceremonies. It therefore seems to me highly unlikely that any court will say that that very legislation, the Equality Act, nevertheless imposes indirectly some duty on religious bodies to do precisely what Section 202 of the same Act states that they do not need to do. Secondly, if there were any ambiguity in the Equality Act—there is none, but if there were—a court would interpret the Equality Act by reference to the right under the European Convention on Human Rights and by reference to Section 13 of the Human Rights Act, which this Parliament enacted, which states that on any question that might affect the exercise by a religious organisation of the right to freedom of religion, the court must have particular regard to freedom of religion. It is plain beyond argument that the court would therefore say that a religious body has no duty to do what would conflict with the religious rights of the church or other religious body concerned. Earlier in this debate, the noble Lord, Lord Tebbit, asked for assurances that the European Court would not interfere in this matter. I would be extremely surprised if the European courts would trespass on a fundamental question of religious freedom, but if they did, nothing that we decide today would affect that—it is simply irrelevant to this debate and therefore cannot be used either to support or to argue against the Prayer that the noble Baroness presents to the House.