Written question asked by Lord Mawhinney (Conservative) on Tuesday, 23 July 2013, in the House of Lords. It was due for an answer on Tuesday, 6 August 2013. It was answered by Lord Wallace of Saltaire (Liberal Democrat) on Thursday, 29 August 2013.

Marriage (Same Sex Couples) Bill

Question: To ask Her Majesty’s Government whether responses organised by campaign groups to their consultation on the Marriage (Same Sex Couples) Bill were classified as individual responses for the purposes of analysing the data in the document Equal marriage: the Government's response; if not, why not; and who was responsible for making the decision on classification of the responses.[HL1894]

Answer: All responses to the equal marriage consultation were treated as individual responses for the analysis of the data exercise and were taken into account as part of the Government's response. This included around 75,000 responses identified as being part of a campaign. Where responses were received from organisations who described themselves as such, these were coded as organisational responses to allow more detailed exploration of the points raised. Petitions were not treated as responses to the consultation but these were qualitatively considered and are set out in Annex B of the Government's response. This was published on 11 December 2012. The decision on classification of the responses was agreed by Ministers.

Secondary information