Equality Act (Sexual Orientation) Regulations 2007

My Lords, much of the debate, in fact all of it, has focused on the objections from those with strong religious convictions. Before the House proceeds, we should note that it is entirely legitimate to have concerns about the drafting of these regulations that do not depend on those religious convictions. As a number of speakers have said, those concerns come back specifically to the interests of children in adoption. You do not have to be prejudiced, or, I suspect, do you have to be heterosexual, to believe that it is in the interests of children, if possible, to be in a family with a parent of each sex. That is why it is generally accepted that two-parent families are, ideally, better than one-parent families. Children benefit from having the role models of both a male and a female parent. That is not to deny that many single-sex couples can provide stable, loving and caring homes, and I would not wish to deny them that opportunity. However, we should allow adoption agencies to have, as one of the criteria that they use in selecting parents, the preference, if that can be achieved, for having two parents of opposite sex. Unfortunately, my reading of the regulations is that stating that as a preference would count as discrimination. We cannot, without debate, pass regulations that would make it discriminatory to regard it as preferable to put a child with a two-parent family, rather than with a one-parent family.