Equality Bill

My Lords, it is a privilege to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Campbell of Surbiton. I welcome this Bill, which presents us with the opportunity to tidy up and consolidate and put equality legislation on a safer footing. The past 11 years that I have spent in your Lordships' House have been an extraordinary journey. I pay tribute to this House for the conscious choices that we made in that journey. For me, it started off pretty badly with that age of consent debate—some of you may remember. It was a terrible and at times very wounding experience. But every subsequent step that we have taken towards equality we have taken voluntarily, in this House, in partnership with the other place. We have worked together in this House for equality for women, racial minorities, religious groups, people with disabilities, the elderly and, particularly for me, the gay community. It is a journey of which I am incredibly proud but, more importantly, for which I am incredibly grateful. In front of us now is a choice. We can build on this tradition and help the Bill find safe passage on to the statute book, or we can use the Bill as a mechanism to refight the battles of the past. I appeal to noble Lords—and I am sorry that the noble Baroness, Lady O’Cathain, is not in her place—not to reopen those debates that we have worked so hard to resolve over the past decade. I ask noble Lords not to use this Bill in a destructive way but to use it to heal and not to divide. I give notice to my noble friends on the Front Bench of two significant provisions that I shall seek, with the support of others, to add to the Bill. The first concerns civil partnerships. This week marks the fourth year since the first civil partnerships were formed; over those four years, civil partnerships have been a huge success and even their fiercest critics cannot deny the overwhelming benefits that they have brought to the gay community, gay men, lesbians and the wider community as a whole. With your help, I want to reverse the current ban on civil partnerships taking place on religious premises. It is wrong to ban civil partnerships from churches and religious institutions. Equally, it would be wrong to force churches and religious institutions to host civil partnerships against their will. As many noble Lords are aware, a number of religious organisations would like to host civil partnerships, such as the Quakers. This House has a tradition of standing up for religious freedoms. It must be a matter for churches and religious organisations to decide for themselves but, having decided, the law should not stand in their way. I hope that I shall have the support of these Benches, both Front and Back, of the Benches around the House and, in particular, of the Lords Spiritual, in achieving this endeavour. I seek only to heal; I do not seek to divide.