Equality Bill

My Lords, I, too, when I read this amendment recently, was fascinated to see in which direction the noble and learned Lord, Lord Mackay, was going. I saw, on the one hand, the kinds of things that the noble Lord, Lord Lester, was saying, but, on the other, saw the fundamental importance of what the noble and learned Lord has put in the amendment. However, before saying any more, I want to appreciate what the noble Lord, Lord Lester, said about the churches and the efforts that together we shall be making later in this Bill. I have a strong sense that the Government are now engaging to find a way through those elements that we shall perhaps come to the time after next. The question, as I hear it, that the noble and learned Lord, Lord Mackay, is putting runs somewhere in between the two noble Lords. As I heard him, I, too, believe in this question of the primacy of conscience, as I know the noble Lord, Lord Lester, does. However, the question that the noble and learned Lord is putting is: how hard will we work in this whole area of discrimination and equality to accommodate with the maximum fairness as many of the points at which a range of rights are intentioned. That seems to be the question that the noble and learned Lord is asking your Lordships from a series of standpoints—if this is, as it were, a probing as well as a principled amendment, although I am not going to put words into the mouth of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Mackay, of all people. How hard will we work to try to accommodate elements of where we are in abrupt tension in all this very important and complex scene of rights, discrimination and equality. He has just referred to the registrar and civil partnerships. He will remember that we had a spirited set of exchanges during the passage of the Civil Partnership Bill through your Lordships’ House. Some of us then said—and the noble and learned Lord drew the analogy—that this was rather like medical doctors and abortion, where there is conscientious objection. Some of us were disturbed, as well as full of regret, that your Lordships’ House did not accept that point in relation to civil registrars and civil partnerships and that something fresh was being brought into the registration service. It seemed to us that that point of view was legitimate. We have been around the same course as regard the sexual orientation regulations and Roman Catholic adoption agencies. Many of us thought that there are plenty of other adoption agencies, so why keep pressing that point? That would be a good example of what I am suggesting. The implication of the amendment of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Mackay, is that each of us—if I can personalise it in this way; I just as much as you, you just as much as me—is bound to work as hard as we can to hold the whole range of different people’s rights, because there is a sense around that some rights are better than others. Your Lordships’ House must take extreme care that we do not affirm that.