I think that I should make a little more progress. I will take further interventions in a moment.
I know that for many of my colleagues, the crux of the issue lies in the protections that I have mentioned, particularly the protections for the Church of England and the Church in Wales. They have a unique position because of the legal duty of their clergy to marry their parishioners, and furthermore, because the Church of England is the established Church, its canon law is part of the law of the land. As I said to the hon. Member for Brighton, Pavilion (Caroline Lucas), the Bill provides for no disadvantageous or, indeed, favourable treatment for the Church of England or the Church in Wales. It simply provides a pragmatic way of putting them in essentially the same position as other religious organisations. If they decide that they want to marry same-sex couples, they can do so.
We have worked hard with a wide range of religious organisations, including both those Churches, to ensure that the protections in the Bill work. Indeed, the Church of England has commented on the constructive way in which we have consulted it about effective legal safeguards, ensuring that its concerns are properly accommodated. The Church in Wales has confirmed that the Bill gives it protection, while still enabling it to make its own decision on same-sex marriage.
Let me now turn to an issue that has already been raised many times today: the question of legal protections and the European convention on human rights. There has been much discussion about the powers of the European Court of Human Rights, but I believe that its case law is clear: the question of whether—and if so, how—to allow same-sex marriage must be left to individual states to decide for themselves.
“It is simply inconceivable that the Court would require a faith group to conduct same-sex marriages in breach of its own doctrines.”
Those are not my words, but the words of the eminent QCs Lord Pannick, Baroness Kennedy and Lord Lester.
The belief that the Court would order the UK to require religious organisations to marry same-sex couples in contravention of their religious doctrine relies on a combination of three highly improbable conclusions. The first is that the Court would need to go against its own clear precedent that countries have wide discretion in the matter of same-sex marriage. The second is that the Court would need to decide that the interests of a same-sex couple who wanted a particular religious organisation to marry them outweighed the rights and beliefs of an entire faith and its congregation as a whole. The third is that the Court would need to discount the importance of article 9 of its own convention, which guarantees freedom of thought, conscience and religion. That would be rewriting the rules not just for one religious organisation in England and Wales, but for all religious organisations in all 47 states of the Council of Europe. I believe that such an outcome is inconceivable.