I am grateful for that intervention, but I urge the hon. Gentleman to check clause 10, parts 2 and 3, and schedules 2, 5 and 6. He is sure to find that they apply to his constituents and mine in Scotland.
The Bill will achieve a great deal in equalising the marriage laws in their own right, but it will also have the effect of challenging and reducing the discrimination that same-sex couples and other LGBT people still face in our society. The Bill will strengthen marriage as a social union, but it will also strengthen our society as a whole, reflecting our values of diversity and freedom. This measure is about freedom. The right to marry is set out in article 12 of the European convention on human rights, drawn up by a Conservative Home Secretary and made part of our law in the United Kingdom by a Labour Government in the 1990s.
Sometimes equality is delivered in huge leaps, on other occasions in small steps. Our society has made huge leaps to end the intolerance and, often, the persecution it inflicted on the LGBT community in our chequered past. Today is a small step, but a hugely significant one. By extending the civil right to marry to millions of people across the country, we send a powerful signal to the world about who we are and what we stand for.
Let us join a dozen progressive countries that have already done just that and stand tonight united as a House on the right side of history.
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