My Lords, I am grateful to all noble Lords who have spoken in the debate, and to the noble Baroness, Lady Thornton, for her support. We have had a comprehensive debate that has shown how this House takes its role seriously and is able to deal with controversial and sensitive issues in a measured way that respects differing views. What has come across strongly is that those who support the Bill and those who oppose it essentially agree on one crucial matter: the importance of marriage. We all agree that marriage is a cornerstone of our society that provides stability and brings families and communities together.
It will not be possible for me to refer to all noble Lords who have spoken in the debate, or to respond to all the points raised. I hope that noble Lords will forgive me for that. However, some key themes have emerged, and I will deal with those. A number of noble Lords, particularly the noble Lord, Lord Dear, questioned whether the process that had been followed for the Bill was right. My party was clear about its wish to consider the case of same-sex marriage in A Contract for Equalities, published alongside our election manifesto. The coalition agreement set out the Government’s commitment to push for,
“unequivocal support for gay rights”.
We have conducted the process of developing our proposals in a completely transparent way. We carried out the country’s largest ever public consultation, and
every response and petition was accounted for and considered with the utmost care. I say to noble Lords who raised questions about petitions that these were not ignored. They were all treated equally, commented on and flagged in the Government’s response to the consultation.
Some noble Lords questioned whether the Bill had had proper scrutiny in the other place. Convention tells us that it is not for this House to comment on how the other House conducts its business. However, it is worth noting that the Committee stage there was completed with half a day to spare. The Bill had two days of debate on Report on the Floor of the House, and was passed by a majority of two to one at Second and Third Readings. As many noble Lords argued, it is now for this House to scrutinise the Bill in detail.
Moving on from process, some noble Lords queried the robustness of the religious protections, including the quadruple lock, whereby no religious organisation or individual minister can be compelled to conduct a same-sex marriage; all will be free to refuse to do so. I say, first, that I am very grateful to the most reverend Primate and the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Leicester for their acknowledgement of the work that the Government have done to ensure that the religious protections in the Bill are effective. The noble Lord, Lord Pannick, and the noble Baroness, Lady Kennedy, were very clear in their contributions about their view of the robustness of these religious protections. However, it is only right, because in my opening remarks I did not address some of the specific points that were raised by noble Lords in debate, that I should now do so.
The concern was raised that the European Court of Human Rights might order the Government to require religious organisations to marry same-sex couples according to their rites, in opposition to their religious doctrines. To suggest that this could happen is to rely on a combination of three highly improbable conclusions. First, the court would need to go against its own clear precedent that states are not required by the European Convention on Human Rights to provide marriage for same-sex couples, and that they have a wide discretion in this area. Secondly, the court would need to decide that the interests of a same-sex couple who wanted a particular religious organisation to marry them according to their rites outweighed the rights and beliefs of an entire faith and its members as a whole. Thirdly, the court would need to discount the importance of Article 9 of its own convention, which guarantees freedom of thought, conscience and religion. It 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.
Some noble Lords raised concerns that the Bill does not deliver equality. Indeed, they suggested that it creates new inequalities and argued that it redefines marriage because same-sex couples cannot procreate. I will return to the definition of marriage after dealing with some of the specific examples that were raised in this part of our discussion. The current definition of adultery has been developed in case law and does not cover relations between members of the same sex. At present, a married man who has a sexual relationship
with another man is not committing adultery. That would be the case only if he had sexual intercourse outside marriage with a woman. The Bill retains this definition. Like existing marriages, a same-sex marriage can be ended by divorce on the grounds of unreasonable behaviour in such circumstances.
As for consummation, that is not necessary for any marriage to be lawful and indeed not possible in some, which is why we allow for death-bed marriages. As consummation is a historical definition associated with procreation, it would not make sense to extend this concept to same-sex marriages and there is no need to do so. If for no other reason, the opportunity for noble Lords to debate these sorts of things in greater detail is a good reason for this Bill to get more scrutiny. I am sure that they will not be able to resist debating all this in great detail.
The noble Lord, Lord Tebbit, asked about the law of succession and its interaction with the Bill, and in particular whether a monarch in a same-sex marriage could succeed to the throne and whether his or her child, or the child of his or her partner, could succeed. The answer is that the Bill does not change anything in relation to the law of succession. Only the natural-born child of a husband and wife is entitled to succeed to the throne—not adopted children, children born as a result of artificial insemination or children born to only one party to a relationship. That is the position now and it will remain the case.