I am very grateful to the Minister for the way in which she has summed up and the way in which she has handled these difficult issues. I thank all noble Lords who have taken part in this debate. It has been very illuminating. We have covered a lot of ground, and I take the point that we will be covering educative issues later in Committee.
I will very quickly make four points. First, I ask the Minister to take on board the very considerable concern that the ComRes poll showed among teachers. I ask her to reflect on her words, which were said, of course, in an effort to be helpful when she spoke at Second Reading, distinguishing the factual and legal position on the one hand and promoting and endorsing views on the other. I still maintain that is a very fine balance in the classroom and may be very difficult to disentangle. In fact, I unashamedly lifted the word “endorse” from the Minister’s speech and put it into the amendment. It may be that we can find a different word, but the issue is still there, balanced, as I said, on something of a knife edge. One has to take into account the opinion of leading counsel on this, and that runs straight into the opinion of the Joint Committee on Human Rights, which stated,
“we encourage the Government to consider whether specific protections are required”,
and so on.
From what I have heard in the Chamber tonight there is sufficient doubt and concern on these issues for us to carry those forward into later debates on the whole business of the classroom, teaching and parents. I hope that at the end of that debate, between Committee and Report stages, the Government will be involved in discussions. I would be very happy to join in those discussions, if that was thought to be helpful. We may be able to bring something forward that would give a degree of satisfaction to those who are involved.
10.45 pm
On Amendment 24, I do not suppose that it was meant in the way it was put over. However, it is rather more than wishful thinking, which the Labour Front Bench seemed to think it was. Sexuality is very much at the root of much of what we are talking about—it has to be if we are going to change the meaning of “marriage” as it has always been known. There is a very fine line, or balance, between sex education and education about same-sex marriage and it is very hard to disentangle the two. The Front Bench has just confirmed that parents have the right to withdraw from sex education. The difference between that and education about same-sex marriage is almost gossamer-thin. I make that point and look forward to further debates on the issue of education later in this procedure. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.