My Lords, in my view this amendment is absolutely unnecessary in the terms put forward by the noble Lord, Lord Dear. I think that the process that the noble Lord suggests is flawed and unnecessary. However, I am a great fan of post-legislative scrutiny and I know that the committee looking into the Mental Capacity Act is doing a splendid job. I think that every Act should be subject to pre-legislative and post-legislative scrutiny as a matter of course, so I would not be against post-legislative scrutiny, but I am utterly against the sort of judicial process that the noble Lord speaks of.
I say to my noble friend Lord Anderson that I find it slightly offensive that he talks of this Bill as a sort of laboratory experiment. I recognise that it brings about a profound change in our society—from my perspective, a very welcome change—but it is certainly not a laboratory experiment. I wish to put that on record.
I say to the noble Lord, Lord Dear, that his suggestion would be completely impractical. The first same-sex marriages will not take place until about a year after the Act has passed. A review in two years’ time would be completely mad. I have discussed this with the Minister and I think that there will be some standard post-implementation evaluation of the Bill, which will be very welcome, but that will rightly not take place for some time. I ask the noble Lord whether he looked at his own marriage one or two years after he entered wedded bliss. I suspect not. In same-sex marriages we tend to think about the seven-year itch, which is a long time after the two years that the noble Lord is talking about.
The thing that would interest me in 10 years’ time would be to go back to noble Lords who are currently against or have deep concerns about the Bill to see whether their views of same-sex marriage have changed. I would wager that the same acceptance that we now have on all Benches for civil partnerships—