My Lords, I support the first amendment for reasons of principle, about which the noble Lords have spoken. The principle of equality is very important. It seems to me that, in Committee, the Minister was unable to respond with any arguments at all based on principle. They were purely pragmatic arguments, which I do not think noble Lords found very convincing.
Amendment 84A, which I support, is very much in line with the recommendation of the Joint Committee on Human Rights, which argued that,
“we consider that the Government should carry out a full review of pension provisions in relation to survivor pension benefit entitlements of same sex married couples and civil partners to ensure that there is no unjustifiable discrimination in pension scheme provisions”.