My noble friend is coming to the view that a review will come to a certain conclusion. We do not know what conclusion that review will come to. The question is surely that we know that under Clause 13—and this was a fairly late addition by the Government—there will be a review of civil partnership. We also know, under Clause 2, that it
does not prevent the review also dealing with other matters relating to civil partnership. Are those who are against the amendment suggesting that the review should be stopped from dealing with those matters?
Part of our problem as politicians—or Members of this House, who may not consider themselves politicians —is that we face this disconnect between what we are doing here and public opinion. In my own judgment, having served 30 years in the other place, public opinion would consider this an important matter. When faced with the sort of examples given by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Lloyd, and the noble Baroness, Lady Hooper, they would say that there is a certain injustice in this matter. We remove ourselves from this view of justice coming from public opinion if we say that it cannot be included in the review, which, if it was able to look at this, might say that it was not properly within its terms. I do not know what the Government consider to be the specific terms of the review, or whether they will define what the review can or cannot do. On the face of it, the review will be able to deal with such matters, and may reject them. But public opinion and most of us would say that these are important matters, which deserve to be dealt with and may be dealt with by the review, which may say that it is not properly within its purview or that it is not something that should be dealt with at all.
In my view, it is proper for the review to deal with that matter, under the terms of the clause, and I look to the Minister to say in terms whether the Government recognise that this is a problem. Do the Government recognise that the examples given by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Lloyd, and others refer to something that is considered unjust by a great number of people in this country? If so, even if the Government try to remove this from the review, will they deal with it in some other appropriate way?