I have taken a great deal of time to engage closely with the detail of this Bill and met with constituents on all sides of the argument, including equal rights campaigners, religious leaders and Ministers to discuss concerns about the Bill’s drafting and implications before coming to a conclusion about how to vote.
From the beginning my concerns have not centred on the issues surrounding the definition of marriage. As a strong supporter of civil partnerships and opponent of discrimination in all its forms, I have no principled objection to equal marriage in secular institutions.
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Initially I was disappointed that this Bill did not extend civil partnerships to heterosexual couples and that is why I voted for amendments NC16 and NC16(a) which will provide a prompt review of civil partnerships legislation. I am pleased that this compromise has been reached as it gives hope to many couples who are currently excluded from civil partnerships and unprotected by the legal rights it offers. My only remaining concern on this issue is that the timeframe and scope of this review remain unclear at this point.
Unfortunately, however, my other concerns about the detail of the Bill, and its potential unintended consequences, have remained unresolved. In particular, although I voted for two amendments that sought to ensure protection of religious freedom, these did not pass and were not accepted by the Government.
In the light of this, and given the vastly contradictory legal opinions offered by Aidan O’Neil QC and Karon Monaghan QC of Matrix Chambers, two of the most pre-eminent human rights barristers in this country, about the strength of the protections provided to religious institutions by the Bill, I am not convinced that these protections will work if challenged in the ECHR, as is very likely.
I voted against the Bill quite simply because I could not be sure that the measures in the Bill for the protection of religious freedom would work in the way the Government intends and because the amendments designed to strengthen these protections failed. The Bill, through poor drafting and rushed consultation, had become a choice between religious freedom and equality. As a supporter of both, I could not find a way to support a Bill that did not guarantee the protection of both.
