The House completed a two-day debate on the Second Reading of the Marriage (Same Sex Couples) Bill yesterday. Cross-bench peer Lord Dear moved an amendment to reject the Bill. There was a packed House and an exceptionally high turnout. The amendment was defeated by 390 votes to 148. The turnout was even higher than these figures suggest, as some peers who were present (including some Bishops) abstained from voting.
The breakdown of the vote shows that a majority in each political grouping in the House supported the Bill.
For the amendment to reject the Bill:
Conservative 66
Crossbench 46
Labour 16
Bishops 9
Other 9
Liberal Democrats 2
Against the amendment:
Labour 160
Conservative 80
Liberal Democrats 73
Crossbench 68
Other 9
I was the last scheduled backbench speaker. I was on the list as speaker number 91, but three peers withdrew their names and so I was actually the 88th speaker. (Two other backbench peers spoke after me, in what is known as the ‘gap’, when you can speak briefly if you have not previously signed up to speak.) My speech, along with the others for Tuesday, can by read here. To watch the debate, you can see it here (scroll through to 3.10). The Bill commences its committee stage in two weeks.
I was stunnded by the huge majority that voted against the wrecking amendment. The news until then was that it could have gone either way. I’ve got to admit I’m not a great fan of the HoL but it showed that they were able to recognise the mood of the country, particularly the younger generations ie under 65, recognise the huge majority from the commons and also recognise that this bill will do a lot of social good. Just hope they get on with it quickly and stop any futher wrecking amendments. Some of us are waiting to get married!
Thank you, Lord Norton, your contribution was illuminating and set things in context very clearly at the end of the debate.
I note that the C of E yesterday issued a statement claiming to have resigned themselves to the Bill going through but in the same breath vowing to work for comprehensive amendment of the clauses, which I take to mean they will continue to use their votes and influence to try to undermine the Bill all the way along.
I’m not in the least surprised by this. The C of E have always worked against acceptance and rights for same sex couples. Despite the superficially polite words of Justin Welby he and 8 colleagues voted to de-rail the Bill. The Bishops claim to work for everybody and yet do not allow Civil Partnerships, or even blessings, or anything else, in “their” Churches. Plainly the issue for them is not “Marriage”
The Church has stated that it is satisfied with the effectiveness of the quadruple lock, which was plainly drafted with their own lawyers anyway.
I hope peers will not allow the Bishops to wreck the Bill with many small, or one big, amendment.
Shocked at the size of the majority is indeed an understatement as well as a lesson to the people of this country that unless they, like the minority paid lobbyists, are willing and more, able, to come out in force and demonstrate, in their millions, to prove, once and for all, that this is a tiny minority issue, our country will be lost to those ruling over us.
Akin to David Cameron over the issue of prisoner voting, many of us felt physically sick that the stringent socioeconomic controls and the use of suppression of opposition through overwhelming censorship has taken control of our democracy.
This was by no means the will of the majority in this country. Not by either young or old. It was a propaganda campaign put out to stifle truth. You only have to read the comments page on any newspaper addressing gay marriage to see the honest feelings of the nation. They are overwhelmingly against this change to our status quo meaning of marriage as between a man and a woman.
More, it proves government and those in both Commons and Lords are totally unrepresentative of democracy. The word dishonour is an understatement. They should hang their heads in shame. And many of them deserve the white feather sent to cowards as they didn’t have the bottle to stand up for what they believe in or for their constituents.
The only way these people can be put back where they belong is through direct democracy. Without it we will continue to face the abuse they are willing to press onto us and our children.
And can anyone tell me why the Bishops abstained?
Take note people.
maude elwes: As I pointed out in the debate, survey data tend to be more reliable than anecdote and assertion. The surveys, where the question is a straightforward one of being for or against gay marriage, are consistent.
But you are missing the point.
This bill was not in any manifesto. If we aren’t told what we are voting for, its not democracy it is dictatorship.
Couple that with us having no democractic control over you, and its even more.
PS. How’s it going on the legistlation you’ve been promising. We have had more Peers selling the law for cash. Still no action from you or other peers.
I even posted you the text of a bill that you could introduce.
Are so many peers doing likewise that they won’t legistlate against the money drying up? Its the plausible explanation.
It has never been the case that governments can only introduce legislation that was in their manifestos. If you don’t like something they introduce (whether or not it was in the manifesto) or if they fail to introduce what they promised in the manifesto, you can choose not to vote for them a few years later (which you can’t do in a dictatorship). In fact, this is what we are told some people will do by voting UKIP next time around (although I suspect in most cases this has nothing to do with equal marriage). If the governing party is worried about losing the next election, they may abandon a Bill. If they don’t think public opinion is that strongly against introducing it, they will press ahead. That’s how democracy works.
As for having your usual swipe at the Lords, they came to the same conclusion as the Commons in the end, didn’t they? It would have been interesting, though, if the Lords has rejected the Bill to see whether you would now be here singing their praises as the ones upholding democracy.
I think it’s too easy to say that the plans for same sex marriage did not feature in any manifesto. Alongside the Conservative Party’s main manifesto, proposals which included consultation into same sex marriage were clearly included, for everyone to read, in the ‘Contract for Equalities’. The Conservative Party was the only one of the three main parties to even mention same sex marriage in all of its manifesto material. That’s a good enough mandate for me.
Lord Blagger: Every session recently we have had a Bill in the Lords to deal with recalcitrant peers. There is no problem getting the provision through the Lords. The problem is the House of Commons. However, that may now be changing.
Do you have some Hansard references?
Or is it as you said the first time round. OK for the Peers to take the cash, because they couldn’t have changed the law. That was what you said, wasn’t it?
Lord Blagger: ‘Do you have some Hansard references?’ Yes, for every session for the past few years! Last session, we got the Bill through and to the Commons, providing for the expulsion of peers who commit serious criminal offences. The problem has been finding time – and Government support – in the Commons, though that may now be changing.
As you all cling slavishly to American opinion here in our Parliament, these polls show, even in the land of the free they can only find 50% in favour at a push. Whilst this is changing rapidly the other way with how it plays out in reality with the States that already have it.
Read all about it whilst you remember most of the against is covered up and not reported. When you surf the net you would believe there is no dissent from the for at all. How strange that is.
http://www.pressherald.com/news/in-focus-groundswell-may-be-grounded_2013-05-28.html
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/may/20/same-sex-marriage-could-take-decades
Ask the so called ‘straight’ people of San Francisco and California if they are for. They have lived with this way of life for a very long time and find it is affecting their lives dramatically to their detriment.
Which is why this is being rushed through here, before the cat is fully out the bag. Trying to find genuine polls in this country is harder than trying to get hold of the Pope. We all know how, in this country, polls are fixed outrageously by politics and their lobbyists, don’t we?
So, here is another that isn’t quite sure where it is. If you scroll down that is.
http://www.pollingreport.com/civil.htm
And, Lord Norton, I was under the impression you were a Conservative Peer? Strange how traditionalists no longer adhere to the principle they spout when looking for voters and why the people are turning to UKIP to save them. Especially when you tell us they are overwhelmingly for gay marriage.
maude elwes: You clearly haven’t been looking at the polls. And it is because I am a Conservative that I voted for the Bill. The percentage of people supporting same-sex marriage rather outstrips the percentage who support UKIP.
@Lord Norton:
I believe the polls record exactly what government wants them to record. And this one on ‘gay marriage’ is the top of that ‘misunderstanding.’
And your last line suggests you care less what Conservative voters are expecting from their party as long as the ‘gay marriage’ bill was passed.
And to enable all MP’s to take note, had you all really believed this country had a majority for this legislation you would not have had to push it through under the table the way you did. In fact you would have had a referendum on it, in the open, and been overjoyed by the result.
But, you knew it didn’t carry the weight you gave it. And you turned a blind eye. Now what could be the true reason for that I wonder?
Direct Democracy can be the only answer to stop this kind of duplicity in Parliament. Could it be cash laid out to the boys who take a thousand pounds a day to back anything that comes their way? No matter what or who they are selling down the river?
Blagger has hit it on the nail. Something very fishy has taken over in government and it won’t be long before we see more appalling legislation forced on the people through the back door.
There was no mandate for this Bill, it was a stitch up. Another reason they want to give a 16 year old the vote. So it can be claimed ‘the children are for it.’ And here I was believing the ‘polls’ that tell us there are more elderly than young in the UK today, and that the elderly are the voters. And didn’t we have the shout that the majority against Gay marriage were the elderly? Or didn’t one of your back patters say in a previous post, that not only was it the older percentage who didn’t want this, it was also ‘women.’ So, if you add up women and then put those groups together, the women and the elderly, plus most religious factions, I cannot see how a poll can come up with the ‘majority’ of the population were for this anomaly? Now that is an enigma, don’t you think?
‘You can fool some of the people all of the time, and all of the people some of the time, but, you cannot fool all of the people all of the time. ‘
Attributed to Abraham Lincoln.
maude elwes: ‘I believe the polls record exactly what government wants them to record.’ What?
One Bishop replied to me saying :
“I certainly have no wish to make this an issue on which the Church makes a stand against the clear wish of the House of Commons ………. I am clear that, in the end, it is not the task of the Lords to frustrate the will of the Commons”.
Another interesting statistic is that out of the 148 people who voted against equal marriage only 24 of them were female. The average age of the females voting against equal marriae was 77 with two of them being 90 and one being 89. The youngest of the females was 61.
Here is how the ages of the female baronesses got split Yrs 60 – 69 ( 2 Baronesses) , Yrs 70 – 74 (7 Baronesses), Yrs 75-79 (8 Baronesses), Yrs 80 – 90 (7 Baronesses).
It strikes me that there is an obvious generation problem here with elderly peers generally voting against gay rights. I haven’t analysed the age groups of the men but am assuming that they generally follow the same pattern. It’s also striking how male peers (elderly) in particular are opposed to this bill.
Many of the peers that spoke or replied to my letters mentioned that they were influenced to vote for equal marriage by the attitudes of their 20/30 something children towards gay people and I can only assume that the children of these elderly peers who voted against equal marriage are themselves nearing 60 and wouldn’t be so much in touch with the general feeling of the younger generations.
timmy: Indeed, 86% of the women peers who took part in the division voted against Lord Dear’s amendment. The average age of peers, excluding Bishops, who voted for Lord Dear was 75.
Lord Deer is a clear view on a foggy day. More respect should be afforded this man of courage. At very least he is a thinking man with enough common sense to broaden perspectives on this very narrow line of the self interested.
The British people are in dire need of more Lord Deers. Without whom the voice of the silent majority will be drowned in a sea of effluence.
Has anyone bothered to address history on this, or, are they simply ready to repeat downward line of the past.
One of the serious problems we have in this country with our present Parliament, in the main, is lack of education. Half the MP’s we have, in particular the younger women group, seemingly have no concept of European history.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/italy/8438210/Fall-of-Roman-Empire-caused-by-contagion-of-homosexuality.html
And Wiki:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homosexuality_in_ancient_Rome
And here is Laurence Olivier in Spartacus giving us a taster.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NJ0VSmkebwk
Get the picture?
maude elwes: Yes, but what about Lord Dear?
And not one of them with a democractic mandate.
You will do as they dictate.
When can the public see the amendments that have been put down for the committee stage?
There is a report out today saying
“Lord Alli has written to fellow Labour members of the upper house to claim that Lord Dear, a leading opponent of the bill, “has asked for his supporters to be ready” on 17 June to vote for the removal of clause one from the legislation.
This clause includes the crucial statement that “marriage of same sex couples is lawful”.
A separate email sent to Labour peers says: “We are aware that Lord Dear is intending to put down an amendment to oppose Clause 1 of the Bill. This is likely to come fairly early on Monday 17th.”
It does’nt show the scrutinising process of the Lords in a very good light if this kind of shenanigans take place!
It’s all available on the Parliament website. In this instance you’re looking at this page:
http://services.parliament.uk/bills/2013-14/marriagesamesexcouplesbill/documents.html
It appears to me, on reading this paper, that what is being requested is a referendum for England and Wales on the issue of same sex marriage. And that until such time as a referendum is held and the affirmative is the reply of the voter, same sex marriage will not be lawful.
This would indeed be democratic, if this is the call as I understand it, and if a referendum does take place. It also addresses the human rights act and that is as it should be. I sincerely hope the Lords who are putting this forward get the answer they want.
Lord Norton, do you think a vote on future stages of the Bill will be much closer? I can imagine that the vote on Second Reading was so decisive in reaction to the notion of striking down a Government Bill at Second Reading, and not simply a vote in favour of equal marriage in its own right.
Malden Capell: We are not expecting votes at committee stage. There are likely to be some on Report, though they may be limited given that the Bill is a short one with one basic aim.
Baroness D’Souza states in the House magazine “She predicts, however, that the bill is in for a bumpy ride in the Lords. “I don’t think you’ll quite see those sort of [big] majorities for the bill now that we are into Committee, Report and Third Reading, because there will be a lot of amendments. There are people who are very against some aspects of it and there may well be ping-pong. It’s a very contentious issue.”
Apart from the govt amendments, which ones do you think will gain support? Apart from the govt amendments any could cause the bill to ping pong between the houses..