Oral Answers to Questions
Kelvin Hopkins Excerpts(5 years, 9 months ago)
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John Spellar (Warley) (Lab)
Kelvin Hopkins (Luton North) (Ind)
The Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice (Mr David Gauke)
We are currently in commercial negotiations with community rehabilitation companies, with the aim of amending contracts and improving operational performance. Once we have concluded those negotiations, we will be in a position to provide further detail about the changes that we intend to make.
Mr Gauke
As I said in my earlier answer, we are engaging with the CRCs, which do need to improve their service. The model that we have has opened up the delivery of probation services to a range of new providers. It has extended support and supervision to an additional 40,000 offenders leaving prison. First-generation contracts can be difficult to get right—I acknowledge that—but we are taking all necessary steps to get the performance that we require.
Kelvin Hopkins
Given the constant underperformance, high cost and deeply abject failure of private probation companies, is it not time to re-establish a professional, coherent and comprehensively public probation service?
Oral Answers to Questions
Kelvin Hopkins Excerpts(7 years ago)
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Kelvin Hopkins (Luton North) (Lab)
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Justice (Dr Phillip Lee)
Prisoners are more likely to have mental health problems than the broader population. We are looking at custody and community for improving the mental health offering. We are looking at a community protocol to be followed and enhancing custodial mental health services.
Kelvin Hopkins
There were 119 prison suicides in 2016—an increase of 32% on the previous year—and cases of self-harm were up by 19%, at more than 10,000. Does the Minister agree that these are appalling statistics? What are the Government going to do to address this human misery?
Dr Lee
Each and every one of those cases is a human tragedy, and I have looked at a large number of them in detail. Indeed, last week I was at HMP Downview, a women’s prison at which a suicide took place. We are investing in better healthcare facilities at that prison, and I am also looking at access to secure accommodation across the country, because that might well be an issue.
Oral Answers to Questions
Kelvin Hopkins Excerpts(7 years, 6 months ago)
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Mr Speaker
Order. I say very gently to the hon. Member for Dumfries and Galloway (Richard Arkless) that I am sure his constituency has many magnificent merits but it is a long way from Chelmsford.
Kelvin Hopkins (Luton North) (Lab)
The Minister for Courts and Justice (Sir Oliver Heald)
The coalition Government promised to review parts 1 and 2 of the Act and we remain committed to undertaking that review.
Rob Marris (Wolverhampton South West) (Lab)
Kelvin Hopkins
I thank the Minister for his answer to my question, but a TUC report of this October raised concerns that the Act is a barrier to access to justice for victims of domestic violence. The regulations concerning the provision of evidence of domestic violence are restrictive and narrow and have led to a 16% drop in applications and a 17% drop in applications granted. Is it not time the Secretary of State admitted that the Act is denying access to justice for thousands and must be amended?
Sir Oliver Heald
It is of course important that legal aid is available for victims of domestic violence, particularly those seeking protective injunctions. On the evidence requirements, in April we more than doubled the time limit on evidence from two to five years, and we have introduced a provision that allows the Legal Aid Agency to grant legal aid if it is satisfied that an application demonstrates financial abuse. This is important and it has been varied in the light of experience over the last two or three years, and we will continue to monitor it.
Police Grant Report (England and Wales)
Kelvin Hopkins Excerpts(8 years, 2 months ago)
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Kelvin Hopkins (Luton North) (Lab)
I would like to speak briefly about Bedfordshire, which has been very seriously underfunded for a prolonged period. It still has serious problems. I was very pleased to visit the Policing Minister with the other five Members of Parliament for Bedfordshire—Conservative and Labour—a little time ago. He will have seen the paper prepared by the police and crime commissioner and the chief constable illustrating the desperate state of funding for policing in Bedfordshire. I made the point, in Business questions last week, suggesting that the funding formula was fundamentally flawed—broken was the term I used. I hope the funding formula will be amended rapidly, so that it can provide fair funding for Bedfordshire and other authorities across the country.
We have a particular problem with knife crime that is comparable with that in Merseyside, Greater Manchester and other areas, yet we are substantially less well funded. We also have a problem with gun crime that is comparable with that in large urban areas. Again, we cannot cope because we have serious underfunding. Our police force does a wonderful job with the resources it has, but those resources are simply not good enough. Rural Wales has, per head of population, resources and police numbers that are a multiple of those available in Bedfordshire, yet it has very little crime. There is something fundamentally wrong with a formula that can give such relatively generous police funding to rural areas with very little crime, when Bedfordshire has some fairly serious problems with crime, which we do our best to deal with but really are struggling with.
We have an excellent chief constable and an excellent police and crime commissioner in Jon Boutcher and Olly Martins. They are doing their best and have provided me with detailed arguments and statistics, which the Policing Minister will have. They make the point over and again that we need a fairer funding formula to bring Bedfordshire into line with other areas.
Our area needs extra resources for policing. As I mentioned, we have crime, but we also have political extremism on both sides of the divide, and that requires extra policing too. The police do the best job they can, with the resources available, but we do not have enough resource to do the necessary job. I urge the Policing Minister to look seriously at the funding formula. It should not just be an extra bit of cash to help out in the short term. We need to consider fundamentally how it can be revised, so that it treats Bedfordshire and every other area more equitably. Overall, we still need more funding for the police in general, but the lower funding we have across the country ought to be allocated fairly, and Bedfordshire should get its fair amount.
I will leave it there. I apologise to hon. Members and to you, Mr Deputy Speaker, because I have to go to the European Scrutiny Committee, where we are interviewing the Foreign Secretary. It is pressing business, so I hope that hon. Members will forgive me if I leave fairly quickly after my speech.
Oral Answers to Questions
Kelvin Hopkins Excerpts(9 years, 1 month ago)
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Kelvin Hopkins (Luton North) (Lab)
In a previous Question Time, I raised the problem of victims of domestic abuse apparently being deterred from going to law because of the cuts in legal aid. Has the Minister discussed the matter with representatives of the law authorities? Does he have any statistics to confirm these reports?
Oral Answers to Questions
Kelvin Hopkins Excerpts(9 years, 4 months ago)
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Mr Speaker
I think that the hon. Member for Shipley (Philip Davies) regards “faffing around” to be a technical expression.
Kelvin Hopkins (Luton North) (Lab)
The Ministry of Justice has massively upgraded its prediction for the prison population, which could be up to 100,000 by 2020. Does that suggest a total failure by the Government to take seriously the reduction of reoffending, and was privatising the probation service precisely the wrong policy?
Andrew Selous
The Government are expanding prison capacity, and four house blocks are under construction and will open early next year. We have a new prison in north Wales, and we keep such matters under review. We will always have enough places for those sent to us by the courts, unlike what happened under the previous Government.
Anti-social Behaviour, Crime and Policing Bill
Kelvin Hopkins Excerpts(10 years, 6 months ago)
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Ann Coffey
I shall speak to new clause 18, which is in my name and those of my hon. Friends. Rightly, there is a lot of concern about serious injury and death caused by aggressive dogs, and I support the measures proposed by my hon. Friends to tighten the current criminal law and introduce stricter penalties.
New clause 18 deals with a different situation—it is a simple preventive measure to stop injuries to many people who, every year, post millions of bits of paper through letterboxes. It is not unknown for dogs to regard fingers put through letterboxes as curiosities and fair game for fastening their teeth on. Some dogs are aggressive, but others might simply believe they are being playful. The thought of a dog hurtling itself at a letterbox might conjure up visions of an hilarious scene from a sitcom, but for the real-life recipient, it can be traumatic and painful. People can sustain injuries ranging from bite marks and minor bruising to fingers or nerves being severed, causing long-term injury. Some years ago, I had to take my constituency assistant to accident and emergency for a serious injury to her hand sustained while leafleting.
The amendment requires householders who keep a dog in their house to put up a wire mesh guard around their letterbox where there is a reasonable probability that, either through aggression or playfulness, it could go for somebody’s hand. I am not saying that every dog owner must rush out and buy a wire guard—if they have a good dog there is no need to worry. However, if there is a chance that their dog might jump up and, for whatever reason, bite someone through the letterbox, it would be up to them to take responsibility to prevent accidents and put in a simple wire guard.
Kelvin Hopkins (Luton North) (Lab)
I strongly support what my hon. Friend is saying. While delivering leaflets during the previous general election campaign, I was bitten by a dog. It took an hour out of my life to have a tetanus injection at the hospital.
Ann Coffey
I thank my hon. Friend for that intervention. I am sure his experience is shared by a lot of hon. Members.
If dog owners fail to comply with the requirement and there is an incident, the person bitten would be entitled to take a civil court action against them. By this simple measure, I believe that many injuries could be averted every year, and it has the added advantage of protecting householders from the hostility generated if their dog bites someone, particularly if that happens to be a child.
I understand that there may not be much public sympathy for politicians who get bitten by dogs, but this is not simply a problem for politicians. Many people push leaflets and letters through doors, including: postmen and women; newspaper boys and girls; people starting up new businesses or advertising pizza and other fast food services; neighbours posting Christmas and birthday cards; and people posting leaflets advertising community events.
I support the other amendments that have been tabled that aim to change criminal law, to make owners manage their dogs better and to put stricter penalties in place. However, my amendment is designed with safety, not the criminal law, in mind and I hope the Government will feel able to accept it. If they do not, I hope they will include the proposal in any future consultation.
Anti-social Behaviour, Crime and Policing Bill
Kelvin Hopkins Excerpts(10 years, 6 months ago)
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Mr Steve Reed (Croydon North) (Lab)
Let me start by paying tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Ashfield (Gloria De Piero) for the way in which she ably steered this Bill through Committee on behalf of the Opposition and for her work more generally as part of our shadow Home Office team before her well-deserved promotion last week. I also welcome the Minister to his new role and, along with my colleagues, I look forward to debating these important issues with him.
Antisocial behaviour orders have been the cornerstone of the fight against antisocial behaviour since Labour came to power in 1997. In that year, the previous Tory Government had failed to address a problem that blighted communities up and down the country, from suburban lanes to inner-city estates, for which people were long overdue a Government response.
ASBOs are a tough, fair and proportionate last response to persistent perpetrators of antisocial behaviour. They require a criminal burden of proof to be brought in, they are a last resort where other interventions have failed and they work because they are backed by the threat of criminal sanction. In seeking to repeal the legislation that brought in ASBOs, the Government are taking a retrograde and misguided step that will not be welcomed by the communities that live in fear of antisocial behaviour and that have come to know that the police have the power to take tough action backed by criminal sanctions if necessary.
In the Government’s most recent crime survey, 80% of respondents said they believed that antisocial behaviour was increasing under this Government since the general election. One third of respondents said that they had either been a victim of, or witness to, antisocial behaviour. They will be wondering why the Government have chosen to respond to people’s concerns not by toughening the legislation or by empowering the police to take action, but by going soft, taking away the threat of criminal sanction, taking police off the beat to attend training on new and weaker powers of response, and requiring the new injunctions to be taken out not in magistrates courts, which would mean they could be dealt with quickly and efficiently, but in county courts, which are slow and overburdened. Amendment 96 seeks not to prevent the Government from introducing injunctions to prevent nuisance and annoyance—they could be a useful alternative for the police to consider using—but to keep ASBOs on the statute book, leaving it to local councils and police forces to decide what best suits their local areas and needs.
I speak from experience. Before the people of Croydon North elected me to the House last November, I spent nearly seven years as leader of Lambeth council in south London. When Labour won power there in 2006, we found that the Tory-Lib Dem coalition had spent the previous three years stalling ASBOs on ideological grounds. One year, it issued none at all. As a consequence, antisocial behaviour remained too high, without sanction. Young people drifted from antisocial behaviour to low-level crime, and then to high-level crime, including street robberies. Gang violence rose. The fear of crime and the perception that local streets were simply not safe became endemic.
One of the first things the Labour-led council did on taking power was clamp down on antisocial behaviour. Issuing ASBOs, working closely with the police, was a key part of the response.
Kelvin Hopkins (Luton North) (Lab)
I congratulate my hon. Friend on his appointment. Conservatives and Liberal Democrats represent areas that are much more prosperous; Labour MPs typically represent by and large urban constituencies, with disadvantaged communities. Is it not the case that ASBOs are much more relevant to the constituencies that Labour Members represent?
Mr Reed
My hon. Friend makes an interesting point, but antisocial behaviour can happen in any community. Government Members ought to listen to the people they represent, who do not wish to see them watering down the responses and toolkit available to tackle antisocial behaviour.
To refer again to my experience, Lambeth council increased the use of ASBOs to achieve a reduction in antisocial behaviour not for the slogans or press releases, or to try to look tough, but because it was needed to get a grip of our streets and return confidence to the law-abiding majority of residents. Government Members cannot tell me that ASBOs do not work because I saw how crime fell when a newly elected Labour council worked alongside the police to use ASBOs to great effect in making our streets and our communities safe again.
ASBOs work in part because they are backed by a criminal sanction. Breaching an ASBO is not something to be taken lightly—it is a criminal offence. Persistent antisocial behaviour is deeply damaging to local communities, and people expect effective sanctions. With Labour’s ASBOs, that is exactly what they got. Instead, the Government propose to take away the criminal sanction. Offenders can breach IPNAs in the full knowledge that they are not committing a crime. If the police or local councils want action taken against someone who has breached their IPNA and who is terrorising a local community, they will not get support from the criminal justice system. There is no automatic penalty. Instead, the breach of an IPNA will lead to the potential of civil action brought under the contempt of court proceedings. Offenders across the country will be rejoicing that the Government have gone soft, while the law-abiding majority will be horrified.
The Government’s proposal is not only a weak response to antisocial behaviour, but the police and local councils will pay for it themselves. Instead of criminal proceedings being brought by the Crown Prosecution Service, the police will have to bring a civil action in the courts at their own expense.
Oral Answers to Questions
Kelvin Hopkins Excerpts(10 years, 10 months ago)
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Mrs Grant
I do not agree with the hon. Gentleman. He is well aware of the actions that have been taken for bereaved families. I will not go into too much detail now, but I will say, picking up the point about judicial review, that these proposals strike the right balance and a fair balance, and they are proportional and targeted. The system is already subject to abuse. The reforms that we will put forward will not restrict access to justice or the rule of law, nor the right to a fair hearing.
Kelvin Hopkins (Luton North) (Lab)
T1. If he will make a statement on his Departmental responsibilities.
The Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice (Chris Grayling)
My hon. Friend the Member for Bury North (Mr Nuttall) has already referred to the new prison in north Wales, and I thought it might be helpful to update the House on our plans. The purpose-built institution that we are planning will hold about 2,000 prisoners and bring about 1,000 jobs and a £23 million boost each year to the region’s economy. We expect work to start on the build in summer next year, with the aim of being fully operational by late 2017.
I want to put on record my thanks to the Welsh Government and the local authorities in the region for their co-operation in helping this, the first prison in north Wales, to become a reality. We will announce the specific set of sites in due course. I believe that this is the right thing for this part of the country and the right way to meet prison capacity demands. New prison builds represent much better value for money for the taxpayer, but as the recent report from Policy Exchange recognised, they are also the right way for us to cut this country’s stubbornly high reoffending rate. That is another reason why the announcement of this Government investment is such welcome news.
Kelvin Hopkins
Only two years ago the probation service was awarded the British Quality Foundation Gold Medal for Excellence and was lavishly praised by the then responsible Minister, who was later sacked to be replaced by hard-line privatisers who are now determined to force more public money into private pockets, whatever the consequences. Is not that the simple truth?
Chris Grayling
It is important that Labour Members understand what they are saying when they oppose these reforms. Every day of every week, a young person, very often somebody who has grown up in the most difficult circumstances and found themselves with a short sentence in jail, is walking back on to our streets with £46 in their pocket and no support, and the majority reoffend. That is a scandal, it needs to stop as quickly as possible, and that is what we are aiming to do.
Marriage (Same Sex Couples) Bill
Kelvin Hopkins Excerpts(10 years, 11 months ago)
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Kelvin Hopkins (Luton North) (Lab)
I welcome the debate. I strongly support new clause 15 and the associated amendments, and believe that it would be a massive, progressive step if the provisions were enacted. I declare an interest as vice-chair since 1997 of the all-party parliamentary humanist group, and as an active member of the British Humanist Association. In that sense, I have a vested interest, but even if I were not a humanist, I would passionately support the proposal to permit humanist weddings.
Sir Peter Bottomley
I have been searching for information but cannot find it on how many humanist weddings there are in England each year on average at the moment. Does the hon. Gentleman have that information?
Kelvin Hopkins
Hon. Members are calling out numbers to me—600 in England and 2,500 in Scotland. Why something is so easy in Scotland and so difficult in England is beyond me to imagine.
One point that the hon. Member for Banbury (Sir Tony Baldry) made quite strongly concerned democracy. Democracy is not dictatorship of the majority. Our kind of democracy accepts freedoms for minorities as well. The humanists are a substantial and significant minority, of whom I am proud to be one. Over the past decade, between the past two censuses, there has been a substantial increase in those professing no religion, and a significant proportion of those people have become humanists. If a number of those professing no faith understood that there was an alternative way of living according to some strong ethical beliefs, they could become humanists themselves. They would only need to find out more about humanism, and they might well become humanists and want a humanist marriage.
Ian Swales
In the 2011 census, 25% professed no religion. That is more than 14 million people. Does the hon. Gentleman believe that they should have the opportunity to celebrate their marriages?
Kelvin Hopkins
I thank the hon. Gentleman for those figures, which had escaped me for the moment. Indeed, 25% is a substantial number. I do not want to oppress any minorities, or majorities, but I do not want my minority to be oppressed by anyone else.
Dame Angela Watkinson
I do not think there is any question about the desirability of humanist marriages. The issue is that if we embark at this moment on the complexities that others have referred to, it will cause an unacceptable delay in the passage of this Bill.
Kelvin Hopkins
I thank the hon. Lady for her intervention, but I suspect that similar arguments were displayed when Catholics became emancipated in 1829. It was argued that it would undermine the constitution, that we have an established religion, and so on—all sorts of arguments against. When progressive changes are made, a year later such pettifogging arguments are forgotten.
Jane Ellison (Battersea) (Con)
To reinforce the point made in the earlier intervention, there is a great deal of sympathy for the proposed provisions. I went recently to a humanist funeral and it was a marvellous ceremony. I do not think that Government Members would argue otherwise. As the hon. Gentleman acknowledged, protecting minorities is important, and a great deal of care and thought has gone into the locks in this Bill to protect people of faith and to give them reassurance. The concern is that this Bill is the wrong vehicle in which to make this change, because by implementing a change for the humanist minority, one unpicks the protections in the Bill for people of faith.
Kelvin Hopkins
At some time, somebody can explain to me the difficulties. I just do not accept those difficulties. It is a simple thing to allow a significant proportion of our population to be married according to their own beliefs, in the same way that other people are married according to their beliefs. I cannot see that it threatens anyone else in so doing.
Dr Huppert
A couple of hon. Members have said that the new clause would unpick the locks, but they have so far failed to say in what way—I hope that the hon. Gentleman agrees—because we already have exemptions for Jews and Quakers, who are not tied to a place. Does he also agree that if Members are to claim that, they should do more than simply asserting it to be true? They should try to provide some sort of evidence and reason why they think it is true.
Kelvin Hopkins
I thank the hon. Gentleman for his intervention. Those Members sitting on the Government side of the Chamber will no doubt explain that in their speeches, and I will listen with interest.
I like to equate humanism with other belief systems, some religious and some non-religious. It is interesting that in France, a strictly secular country with a strong separation of the state and religion, humanists are treated in the same way as religious organisations. Humanists cannot attain any kind of support at all from the state, in the same way that Churches cannot, because if they did so the Churches might try to claim it as well; so they are treated in the same way.
In my constituency, which has many religions and strong support for them, we have a council of faiths that does wonderful work in bringing people together. It has produced a colourful pamphlet showing a rainbow spectrum of different beliefs and belief systems, including humanism, so it treats humanism on a par with other belief systems. I think that we should do the same by allowing humanists to be married.
Mr Crispin Blunt (Reigate) (Con)
I want to intervene while the Attorney-General is in the Chamber. Was the hon. Gentleman, like me, astonished when the Attorney-General advised at the Dispatch Box that extending rights to a particular group of people could somehow fall foul of the Human Rights Act?
Kelvin Hopkins
It is bizarre, but I must say that I am not a lawyer—I am only a humble economist—so these things escape me. Perhaps I can look forward to legal explanations later in the debate.
The Attorney-General
I will say this one last time. It has nothing to do with the merits or otherwise of wanting to extend marriage to humanist or secular groups. The way the amendment has been drafted confined it to groups promoting humanism, but there are many other secular groups. The local tiddlywinks club might wish to become a registered charity and to conduct weddings, so by its very nature, and for that reason, it is discriminatory, and by being discriminatory it is in serious danger, I suggest, of violating article 14 of the European convention on human rights. I can only say that. It might be curable, and there might be all sorts of other things that can be done—[Interruption.] Well, not in this House. As matters stand, the amendment is in that condition. I made that point simply to help the House.
Kelvin Hopkins
I thank the Attorney-General for that intervention. No doubt Scotland will be drummed out of the convention for what it has done.
I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Stretford and Urmston (Kate Green) on her powerful speech, which I think she made extremely well. I only wish that she had been given more time to go through all the detailed objections, which the British Humanist Association has answered at length, but of course there is not always time in debates to answer every question. I assure hon. Members that the BHA has dealt with all the objections it has heard so far. [Interruption.]
Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)
Order. There are too many private conversations going on and I am struggling to hear—[Interruption.] Mr Blunt, order, please.
Kelvin Hopkins
In conclusion, I want to put it on the record that I strongly support new clause 15 and very much hope that it will eventually lead to humanists being allowed to marry in the way they wish and not to be required to get married in any other way.
Greg Mulholland (Leeds North West) (LD)
I want first to speak to new clause 15 and to express my full support for it. After doing so, I will link that with new clause 14, which stands in my name, and the comments I made yesterday on amendment 10 and why it could and should have been dealt with separately.
In expressing my support for new clause 15, I remind the House of my early-day motion 667, tabled in September 2010, which called for humanist marriages to be allowed in England and Wales in exactly the same way as in Scotland. That is something I believe as a liberal, and also because I was extremely fortunate in having the honour of being best man at the wedding of two humanist friends, Derek and Louise, in September 2007. It was an honour to play a role in that ceremony. I was moved by what an appropriate, fitting and solemn ceremony it was. They were married exactly the way they wanted to be, according to their beliefs. They were equally happy to participate in my Catholic wedding a few years before.
As a liberal, I believe that each and every one of us has the right to marry according to our own beliefs. The problem with how the Bill is currently drafted is that we are allowing a situation to continue in which some religions—to be more precise, some sects of some religions—have access to a civil marriage ceremony while other religions, sects of religions and belief-based systems do not. To me, as a liberal, that is simply not justifiable. My opinion is simply that each and every citizen of this country, of all belief systems and religions and none, should have the same right to equal recognition of their relationship.
New clause 14 stands in my name and that of my hon. Friend the Member for Bristol North West (Charlotte Leslie), whose support and common-sense approach on this I appreciate. The simple reality is that if the Government had approached this matter in a more rational and common-sense way, the debate we are having now would be entirely unnecessary. Many Members on both sides of the House—interestingly, they include many who have concerns about the Bill and many who fully support it—believe that we should be making a proper separation of the belief-based recognition of a relationship, whether humanist or religious, from the state’s right to confer legal rights and legal recognition on individuals. The trouble is that the Bill, as drafted, conflates and confuses the two. Even worse, it enshrines the confusion we have heard about, such as the various marriage Acts replacing each other, and adds even more layers of complexity, which means legal confusion. At the same time, there is the absurd situation in which the Bill is having to specify in law that some Churches may not marry certain people and having to put in place protections for other Churches so that they do not have to do so. Of course, if we had a proper separation of civil and marriage, those things would simply not be necessary.
Maria Miller
My hon. Friend reads my mind, because I was about to go on to that very point. He is right: it is important that we recognise that those of the Jewish faith and Quakers have a particular position, and we have been accommodating their needs since marriage was first regulated in this country back in 1753, as the hon. Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant) mentioned. That is a long-standing historical arrangement designed to respect and accommodate ancient and religious traditions. My hon. Friend will understand that because it has been established in time, it cannot be changed retrospectively and it is therefore entirely consistent with the position set out by the Attorney-General.
Kelvin Hopkins
I do not follow the right hon. Lady’s logic. She says that the Jews and the Quakers have a particular position, which has been accommodated. Why cannot we have a particular position, which is accommodated too?
Maria Miller
Because the existing arrangement pre-dates the European convention on human rights, as the hon. Gentleman knows. That is the anomaly. Furthermore, it is not legally possible to restrict—