My Lords, I did not put my name to this amendment because there were enough people already, but I used to teach family law, including the law of marriage. In this country, it is very easy to get married in a registry office or in a properly registered religious place. You can get married in a hotel if you want to or you can have a civil partnership. There are all sorts of official unions that you can make very easily, but the worst of all possible worlds is to be duped into believing that you are married in a religious ceremony and then find that you are not, because you lose any protection that English law gives you, while at the same time, stereotypically, your husband—if he is really your husband—can abandon you or take another wife.
This is not just a question of running parallel systems of law: it is about the protection of women and the need to preserve transparency and regularity in people’s marital status. All that is necessary is for more mosques to become registered as proper places of marriage, just in the way that synagogues are, and all would be resolved. I see no arguments against this amendment at all. It is overdue.