Part of the debate – in the House of Lords at 2:52 pm on 21 March 2001.
My Lords, it is important to remember that we have to maintain a balance. We have to have marriage laws which are not discriminatory as between any part of our population. We have to make sure that it is not unnecessarily difficult for people who legitimately want to get married to do so. At the same time we have to make sure that our laws are the same for everyone. That means that sometimes there will be bigamous marriages, marriages which involve perjury or marriages of people who have entered this country illegally.