Controversy over move to allow Church of England to host weddings from other denominations

Tory former Cabinet minister John Gummer, who sits in the Lords as Lord Deben, said the current marriage system was a “fudge”.

He told peers his Ecumenical Marriage Bill would not require the Church of England to make the change but remove a “legal impediment” from them being able to do so.

“We live in an ecumenical world and have to come to terms with that,” said Lord Deben, a former member of the Church of England general synod who is now a Catholic.

He said the Church of England should be “challenged” to decide whether it wanted to “make this step towards a more ecumenical society”.

But the move was opposed by the Bishop of Winchester, the Right Rev Tim Dakin, who said there was already considerable flexibility over marriages flowing from the relationship between churches of different denominations.

He warned that the Bill was a departure from the long standing constitutional convention that the Church of England made its own legislation by synodical process.

“This Bill is not the way to encourage ecumenical hospitality for which we continue to work and to which I am personally committed,” the Bishop said.

Tory Lord Robathan told Lord Deben that he was “instinctively uneasy” about a measure proposed by “somebody who has rejected the Church of England”.

For the Government, Baroness Vere of Norbiton said it was not conventional for Parliament to legislate directly on…