David Norris (Independent)

However, it interesting that Father Peter McVerry made a point that I, too, have made previously, that there is a certain spiritual danger in the fiction of a state and a state apparatus being sustained by the Vatican. It is not a country. It has accreditation with the United Nations and so on. If one looks at the interventions at diplomatic and UN level, of the Vatican as a state, they are by no means all positive in terms of what are generally perceived as human rights, in particular, with regard to the reproductive rights of women, with regard to contraception, with regard to AIDs, with regard to gay people. When one takes into account the question of human rights, one has to be quite nuanced in one's approach to this question and it should not be used as a banner. I say this, despite the fact that I have recently come across an article where I had said three cheers for Pope John Paul II because of his principled stance on Iraq and the attack on that country.

I have always objected to the primate of my church, the Church of Ireland, being made a member of the House of Lords. I applaud that historically the Church of Ireland was disestablished and I wish they would disestablish the Church of England. The relationship between religion and politics is always toxic.