A week of retractions and rewrites – and a “Psalm Sunday” reminder from the Newark MP
Overseas marriages
On Tuesday, in answer to a written question from Richard Holden (Basildon and Billericay, Con) asking the Secretary of State for Justice, if he will make it his policy not to recognise overseas marriages that would be illegal under UK law, Jake Richards, Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State at the MoJ, said this:
”There are no plans to change the law that an overseas marriage is normally recognised in England and Wales if it complied with the requirements for the form of the ceremony where it took place (meaning by whom, where, when and how it was conducted) and if both parties had capacity to marry according to the law of their domicile.”
One cannot help wondering what occasioned the question in the first place.
Finland, religion, free speech and homosexuality
The Helsinki Times reports that, by three votes to two, the Supreme Court of Finland has convicted and fined Päivi Räsänen, a Christian Democrat member of the Finnish Parliament, and Juhana Pohjola, a bishop of the small Evangelical Lutheran Mission Diocese of Finland, for hate speech. The charge related to a pamphlet published by the Mission Diocese that described homosexuality as a disorder in psychosexual development and rejected the view that it was a natural variation of human sexuality. The judgment requires the removal of specific passages, but allows the rest of the pamphlet to remain available.
According to the report, the Court said the case did not centre on religious confession and found that the disputed passages reflected social and medical claims rather than expressions tied to religious doctrine, adding that freedom of religion did not protect statements unrelated to religion when assessing criminal liability. However, Ms Räsänen was cleared of charges linked to a social media post in which she cited the Bible.
EU Special Envoy for Freedom of Religion or Belief
Mairead McGuinness, a former European Commissioner for financial services and Fine Gael’s candidate in Ireland’s 2025 presidential election, has been appointed EU Special Envoy for the Promotion of Freedom of Religion or Belief outside the EU.
Assisted dying claims debunked
A summary of posts on X headed Prue Leith’s Assisted Dying Claims Debunked by Lords Records commented:
“Leith accused Archbishop Sarah Mullally and six others of filibustering the Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill, but Mullally tabled zero amendments and the changes came from over 50 peers. The bill, which passed the Commons in June 2025 by 315-291, lets terminally ill adults in England and Wales request aid to end their lives under safeguards like dual doctor approval. Now in its 11th committee day, supporters call delays a filibuster while opponents stress vital scrutiny amid time pressures before summer recess”.
On Friday, the BBC reported that both those promoting the bill and those opposed to it had now concluded that it would not become law in the current session of Parliament.
Further to our Wednesday post, A further examination of AI in legal blogging, Legal Cheek reported that the Judicial Appointments Commission confirmed this week that judge hopefuls may use AI when drafting and reviewing self-assessment or individual skill and ability examples, so long as they remain “fully responsible for the accuracy and truthfulness of all material submitted.”
Acceptable uses include running self-written drafts through AI to improve grammar, clarity and structure, using it to identify key themes or strengths in content already written, and checking whether a draft flows and holds together. Candidates may also use AI to summarise long documents they have personally authored. However, “[AI] must not create substantive content or replace or inaccurately overstate personal experience.”
However, there are two sides to every job application, and one is reminded of a classic Beaker Folk article “If Clergy Ads Told the Full Story”, the assertions in which received a degree of episcopal acknowledgement.
Quick links
- Bible Society: not really “law”, but its report, The Quiet Revival, based on YouGov data and now known to be faulty, has been removed and reissued here; the Society claims, however, that “this faulty survey sample does not undermine the reality of a significant trend in which many people – especially young people – are finding renewed relevance in the Bible and Christianity in Britain today”.
- Jessica Murphy, BBC News: How a ban on religious symbols has triggered a Canadian constitutional debate: on the continuing controversy surrounding Québec’s Loi sur la laïcité de l’État.
I’m not sure if you were be being sardonic in your rhetorical question on Holden’s question – you needn’t publish this if you were.
But experience suggests he was referring to Islamic marriages. There’s a lot of hysteria about those (as we’ve all noted below the line before, the UK recognises them only in the criminal law – unless they take place overseas).
Two particular political bugbears that he may be concerned about:
– Marriages of minors in jurisdictions (such as Scotland?) where the legal age for marriage is under 18;
– The large number of British nationals who marry a Pakistani in a Muslim marriage in Pakistan, which brings eligibility for a family visa, and recognition in the Family Court for divorce & custody purposes. Removal of that recognition would significantly worsen the already precarious position of many British partners to those marriages, women especially.
I wrote that bit and I wasn’t being sardonic: I genuinely couldn’t work out what was behind the question.