To me there's nothing different in principle with a Catholic adoption agency, or indeed Methodist adoption agency, saying the rules in our community are different and therefore the law shouldn't apply to us. Why not then say sharia can be applied to different parts of the country? It doesn't work.

It's perfectly fair that you can't be a Roman Catholic priest unless you're a man. It seems right that the reach of anti-discriminatory law should stop at the door of the church or mosque.

I think there's an awful lot of noise about the Church being persecuted but there is a more real issue that the conventional churches face - that the people who are really driving their revival and success believe in an old-time religion which, in my view, is incompatible with a modern, multi-ethnic, multicultural society.

Once you start to provide public services that have to be run under public rules, for example child protection, then it has to go with public law. Institutions have to make a decision whether they want to do that or they don't want to do that.

There's no question that there is more anti-religion noise in Britain.

I ask questions, and a large part of my life has been spent asking questions of Ken Livingstone.

Bleak House by Charles Dickens is my favourite book.