Marriage (Same Sex Couples) Bill

Angela Watkinson Excerpts

Monday 20th May 2013 Commons Chamber

In 2012, the Relationships Foundation calculated the cost to this country of family breakdown at £44 billion—some £1,470 per year to every taxpayer, or 1.8% of gross domestic product. That is a big problem—a growing problem that is costly, financially and socially, in our society. Fewer than one in 10 married parents have split by the time a child reaches the age of five, compared with more than one in three of those who are cohabiting but not married, and 75% of family breakdowns involving children under five result from the separation of unmarried parents. The Centre for Social Justice has produced a raft of statistics showing that a child who is not in a two-parent family is 75% more likely to fall out of school and 70% more likely to be addicted to drugs, and is more likely to get in trouble with the law, be homeless, and not be in employment, education or training. We know that marriage works, but we also know that civil partnerships are beginning to show empirical evidence of greater stability for same-sex couples, including those who have children, be it through adoption, surrogacy or whatever. There is a strong case for believing that extending civil partnerships would improve that stability for many more families in different forms.

[Dame Angela Watkinson (Hornchurch and Upminster) (Con)]

My hon. Friend is making a compelling case for extending civil partnerships to opposite-sex couples. In fact, I have not detected any resistance to the idea in any part of the House, so there seems to be agreement that it would be beneficial. The point of argument is when it can be achieved, for the many reasons that he touched on. Benefits, pensions, inheritance and tax are very complex; it will take time to cost the proposal properly, rather than introducing it before we know exactly its implications.

[Tim Loughton]

I hear the point that my hon. Friend makes and it has been made before. I will come on to say that all that work was done in 2004. I am trying purely to mirror the sort of arrangements that were made back in 2004 when civil partnerships were introduced.

If just one in 10 cohabiting opposite-sex couples were to enter a civil partnership, that would be some 300,000 or so couples and their children, giving them greater security, greater stability, less likelihood of family breakdown, better social outcome and better financial outcome. That surely is progress.

One interesting witness, who has been named already in our deliberations in the witness stage, was Alice Arnold, who is in a civil partnership with Clare Balding. She is very much in favour of the Bill. I entirely respect where she is coming from. One thing she said was that when she is asked, “Are you married?” she has to say, “No, but—” because she is in a civil partnership, not what she regards as a marriage. There is currently a problem with civil partnerships. If someone fills in a form, goes for an interview or responds to a question and says that they are in a civil partnership, they are automatically admitting their sexuality which, for some people, is uncomfortable. If civil partnerships were extended to everybody, people could be in a civil partnership and their sexuality would not be questioned or questionable.

There is a further application. Many people who have strong religious beliefs, particularly if they are Catholics, and have ended up getting divorced, which is in conflict with certain religious teachings, may not be inclined to get married again if they meet a new partner, because supposedly their Church believes they should be married for life. They would, however, in many cases be able to square that position by entering into a new formal commitment through an opposite-sex civil partnership. So there are a number of practical applications where civil partnerships for opposite-sex couples will achieve something very positive—not wrecking, but achieving something for which people have a requirement.

Opposite-sex civil partnerships are not something cooked up in this country. Let us look at various overseas experiences. In South Africa the Civil Union Act 2006 gave the option for some same-sex and opposite-sex couples to register a civil union by way of a marriage or a civil partnership on the same basis. In France, as has been mentioned, the pacte civil de solidarité, or PACS, as it is known, was introduced in 1999 as a form of civil union between two adults of the same sex or the opposite sex, and now gay marriage has been added to that. Interestingly, 94% of PACS that took place in 2012 were between opposite-sex couples. Even more interestingly, in France one in 10 PACS has been dissolved, against one in three marriages ending in divorce. There is evidence to show that some of these civil partnerships have created greater stability, whether those are opposite-sex or same-sex partnerships.

Many people would not want to do such a trade-off for religious reasons. We need to recognise that society is changing. What does not change is the desire to create as much stability as possible for couples and children in those families. In the Netherlands in 1998 registered partnerships were created for same-sex and opposite-sex partners which provide the same rights and responsibilities as married partners, except in relation to children, to do with overseas adoptions and so on. This is not rocket science—it already happens.

I contend that a great deal of work was done at the time of the Civil Partnership Act 2004—complicated work, as the Secretary of State said, which took a while to bring into operation, but that work has been done. I want identical terms to apply, as applied back in 2004. The Government also say that the proposal would require big changes to lots of other legislation. Introducing same-sex marriage will require big changes to lots of other legislation; why cannot the two types of change be made in parallel?

Last year, as we said, the Government consulted on the whole issue, as the right hon. Member for St Helens South and Whiston (Mr Woodward) reminded us, and a clear majority said that they were in favour of it. Surely the Government, as a contingency at least, have done some preparatory work on what would be involved if there was a call to change the law, as all the opinion polls show and as I am now calling for.

It was reported in a newspaper this morning that one of the Ministers involved, in objecting to my amendment, had

“said such a radical change must not be introduced in a ‘rush’. She added that civil partnerships should be reviewed once gay marriages had been operating for five years.”

If we take it to 2019, civil partnerships will have been operating for almost 15 years, which seems more than enough time to gauge whether they are working and should be extended. I must say that there has been some pretty scurrilous and disingenuous last-minute scaremongering by certain parties on the Front Bench.