Marriage (Same Sex Couples) Bill

Baroness Barker Excerpts

Wednesday 10th July 2013 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Barker]

My Lords, I freely confess that one of the happiest days of my life was when I gave up speaking on pensions matters in your Lordships’ House. I never thought that I would come across anything more complex until we came to this legislation. This is not necessarily a complex issue, but when the Minister talks about a fast-track procedure, she is talking about a procedure that has gone on for at least two years. That is the level of difficulty. I thank the Minister. She, like the rest of us, has been on a very fast learning curve and has dealt with these issues with great sensitivity and dedication.

The noble Baroness, Lady Gould, is right; we are perhaps 90% in agreement. The people directly affected by this issue are grateful for the advances made in the Bill. I am sure that the very small number of people who will be directly affected by Amendment 89—people who have not gone through the process of acquiring a full gender recognition certificate because they would have had to divorce their spouse to do so—will be extremely pleased. I am pleased to be accompanied by a number of Bishops today, and I think it is apt to say that one of the couples who I know will be directly affected are active members of their church. Their marriage was very important to them and they did not wish it to be broken up in these circumstances. We have enabled a small number of people to live their lives with greater dignity. That is important.

The noble Baroness, Lady Gould, is right; people in the transgender community believe that there is still a possibility that spouses who are very angry and upset will retain the capacity to delay the process of divorce and therefore of obtaining gender recognition for some time, mostly by starting divorce proceedings and then not actioning them. That remains an issue. I agree with the noble Baroness that we have probably gone as far as we can in the Bill and that the issue is perhaps something to which we should return in post-legislative scrutiny.

The Bill has achieved an important step forward for a small number of people who, in the course of their ordinary lives, put up with an awful lot of hostility. We have made their lives a bit better and enabled them to live with a little more dignity. For that, this House should be very proud of what it has done.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Anderson of Swansea]

My noble friend is coming to the view that a review will come to a certain conclusion. We do not know what conclusion that review will come to. The question is surely that we know that under Clause 13—and this was a fairly late addition by the Government—there will be a review of civil partnership. We also know, under Clause 2, that it does not prevent the review also dealing with other matters relating to civil partnership. Are those who are against the amendment suggesting that the review should be stopped from dealing with those matters?

Part of our problem as politicians—or Members of this House, who may not consider themselves politicians —is that we face this disconnect between what we are doing here and public opinion. In my own judgment, having served 30 years in the other place, public opinion would consider this an important matter. When faced with the sort of examples given by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Lloyd, and the noble Baroness, Lady Hooper, they would say that there is a certain injustice in this matter. We remove ourselves from this view of justice coming from public opinion if we say that it cannot be included in the review, which, if it was able to look at this, might say that it was not properly within its terms. I do not know what the Government consider to be the specific terms of the review, or whether they will define what the review can or cannot do. On the face of it, the review will be able to deal with such matters, and may reject them. But public opinion and most of us would say that these are important matters, which deserve to be dealt with and may be dealt with by the review, which may say that it is not properly within its purview or that it is not something that should be dealt with at all.

In my view, it is proper for the review to deal with that matter, under the terms of the clause, and I look to the Minister to say in terms whether the Government recognise that this is a problem. Do the Government recognise that the examples given by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Lloyd, and others refer to something that is considered unjust by a great number of people in this country? If so, even if the Government try to remove this from the review, will they deal with it in some other appropriate way?

[Baroness Barker]

I have listened to and taken parts in these debates ever since the noble Baroness, Lady O’Cathain, first raised them during her then opposition to civil partnership. There remains one point that is fundamental to this discussion and which has never been answered properly by those people who have advanced them, such as the noble Baroness, Lady Deech.

The rights and responsibilities of adults who voluntarily enter into relationships with other people are wholly different from the rights and responsibilities of family members—people born into the same family. If we were to treat them in the same way, as is achieved in the noble Baroness’s amendment, it is wholly possible that a member of a family could find themselves under an obligation to a family member to enter into a relationship, in particular to preserve the right of the family to property. That sets up some potentially damaging and ugly relationships within families, which is a consequence of what she proposes which she would really not like to see come to pass.

To answer the noble Lord, Lord Cormack, I do not think that that potential should enter into law and I do not think that it should form even part of any review. Therefore, I wish today to make that statement as strongly as I possibly can; I shall vote against this amendment and do so in the knowledge that there are people who will support me in supporting carers in a whole variety of different ways, which are wholly appropriate and far better than this.

[Lord Pannick]

My Lords, I find this a much more difficult issue than all noble Lords who have spoken so far. There are very strong arguments on both sides of the case and I very much hope that noble Lords on each side would recognise that.

My reason for speaking is that I spoke in Committee in favour of this amendment, and I am in a very unusual position in that the debates that we had in Committee on this issue have actually caused me to change my mind. The reason I have changed my mind is because I think that there is a very real injustice done to the people for whom the noble Baroness, Lady Deech, has spoken, but I am not persuaded that this is an appropriate vehicle by which this injustice should be addressed. The noble and learned Lord, Lord Lloyd of Berwick, says, sotto voce, “Why not”—and I will tell him. The purpose of the review is very simple; it is to assess whether the existing civil partnership regime, which is part of the law of the land, continues to serve a useful purpose now that we will have same-sex marriage. That is a very narrow purpose, and I do not think that it is appropriate that a review should consider whether a civil partnership should be used as a means to address a very real injustice which, if it is to be addressed, should be addressed through the taxation system and other means. That is why I have changed my mind and why I much regret that I cannot support the noble Baroness, Lady Deech.