Civil Partnership Act 2004 (Amendment) (Sibling Couples) Bill [HL]

Baroness Barker Excerpts

2nd reading (Hansard): House of Lords
Friday 20th July 2018 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Barker (LD)]

My Lords, it is a great pleasure this morning to put on record my admiration for the noble Lord, Lord Lexden. I do not know him particularly well, but over the years I have watched the many things that he has done, particularly within his own political party, to secure greater equality for LGBT people. I admire much that he has done. It will surprise nobody, least of all him, that today I profoundly disagree with him, but I hope we will continue in future to be allies on other matters.

I disagree with him today because I believe that this proposal has a fundamental and dangerous flaw. I accept that, back in 2004, the people who proposed extending civil partnerships in this way did so to wreck the then Civil Partnership Bill, and they very nearly succeeded. The noble Baroness, Lady O’Cathain, very nearly succeeded in doing so. I also accept that today that is not the motivation of the noble Lord, Lord Lexden. None the less, I believe that the path he has chosen to pursue is wrong. In 2004, the noble Baroness, Lady O’Cathain, took her lead from the Christian Institute, one of the first organisations to import into this country a rather brutal form of evangelical Christianity from the United States. I think noble Lords will find it worth reading the documents which the institute produced at that time to see the fundamental underlying motivation for the proposal.

It is wrong to equate the relationship between siblings and family members with relationships between adults which are entered into voluntarily as loving relationships. It is simply wrong. Consanguinity is not something that we can ignore in this matter because it has a profound effect upon relationships. I shall pick up one point made by the noble Lord, Lord Lexden. He talked about equalising the relationship of siblings with people who have particular lifestyles they have chosen. Being gay is not a lifestyle and, for some of us, it is not a choice. We are who we are and our relationships as gay people are fundamentally different from the relationships that we have with our siblings. The noble Lord, Lord Lexden, and many other noble Lords made the point that the purpose of the Bill is to end discrimination or to support siblings—although I noticed how many of your Lordships talked about daughters, and I will come back to that in a moment—supporting their family. The noble Lord, Lord Lexden, is not, I think, proposing that children should enter into civil partnerships with their parents. However, if one accepted the basis of his proposal, one could argue that perhaps they should. I think that that is fundamentally wrong. It conflates two entirely different relationships and complicates them.

Let us get on to the complications. The noble Lord, Lord Lexden, has not talked about one particularly important matter: a civil partnership can be dissolved. You cannot dissolve your relationship with your family in the same way. You can become estranged, you can have the most horrible and distant relationship, you can fall out over property, but you will remain in that family. That is why I think the noble Lord, Lord Lexden, was wrong, as was the noble Lord, Lord Cormack, to say that this is a wholly beneficial measure which inflicts no harm on anyone. Imagine yourself in the position of a woman in a family with an overbearing, dominant brother or father and a significant property. Noble Lords have spoken this morning about couples they know. The couple who come to my mind—there were originally three siblings but one of them died; I do not know what we would do in a case where there were more than two siblings, but that is another matter to consider—lived on a farm. They were devoted to each other. They were members of my father’s church and wonderful people. If this proposal had been in place and one of those siblings had wished not to remain on that farm but to go away, imagine the pressure that there would have been on that woman. That is the dark side of this that no one has spoken about: the potential for abuse that it opens up. It is why I have maintained in all the discussions we have had that the noble Baroness, Lady Deech, is wrong. I can see that carers would come under enormous pressure to enter into a civil partnership. Incidentally, as I have said to her before, I think it is really interesting that no carers’ organisation has ever asked for this and, as far as I know, they do not support it. They support carers having much greater support than they do now but not being tied into a legal obligation such as this. I could not disagree more fundamentally with the noble Baroness. I do not for one moment question her motivation but I disagree with her entirely.

The Bill is fundamentally flawed. The noble Lord, Lord Lexden, talked about the “curious reluctance” of another place to consider this matter. I think it is a wholly understandable decision not to pursue something that is fundamentally flawed and potentially dangerous.

[Baroness Deech]

On a point of order, why would there be more duress on two family members to enter a civil partnership than on any other two people? Of course if there is duress, it is vitiated. Any contract or marriage or civil partnership that you enter into not of your own free will is invalidated. A civil partnership can be ended just like that, even if two people are family members. Given that there is a dissolution procedure, that would apply. There is an academic output, which I do not know if the noble Baroness has seen, that suggests that the pressure for civil partnerships, which is not just about money, between family members is a way of denying the sexuality of gay partnerships. Some 14 years have gone by and I think that argument is simply not tenable.

[Baroness Barker]

Yet again I disagree fundamentally with the noble Baroness; I think that is exactly what it is about. I also say to the noble Lord, Lord Lexden, that I am not guilty, and I do not know anyone else within the LGBT community who is, of wanting to keep civil partnerships as the preserve of our community. I support the extension of civil partnerships to heterosexual couples, although that debate is for another day, but extending it to people who as adults come together of their own volition, with no baggage and no pressure, is completely different. The noble Baroness dismisses some of the great tensions of family life in her submission.

I believe the noble Lord, Lord Hamilton, is right that the Bill is trying to deal with a matter that should be dealt with by the Treasury because it is about fiscal matters. I would warmly support anyone who wished to find some way of addressing those issues of inheritance tax. However, you do not solve an injustice by putting in place something that is equally unjust and open to great abuse. I genuinely believe that this is a wrong and dangerous move. I hope that, just as 14 years ago, we in this House and people in another place will see this for the great mistake that it is and stop it.