Marriage (Same Sex Couples) Bill

Debate between Caroline Lucas and Mary Glindon

Tuesday 21st May 2013 Commons Chamber

[Caroline Lucas]

I am grateful to the right hon. and learned Gentleman for that intervention. I know he has had first-hand experience in his constituency of exactly this issue.

Paragraph 18 of schedule 9 to the Equality Act 2010 allows employers and pension providers to ignore the service and contributions of gay employees made before 5 December 2005 when it comes to assessing survivor benefits for their civil partners and occupational pension schemes. Paragraph 15 of schedule 4 to the Bill would extend that discriminatory provision to same-sex spouses.

As we saw in yesterday’s debate on opening civil partnerships to opposite-sex couples, the Government are comfortable arguing that unforeseen costs to pension schemes are a legitimate justification for sanctioning discrimination, yet their warning that the equalisation of treatment in the provision of occupational pension benefits will cost too much simply cannot be substantiated. No pension provider can accurately predict how many individuals in a pension scheme will be gay, never mind how many of them will marry or form a civil partnership with an individual who outlives them by a significant period of time.

Dealing with uncertainties around length of life, the possibility of illness, the decision to marry and many other issues is second nature to pension providers. Gay married people pose no more uncertainty than their straight counterparts. What is more, according to the Government’s figures, two thirds of pension providers already do the right thing, so any additional liability to pension schemes will surely be minimal. The financial implications of perpetuating discrimination could be very grave indeed, though, for those individuals who have paid into their pension schemes in the same way as other employees, yet will be denied the survivor benefits available to married mixed-sex couples.

One recent employment tribunal found that an occupational pension scheme was directly discriminatory because it provided a civil partner with only the benefit from pension rights accrued since 2004—in other words, when civil partnerships became available in the UK. John Walker and his civil partner have been together for 20 years and registered their civil partnership at the first possible opportunity, yet the pension scheme sought to restrict the survivor benefits available to John’s partner to just £500 a year. If John dissolved his civil partnership and married a woman today, she would be entitled to £41,000 per annum in the event of his death.

With the help of Liberty, John challenged that discrimination and recently won his legal battle to secure equal pension benefits for his civil partner. The employment tribunal relied on European Court of Justice rulings, which concluded that treating married and same-sex couples differently over the pensions payable to a survivor when national law recognises the relationships as equivalent in other respects breached the framework directive on equal treatment in employment. My amendment 49 would ensure full compliance with that directive and, crucially, ensure that the equality rulings made by the courts are applicable to all marriage relationships.

[Mrs Mary Glindon (North Tyneside) (Lab)]

Does the hon. Lady agree that if people are to have parity before the law, they must have not just emotional parity, but financial parity? Anything less would not be equality in any shape or form.

[Caroline Lucas]

I absolutely agree with the hon. Lady. We are talking about genuine equality. That means legal equality, as well as symbolic or any other kind of equality.

That tribunal was a landmark case. Interestingly, the Government lost the case, so one could argue that agreeing to my amendment 49 might save them money, as they would not need to pay out in future legal cases that might go against them. If the law remains as it is for civil partners and that inequality is extended to those in same-sex marriages, it could be several decades before gay couples achieve real equality in pension provision. I see no justification for continuing to permit discrimination in this area. I hope very much that colleagues will support amendment 49 and join me in overturning an anomalous and discriminatory provision.