Civil Partnerships, Marriages and Deaths (Registration Etc.) Bill

Debate between Caroline Nokes and Tim Loughton

3rd reading: House of Commons & Report stage: House of Commons
Friday 26th October 2018 Commons Chamber

[Tim Loughton]

My hon. Friend pre-empts my closing remarks. If there is a problem getting this Bill through the House, it must be one of the most complicated private Member’s Bills there has ever been, which is my fault. It so happens, however, that all four tenets of the Bill are now Government policy, so there should not be a problem. We still have some way to go before, hopefully, the Bill passes to another place and becomes subject to the vagaries there. If we do not get there, there is the important issue of adding mothers’ names to wedding certificates—that has been an anomaly since the reign of Queen Victoria and should have been addressed ages ago. Now at last we can do it.

The Bill contains important provisions on allowing coroners to look into certain stillbirths, and again, huge cross-party support for that has been aired on many occasions. There are also other important matters regarding how we view stillbirths before the 24-week gestation period. This Bill is not just about civil partnerships; it is about a whole load of other things for which there is widespread support. I hope that the Government will see that the new clause is well intended and will hold the feet of officials to the fire as they work long hours to get this legislation through. It is achievable. I have tabled new clause 1 in the spirit of being helpful to the Government in achieving equality. Consequential amendment 1 has now become redundant, because it is now Government policy to allow civil partnerships, and the new clause will ensure that we get on with it.

[The Minister for Immigration (Caroline Nokes)]

When warned that I might be speaking early, Madam Deputy Speaker, I had not expected it to be this early.

My hon. Friend the Member for East Worthing and Shoreham (Tim Loughton) has raised important points, and I am grateful to him for having promoted this Bill in its entirety and for his enormous and, as he pointed out, long-standing campaigning work in support of civil partnerships.

As most hon. Members will know, when the Bill was first introduced back in February, the Government had not yet taken a final decision on the future of civil partnerships. We were clear that the current situation, in which same-sex couples can marry or enter a civil partnership but opposite-sex couples can only marry, needed to be addressed. Indeed, earlier this year, we published a Command Paper that set out how we would proceed with our deliberations to ensure that we chose the right course of action. Events over the past few months have moved on substantially, not least thanks to the efforts of my hon. Friend in promoting this Bill, and I am pleased that the Prime Minister recently announced our intention to make civil partnerships available to both opposite-sex and same-sex couples. We intend to introduce specific legislation to do just that, and I know that in conversation with my hon. Friend the Minister for Women and Equalities made those intentions clear.

--- Later in debate ---

[Caroline Nokes]

There are a number of important points I would like to make with particular reference to the amendment and some of the challenges we think it poses. Perhaps the hon. Gentleman will be patient and allow me to get to them.

There are a number of reasons why we are concerned about my hon. Friend’s amendment and a number of reasons why the Bill may not be the most appropriate legislative vehicle in which to equalise access to civil partnerships between same-sex and opposite-sex couples. As I have said, the Bill contains a number of important measures that we certainly do not wish to jeopardise by allowing the substantive amendment on civil partnerships at this late stage in the Bill’s progress through Parliament. I think that these substantive changes deserve to have been debated more thoroughly at earlier stages of the Bill’s progress, rather than just in the limited time available to us today.

I also need to make the point that, while we are happy to have announced our intention to extend civil partnerships to opposite-sex couples, there are still quite a number of significant issues that need to be resolved before we can move on to implement opposite-sex civil partnerships. Some of these are entirely practical. [Interruption.] The hon. Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant) from a sedentary position is yelling, “Such as”. If he will give me a chance, I will get to them. For instance, we need to check all the existing legislative provisions that cross-refer to the civil partnership regime to make sure that they still work as intended for opposite-sex couples as well as same-sex couples. These existing provisions are spread across a wide range of current legislation, from arrangements for adoption through to pension entitlements, so this is not an insignificant body of work. Any existing provisions that are not appropriate to extended civil partnerships will need to be changed. There are also a number of sensitive policy issues that will need to be resolved, such as whether convergence from a marriage to a civil partnership should be allowed and whether the terms for the dissolution of an opposite-sex civil partnership should mirror those for same-sex couples or be the same as for opposite-sex marriages.

We also need to resolve a number of cross-border and devolution issues, such as how we should provide for recognition of similar relationships entered into in other countries and how our own relationships should be treated in other parts of the United Kingdom, which have their own legislation on civil partnerships.

I am disappointed that the amendment tabled today seeks to replace the provisions in clause 2, particularly the requirement for Government to consult and report to Parliament on the way in which they intend to equalise civil partnerships between same-sex and other couples. We particularly supported this original requirement, as we see consultation prior to the implementation of the extension of civil partnerships as key in both helping us to set out the Government’s views on the issues I have just mentioned, as well as getting a broader view of the implications of the various options.

[Tim Loughton]

My hon. Friend will acknowledge, of course, that the requirement for review and consultation is not a statutory requirement. It did not need to be in the Bill, but it was the only way of getting it through. And of course the Government, by their own admission, have started that review and consultation, albeit at a late stage. Taking the clause out of the Bill does not mean that it stops it, so it is actually not required.

[Caroline Nokes]

This is a subject on which we conduct long conversations, reviews and consultation across the Government, and the fact that the review has started does not mean that it should stop, but we do want to conclude it. It is important to us to have those views.

The Government are keen to progress the review and to do so as quickly as possible. The planned consultation is not some sort of prevarication; it is a necessary step to help us to ensure that when we introduce legislation it is fit for purpose and does not slow down its parliamentary passage. Officials are already starting to identify all the matters on which we want to consult. I hope that we will soon be in a position to say more about our proposed timing for that consultation, but we wish to conduct it as soon as possible. I stress that the consultation will be about how we make the provisions to ensure that civil partnerships work as intended for opposite-sex couples, not about whether we intend to extend them in that way.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Caroline Nokes and Tim Loughton

Monday 16th July 2018 Commons Chamber

[Caroline Nokes]

I was not present at that meeting, so I cannot comment on that specific case, but I am very conscious that Her Majesty’s Passport Office and UKVI work very hard to ensure that we deliver within service standards. Where fees are looked at and there is a genuine case for a refund, we do make refunds.

[Tim Loughton (East Worthing and Shoreham) (Con)]

The Home Affairs Committee’s recent report on the Windrush scandal shows that the whole immigration and nationality application service is hugely complicated, very bureaucratic and needs completely overhauling and streamlining, and that fees bear no relationship to the service’s efficiency or cost. Will the Minister guarantee that the additional costs of sorting out the Windrush scandal will not be used as an excuse, under full cost recovery, to jack up fees yet further?

[Caroline Nokes]

Of course, the lessons learned review that is commencing into Windrush will be an important opportunity for us to review all practices across UKVI and ensure that such an appalling scandal cannot happen again. My hon. Friend will have heard comments about reviews of fees, which happen annually, but I point out that we passed primary legislation in 2014 that allows the Home Office to charge fees that not only recover the cost of individual applications but contribute to the whole borders and immigration system, thus helping to secure our borders and ensure that we are safe.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Caroline Nokes and Tim Loughton

Monday 17th October 2011 Commons Chamber

[Caroline Nokes (Romsey and Southampton North) (Con)]

7. What assessment he has made of the effects of the withdrawal of bursary funding on PGCE students who commenced their courses in September.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Education (Tim Loughton)]

All PGCE students can apply for the same student support as undergraduate students, including maintenance loans and means-tested grants. As an additional recruitment incentive, the Department pays bursaries. These are adjusted regularly according to the size of the pool of potential teachers and the demand from schools for new teachers. For certain subjects we have therefore removed the bursaries for 2011-12. Other subjects, including maths, foreign languages and sciences, attract bursaries of up to £9,000.

[Caroline Nokes]

Can the Minister tell the House how the changes to the bursaries have affected recruitment to initial teacher training courses this year?

[Tim Loughton]

The hon. Lady is right. We will have recruitment numbers to courses in November, when the Training and Development Agency for Schools has completed its census of training providers. That will include the figures for initial teacher training, but it looks as though we will have high numbers of quality applicants in all subjects. The latest evidence suggests that this will be another strong year for recruitment, and that we are on course for the best year ever in the recruitment of physics and chemistry trainees in particular.