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

Chris Philp Excerpts

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

[Neil O'Brien (Harborough) (Con)]

There are many extremely good things in this Bill, the first being the righting of the wrong, which has been in existence since the Victorian era, of not being able to include mothers’ names on marriage certificates. When I got married in 2012 and was told I could not include my mother’s name, I thought that there had been a mistake and that they were using an old book. I had not realised that the law could still be so ridiculously out of date in the modern era. Members such as the hon. Member for Washington and Sunderland West (Mrs Hodgson) and my hon. Friend the Member for Solihull (Julian Knight) have reminded us that that is a really important change for some people.

Likewise, the opportunity for parents who have lost a baby before 24 weeks to register the life of their child is hugely important, as are the new powers for coroners. I congratulate my hon. Friends the Members for Colchester (Will Quince) and for Banbury (Victoria Prentis) on all the work they have done on that hugely important subject.

I rise today, however, with more mixed emotions than ever before about any proposed legislation, because I do not agree with the extension of civil partnerships to heterosexual couples. To be clear, I support—and supported—equal marriage for gay people. I ran the think-tank Policy Exchange at the time—I was not in this House—and published a paper arguing in favour of it. I thought, and still think, that it was really important for everybody to be treated the same and for everybody to be able to get married, as a further step towards reducing prejudice against gay people in this country.

It is very easy for heterosexual people not to notice the high levels of prejudice that continue to exist in this country, even in this modern era, and not to see that suicide rates for gay people are still higher. I went to school in the 1990s, which was not that long ago, and remember a lad walking up four flights of stairs with kids all around him chanting, “Gay. Gay. Gay.” at him. I do not even know if he was gay, but I am sure he remembers that and will do so for the rest of his life. It is a reminder that prejudice is still out there and still very strong. So, for me, equal marriage was a really important and brilliant reform.

Civil partnerships, however, were, for me, only ever a stepping stone towards creating equal marriage. I thought that, rather than creating two types of marriage, we should have got rid of civil partnerships at the point when marriage was opened up to same-sex couples.

I respect and understand why other Members do not agree with that, and we have heard some of those arguments today. However, I do not accept in particular the argument that we should legislate in this House today because there has been a court case. I think that it is profoundly the business of elected politicians in this House to make such decisions, not unelected judges across the road.

[Chris Philp (Croydon South) (Con)]

My hon. Friend is making a case as to why civil partnerships should not be equally available; indeed, he is suggesting that civil partnerships should not be available to anyone. However, does not the term “marriage” carry very long-established religious connotations? Some people may not want to sign up to that. Should not the individual have the liberty to make that choice themselves, rather than be prevented by this House from doing so?

[Neil O'Brien]

I hear my hon. Friend’s argument, but I do not agree with him. During the process of arguing the case for equal marriage, one of the important points made was that it did not affect religious institutions. It did not affect religious marriage; it affected civil marriage. In fact, that is all we have the power to do in this House; we do not and should not control people’s religious practice.

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[Neil O’Brien]

I am genuinely grateful to the hon. Gentleman for his thoughtful intervention. It has been brilliant to go to some of the equal marriages that have happened since the change in the law. One learns some wonderful things and hears people’s stories in a way that one would not have done had those marriages not existed. I am glad that they are also powering the marriage industry. I do not, though, buy the argument that people need to spend more to be married than to have a civil partnership. I think that is a canard. I hear the argument about not wanting to feel like what went before is invalidated, but I just do not think that that is true. Getting married does not invalidate the fact that a couple were together happily before it. I hear all these arguments, but ultimately I am not persuaded by them—

[Chris Philp]

rose—

[Neil O’Brien]

Here comes another, more powerful one.

[Chris Philp]

A moment ago, my hon. Friend asked why we need to have civil partnerships when marriage exists and people are perfectly at liberty to choose marriage as an option. The answer is this: marriage has existed for thousands of years and has a profoundly religious connotation for most people, as a social practice dating back millennia. Some people, exercising their own choice, are not happy to enter into an institution that has that religious connotation and therefore want an alternative arrangement. That is why we need civil partnerships as an alternative.

[Neil O’Brien]

I almost always agree with my hon. Friend about almost all things, but on this issue we find ourselves in disagreement. Marriage in this country predates almost any religion that one can name. I am worried by the argument that is being made in the House today that if someone enters into a marriage—I had a civil marriage; I am an atheist—they are in some way being lured into a religious institution. I just do not think that is the case. I did not notice it. In fact, people who have a civil wedding are not even allowed to play something like Madonna’s “Like a Prayer”, because apparently it is a religious thing. There is a clear distinction in my mind between civil marriage and religious marriage.

I feel that I have made my points. I respect Members from all parties who have made arguments to the contrary, but I feel differently.

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[Chris Philp]

I rise to add my warm congratulations to my hon. Friend the Member for East Worthing and Shoreham (Tim Loughton) on the tremendous work he has done to compile the Bill and steer it through its various stages.

I am happy to support all the clauses of the Bill, as it has been amended, not least clause 1, under which, as hon. Members have said, mothers will be recorded on the marriage certificate.

Of course I support the concept of the electronic register that will be set up under the Bill—it is a modern way of recording very important information—but I would be grateful if the Minister confirmed from the Dispatch Box when she sums up the debate that there will still be some form of paper signing in the church or other venue where the marriage takes place. I ask that because my constituent Councillor Tim Pollard has made the good point to me that the traditional ceremony in which the piece of paper is signed is an important part of many people’s experience of marriage. I would be grateful if the Minister confirmed that the signing ceremony will still be part of the process, even if the information is ultimately recorded electronically, rather than in the old bound books.

Clause 2 is about preparing a report on bringing in civil partnerships for people of all orientations. I strongly support that provision. I respectfully disagree with the comments my hon. Friend the Member for Harborough (Neil O’Brien) made in his speech a few moments ago. He criticised the proposal on the grounds that it would create a two-tier system of relationship recognition: civil partnerships and marriage. He referred to civil partnerships as a “halfway house”. I do not accept that they are a halfway house at all; in my view, they are entirely equal to the institution of marriage. I associate myself fully with the hon. Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant). On this issue, I am entirely at one with him—I mean that intellectually, rather than in the biblical sense. I think that people should have the choice. As a Conservative, I believe in personal liberty and personal choice. The individual should be able to choose which of the two institutions they subscribe to.

I do think there is a difference between the two institutions, because marriage carries religious connotations. My hon. Friend the Member for Harborough said that the institution of marriage predates religion, but even in times before Christianity and Judaism, the marriage ceremony always had religious overtones. Some people may decide, for their own reasons, that they do not want to associate with that. Indeed, my hon. Friend said that he had in the past been one of them. I therefore think that the choice should be available. Personal liberty and personal choice must sit at the heart of our philosophy in relation to these matters.

Clauses 3 and 4 introduce welcome measures. The report under clause 3 will look into how we might go about implementing the registration proposals. I suggest that parental choice should be the overriding consideration. Different parents will probably feel differently depending on their personal circumstances, and it should be up to the parent to choose whether the registration takes place. Perhaps that could be my early submission to any consultation that takes places on the matter.

Clause 4 is about investigations. My hon. Friend the Member for East Worthing and Shoreham, I think, raised a concern about providing only for parental choice, as there might be some circumstances where the parent—for reasons of domestic violence, for example—might not exercise their choice when properly they should. I wonder whether another way of handling this would be to say that an investigation should take place if either parent or one of the clinicians involved opted to trigger a coroner’s investigation. That is, if any of the interested parties felt that an investigation was appropriate, one would take place. That might guard against my hon. Friend’s concern, while also allowing an element of parental choice.

As parliamentarians, we should focus on trying to reduce—as far as we can—the awful tragedy of stillbirth and neonatal death. Of course, my hon. Friends the Members for Colchester (Will Quince) and for Banbury (Victoria Prentis) have campaigned tirelessly on the issue. I draw the attention of the House to the work of Tamba—the Twins and Multiple Births Association—which has run a pilot over the last couple of years, encouraging 30 maternity units to fully adopt National Institute for Health and Care Excellence guidelines in relation to multiple births. As a result, stillbirths in those units declined by 50% and neonatal deaths declined by 30%.

Tamba is campaigning to get these guidelines rolled out across all maternity units. I am a father of twins who were born very prematurely, at 25 weeks and one day. They were very fortunate in that they received excellent care from the NHS and survived, but that is not an experience that all parents have when their children are born as prematurely as 25 weeks and one day. I strongly support Tamba’s campaign and ask the Secretary of State for Health to adopt its recommendations and carry them forward.

Salisbury Incident

Chris Philp Excerpts

Wednesday 12th September 2018 Commons Chamber

[Mr Wallace]

If I may just set the scene by pressing on a bit, I will happily give way later.

On 3 March, the two individuals travelled to Salisbury before returning to London after a few hours. We believe that the purpose of that was a recce. On 4 March, they returned to Salisbury by train, and they were in the immediate vicinity of the Skripals’ house between 11.58 and 13.00 on that day. We believe that it was at that time they sprayed the deadly Novichok nerve agent on to the handle of the front door. That same afternoon, Sergei and Yulia Skripal left the house and travelled by car to the centre of Salisbury. After a meal and a walk around, they were taken ill at the centre and slipped into unconsciousness at 4.15 pm on 4 March.

As hospital staff and paramedics worked to save the lives of the Skripals, the two suspects left London and travelled to Heathrow, flying back to Moscow at 10.30 pm on 4 March on flight SU2585, leaving behind them a deadly trail. We should not forget that only the brave actions of police and NHS staff on that day ensured that the damage to that community was minimal. Because of the actions of the GRU agents, Detective Sergeant Nick Bailey fell gravely ill, and he ultimately bore the consequence of their reckless action. I am convinced that if it was not for the expertise in the hospital and the bravery of those in our blue-light services, who often acted with disregard for their own safety, we would have been reflecting today on a far worse situation.

Novichok is a deadly chemical nerve agent, and it was used in this attack. We believe that it was brought in in a counterfeit perfume bottle, in the packaging of a Nina Ricci bottle. That bottle was then recklessly discarded on the streets of Salisbury and had the potential to kill or injure dozens or hundreds of people. The Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons has recently reported that, having tested it, it is confident that the liquid within the recovered perfume bottle had a very high level of purity.

Since the incident in March, some 250 detectives, led by SO15, have worked around the clock, trawling through 11,000 hours of CCTV and taking more than 1,400 statements. They have worked painstakingly and methodically to identify exactly which individuals are responsible and the methods they used to carry out the attack.

[Chris Philp (Croydon South) (Con)]

The Minister, like the Prime Minister a few days ago, has today presented clear evidence linking this incident to the GRU and the Russian state. He has also pointed out how the attack was facilitated by the apparatus of the Russian state. Does he therefore agree that it would be appropriate to ask the Foreign Office to look again at expelling further Russian diplomats beyond those expelled already to degrade their ability to plan and execute such activities on our soil as well as the other espionage activities they conduct?

[Mr Wallace]

My hon. Friend makes a point in response to the horrific facts of this case. We of course seek to keep pressure on the malign activity of the Russian state—to push it back, as the Prime Minister has said—and we will keep all options on the table for doing that. For now, we are working on a number of measures, to which I shall come later, to push back Russia’s activities, and we are doing our best to degrade Russia’s intelligence services.

Investigatory Powers Bill

Chris Philp Excerpts

Report: 2nd sitting: House of Commons
Tuesday 7th June 2016 Commons Chamber

It is telling that in the last decade every single security service counter-terrorism case involved communications data and 95% of serious and organised crime investigations in which the CPS was involved concerned locations data. Those facts speak for themselves. Opposition Front Benchers have been very constructive in dealing with this and in the amendments they have tabled, and those on the Government Front Bench have responded in the same way. For these reasons—I will not add to the very good reasons already given by my hon. Friend the Member for Louth and Horncastle—I support the Bill and the amendments that the Government have accepted.

[Chris Philp (Croydon South) (Con)]

I want to speak briefly about clause 68, Government amendment 51 and amendment 145. Clause 68 is welcome and delivers the manifesto commitment to introduce judicial oversight of these investigatory powers over journalists. As the noble Lord Falconer has pointed out, no such protections exist under the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000. These new requirements for judicial consent by the commissioner are very welcome.

I very much welcome Government amendment 51, which explicitly acknowledges the public interest in protecting a journalist’s sources and makes it clear that the commissioner must weigh that against any other public interest, which must be overriding. I hope that gives the right hon. and learned Member for Camberwell and Peckham (Ms Harman) at least some comfort. Were we to adopt her amendment 145, I think the implication would be that the judgment would have to be made in open court, and given the difficult and potentially wide definition of journalistic material that now exists, that might impose a rather onerous requirement. Were the Government so minded, they might at some later time fine tune clause 68 to say that if the judicial commissioner found the situation slightly ambiguous, they could go to the journalist to seek clarification; if there were cases in which they were finding it difficult to make that judgment, they could seek further and better particulars. However, I think that Government amendment 51 is extremely helpful in addressing many of the concerns expressed about that important issue.

[The Solicitor General]

It is a pleasure to speak at the end of a wide-ranging but important debate about the new power on internet connection records. It is right to remind ourselves of the context of the debate. Only last week, two individuals received significant prison sentences in Britain’s biggest known gun smuggling operation. It was analysis of communications data that provided vital evidence in that case. It allowed the investigative team to attribute telephone numbers and SIM cards to the defendants and to identify key locations.

However, communications data are changing. The world in which the hon. and learned Member for Holborn and St Pancras (Keir Starmer) and I started out practising is no longer the world as it is today. Telephone calls are very often not the means by which criminals and terrorists conduct their activity. Much of that has moved on to the internet via WhatsApp, via internet chatrooms and via the electronic internet communications that have become the mainstay of many criminal enterprises. It is vital that the legislation that we pass in this House not only attempts to keep pace with this breathtaking change, but tries to get ahead of it as far as possible.

Investigatory Powers Bill

Chris Philp Excerpts

Tuesday 15th March 2016 Commons Chamber

[Mrs May]

My hon. Friend raises an important point. Many internet service providers, for example, offer services here but they are predominantly based in other countries. That is why the Government have been progressing, and continue to progress, discussions with the United States’ authorities about the whole question of the circumstances under which warrants issued lawfully in the United Kingdom can be exercised in the United States. We have always asserted territorial jurisdiction of those warrants under the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000. In fact, the previous Labour Government, who introduced RIPA, also established that territorial jurisdiction. It has never been tested, but we are putting that discussion with the United States into place.

[Chris Philp (Croydon South) (Con)]

The Home Secretary recently met my constituent Barry Bednar, whose 14-year-old son Breck was groomed online and, tragically, murdered. Could she explain to the House how the provisions in the Bill will help to prevent a repetition of Breck’s tragic murder?

[Mrs May]

My hon. Friend has represented his constituents very well in that matter, and it was an absolutely tragic case. I know the enormous distress that has been caused to Breck’s parents, not just by the initial grooming of their son and its sad consequences, but by other actions that have taken place since in relation to the case. What we are doing in this legislation is important, because it will ensure that the authorities, the agencies, law enforcement and the police will have the powers to enable them better to investigate incidents such as that which led to Breck’s sad death.

Part 1 of the Bill responds to recommendations by David Anderson and others by restricting the use of powers outside the legislation to undertake equipment interference. Where the police or the security and intelligence agencies wish to interfere with a computer or a smartphone to obtain vital evidence and intelligence, a warrant under the Bill will be required. As I have indicated, the Bill also responds to the recommendations of the Intelligence and Security Committee and places a statutory bar on the making of requests, in the absence of a warrant, to other countries to intercept the communications of a person in the UK. There can be no suggestion that the security and intelligence agencies could use their international relationships to avoid the safeguards in the Bill. In answer to a couple of questions earlier I referred to the territorial jurisdiction of the Bill. For the avoidance of doubt, I clarify that I meant, of course, the extraterritorial jurisdiction of the Bill.

The House will know that interception—the obtaining of the contents of a communication, by, for example, listening to a telephone call or reading the contents of an email—is one of the most sensitive and intrusive capabilities available to law enforcement and to the security and intelligence agencies. It is also one of the most valuable, and over the past decade, interception in some form has played a part in every top-priority MI5 investigation. The Bill restricts that power to only a handful of agencies and allows for warrants to be issued only where they are necessary and proportionate for the prevention or detection of serious crime, in the interests of national security or in the interests of the economic wellbeing of the United Kingdom, where that is linked to national security.

Authorising warrants is one of the most important means by which I, the Foreign Secretary and the Northern Ireland Secretary hold law enforcement and the security and intelligence agencies to account for their actions. In turn, we are accountable to the House and, through its elected representatives, to the public.

Part 2 of the Bill will introduce an important new safeguard. As now, a Secretary of State will need to be satisfied that activity is necessary and proportionate before a warrant can be issued, but, in future, it will not be possible to issue a warrant until the decision to issue it has been formally approved by a judicial commissioner. That will place a double lock on the authorisation of warrants. It will preserve that vital element of democratic accountability, but it will, for the first time, introduce independent judicial authorisation.

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[Chris Philp (Croydon South) (Con)]

Clearly, when we grant the Government powers to infringe on our privacy, such powers must be deemed absolutely necessary. No case better shines a light on what may be considered necessary than one that arose in my constituency a short time ago. Barry Bednar’s 14-year-old son was groomed online over the course of some months. He was lured to the flat of someone called Lewis Daynes, where he was brutally murdered. When speaking to Barry Bednar and the boy’s mother, Lorin LaFave, it is very clear that powers such as these are absolutely necessary to protect young people like Breck from being groomed online, to help the authorities to investigate such offences, and to prevent further offences from taking place.

We always face a choice in these matters, and I choose to stand with victims like Breck. I choose to stand with Breck’s mother and father in doing everything we can to prevent, to investigate, and to catch the perpetrators of crimes like these. If the price I have to pay for that is that my internet browsing history gets stored or the authorities have certain powers to intercept my communications, then I am very happy to pay it in order to protect young men and women like Breck Bednar. That is why I will support Second Reading of the Bill. I thank the Home Secretary for taking the time to meet Barry Bednar and Lorin LaFave about two weeks ago. They were very grateful for the time that she took to listen to their concerns, and I want to put on record my thanks to her for doing that.

Since the shadow Home Secretary is now in his place, I will take the opportunity to respond briefly to a point that he raised in his speech. He made great play of the question of economic wellbeing, which concerned him. He mentioned an example from 1972, and the fact that he had to go back as far as 1972 to find an example tells us something. I draw his attention to clause 18(4), which I believe addresses his concern. It states that the test of economic wellbeing can be applied only to interception requests that are not in the United Kingdom. The concerns that he raised about the conduct of trade unions and so on would not apply because the test relates only to matters outside the United Kingdom. I hope that that gives him the reassurance that he requires.

I believe that the Bill is proportionate and reasonable. I am comforted by the judicial oversight that is in place, and I will most certainly support the Bill in the Division Lobby this evening.