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

Christopher Chope Excerpts

Ping Pong: House of Commons
Friday 15th March 2019 Commons Chamber

[Tim Loughton]

Thank you so much, Mr Speaker. Having made the journey back home, I eventually got to my office to realise that I had left my mobile phone in my jacket that I had taken off, so things can only get better today.

We have before us technical amendments. The Bill has had a long journey. It had its First Reading on 19 July 2017—those heady days when we had a relatively stable Government and could get legislation through the House. Today is a culmination of that, with ping-pong, which I hope will be solely ping and leave no pong.

Members will remember that when my Bill left the Commons last year, it contained my last-minute amendment obliging the Government to bring in the legislation on civil partnerships within six months of the Bill achieving Royal Assent. Curiously, although the Government at that time were not supportive of it, when it came to the possibility of a vote, a rather curious new parliamentary term was coined by the Immigration Minister, who said that the Government were not “actively” opposing my amendment. Hopefully that has now transmogrified into the Government supporting it.

While the wording of clause 2 has changed since the Bill left this House, I want to assure Members that the intention of the clause—to create equality between same and opposite-sex couples in their ability to form a civil relationship—remains. I amended my Bill on Report, before it left this House, to give the Government the ability to extend civil partnerships to opposite-sex couples, rather than just review the possibility of an extension. The Government, although slightly belatedly, came to support the principle of opposite-sex civil partnerships, perhaps spurred on by the Supreme Court judgment in a case last June. I accept that there were technical deficiencies in the drafting of my original amendment.

Since then, I have worked with the Government and the noble Baroness Hodgson of Abinger, to whom I pay great tribute. She guided the Bill through the Lords as a private Member’s Bill virgin, as she described herself, but did so skilfully and with great deftness, steering it on an even course so that it is back here with us today. Baroness Hodgson was able to correct those deficiencies and improve the drafting of the Bill. She then tabled and successfully moved the revised clause 2 and related changes in Committee in the other place, despite some rather indulgent attempts by certain peers in the other place to add their own agendas to the Bill, which were, alas, defective and would have had the result of scuppering the whole Bill. I pay tribute to the way that Baroness Hodgson steered those through potentially choppy waters to avoid the Bill being holed below the water line.

Lords amendments 1 and 2 replace my earlier version of clause 2. The new clause now requires the Secretary of State to amend by regulations the eligibility criteria of the Civil Partnership Act 2004 so that two people who are not of the same sex may form a civil partnership. The Bill requires that these changes be made so as to come in no later than 31 December. That will mean, as we have agreed with Ministers in the other place, that the legislation needs to be in place by 2 December, because notification of a clear 28 days is required before a ceremony can actually take place. There was an undertaking that civil partnerships would be available before the end of 2019, and I look forward to a series of invitations to civil partnership ceremonies on new year’s eve.

[Sir Christopher Chope (Christchurch) (Con)]

Many congratulations to my hon. Friend on steering this Bill through so successfully and on getting his timing absolutely right so that it could incorporate the decision of the Supreme Court. May I ask him whether he is concerned about the fact that subsection (1) of the new clause says:

“The Secretary of State may, by regulations”

thereby indicating a certain discretion, but subsection (2) says that if he exercises that discretion under subsection (1) then he “must” do so before 31 December? Is my hon. Friend suspicious that the contrast between “may” and “must” in subsections (1) and (2) could be used by the Government to undermine what he has just asserted?

[Tim Loughton]

I know my hon. Friend is always vigilant, rather than suspicious. Having sat through many Committees over many years in this House arguing the toss over whether the word “may” should be replaced by the word “must”, I have to say that I am not concerned about the wording of the Bill. I have had many conversations with the Ministers responsible, and the Government are absolutely committed to delivering on the undertakings in this Bill. It had to be put together in such a way to give some leeway to Ministers to be able to produce the right legislation at the right time. That involved a degree of discretion, which I know my hon. Friend and others in both Houses were concerned about. A number of undertakings were therefore added to the Bill and were given orally, not least a sunset clause, so that this clause, which I know my hon. Friend has had concerns about in the past, could not be used for other purposes as something of a Trojan horse. I entirely appreciate his observation, but I do not share his concern that this will not actually be produced. I think it will be produced in a fairly short space of time. Goodness knows, we tried for long enough to get mothers’ names on marriage certificates.