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

Debate between Christopher Chope and Chris Bryant

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

[Sir Christopher Chope]

I take it from that that, because of the forces lined up against the Government, they are throwing in the towel, which is good and encouraging news. I congratulate my hon. Friend on the progress he has made.

I despair at the way the Government have been dragging their feet over this issue for so long. It was on 21 May 2013—more than five years ago—on the Third Reading of the Marriage (Same Sex Couples) Act 2013 that I intervened on the then Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport and Minister for Women and Equalities asserting that I believed that doing what the Government were doing in that Bill would be in breach of human rights law. The answer from the Minister, obviously on the advice of Government lawyers, was that the provisions of the European convention on human rights would not be compromised by the fact that the legislation made unequal provision for civil partnerships.

How wrong were the Government and the Minister! For five years people have been in limbo, while the Government have connived over legislation that is at odds with human rights requirements under the European convention. Surely there must be a greater sense of urgency from the Government than was demonstrated in my right hon. Friend’s response to the new clause. I also find it extraordinary that today’s written statement makes no mention of the Supreme Court ruling.

I hope that when the new clause and amendment are put to the vote, they will go through without a Division, but if there is a Division, I will be interested to see whether the Government try to argue against what the Prime Minister has already assured us of—namely, that the Government are on the side of the proposal in the new clause.

[Chris Bryant]

I will be very brief. I just want to explain to the Minister why I feel very impatient—she looked grumpy with me for complaining that she was taking a long time. She used words such as “soon”, “as soon as possible” and “quickly”, and while Ministers often use those words, they mean absolutely nothing in parliamentary language.

On the Minister’s timetable, we might get a Bill in the next Session, but I would not be surprised if the next Session was a two-year Session, like this one, which might mean us waiting another two and a half years. Every year, I have straight people coming to my surgeries who had lived with a partner of the opposite gender for years and years in a relationship that had felt in every respect like a marriage, but who never wanted to enter into a marriage and consequently suffered when their partner died due to a lack of a legal arrangement because civil partnerships were not available to them. They suffer exactly the same distress as gay couples did until civil partnerships were brought into law.

Health and Social Care (National Data Guardian) Bill

Debate between Christopher Chope and Chris Bryant

Committee Debate: 1st sitting: House of Commons
Wednesday 6th June 2018 Public Bill Committees

[Sir Christopher Chope]

It may well be a standard clause, but such clauses are often abused by the Government. For example, Parliament passed a measure to outlaw exit payments for public sector workers in the Enterprise Act 2016. We are still waiting for the regulations under that primary legislation to be introduced. The Government now say that they will have to consult on them. Effectively, what Parliament thought was happening—the limiting of public sector exit payments—has not happened.

The Bill is supported across the House, as the measure I have mentioned was. I should be grateful for some indication from the Minister of when the Government will implement it. It could be delayed by the Government by means of the regulation-making powers in the clause; or by the Government’s not appointing the Data Guardian. There are other ways in which it could be delayed, and if we take the past as a guide to the future we should be suspicious of the Government when they are not prepared to include in the Bill a commitment for it to commence on a given date.

[Chris Bryant]

Christchurch and Rhondda speak as one, in a uniting of the Christophers, something that will not, I think, happen very often. It is a serious point; I understand that such clauses are a frequently used means of tidying up the process of a Bill coming into force. However, it adds cost, because the Government must go through an additional process; and frankly there is no reason why we should not just put in a date and tell the Government to get their act together—because everyone supports the measure.

I hope—I am sure—that the Minister will now say, “We intend to do it as soon as practicable after the Bill has been through both Houses,” and all the rest of it; but it would be better for the date to be in the Bill, because then she would not have to do anything later, and, to use a valleys word, it would be tidy. Let us be tidy.

[Jackie Doyle-Price]

Tempted as I am to engage in debate on the abuse or otherwise of statutory instruments, I prefer not to go down that road. Suffice it to say, we should put provisions into action only once they are tidy, to use the term suggested by the hon. Member for Rhondda. We should be governed by the integrity of the rules we pass rather than by speed, but I can confirm that it is the Government’s desire to implement the Bill, which we fully support, as soon as practicable. Clearly, we already have a National Data Guardian; the Bill would just put it on a statutory footing. It is in all our interests that we do that as soon as possible, so the Government are content with the clause.

Private Members’ Bills: Money Resolutions

Debate between Christopher Chope and Chris Bryant

Monday 21st May 2018 Commons Chamber

[Sir Christopher Chope (Christchurch) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Walsall South (Valerie Vaz). I think it is a pity that the Opposition have conflated the issue of process and procedure with the issue of substance relating to the particular Bill that we are discussing today. On the issue of process and procedure, I absolutely agree with all those who say that we should be having discussions about money resolutions. Obviously the Government can whip against them if they want to, but I suspect that in the case of this Bill, the House would probably support a money resolution. Perhaps that it why they are a bit inhibited about tabling one.

I do not want to be caught up in the discussion about the merits or demerits of the Bill. However, I must say to my right hon. Friend the Leader of the House that when she was listing all the wonderful private Members’ Bills that are currently before the House, I was very disappointed that she did not refer to one of the 19 that I had tabled for debate on 15 June. I felt that that was a serious omission.

Many of my Bills do not need money resolutions. One of the unintended consequences of this new rule that the Government have adopted is that a well-advised private Member who is successful in the ballot will probably say, “I’m going to go for a Bill that does not need a money resolution, because a Bill with a money resolution faces an additional hurdle.” Let us imagine that a Member wins the ballot and introduces their Bill, but it has probably attracted some awkward customers on Second Reading who disagree with it and want to talk for a long time. The Member will need to have 100 Members present to secure closure; in the past, as night follows day, when they have secured closure and completed Second Reading, they will have a money resolution.

I remember when Austin Mitchell introduced the licensed conveyancing Bill, which was hated by the then Conservative Government and strongly opposed, but the will of the House—I had the pleasure of supporting that Bill—was that that was a really good idea that would loosen up and liberate that rather closed profession of solicitors and enable people to get conveyancing done at less expense. That Bill therefore went through and went on to the statute book and has been a force for good. If the Government had blocked it at the time because they disapproved of it and they had said it needed a money resolution, we would not have had that legislation on the statute book with all the benefits it has brought to consumers.

[Chris Bryant]

The hon. Gentleman is right to point to the element of caprice about this. When I came top of the ballot, I asked the public which of several different Bills they might want me to introduce as my No. 1, and fortunately they came up with one that did not need a money resolution, whereas it could just as easily have been the motion taken forward by the third Member on the list about civil partnerships, which would require a money resolution, then I would have been entirely in the hands of the Government. There is an element of caprice that we need to change.

[Sir Christopher Chope]

I thought that we did not need to change it, because I thought the convention was that if a Bill secured a Second Reading it would get a money resolution, and that is the disappointment that has come out of this debate.

My right hon. Friend the Leader of the House says that the Government are now going to look at this on a case-by-case basis, so we now have another layer, basically with the Government—the Executive—saying “We’re going to second-guess Members’ priorities.” It is difficult enough to secure Second Reading for a private Member’s Bill, but once these Bills have done so the order in which they go into Committee is now solely under the control of the Government, because the Government decide whether or not Bills are going to have their blessing on a case-by-case basis.