Points of Order

Greg Knight Excerpts

1st reading: House of Commons
Wednesday 19th July 2017 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

I think the nation should be aware that, perhaps because the right hon. Gentleman’s Bill relates to parking, he is sporting a notably colourful tie, which features a very large number of cars. Knowing his penchant, I assume that they are classic cars.

[Sir Greg Knight (East Yorkshire) (Con)]

They are, indeed.

Unpaid Trial Work Periods (Prohibition) Bill

Presentation and First Reading (Standing Order No. 57)

Stewart Malcolm McDonald, supported by Ian Murray, Lady Hermon, Caroline Lucas, Christine Jardine, Patricia Gibson, David Linden, Alison Thewliss, Chris Stephens, Patrick Grady, Carol Monaghan and Martin Whitfield, presented a Bill to prohibit unpaid trial work periods in certain circumstances; and for connected purposes.

Bill read the First time; to be read a Second time on Friday 16 March 2018, and to be printed (Bill 18).

Prisons (Interference with Wireless Telegraphy) Bill

Presentation and First Reading (Standing Order No. 57)

Esther McVey, supported by Andrew Selous, David T. C. Davies, Kirstene Hair, Trudy Harrison, Philip Davies, Mr Jacob Rees-Mogg, Mr Christopher Chope, Paul Farrelly, Mr Kevan Jones, Mr Stephen Hepburn and Sir Edward Davey, presented a Bill to make provision about interference with wireless telegraphy in prisons and similar institutions.

Bill read the First time; to be read a Second time on Friday 1 December, and to be printed (Bill 19).

Stalking Protection Bill

Presentation and First Reading (Standing Order No. 57)

Dr Sarah Wollaston, supported by Mrs Cheryl Gillan, Ms Harriet Harman, Alex Chalk, Antoinette Sandbach, Luciana Berger, Richard Graham, Victoria Prentis, Maria Caulfield, Mims Davies, Jess Phillips and Vicky Ford, presented a Bill to make provision for protecting persons from risks associated with stalking; and for connected purposes.

Bill read the First time; to be read a Second time on Friday 19 January 2018, and to be printed (Bill 20).

[Mr Speaker]

Friday 19 January—I do hope I am here.

Employment and Workers’ Rights Bill

Presentation and First Reading (Standing Order No. 57)

Stephanie Peacock, supported by Louise Haigh, Rachel Reeves, Dan Jarvis, Ellie Reeves, Clive Lewis, Lisa Nandy, Jo Stevens, Ian Mearns, Mike Amesbury, Laura Smith and Chris Stephens, presented a Bill to make provision about employment conditions and workers’ rights; and for connected purposes.

Bill read the First time; to be read a Second time on Friday 27 April 2018, and to be printed (Bill 21).

Licensing of Taxis and Private Hire Vehicles (Safeguarding and Road Safety) Bill

Presentation and First Reading (Standing Order No. 57)

Daniel Zeichner presented a Bill to make provision about the exercise of taxi and private hire vehicle licensing functions in relation to persons about whom there are safeguarding or road safety concerns; and for connected purposes.

Bill read the First time; to be read a Second time on Friday 2 February 2018, and to be printed (Bill 22).

Freedom of Information (Extension) Bill

Presentation and First Reading (Standing Order No. 57)

Andy Slaughter, supported by Dan Jarvis, Jo Stevens, David Hanson, Ian C. Lucas, Ruth Cadbury, Christian Matheson, Clive Efford, Stephen Timms, Ms Karen Buck, Louise Haigh and Kate Green, presented a Bill to make providers of social housing, local safeguarding children boards, Electoral Registration Officers, Returning Officers and the Housing Ombudsman public authorities for the purposes of the Freedom of Information Act 2000; to make information held by persons contracting with public authorities subject to the Freedom of Information Act 2000; to extend the powers of the Information Commissioner; and for connected purposes.

Bill read the First time; to be read a Second time on Friday 15 June 2018, and to be printed (Bill 23).

Representation of the People (Young People’s Enfranchisement) Bill

Presentation and First Reading (Standing Order No. 57)

Peter Kyle, supported by Nicky Morgan, Norman Lamb, Sir Peter Bottomley, Rachel Reeves, Ruth Smeeth, Wes Streeting, Anna Turley, Holly Lynch, Conor McGinn, Caroline Lucas and Jim McMahon, presented a Bill to reduce the voting age to 16 in parliamentary and other elections; to make provision for auto-enrolment onto the electoral register for people aged 16 to 24; to make provision about the use of educational establishments as polling stations; and for connected purposes.

Bill read the First time; to be read a Second time on Friday 11 May 2018, and to be printed (Bill 24).

Physician Associates (Regulation) Bill

Presentation and First Reading (Standing Order No. 57)

Anne Marie Morris presented a Bill to make provision for the regulation of physician associates; to make physician associate a protected title; and for connected purposes.

Bill read the First time; to be read a Second time on Friday 26 October 2018, and to be printed (Bill 25).

National Living Wage (Extension to Young People) Bill

Presentation and First Reading (Standing Order No. 57)

Holly Lynch, supported by Chris Bryant, Jo Stevens, Anna Turley, Wes Streeting, Jess Phillips, Tulip Siddiq, Ruth Smeeth, Gareth Snell, Conor McGinn, Naz Shah and Graham Jones, presented a Bill to extend the National Living Wage to people aged 18 to 24.

Bill read the First time; to be read a Second time on Friday 6 July 2018, and to be printed (Bill 26).

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

Greg Knight Excerpts

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

[Sir Greg Knight (East Yorkshire) (Con)]

Will my hon. Friend give way?

[Tim Loughton]

Everybody wants to chip in, and of course I will give way to my right hon. Friend.

[Sir Greg Knight]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend, who has the second best tie in the House, for giving way to the person wearing the best tie. Subsection (6) of the new clause imposes a duty to consult. Who does he expect to be consulted, and is he in any way concerned that this consultation process may lead to a further delay?

[Tim Loughton]

I am going to come on to the consultation, but, absolutely, that cannot lead to further delay because we now have a timeline in the Bill. There is some detail still to agree—I absolutely appreciate that—but that should not prevent this new legislation from coming in before the end of this year. Again, my right hon. Friend is right to be slightly suspicious, and I am very grateful to him for taking the time to be here today. I am not sure how much longer he is staying, but I hope he does not get a ticket on his car—if he is parked on a line or somewhere on private property.

Subsection (3) of the new clause enables the Secretary of State to make other provisions by regulations if this is appropriate in view of the extension of eligibility. The current civil partnership regime is bespoke to same-sex couples, and this subsection enables the Secretary of State to ensure that a coherent scheme can be introduced for opposite-sex couples. Subsection (4) sets out some of the areas in which regulations will be needed, including matters such as parenthood and parental responsibility, the financial consequences of civil partnership and the recognition of equivalent opposite-sex civil partnerships entered into overseas.

Subsection (5) enables the Secretary of State to make regulations relating to the conversion of a marriage into a civil partnership and vice versa. At present, same-sex couples are able to convert a civil partnership into a marriage, and in implementing an opposite-sex civil partnership regime, the Government will need to consider what conversion rights should be given to opposite-sex couples. That is actually an important point about the practicalities of how this will be brought in. If hon. Members remember, the original Civil Partnership Act came in back in 2004-05 and then there was the Marriage (Same Sex Couples) Act 2013, but there was a delay between same-sex marriage becoming available and conversions from same-sex civil partnerships becoming available. Interestingly, however, according to the last figure I saw, only about 15% of same-sex civil partnerships chose to convert into a same-sex marriage after that became available.

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One suggestion is that the opportunity to convert a same-sex civil partnership into a same-sex marriage should be ended after a while because the full range of options is now available, and there should also be a window of opportunity for conversions the other way. We would then move on to a completely level playing field in which anyone can have a same-sex or opposite-sex civil partnership or marriage. The question of conversion will no doubt be of particular interest to many, and subsection (6) of the new clause requires the Secretary of State to consult before making any regulations on conversion. As my right hon. Friend the Member for East Yorkshire (Sir Greg Knight) said, it is important that everybody engages with this issue to ensure that we get it right, and I think this Bill will go through before such measures are finalised in Scotland.

[Sir Greg Knight]

My hon. Friend is generous in giving way. Subsection (4)(c) of the new clause refers to the financial consequences of a civil partnership. Has he received any assurance from the Government that such an arrangement will have no adverse financial consequences?

[Tim Loughton]

There are some financial consequences—mostly about private pensions—just as there were when civil partnerships were introduced for same-sex couples. That was accounted for in the Government’s previous consultations—my right hon. Friend may remember that there was a consultation on extending civil partnerships before the Marriage (Same Sex Couples) Bill, and again afterwards as a result of an amendment I tabled. The Government are aware of the financial consequences, which are not huge and are relatively insignificant, and they have consulted on them. He need not worry that this Bill will be costly—indeed, I assure him that parts of it will save money.

Subsection (7) allows the Secretary of State to make regulations that protect the ability to act in accordance with religious belief. That could include, for example, ensuring that religious organisations are able to decide whether to host opposite-sex civil partnerships on religious premises, which should remain a decision for an individual religious organisation—I am not proposing any changes there. Subsection (8) enables the regulations made under the new clause to amend, repeal or revoke primary legislation, and amendments to clause 5 will ensure that those regulations are subject to the affirmative resolution procedure—I know that right hon. and hon. Members will be concerned about that. That will ensure that the regulations receive proper parliamentary scrutiny and are debated in this House and the other place.

Amendments 3, 4 and 5 make the necessary changes to the supplementary provisions for making regulations in clause 5, and amendment 6 changes the long title of the Bill to reflect the fact that clause 2 no longer relates to the publication of a report on civil partnerships, and instead relates to the extension of civil partnerships to opposite-sex couples—that is how it was when the Bill first started out, before the Government wanted me to change it. We are back where we were originally, but there has been a lot of good fun in the process.

Other clauses in the Bill that attracted widespread support across the House and beyond are completely intact, helped by various assurances given in the Lords by Baroness Hodgson and Baroness Williams, particularly about the consultation on moves to extend the power of coroners to investigate stillbirths. Other parts of the Bill add mothers’ names to marriage certificates—that has not been available in England since 1834—enable coroners to investigate stillbirths where appropriate, and oblige the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care to review how we might register stillbirths before 24 weeks, which are technically referred to as late-term miscarriages. A working party has already started work on that. It has slightly ground to a halt since last autumn, but it will be obliged to report under provisions in the Bill. A lot of work still needs to be done on that difficult subject, about which hon. Members heard many emotional testimonies during the passage of the Bill.

Perhaps I may crave the House’s indulgence before I conclude my remarks, because this will hopefully be the final hurdle for a Bill that started in this House on 19 July 2017, but had its genesis in amendments that I proposed to the Marriage (Same Sex Couples) Bill in 2013. This Bill has kept me awake for much of the past 20 months or so, and I wish to say some thank yous.

Even if I say so myself, this Bill is quite a remarkable achievement—[Interruption.] I am going to say so myself, and I really do not care: it is a remarkable achievement, and will be law in a few weeks’ time. As I said at the outset of my remarks, this is the most greedy and ambitious private Member’s Bill that I have seen in my 22 years in this House. It proposes not one but no fewer than four main changes to the law. It involves legislation involving not just one Department but four, and the engagement of not one but four Secretaries of State, three of whom unhelpfully got reshuffled when the Bill was approaching Second Reading, which meant that I had to start my difficult negotiations all over again in January 2018.

This is not a handout Bill, and it would not be happening had not various people supported putting all these clauses together. As I said, I made it so complicated because in my 22 years in this House of applying for the private Member’s ballot each year—other than when I was a Minister—and failing to be picked, this was the first time my name came up, and no doubt it will be the last. I went for broke, and I think we have come up trumps.

We started in the Commons on 2 February 2018, not knowing whether the Bill would receive its Second Reading, and we had to make a number of last-minute compromises. We had a lot of help from Baroness Hodgson and Baroness Williams, and other organisations that have fought tirelessly for this Bill, such as the Equal Civil Partnerships campaign—its members are looking down from the Gallery very sedately and excitedly, ahead of the celebration that we will have later on—as well as other organisations, such as the Campaign for Safer Births, and I particularly pay tribute to Nicky Lyon, Michelle Hemmington and Georgie Vestey. A few other institutions were not quite as supportive, but we got the Bill through anyway and I will not name them.

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[Kevin Foster]

It is always a pleasure to be called to speak by you, Mr Deputy Speaker, and to see you in the Chair. This is a welcome chance to say something about this Lords amendment, but first I wish to join other Members in reflecting on the events in New Zealand yesterday. Having visited New Zealand and its Parliament last year, I saw how often throughout history our two nations have stood together. It is worth remembering that at the moment when this nation faced its greatest peril in 1940 there were Kiwis who travelled thousands of miles to come here and defend our democracy; they literally stood on the shores of Britain ready to meet a Nazi invader had they ever managed to cross the channel. So we stand in solidarity with them in facing the fascists today in the way that we defeated the fascists of the past.

This Bill is very welcome, and particularly the new clause being inserted into it. People should have a choice about what type of relationship and legal partnership is right for them. As I alluded to in an earlier intervention, when I got married in June 2017 it was a religious sacrament; that was part of being united together. It was a very special experience—we had the mass straight afterwards, as that was the first thing we wanted to do as a married couple. But that is not everyone’s choice, and it is not everyone’s view on marriage.

There are different religious faiths and different religious communities, including in the Christian faith. There are very different views across the spectrum of Christian opinion, for example on divorce and remarriage. There are those who have annulment as the only option and those who recognise civil divorce in a religious context.

[Sir Greg Knight]

Does my hon. Friend agree that it is good that the Bill imposes on the Minister the duty to consult and that people should be consulted before we change the law? Does he also think this Bill will have any impact on landlord and tenant relationships and the rights of a civil partner?

[Kevin Foster]

I thank my right hon. Friend for his intervention; I was a great fan of his private Member’s Bill, which I am delighted to hear now has Royal Assent.

On the impact this Bill might have on the rights of landlords, we should be clear that we are not creating a new legal concept here: civil partnerships have now existed for some time and courts are familiar with dealing with them, so I would expect any rights accruing under tenancies through being a civil partner in a same-sex situation to transfer in exactly the same way to a civil partnership between persons of a different sex—a mixed-sex couple. I do not see why it would extend, or for that matter contract, the rights that have already been created effectively under law by allowing civil partnerships between same-sex couples. I would expect the courts to view them as exactly the same—I think that is the thrust of the Bill—in the same way as civil partnerships, when they were created, had much of the legal history of civil marriage attached to them. That was a large part of the argument used at that time, when it was felt that it was the right step for Parliament to legislate for civil partnerships.

At that time, of course, there was not the option of a legal union for a same-sex couple, hence civil partnerships were created. The intention was to provide much of the legal status of marriage without actually having a civil marriage. Of course, the law has moved on and we now have same-sex marriage, allowing the option of civil partnerships for mixed couples. But I would not necessarily see anything that a landlord should fear from the Bill, other than the same things they would be used to dealing with for a same-sex couple who have entered into a civil partnership.

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[Kevin Foster]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his welcome intervention. I hope that that is indeed the case.

Some of this grows out of the time when it was very difficult to get divorced. It was expensive, and the legal system reflected a different era. This is about simplifying the options. It is also about same-sex couples. Sadly, for too many years they were denied the opportunity to have their relationships—often close, loving relationships that had lasted for many decades—recognised under the law, whereas an opposite-sex couple could quite easily get married purely for convenience or to avoid certain tax liabilities. We have rightly moved the law forward in that regard to give people options and opportunities. People now have a choice if they do not necessarily want to see themselves as married but want a form of legal recognition for their relationship.

Sadly, there have been too many cases over the past 30 or 40 years involving same-sex couples who have had a close and loving relationship, and when one of them passes away, the relatives have suddenly developed rather Victorian attitudes to such relationships when they realise that there might be a few quid in it for them. Those relatives often launch legal actions that the deceased partner would certainly not have wanted to see, because they would have wanted their property dealt with in a very different way. We must get the message across that there is something about being married or being in a civil partnership that gives people legal recognition and puts their status and wishes beyond doubt.

[Sir Greg Knight]

My hon. Friend is making a number of powerful points. Does he agree that there is a case for the Government pursuing a publicity campaign in the wake of this Bill on the issues that he is talking about?

[Kevin Foster]

Yes, absolutely. There may well be a case for having a publicity campaign to advise people of the details of the legislation and to ensure that they are aware of the option it gives them to become a statute law partner rather than a common law partner. This would apply to people who are in a long-term relationship, and who have perhaps bought a property together, but who do not want to get married. As the hon. Member for Ipswich (Sandy Martin) said, relatives are often very supportive of such relationships until they discover an old legal case that might give them the chance to get some money after one of the partners has died. I hope that the Government will look at what information can be made available. This could also apply to venues that have in the past advised that they could accommodate only civil marriages. Perhaps they could now also offer civil partnerships to opposite-sex couples looking to be joined together. I hope that the Government will look at how these matters could sensibly be promoted.

The Lords amendment is welcome, particularly because it gives the opportunity to convert a civil partnership into a marriage. I do not think that that will be an issue for the Bill. I am also pleased that the Lords resisted the temptation to table amendments relating to the role of the clergy. As the hon. Member for East Worthing and Shoreham said, it would have taken the Bill in an unwelcome direction and perhaps endangered its passage through this House if we had had to send it back to the Lords just to deal with such an amendment. It is unlikely that such an amendment would have received the support of a majority of Members in this House. We made it clear when the provisions relating to same-sex marriage came in that there would be a protection there. I sometimes debate whether there really needs to be a complete ban on one particular religious group, in relation to same-sex marriages on Church of England premises. Perhaps in future years we might look at providing a choice, but I accept that this was about giving reassurance and a firm commitment on choices relating to religious rights and opportunities.

I shall bring my remarks to a close in time for the minute’s silence that we will all wish to participate in. I noted the point about siblings with a close relationship who live together, but I do not think that this is the time to legislate for that. That relates more to financial matters than to loving relationships, and it might be confusing to legislate for it here. We have made it very clear that civil partnership is similar to marriage in its legal effect. For good reason, we also have criminal offences—for example, relating to people being married to two people at the same time. Again, extending the law into this area would create confusion and we might have to ask whether we should exempt that. I understand the points that have been made on these matters, but as I said to the hon. Member for Ipswich, I think we need to consider how we would deal with them via the tax system.

The Bill is long overdue, and very welcome. I was genuinely saddened that I could not put my mother’s name on my marriage certificate, but this legislation will allow me to do that. I urge the House to concur with the Lords in their amendment.