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

James Cartlidge Excerpts

2nd reading: House of Commons
Friday 2nd February 2018 Commons Chamber

[Tim Loughton]

Not only do I support it, but I think my name is on it. My proposal will help to create greater stability, with the ultimate aim of giving the 2.2 million children in such relationships the very best opportunities and the best start in life.

The Centre for Social Justice has calculated that the cost of family breakdown to this country is some £48 billion a year, or some 2.5% of gross domestic product. That is a big and growing problem, which is socially and financially costly for our society. Fewer than one in 10 married parents have split up by the time their child reaches the age of five, compared with more than one in three of those who are cohabiting but not married, and 75% of family breakdowns involving children under five result from the separation of unmarried parents. The CSJ has produced a raft of statistics showing that a child who is not in a two-parent family is much more likely to fall out of school, to become addicted to drugs, to get into trouble with the law, to be homeless and not to be in employment, education or training. Let me be clear: that is not to be judgmental about parents who find themselves, through no fault of their own, having to bring up a child alone, but two partners make for greater stability.

We know that marriage works, but civil partnerships are also showing evidence of providing greater stability for same-sex couples, including those who have children through adoption, surrogacy or whatever means. There is a strong case for believing that extending civil partnerships would improve that stability for many more families in different ways. If just one in 10 cohabiting opposite-sex couples entered into a civil partnership, that would amount to more than 300,000 couples and their children. The extension of civil partnerships would offer the prospect of greater security and stability, lower likelihood of family breakdown, and better social and financial outcomes. That, surely, would be progress.

Understandably, some people will ask, “Why can those couples not just get married?” People choose not to get involved in the paraphernalia of formal marriage for a variety of reasons. For some, it is too much of an establishment thing to do. Many identify marriage as an innately religious institution, and even if it is done in a registry office, it still has religious connotations. Some see marriage as having a patriarchal side, and some see it as a form of social control. For others, it is rather expensive. Marriage is not seen as a genuine partnership of equals, as civil partnerships are. Those are not my views, but they represent how many people see marriage. Many people have lobbied me—I am sure that they have done the same to other hon. Members—about why they would like to take advantage of the opportunity to enter into a civil partnership, and why they have not got married.

[James Cartlidge (South Suffolk) (Con)]

Some may argue that in effect, the idea of commitment would potentially be undermined, but does my hon. Friend agree that probably in reality, people who might opt for civil partnership might otherwise not have made any commitment?

[Tim Loughton]

It is interesting. I recorded a television interview this morning with a couple who have been together for 26 years; they have teenage children and, for a variety of reasons, do not want to get married. They travelled to the Isle of Man, which is the only part of the British Isles that recognises civil partnerships for opposite-sex couples, and have become the first couple from mainland UK to have a civil partnership through the Isle of Man. Obviously, it is not recognised in the UK proper.

They made a very interesting point. They said, “We want to show our commitment in the eyes of the state. We want the stability and the protection, and the legal protections, that we just don’t have as a cohabiting couple, but marriage is not right for us. If we are going to be forced into a marriage as the only way of getting that legal protection, we would effectively be undermining marriage, because we would be doing it for the wrong reasons.” Civil partnership is a way to show that commitment and get the protections without having to conform in a way that they do not believe in.

Whether we agree with them, that is their right. Surely in an age when families take many different forms, the key thing that the state should be interested in is doing whatever creates stability and the best opportunities for loving couples to thrive and for children, when they are involved, to be brought up in a stable environment. This is surely another opportunity to get more people to be able to take advantage of such a situation.

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[Helen Whately (Faversham and Mid Kent) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Colchester (Will Quince), who has been such an effective campaigner on this issue, and other colleagues who have made such brave speeches about their own experience of neonatal birth and stillbirth, and losing their loved ones. I also congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for East Worthing and Shoreham (Tim Loughton) on this brilliant Bill, which my hon. Friend the Member for Erewash (Maggie Throup) rather ingeniously named “the Loved Ones Bill”, a nickname that brings all its elements together.

Earlier this week, I had the pleasure of meeting Denise and Dale from Boughton Monchelsea, in my constituency. They came to the House to talk to me about civil partnerships. They desperately want to make a formal commitment to each other. They want to ensure that they would both be financially protected should something happen to one of them, but they do not want to get married. They want a civil partnership, but, unlike their friends in same-sex relationships, they do not have that option.

The introduction of same-sex civil partnerships was an important step towards greater equality, putting same-sex couples on a similar legal footing as married couples and officially recognising their love and commitment in law. In 2013 we rightly introduced gay marriage, recognising that marriage has a particular status in our society, and that same-sex couples who wanted to marry should be able to do so. Paradoxically, however, opposite-sex couples are now being effectively discriminated against, as they are not given that choice. If we believe in relationship equality and giving couples the same rights and freedoms whatever their sexuality, it makes no sense to deny civil partnerships to opposite-sex couples.

I am married myself; my parents are married, as were my grandparents; but I recognise that not everyone has such good experiences of marriage. Some people see it as a patriarchal institution that oppresses women. They clearly have not met my husband and me! [Laughter.] Not all people feel that marriage is right for them, and their choice should be respected.

[James Cartlidge]

My hon. Friend is making an excellent speech. She mentioned discrimination. In 2016 a heterosexual couple presented a case to the High Court, claiming that the present law discriminated against them. The case was dismissed because the judge ruled that they were not subject to humiliation or derogatory treatment as a result of their status. Surely the point is that the system discriminates de facto, irrespective of whether people are actually abused.

[Helen Whately]

My hon. Friend has made a very good point in citing that case.

If, for whatever reason, a couple do not feel that marriage is right for them, but want to make a strong and formal commitment to each other—and given that we have developed a model for it with civil partnerships, even if that was not the original intention—I believe that we should allow them to do so.

Furthermore, we know that children benefit from growing up in a stable family, with a couple who have a stable relationship. Not every relationship works out, and not every child will be brought up by a couple in a stable relationship, but we owe it to children to help people to form, build and sustain stable relationships, and I believe that if a civil partnership is the way in which a couple want to formalise their commitment to each other, it is wrong to stand in their way.

Let me now turn to the registration of marriages. It is clearly wrong for mothers not to sign the registers, and it is also clearly outdated. The current system does not reflect modern Britain. When the child of a single mother gets married, only the father’s name is included on the certificate, even if the child was raised by its mother alone and barely knew its father. I made a point earlier about some people’s perception of marriage. The continuation of a system that does not allow mothers to sign the marriage register may add to the view of some people that marriage is rather old-fashioned and patriarchal. That is something that we could put right.

Finally, on the registration of stillborn babies, I cannot imagine the pain of losing a baby; I remember the misery of an early miscarriage, but I find it hard to imagine how I would have felt if one of my children had been stillborn, and I have so much respect for colleagues who have spoken so courageously about their experiences, particularly the hon. Member for Washington and Sunderland West (Mrs Hodgson), who has spoken today, and my hon. Friends the Members for Banbury (Victoria Prentis), for Colchester and for Crawley (Henry Smith), who mentioned his own experience earlier. I have enormous respect for what they are doing in their campaign on this, and I know it is appreciated by constituents of mine who have been through stillbirth. A constituent of mine who lost a baby—I will change the name—told me:

“Emma was my daughter, she wasn’t a statistic.”

My overriding view on this matter is that we have to do better in our health system at reducing the number of stillbirths. I spent time working in maternity units and found it shocking when looking at the data and asking questions that I got the impression that it was just accepted that every year there would be nine, 10 or 11 stillbirths; that was just how it was—that was just a fact. In the particular unit where I heard that, there did not seem to be a sense of inquiry about why, and whether each one of them could have been prevented. That simply should not be accepted.

I welcome the Government’s work and the ambition to halve the stillbirth rate; that is absolutely right, and, as my hon. Friend the Member for Colchester has said, there is a huge amount going on. A crucial part of achieving that ambition is understanding what has happened when there is a stillbirth—what went wrong—through proper investigations, perhaps by an independent body. As my hon. Friend the Member for Banbury said, coroners investigations might not always be the right way to do that, but sometimes they might, so I welcome the inclusion of that in the Bill.

We should learn from stillbirths—or late miscarriages, as they are officially known—whenever they happen, whether after 24 weeks or before. We have heard powerful points on the registration of babies before 24 weeks, and I am conscious of time so I am not going to contribute on that. Instead, I conclude by saying that I welcome the fact that the Government are clearly listening very hard and supporting the Bill.

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[James Cartlidge (South Suffolk) (Con)]

It is a pleasure, as always, to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Torbay (Kevin Foster). It is fair to say that we are, in a regular capacity, the tail-enders. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for East Worthing and Shoreham (Tim Loughton) on introducing this Bill.

When I first heard about the proposal on civil partnerships, I must admit that I had one concern, about which I intervened on my hon. Friend earlier: the idea—I am not trying to present this as a straw man—that this could be seen as “commitment-lite”. In other words, it might affect the idea that marriage is something very solemn and permanent that people go into committing for life by being less of a commitment and therefore appealing to people who go into it almost in a half-hearted fashion.

That was my instinctive response. However, having considered it and, like my hon. Friend the Member for Faversham and Mid Kent (Helen Whately), spoken to people who would consider this option and would like to have it, I feel that, on the contrary, it would offer to people who would never get married a way that they can commit. That is a very positive thing. Based on all kinds of evidence, we could argue that we live in a more consumerist society where we like to upgrade our mobile phones every year and so on and to have a lot of choice. Arguably, we are not sticklers in the same way that previous generations were. Therefore, institutions that encourage commitment are to be welcomed. I do not have any problem with this in principle.

With regard to Government consultations, we hear a lot about demand. Is there demand for this option? I am not sure that that is the best way to talk about this. We are talking about rights and equality. One person can bring a case to court because that person has rights. The fact that we know individuals who would like to consider this option is enough in itself, and we then have to decide whether it is right in principle. As I said in an intervention on my hon. Friend the Member for Faversham and Mid Kent, there was a court case that found that the lack of heterosexual civil partnerships was not discriminatory because the couple in question had not been subject to abuse and so on. I disagree with that—while obviously respecting the independence of the judiciary. To me, it is self-evidently discriminatory. This provision would be a welcome addition to our institutions. I am more than happy to support it for that reason.

Since becoming an MP, I have been incredibly moved by speeches I have heard from my hon. Friends the Members for Colchester (Will Quince) and for Banbury (Victoria Prentis), and from Opposition Members, who, in a wonderful cross-party way, have supported such wonderful reforms in the area of baby loss. As a father of twins, the idea that there was a case where a parent had lost their twins and one received a certificate and the other did not is extraordinary. Whatever else we do, we should ensure that that cannot happen. That is why I support my hon. Friend the Member for East Worthing and Shoreham.