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

Kevin Foster Excerpts

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

[Victoria Atkins]

There is a sense of urgency—very much so. If my hon. Friend will forgive me, I will not be drawn into precise time limits because I would not wish to undermine in any way the academic research that will be undertaken, but there is a very great deal of urgency. We hope that we will have a proportionate amount of data from the pieces of work that I have set out by September next year.

I turn to the subject of marriage. In the Home Office, sadly we very often have to deal with the very worst of humanity, so it is a positive pleasure to talk about civil partnerships and marriage, and to celebrate happy and—one hopes—long-lasting relationships. As someone who is very happily married to a long-suffering husband, I know the irritation that can happen at the ceremony when people realise that the marriage certificate does not provide for the inclusion of mothers. The Government fully support the correction of this issue, and I am grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for East Worthing and Shoreham for drawing it forward.

At this point, I should welcome the hon. Member for Lincoln (Karen Lee) to her place on the Opposition Front Bench. Although I have only been a Minister for eight weeks or something like that, may I give her just a little piece of advice? Hearing and judging the tone of the House is a very important role for those on the Front Bench. She will have noticed that there is a great deal of consensus in the Chamber today, so perhaps we did not need to drag the discussion into, “He said”, “She said”, and so on.

The long title of the Bill refers to only mothers being added to certificates. We need to ensure that when the marriage entry is updated it allows for all the different family circumstances in society today—for example, same-sex parents. Indeed, my hon. Friend the Member for Banbury set out the pressures that can be present in family circumstances and the need for marriage certificates to reflect that. We need to make sure that we have a system in place that enables the marriage register to be capable of adapting. My hon. Friend suggested that perhaps people could simply strike through the marriage certificate to include the mother’s name. I implore people not to do that. This is a technical, legal document, and doing so may mean that it is not valid, so the happy couple will have to go through another ceremony. We will work very hard on this.

I thank my hon. Friend the Member for East Worthing and Shoreham for agreeing to amend clause 1 of his Bill in Committee to insert the provisions of the Registration of Marriage (No. 2) Bill in its place. That important Bill is the long-standing work of my right hon. Friend the Member for Meriden (Dame Caroline Spelman), who has been battling for years to have this anomaly in our marriage ceremony and celebrations corrected. I place on record my thanks for her commitment to ensuring that the marriage certificate reflects the important role of both parents.

When the Registration of Marriage (No. 2) Bill is added to this Bill, the provisions will form the way in which marriages are registered in England and Wales, moving from a paper-based system to registration on an electronic register. I know that some will worry immediately about what that means for the all-important photographs that we show off of the end of a happy marriage ceremony. I assure the House that we will still be able to have the photograph of signing a document at the ceremony. Wedding photographers need not worry: brides and grooms will get that all-important photograph with the document and their signatures.

Moving to a schedule system is the most efficient and cost-efficient way of updating the marriage entry. It would be the biggest reform of how marriages are registered since 1837, moving away from the outdated legislation currently in place. To the joy of my colleagues in the Treasury, it will also introduce savings of about £33.8 million over 10 years. Some concern has been raised about the use of Henry VIII powers in the Registration of Marriage (No. 2) Bill. We would be content for the Bill to be amended to include a sunset clause limiting the use of the powers to a period of three years, allowing for the legislation to be amended to introduce a schedule-based system. Once implemented, that would allow for any amendments required to deal with any unintended consequences.

Having dealt with civil partnerships and marriage, I now move on to the subject of registering stillbirths. I must acknowledge the very hard work and commitment of my hon. Friends the Members for Colchester (Will Quince) and for Eddisbury (Antoinette Sandbach), and the hon. Members for Lewisham, Deptford (Vicky Foxcroft) and for Washington and Sunderland West, who have campaigned so effectively to ensure that these losses are felt within this Chamber and that our legislation reflects them as well.

The Government’s ambition is for the health service to provide the safest, highest-quality care available anywhere in the world. I am sure that we would all acknowledge the excellent NHS staff working tirelessly on a daily basis to help us achieve this ambition. Nevertheless, when it does occur—I would like to ensure that Opposition Front Benchers pay due respect to this section of the Bill—the loss of a pregnancy is a heart-rending tragedy for families that stays with them for the rest of their lives. Many of the care considerations for parents experiencing a stillbirth—that is, when a baby is born after 24 weeks’ gestation—will be similar for those experiencing a late miscarriage. Local policies, however, may affect the type and place of care offered or available depending on the gestation when baby loss occurs.

Currently, parents whose babies are stillborn after 24 weeks’ gestation can register the baby’s name and receive a certificate of registration of stillbirth. When a pregnancy ends before 24 weeks’ gestation, however, there is currently no formal process for parents to be able to register their loss legally. Some expectant parents find this to be not just distressing but devastating. The Department of Health and Social Care recognises the need to do more to support families affected by a miscarriage. Some families may want their loss to be acknowledged and registered. Others, however, may feel distressed at any mandatory requirement to do so in the circumstances of their grief. This issue must therefore be approached with great care and sensitivity.

Accordingly, I am pleased that clause 3 will provide for the Government to review this issue and to look at whether current law on registration of stillbirths should be changed to allow for the registration of pregnancy loss before 24 weeks’ gestation. As part of this review, we will seek views and evidence from all interested parties. I hope that colleagues across the House will contribute to that review.

I now move on to coroners’ investigations.

[Kevin Foster (Torbay) (Con)]

May I clarify something before the Minister moves on? My hon. Friend the Member for East Worthing and Shoreham (Tim Loughton) made it clear that he did not intend that this Bill would make any change to the provisions on the number of weeks in relation to abortion. Can she confirm that that is the Government’s intention as well?

[Victoria Atkins]

I am extremely grateful to my hon. Friend, who shows his usual attention to detail. The proposals in this Bill do not in any way affect the laws relating to the availability of termination. They simply concern miscarriages in the circumstances we have described today. I thank him for allowing me to clarify that on the record.

I move on to coroners’ investigations. I should declare that in my previous life I worked with the chief coroner, His Honour Judge Mark Lucraft QC. On clause 4, let me first assure the House that the Government agree wholeheartedly with the need to look at the role that coroners could play in this regard. On 28 November last year, my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, as he now is, made a statement in this House about the Government’s maternity safety strategy. This Bill potentially has an important role to play in promoting better outcomes for mothers and babies.

Currently, under the Coroners and Justice Act 2009, coroners do not have jurisdiction to investigate when a baby does not show signs of life independently of its mother. Coroners can commence an investigation if there is doubt as to whether a baby was stillborn or lived independently of its mother, but the investigation stops if the coroner’s inquiries reveal that the baby was stillborn. Clause 4 places a duty on the Secretary of State to prepare and publish a report on whether, and if so how, the law ought to be changed to enable or to require coroners to investigate stillbirths. It also gives the Lord Chancellor a power to make regulations amending part 1 of the Coroners and Justice Act 2009 so as to provide for when, and in what circumstances, coroners will investigate stillbirths.

I realise that the House may have concerns about a power to make regulations in this way, but the safeguards written into the clause will ensure that it is used appropriately. For example, the regulations will be subject to the affirmative resolution procedure, so there will be scrutiny by both Houses, and the regulations cannot be used to create any criminal offences unless the offence has an equivalent in part 1 of the Coroners and Justice Act 2009.

The Government think that it is important to carry out a review and produce a report in this area before making any changes. There are important and sensitive issues to explore, such as the question of how far into a pregnancy coronial involvement should be triggered, and the potential role of other factors, such as violence to the mother or medical negligence. We need to hear a wide range of views, including those of coroners, including the chief coroner, medical professionals, researchers in the field and, of course, bereaved parents and the organisations that support them.

I referred earlier to the statement that my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care made in the House last November on the Government’s maternity safety strategy. He set out improvements under way in the NHS, including the newly established Healthcare Safety Investigation Branch, which will investigate 1,000 cases per year of full-term stillbirths, neonatal and maternal deaths, and severe brain injuries during labour, in order to discover what may have gone wrong and to learn lessons. At the same time, he announced that the Government intend to look closely at enabling coroners to investigate stillbirths. My hon. Friend’s Bill today helpfully moves us forward in that regard.

This short Bill has grand ambitions. It deals with the happiest of times—the celebration of love and committed relationships—as well as the saddest of times: the loss of a much-cherished baby. My hon. Friend and others have dealt with the inevitable emotions that arise on such occasions sensitively and powerfully, and I thank them all. The Government want to work with him constructively and thank him for the assurances he has given on clauses 1 and 2. Accordingly, the Government are pleased to be able to support it.

--- Later in debate ---

[Kevin Foster (Torbay) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to speak in this debate. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for East Worthing and Shoreham (Tim Loughton) on introducing the Bill to the House. The reassurance from the Minister about what the Bill does and does not cover probably took two hours off my speech.

[Stephen Pound (Ealing North) (Lab)]

Shame!

[Kevin Foster]

I hear the hon. Gentleman’s disappointment, but I will make sure I speak briefly because I am also quite a fan of the next Bill on the Order Paper, so I have no intention of performing one of my longer Friday orations. I shall focus on the nature of the Bill.

When we consider private Members’ Bills on Fridays, I regularly speak about whether they are needed, whether they are not just something that sounds good but might actually make a real difference, and whether the proposals are proportionate to the issue. In the case of this Bill, all those tests are satisfied. We only need to hear some of the evidence from our constituents about those who get married, including me. When people get married, at the end they are presented with the formal register. I listed the fact that my father was a painter-labourer in Devonport dockyard, and my wife Hazel listed the fact that her now-deceased father was a farmer, and of course that was it. Given that my mum could not be at my wedding—she died four years ago this week—it was actually very sad that she could not even have the recognition of being part of the day via the inclusion of her name and profession on the certificate.

As my hon. Friend the Member for East Worthing and Shoreham rightly said, this law dates back to an era when married women were viewed as chattels of their husband. The idea was that they were physically the property of their husband. In fact, they had no persona of their own legally; by law, they were their husband. That continued right the way up to the 1880s. People may be wondering whether there was some sort of enlightenment during the 1880s that meant that law was abolished. In fact, it was abolished after a court ruled that everything written by a female author was actually legally by her husband, so the author went and ran up a whole load of debts. When the creditors sued, the court ruled in exactly the same way, saying that all those signatures were legally her husband’s and he had to pay every single bill. Funnily enough, the provisions were abolished very soon after that and married women were given their own legal identity. It is certainly a reminder of a time that no longer exists.

My hon. Friend the Member for Erewash (Maggie Throup) pointed out the social history and information that we get from items such as wedding and birth certificates. I had a little bit of a surprise when I looked at my grandfather’s birth certificate. In fact, this is a story that the hon. Member for Ealing North (Stephen Pound) will probably quite like. It turned out that my great-grandfather was a Canadian soldier. We all said, “He never went anywhere near Canada, so how was he a Canadian soldier?” It turned out that he was an Irish Roman Catholic who was prepared to join the fight against imperial Germany, but did not wish to join the British Army. At that time, the compromise for these men was to say, “Well, you’re going off to the same place anyway. If you want to go with the Canadians or one of the other dominion armies, off you go.” So he was signed up for the Canadians, even though he had never set foot in Canada. Obviously, my great-grandfather’s views on the Union were very different from mine. That is an example of what people can find out, and the social history that is not captured by these wholly outdated provisions.

I am interested to hear that the Bill will give us the opportunity to bring in a more modern system of marriage registration. There are those who view marriage not as a loving commitment and not as I see it—as something that Hazel amd I celebrated before God—but as an opportunity to abuse the immigration system. A more modern registration system will help to deal with that, which is welcome, while removing the archaic provisions of only listing a father on the certificate.

On opposite-sex civil partnerships, I am open to the evidence. I am not as opposed to them as my hon. Friend the Member for Chippenham (Michelle Donelan). It was the right choice for Hazel and I to have our wedding in church, as that is what we strongly believe in, but I recognise that it is not everyone’s choice and neither should the law force people to marry in church. Since 1833, people have not been forced to get married in church. I also recognise that there are people local to me who want to have a civil partnership. I do not see a particular problem with people making this choice, so I will look at the evidence from the consultation and we will see whether it affects the provision.

The only thing that I would slightly caution is the argument about the views of the Roman Catholic Church, although it is not really for me, as an Anglican, to get into this argument too much. The idea is that if someone was divorced they could have a civil partnership rather than a marriage. I did not find that particularly convincing because my understanding is that the Church would still see it as a partnership in the same way as a civil marriage. In reality, what makes the difference is whether the Church would allow marriage in a church. Of course, the position of divorcees in the Church of England has changed in recent years: it was once very unlikely that divorcees would be able to remarry in the Church of England, but parish priests are now much more likely to exercise their discretion based on many quite reasonable grounds. For example, I do not think that any of us would seriously believe that Christ would call someone to stay in an abusive relationship. None of us believes that is the case, so it is right that we make this change.

I very much welcome the provision to change registration of births. I hope that it will provide comfort; hearing the powerful stories today confirmed that for me. I particularly welcome the provision to allow coroners the power to investigate stillbirths. A coroner’s inquiry gives a unique opportunity to examine what went wrong—not necessarily to apportion blame, but actually to find out what went wrong, to learn lessons, to give comfort to all involved and to come to a decision. Therefore, it is welcome that their powers are extended in this way. Again, there is obviously a lot of detail to go into. I am sure that a discussion will be needed with the devolved Administrations, particularly in Wales, about how exactly this will work. However, I think that this welcome provision will bring closure to many people.

It is appropriate that this Bill gets its Second Reading. The only concerns are matters that can be dealt with in Committee and perhaps on Report if Members have specific areas that they wish to tweak. It would not be proportionate to try to block the Bill, because it tackles issues that reflect, first, changing society and, secondly, changing medical knowledge. The original provisions on coroners were passed in an era when it would have been very hard to work out what was going on inside the human body. That is now possible with modern scanning and testing techniques, so coroners can look at real evidence. Given the impact on people, giving them the ability to register what was to them not just a statistic or a number in a hospital but a child is totally the right step for us to take. I fully welcome the Bill, and I am sure that it will get its Second Reading in the very near future.