Civil Partnership Act 2004 (Amendment) (Sibling Couples) Bill [HL]

Lord Cormack Excerpts

2nd reading (Hansard): House of Lords
Friday 20th July 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Cormack (Con)]

My Lords, my noble friend Lady Wilcox has, Sinatra-like, done it her way. I sincerely hope that her plea will be heeded.

I am delighted to support my noble friend Lord Lexden on this small but important Bill, but please do not think that this is merely one good turn returning another. I much appreciated his injunction to your Lordships to accept my invitation to Lincoln—when the trains are running—but I stand to support his Bill because I have believed in this from the moment that the Civil Partnership Bill was introduced in another place. In fact, I spoke on that occasion and I felt so strongly that I withheld my support from the Bill because I felt that it was not honouring all those whom it should honour. I felt that because I had had the good fortune to represent a Staffordshire seat in the other place—by that time, I had represented it for some 34 or 35 years—and I had come across so many examples of sisters widowed early in life because their husbands had suffered in the mines. I also had a couple of sisters who ran a village post office in one of the 30-something villages in my constituency and brothers who had come together, honoured each other and been brothers in every possible sense, yet these people and many others were being discriminated against. We failed 14 years ago as my noble friend Lady Wilcox has just said, but we have the opportunity to put things right.

The recent judgment, to which my noble friend Lord Lexden referred in his magnificent speech, and to which others referred should put this at the top of the domestic agenda again. It would be only fitting for this House, which passed that amendment 14 years ago, to take the lead and say to another place, “Here is a small, modest measure which does harm to no one”—and of how many laws can that be said?—“but which can give enormous peace of mind to many people”, often quiet, unobtrusive leaders in their own little communities, as in my constituency in Staffordshire. I hope that the Minister will reply positively, indicate that the Government accept the logic of the case made in every speech in your Lordships’ House this morning and give this Bill a fair passage. At the moment the law has got it wrong. In the immortal words of Mr Bumble, the law is an ass. Let us put it right this morning.