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

Lord Lexden Excerpts

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

Moved by

[Lord Lexden]

That the Bill be now read a second time.

[Lord Lexden (Con)]

My Lords, this is an extremely short Bill consisting of just two clauses, the second of which is concerned with the formalities that all legislation requires, but though small in size it would have large and wholly beneficial effects. It would inflict no hardship on anyone, while removing a palpable injustice suffered by a significant number of our fellow country men and women.

British society has been reshaped in our generation, assisted by the introduction of important new rights that have produced greater legal equality than ever before and released many individuals from scorn and outright discrimination because of the lifestyles that they choose to follow. My Bill would extend the benefits of some of these new rights, which surely ought to be spread as widely as possible in conformity with the spirit of our times. It would confer on thousands of men and women living together in secure and committed platonic relationships the legal status that they have hoped for so long to possess and which they deserve so thoroughly to acquire.

Throughout the country, sibling couples—brothers, sisters, sometimes one of each—have decided to spend their lives together in homes that they have created jointly until parted by death. Proper legal recognition should be given to them. Their circumstances will vary greatly. All, however, will develop the strongest platonic ties, stemming from natural family affection. Sometimes, the sense of being part of a family will become immensely powerful. It tends to be particularly marked where one of the siblings has a child and the other shares responsibility for bringing up the much-loved youngster. Two very dear friends of mine, Catherine and Virginia Utley, have done just that, and now the third member of their family, Olivia, who has inherited the long-established family talent for journalism, has joined them in making the case for the legal reforms embodied in my Bill. Indeed, my initiative owes much to their inspiring example.

The reforms that sibling couples need can be so easily accomplished thanks to the existence of the Civil Partnership Act 2004. Just six simple, straightforward additions to it provided for in my Bill would bring sibling couples the legal recognition that they require and deserve. The first and only substantive clause sets out those additions and specifies where they would be inserted into the 2004 Act. They include a clear definition of the sibling couples who would be entitled to register as civil partners. Both siblings would have to be aged over 30 and have lived together continuously for 12 years.

Why do committed platonic sibling couples need the legal rights they would gain by becoming civil partners? The cruellest aspect of the current state of affairs is the terrible situation that can arise when one member of the committed sibling couple dies. Their joint home, owned by them both and the repository of a lifestyle of shared experiences and memories, has an importance to them that goes beyond bricks and mortar. Yet the rise in the value of property in our time often means that a home that has been shared for decades must be sold when the first sibling dies to raise the inheritance tax on his or her share. Living with the knowledge that this could happen at any time can cause years of apprehension and anxiety that members of the committed, platonic family unit ought surely to be spared. Loss of the shared home creates huge additional misery when two siblings are parted by death.

This tragic state of affairs has been widely publicised and deplored, but nothing has yet been done to remedy it. The state continues to insist that the passing of property from one person to another free of tax must apply only to spouses and civil partners. Sibling couples, lacking the right to form civil partnerships, have been left to bear the combined distress and the loss of a shared home as best they can. The coalition Government’s tinkering with inheritance tax thresholds added to the injustice, for the measures did not apply to sibling couples.

This issue, grave though it is, is just one feature of the wider injustice to which sibling couples are subject, rather than the sole ground on which change is sought, as is sometimes mistakenly suggested. There are other serious difficulties faced by sibling couples, including restrictions on applying for joint council tenancies and the inability to transfer pension rights. The state ought to bestow support on sibling couples. Instead, it leaves them in severe difficulties.

Fourteen years ago, when the civil partnership legislation was going through Parliament, the force of these arguments was recognised in your Lordships’ House. An amendment was carried to include sibling couples, but it did not find favour in the Commons. Then and since, there has been a curious reluctance in the Commons to face up to the issue properly and decide what should be done about it, in part perhaps because successive Governments, including this one so far, have irresponsibly shied away from it. Action could perfectly well be taken in the Commons now through a Private Member’s Bill which is before it, designed to extend civil partnerships to men and women who want to be united but not through marriage, a point of view strengthened by a recent ruling of the Supreme Court. Yet despite the efforts of some Conservative MPs, an obvious opportunity to right a wrong through that Bill may well be lost. That makes my Bill all the more important.

Throughout the past, frustrating 14 years, recognition of the case for change has remained strong in your Lordships’ House. No one has reiterated it with more force and authority than the noble Baroness, Lady Deech. Sibling couples throughout the land will be heartened by her participation in this debate. It will be of great importance to them, too, to hear the noble Lord, Lord Alton, speaking up for them today.

Other noble Lords, learned in the law, also support this Bill. Both the noble and learned Lord, Lord Mackay of Clashfern, and the noble Lord, Lord Pannick, an expert in the subject who took the well-known case of the elderly Burden sisters to the European Court of Human Rights, would be in the Chamber today if engagements had not detained them elsewhere. I am grateful to all noble Lords who have come here this morning to consider this significant little Bill.

The view has been expressed—it may well be heard in this debate—that since civil partnerships were introduced specifically for gay people by Mr Blair's Government, they should not be extended widely where no sexual element is involved in a relationship . There is a deep and understandable sense of attachment to them in a restricted form by some gay people. I yield to no one in my support for LGBT rights, as my record in this House shows. I would be gravely distressed if fellow gay men and women in the community at large should feel an overwhelming reluctance to see civil partnerships extended to others who can benefit so significantly from them, particularly since we now have equal marriage, which is for ever closed to sibling couples. We owe sibling couples, indeed other blood-related co-habitees, support in their quest for justice.

Is it not important to remember that the sexual expression of love has never been a defining characteristic of civil partnerships? Ordained priests in the Church of England are permitted to enter into them on the condition that they remain chaste. As the former Bishop of Rochester, Dr Michael Nazir-Ali, wrote recently,

“surely civil partnerships should be open to all those who live together permanently … They should not be based on the presumption of a sexual relationship”.

Indeed, that would be very strange since they already exist without a sexual element.

I turn now to the position of the Government. The recent experience of my friend Catherine Utley is not, I think, untypical. For years she has been writing and commenting publicly on this issue. Towards the end of May, she wrote to Ms Penny Mordaunt in her capacity as Minister for Women and Equalities, asking her whether she accepted that cohabiting blood relations were unfairly treated and whether she was,

“open to ideas of ways in which the government might help”.

Not even the prospect of this debate, to which Catherine Utley referred, could stir the Minister’s office into action. In response to a reminder at the start of this month, she received the following email from the senior assistant to Ms Mordaunt’s special advisers:

“Hi Catherine”—


this perky, informal person wrote—

“I have passed your letter onto our correspondence team here! I will keep you updated”.

Nothing more, of course, has been heard, even though the Minister is clearly not short-staffed. Perhaps my noble friend who will reply to this debate would feel disposed to have a word with Ms Mordaunt about the shortcomings of her not inconsiderable entourage.

I hope that the Home Office is not so inert. My noble friend Lady Williams and I had a little exchange three years ago. I asked the Government why they had no plans to extend civil partnerships to sibling couples. I was told:

“Civil partnerships are the equivalent of a marriage: a loving union”.—[Official Report, 9/9/2015; col. 1427.]


The only interpretation that can be put on this is that a loving union must in the Government’s view have a sexual element, but, I repeat, the existing law makes no such assumptions. Why should brotherly and sisterly love be disregarded?

I look forward to hearing the Government’s current position. Have they reflected that they represent the party of the family and that in today’s diverse society sibling couples need to be seen as family units? Exactly 30 years ago, Margaret Thatcher said that,

“the basic ties of the family … are at the heart of our society and are the very nursery of civic virtue. And it is on the family that we in government build our own policies”.

Those Tory principles surely underline the accuracy of the assessment of the current situation made by the former Attorney-General, Mr Dominic Grieve. He has stated:

“The basis for creating civil partnerships is the recognition by government of the value of close mutually supportive relationships outside of traditional marriage. As such the exclusion of cohabiting blood relations from the right to form one is discriminatory and a serious mistake that needs to be corrected”.


Not everything that Mr Dominic Grieve says and does earns the approval of your Lordships’ House, but I hope that on this matter there will be widespread support for him.

This is a mistake that my Bill would put right as regards sibling couples. It happens to coincide with a review of civil partnerships as a whole by the Government, following the recent judgment in the Supreme Court. That is a fortunate accident of timing. The review was discussed in the other place two days ago. It would be incomplete without the inclusion of my Bill. I therefore look to my noble friend the Minister to ensure that it will be carefully considered during the review. The central issue is this: why should all those whom the Government presume are in a sexual relationship, whether heterosexual or gay, enjoy legal recognition, and only those who live together in committed, secure, platonic relationships be denied it? Their inferior status must be ended. I beg to move.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Lexden]

My Lords, sibling couples throughout our country will have been heartened and encouraged by most of this moving debate this morning. It was on their behalf that I brought the Bill before Parliament. For too long their interests have been neglected and ignored, and it will mean much to them to know that there is a strong view in your Lordships’ House that the injustices they suffer should be corrected. I thank all those who voiced their strong support for this short but important Bill.

To the noble Baroness, Lady Barker, and the noble Lord, Lord Collins, with whom I work closely on LGBT matters, as they mentioned, I simply say this. In 2004, a hugely important reform was enacted. Its passage through this House and the reaction to it 14 years ago may have left them deeply dissatisfied. We have moved on. I see no reason why important legislation which served one purpose in 2004 should not now be used to honour and recognise other important, stable, committed relationships. That is the heart of the matter. A review is taking place. The essential immediate point must be to ensure that the review encompasses the Bill, and I look to the Minister to assist in that process.

This is not the first time in recent weeks I have found myself not completely at one with the Home Office. The Minister will recall another outstanding matter that needs to be very immediately addressed, touching the shortcomings of Operation Conifer. We are not at one, but this morning this House has expressed an extremely strong view. I look forward to further constructive discussions about the issues with which the Bill is associated and I ask the House to give the Bill a Second Reading.

Bill read a second time and committed to a Committee of the Whole House.