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

Rebecca Pow Excerpts

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

[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.

[Rebecca Pow (Taunton Deane) (Con)]

Will my hon. Friend give way?

[Tim Loughton]

I will—in for a penny, in for a pound.

[Rebecca Pow]

The consultation did not have any consensus that we should go down the civil partnership line, but will my hon. Friend comment on the fact that in France, religious marriages are not recognised and have to be preceded by a civil ceremony? I wonder whether any data have been gathered about how many split-up families they have there, or whether they have a better record than we are likely to have, because this is really all about family stability.

[Tim Loughton]

I have precisely the statistics that my hon. Friend is looking for. If she is patient for a few minutes longer, I will give her exactly that information.

Such people are mostly in committed loving relationships, but if they do not want to go for a traditional marriage, they have no way of having that recognised in the eyes of the state. That brings me on to the third main rationale for this reform—I promise that I will then come to my hon. Friend’s point. Particularly worrying is the common misconception that there is such a thing as a common-law wife or husband, as a woman typically finds out abruptly on the death of the partner when there is an inheritance tax bill on the estate and potentially on the family home. If a woman has a child with her partner and the relationship breaks down, she is not entitled to any form of financial support if they are not married. There is no automatic entitlement to property, even if she had been paying into the mortgage.

When one partner is much older than the other and there is a reasonable expectation that one will die some years before the other, the long-term survivor would not receive the same tax benefits as a married woman or those in a civil partnership. That would be discriminatory towards the couples’ children. The same vulnerabilities can apply if one partner does a runner. Even a couple engaged to be married have more rights than a cohabiting opposite-sex couple.

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[Maggie Throup (Erewash) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Bedford (Mohammad Yasin). I commend the hon. Member for Washington and Sunderland West (Mrs Hodgson) for her powerful and emotional speech. She said she was not brave or strong. I completely disagree; she is very brave and very strong, and I thank her for her words. People in the House were moved, and I am sure that those watching her speech on TV were also moved. She made very important and powerful points, and I thank her.

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for East Worthing and Shoreham (Tim Loughton) on bringing his private Member’s Bill to this stage. The way that he has brought four pieces of legislation together is ingenious. I have looked for the common theme, and I think that it is how individuals and their loved ones are recognised. I hope that he agrees. It is a pick-and-mix Bill, and I am going to pick a couple of bits to talk about today. I will speak to the first two clauses, on the registration of marriages and civil partnerships and the reform of civil partnership.

As other Members have said, my right hon. Friend the Member for Meriden (Dame Caroline Spelman) and my hon. Friend the Member for Charnwood (Edward Argar) have been very vocal on and great advocates for the registration of marriages. It is so important to have our mothers’ names on our marriage certificates. My hon. Friend the Member for North Cornwall (Scott Mann) said that he was not aware until he began to look at this that our mothers’ names are not on our marriage certificates. I am sure a lot of people are under the illusion that their names are included, and only when they look at the certificate after the event do they realise that the name of a very important person is missing. Our mothers form our early lives and our lives as we grow up and enter adulthood, and they play such an important role. I am sure they have also had an important role in putting together the wedding ceremony, only for them to be denied having their details on the marriage certificate, which I think is so wrong.

We are celebrating 100 years of women having the vote, which makes it even more bizarre that this has not been sorted out. It is a matter of equality, as well as a matter of family history and social history. So much information will be able to be gathered in the future if we include our mothers’ names on marriage certificates. My family is a case in point. My marriage certificate had my father’s profession as a timber merchant, but not what my mother did—she was a classroom assistant in a school for disabled children—after bringing up her children and as we got older. On the paternal side, my grandfather was included in my parents’ marriage certificate as a mill worker, but my grandmother, who was in service, is missing. On the maternal side, my grandfather was included as a railway worker, but, sadly, I do not know what my grandmother did, and I can no longer ask my mother, so that bit of social history is missing. What we are discussing will not only add to social history, which is so important, but demonstrate social mobility and address the equality side of things.

[Rebecca Pow]

My hon. Friend is making a very emotive point. Does she agree that this is very important not only on the social side—we seem to disappear if we are not on marriage certificates—but in these days of equality? We are going to celebrate 100 years of women having the vote and all of us in Parliament talk about equality, yet this situation is completely unequal.

[Maggie Throup]

If we look at this across the board, we see not only this inequity, but others. We need to look at such things in more detail to make sure that men and women—I include men in this—are equal because there are inequalities for both genders and we need to sort this out.

I agree that we need to look at the cost and make sure that any change is not made at huge cost to the taxpayer, so I welcome the way in which it has been proposed. That is so important, as is not losing a vulnerable certificate that means so much to so many people.

I will move on to the second part of my speech, which is on the reform of civil partnerships. I welcome the Minister’s words about more work being carried out. We are aware that civil partnerships were originally intended not as an alternative to marriage, but to provide a legal recognition of such relationships and access to the same legal rights. We need to make sure that, if we make any change in legislation to include heterosexual relationships in civil partnerships, we get it right.

If we look at the data on what is happening with civil partnerships, we find that almost half the people entering civil partnerships are now aged 50 or above, compared with 19% in 2013, so the way people perceive civil partnerships has changed. The average age of women entering civil partnerships is now higher than that of men, so we need to look at what we are trying to do and what gap we are trying to fill. The uptake of civil partnerships has now decreased dramatically. According to the data I have, approximately 6,000 women and 9,000 men entered civil partnerships in 2006, but the numbers of both types of civil partnerships are now down to three figures. We must make sure that we are actually providing the right mechanism for people to cement their relationships and the security they are looking for in the future. With a population of 84,000, there is a good cohort of people on the Isle of Man, where civil partnerships for mixed-sex couples are available, to look at to see what lessons can be learned, as well as what works and what does not work.

I thank the Minister for looking at this in more detail. We need to make sure we get right any changes we make. I know people will say that we are not rushing into this, but we do need to make sure that we are providing the right mechanism for the right people at the right time.

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[Rebecca Pow (Taunton Deane) (Con)]

I am pleased to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Faversham and Mid Kent (Helen Whately) and to have heard her passionate words, particularly about stable partnerships and her experiences in the NHS. I am delighted to support the Bill of my hon. Friend the Member for East Worthing and Shoreham (Tim Loughton). It is a short but packed Bill that deals with life and death and everything in between, including a lot of loving. It is therefore a very worthy Bill, and I want to turn first to the point about mothers’ names on marriage certificates.

I have been married for 29 years, and think a medal is in order—although I am not sure whether it should be given to me or my husband. The whole concept of making a commitment and marrying somebody was a very big decision, and our wedding day was a most momentous day, and our union is forever recorded on our marriage certificate. But currently on our precious marriage certificate there is no reference to my poor mother at all, even though she bore me and virtually died—something she has never stopped reminding me of since. I tell her I was trying to make my presence felt at a very early stage. Similarly, when my two daughters get married—if they do—as the law stands, my name will not be on the marriage certificate. One might reflect that that is of no particular consequence, but as my hon. Friend the Member for Erewash (Maggie Throup) pointed out, genealogists and others interested in tracing their family history or the social history of women will be unable to find this kind of information because it is not recorded. That is a great pity, especially as so much progress has been made on women’s equality. Next week, we will celebrate 100 years since women got the vote, and it is ironic that we should be standing here right now debating whether we should be allowed to have our names on marriage certificates. The system is simply archaic, and this came about because we were regarded as the chattels of our husbands, as my hon. Friend the Member for East Worthing and Shoreham said. It is quite clear that we are no longer simply chattels; there is a lot more to us than that.

More pertinent to the debate is the fact that, owing to the changing nature of our society, there are 2 million single parents in the UK, 90% of whom are women. Under the current system, if those women’s children get married, only the father’s details would be included on the marriage entry. That is a damning indictment of the many women who have done so much great work to bring up their children alone. On those grounds, I think that this is a really important area that we should be pushing, if we are to better reflect the modern state of Britain.

Such a change would also provide an opportunity to reform the whole system of marriage registration. Using digital technology, we could make the whole system much more efficient and create a more secure system for the maintenance of marriage records. Ironically, there is a system for civil partnerships in England and Wales, but Scotland and Northern Ireland have a scheduled system that has been in place since 1855 which deals with all this. We are not normally behind the Scots, but in this instance we clearly are.

I want to turn to the part of the Bill that deals with a more sombre affair: the proposals to allow coroners to investigate and register certain stillborn deaths. I can only imagine the pain that stillbirth can bring, but sadly, it is an experience that many women have faced. Having some lasting recognition that the child was part of life will provide some small compensation. My hon. Friend the Member for East Worthing and Shoreham went into moving detail about some twins who fell foul of the system. I also want to pay tribute to the hon. Member for Washington and Sunderland West (Mrs Hodgson) for the way in which she related her story today. I absolutely take my hat off to her, and I thank her very much indeed for doing that.

Changing the definition relating to stillbirth to beyond 24 weeks has already been done; the Government have reduced the threshold from 28 weeks. However, having had three healthy children myself—for which I count myself incredibly fortunate—I know that they were certainly making their presence felt at six months, or 24 weeks, but I am sure that all women who have had a baby will know that that person makes their presence felt from day one. That life is worth celebrating, whatever happens. It is absolutely right that the Government are looking into bringing down the threshold, and I welcome the review of this aspect of the Bill. I also support the clause that deals with investigating certain types of stillbirth. From April this year, the Healthcare Safety Investigation Branch will investigate every case of stillbirth, neonatal death, suspected brain injury or maternal death notified to the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists. There are currently 1,000 of these incidents a year. Having a stillbirth would not be wished on anyone, but should it happen, gathering evidence about the whys and wherefores is so important if we are to avoid future stillbirths.

Best practice is more important than anything else, and I highlight Musgrove Park Hospital in my constituency. I am not sure whether the all-party parliamentary group on baby loss knows about the project at Musgrove Park, but it has won a national award because of the excellent care bundle that has halved the number of stillbirths at the hospital in three years. The project has done excellent work, and it would be good if that model could be rolled out elsewhere.

The reduction in stillbirths has come through better support to help women stop smoking in pregnancy; the identification of small babies during pregnancy; and making mothers aware of the need to report, without delay, changes such as not feeling any movement. All the pregnant mums at Musgrove Park are being given wellbeing wallets and documents to fill out, which is something the all-party group is recommending to other hospitals. I could not recommend the scheme at Musgrove Park more—it is literally a lifesaver.

Finally, civil partnerships were never intended to be an alternative to marriage, but a clear case has been made today for looking much more closely at the issue. I support the Minister in calling for a further review and consultation, because the more evidence that can be gathered to make the case, the better. What is really important is the safety and strength of our family units. If we can do anything to improve that, all the better.

There is much in the Bill that is good, and it genuinely goes to the heart of people’s lives. I support the measures that are going forward, and I support the reviews that the Government are instituting to edge forward the other proposals, too.