Tom Harris
Main Page: Tom Harris (Labour - Glasgow South)Marriage (Same Sex Couples) Bill
Tom Harris Excerpts
Mr Burrowes
I welcome that intervention. I am merely seeking, with the support of other hon. Members, to provide a conscientious objection clause that would not necessarily have any detrimental effect on the Bill. This is not unprecedented. For example, section 4 of the Abortion Act 1967 allows individuals with a conscientious objection to abstain from participating in abortions. Section 38 of the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Act 1990—the right hon. Gentleman will remember the debate on that—allows any person conscientiously to object to participation in work involving the treatment and development of human embryos. Paragraph 2(3) of the relevant national health service regulations allows medical staff to refrain from providing contraceptive services. Atheist teachers are not required to conduct collective services or to teach religious education. Those are just a few of the conscientious objection clauses that are already enshrined in law and do not seek to go against the principle of the legislation concerned. What is appropriate for GPs and teachers should also be appropriate for registrars.
The new clauses would strike a proper balance between the right of marriage and the right of conscience. If the Bill is passed, they should not in any way hinder the ability of same sex-couples to marry. As a precondition, an appropriate number of registrars should be available. That is a reasonable proposal.
New clause 3 is even more reasonable. It is a transitional measure similar to a provision in the Netherlands, which has led the charge in legalising same-sex marriage.
Mr Burrowes
I am afraid not, because I want to make progress to allow other hon. Members to speak.
Dutch registrars who were already employed before the legislation was passed are able to exercise their conscience and object. If it is good enough for those Dutch registrars, it is good enough for UK registrars. During the Bill Committee, one hon. Member suggested that people should realise that the writing is on the wall for their employment and that they should jolly well recognise that they will have to stick to the law and not exercise their own conscience, or get out now while they have the chance. That is disgraceful and amounts to serving people with a notice to quit. It means that this will be not just a marriage Bill, but an unfair dismissal Bill.
Tim Loughton
My hon. Friend is right. The trouble is that, given that there has been such fast movement in various people’s positions, goodness knows what the position will be after the vote has taken place.
I want to support new clauses 10 and 11, tabled in my name and those of other hon. Members on both sides of the House and on all sides of the argument, and in doing so I must oppose the last-minute Government new clause and the manuscript amendment from the Labour party. This is a Back-Bench debate—let us have a Back-Bench debate without Whips and party politics trying to put pressure on hon. Members to change their votes, which should be based on their free will.
Let me be clear once and for all that the new clauses are not wrecking amendments. They are supported by passionate supporters of the whole Bill. If the new clauses are passed, they will remove some of the anomalies and flaws in the Bill and make it more palatable. If that is wrecking, I am not doing a very good job of it.
Mr Tom Harris
Does the hon. Gentleman understand why there are those who are briefing the media and accusing him of tabling wrecking amendments, given his full-throated opposition to the principle of the Bill in the first place? It is hard to believe that his motivation is anything other than to stop the progress of the Bill when it gets to the other place. If that is not the case, he has been ill-used and ill-spoken of, but does he at least understand why people are reading that into his motivation?
Tim Loughton
I can understand why people are trying to cause mischief on that basis. I approach the new clauses in the expectation that the Bill will probably become law, whether I and other hon. Members like it or not. We must therefore plan on that basis. I think it could become better law if it provided for equality in civil partnerships which we could give to opposite-sex couples, and I now want to explain why.
The idea was proposed in Committee three months ago by the hon. Member for Bristol West (Stephen Williams) and supported by the hon. Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant). Bizarrely, neither of them voted for it. In our witness sessions, it was strongly supported by experts such as Lord Pannick and Baroness Kennedy, who clearly said that they thought that the addition of the extension of civil partnerships would greatly improve the Bill. Supporters of the proposals have included those in favour of the Bill, those against it and those who have abstained. They have not just come out of nowhere. Several hon. Members have mentioned the Government’s consultation on the original Bill. Many people responded and 61% said that they were in favour of extending civil partnerships to opposite-sex couples. This is not an idea that we have cooked up at the last minute to wreck the Bill; the Government’s research shows that the public—our constituents, our voters—are in favour of it. However, the Government went into the subsequent production of the Bill completely and utterly ignoring the clear wish of the people as shown by their own consultation.
There are two rationales, as far as I am concerned, for supporting the amendments. First, they will correct what is, I am sure, an unintended but glaring inequality that would result from the Bill in its current form. If the Bill goes through, as I expect, same-sex couples will be entitled to continue in a civil partnership, to take up a civil partnership or to take up the new form of marriage. Opposite-sex couples will have only the option of traditional marriage, albeit by a larger range of religious institutions. That is not fair. It gives rise to an inequality in what is intended to be a Bill about equalities. Secondly, a very positive reason for pushing forward with the amendments is family stability, and I will come to that in a minute. Highly divisive as the Bill has been, particularly on the Government Benches, surely that is one issue on which we can all agree and rally round.
I acknowledge that the quadruple lock that the Government have put in the Bill largely does the job that they intend it to do. That is why many of the Church institutions have been reassured by the safeguards that they have been given. Earlier, we also heard about amendments that tried to give safeguards to people in public service who might fall foul of the legislation.
Let me return to why people seem to be in rather a difficult position. ComRes carried out an opinion poll among 159 Members of this House—quite a large sample—and some 2,012 members of the public. Interestingly, that recent opinion poll found that 73% of hon. Members in this House support the amendments. Among Conservative Members, there was 72% support; among Labour Members, 76%; and among Liberal Democrats, 67%. If the amendments do not get the full backing of 73% of hon. Members tonight, what has changed in the space of just a few days, since that opinion poll was carried out in private?
In 2010, an Office for National Statistics report said that there were almost 3 million—2,893,000, to be precise—cohabiting opposite-sex couples in this country. That is almost double the figure reported some 15 years earlier. Some 53% of all birth registrations are to married parents, but 31% are to unmarried parents who are living together, and 40% of unmarried couples living together choose to have children. Indeed, cohabitation is the fastest-growing form of family in this country, and we need to recognise that our society is changing, whether or not we approve.
People choose not to get involved in the whole paraphernalia of formal marriage for a variety of reasons: it is too much of an establishment thing to do; it is too much of a religious institution for some, and even if done in a register office, it has religious connotations; there is a patriarchal side to it; it is a form of social control—there are a whole load of complex motives as to why many of our constituents do not go down the formal marriage route. They are mostly still in committed, loving relationships, but they have no way of demonstrating that in the eyes of the public and the law, if they do not want to go down the traditional marriage route.
In Committee, my hon. Friend the Member for Bristol West (Stephen Williams) made a very good point about 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 a partner, when there is a tax bill on the estate, and potentially on the family home. Even a couple engaged to be married have more rights than a cohabiting couple. I have received many e-mails and letters in support of this proposal, and one summed up the position:
“I am 60 yrs and have been with my partner for over 20 years. We have two boys ages 16 and 18 yrs. Neither of us wish to get married but we would like to have the same rights as a married couple. We see the civil partnership as discriminatory towards us as a couple, especially as we have children. A great number of friends and acquaintances are in a similar position to ourselves and do not wish to be married although we are all in a lifelong family commitment. My other issue with this is that, as I am much older than my partner, I will probably die before her and she would not receive the same tax benefits as a married woman or those in a civil partnership, which in turn would be discriminatory towards our children.”
Why should those who have chosen not to go for a traditional marriage not have the opportunity to have the same rights, responsibilities and protections in the eyes of the law that we rightly, and not before time, extended to same-sex couples back in 2004?
Mr Crispin Blunt (Reigate) (Con)
I could begin my remarks by saying, “I don’t want to say, ‘I told you so’”, but that would not actually be true. I said on Second Reading that if we did not deal then with the equality issue, elaborated very well by my hon. Friend the Member for Leeds North West (Greg Mulholland) and the hon. Member for Brighton, Pavilion (Caroline Lucas), we would have to do it all over again at a later date. Regrettably, that is the position in which we seem now to find ourselves.
Personally, I entirely endorse what my hon. Friends the Members for Leeds North West and for Bristol North West (Charlotte Leslie)—the latter also signed the new clauses—said about the intention of the new clauses. If we want to do the job properly, we need to differentiate religious and civil marriage. My hon. Friend the Member for East Worthing and Shoreham (Tim Loughton) asked whether the word “marriage” and its associations might prevent people from taking up a civil commitment of legal union. Without dancing on the head of a pin, however, over the different legal obligations of a union between two people of whatever sex, it should not be beyond the wit of the House or the Government to introduce measures to achieve the equality objective in a way entirely congruent with the position put forward by my hon. Friend the Member for Leeds North West. However, I have to tell him that my judgment is that where we have got to on this—the work done in Committee and, frankly, the failure to take the opportunity to address the issue properly—means that it will not get done. I am influenced to a degree by the position taken by Stonewall and my right hon. Friend the Member for Arundel and South Downs (Nick Herbert), who, along with others, is extremely anxious to get this Bill on the statute book.
In the end, the conclusive position is that of Opposition Front Benchers. It is their decision that will dictate what actually happens. I would have come to a conclusion that agreed with my hon. Friend the Member for Leeds North West: that if we cannot do it properly, which is how he wanted to do it, then doing it in a second-best fashion and having two levels of union or marriage—civil partnerships or civil marriage, with religious marriage associated with it—would at least deliver equality. Understandably, the Opposition have—in my view properly and responsibly—made a judgment about whether the route offered by new clause 10 might threaten the timely passage of the Bill and thereby delay matters for those who are anxious to get on and take advantage of the opportunity to enter a same-sex marriage.
It is a messy compromise, but I will support the Opposition’s amendment, to ensure that we get on with the review in as timely a fashion as possible and drop this five-year business from the Bill. I have to say to my right hon. and hon. Friends on the Front Bench that the way in which we have managed this whole process has not reflected very well on any of us. Frankly, it does not reflect terribly well on Opposition Front Benchers that they have undertaken this manoeuvre right at the last moment. All this was predictable and was predicted, not least by me. The conclusion is that we will have the opportunity to have all this entertainment all over again at some future date, when we finally address the issue of equality and put a measure that promotes complete equality on the statute book. I regret that that is where the corpus of opinion appears to be now. If we could rescue things and introduce a proper measure of equality—which is what the amendments tabled by my hon. Friends the Members for Bristol North West and for Leeds North West would do—that is what I would wish for. I regret that we are in this position, but I am going to bow to the inevitable, accept second best and look forward to the opportunity to do this all over again at some future date.
Mr Tom Harris
I have a great deal of time for the hon. Member for East Worthing and Shoreham (Tim Loughton)—who may or may not have been about to leave the Chamber as I stood up. I would have been proud if the work he did as children’s Minister, particularly on adoption, had been done in the name of a Labour Government. I was disappointed to see him leave the Front Bench—although presumably not as disappointed as he was. He has started, in an excellent speech, to open my mind on this issue with his arguments—I am not yet convinced, but I am happy to support new clause 16 as amended.
When we legislated in this House 10 years ago, we stopped short of legalising same-sex marriage for the simple reason that it was considered a step too far. We did not legislate for civil partnerships because we had arrived at a perfect alternative institution to marriage. We stopped at that point. We deliberately and intentionally created something that was not as good as marriage, because politically we did not feel we could get it at that time. We did so for the best reasons possible and it was a huge step forward, not just for gay couples but for the whole nation. I am extremely proud to have voted for that legislation, but let us be honest about what civil partnerships were. They fell short of marriage—they were second best—because we could not get as far as marriage. That is why, a decade later, we are debating this reform. In a perfect world, it would have been delivered long before now. The case for allowing same-sex couples to marry is not that they have been denied it so far; it is that marriage is better than a civil partnership.
Kate Green
I do not think that many of the people who have entered into successful and happy civil partnerships would agree that those partnerships were in some way second best. In 2004, we might not have known where this journey would lead us, but nine years on we can see that the civil partnership legislation has been extremely successful in its own right. It ought to be celebrated.
Mr Harris
I accept what my hon. Friend says, but let me ask her a question. Had we been able to legislate to allow same-sex marriage 10 years ago and had such a law been put on the statute book, would we be having this debate today? Would we be spending more than a few seconds debating whether to introduce civil partnerships for straight and gay couples? Of course the answer is no.
Like every other Member, I have received letters and e-mails warning me that legislating for same-sex marriage will, in some undefined way, undermine the institution of marriage. I take a very different view. I believe that the real threat to marriage will come from the continuation of civil partnerships and their extension to heterosexual couples. As things stand today, the legal security and recognition offered by marriage can be enjoyed only by straight couples. The legal security and recognition offered by civil partnerships can be enjoyed only by same-sex couples, although I hope that that is about to change. Needlessly telling all couples that they can now opt for a second-best arrangement that nevertheless offers all the same legal privileges and protections as marriage would surely undermine marriage far more than extending the qualification for marriage to same-sex couples. From the day the Bill becomes law, the choice offered to all couples will be the same as the choice that has up to now been offered to all straight couples: either get married or don’t—it is your choice.
Because we have indulged in this debate, we have failed to address anther issue. Many individuals—mostly, but not always, women with dependent children—need to be offered more security when they are living with a partner and perhaps depending on him financially. But if that partner is unwilling to commit to marriage, he will probably be equally reluctant to enter an alternative arrangement that offers the same level of legal and financial responsibilities. What those partners and families need is some kind of passive legal recognition, perhaps similar to what used to be known as common law marriage, a state that used to prevail in Scotland but which, since 2006, no longer does so. Moves to make civil partnerships available to all might, on the face of it, look like a progressive move, but they will do nothing to help those vulnerable women, and their children, who are in relationships with partners who simply refuse to bind themselves with legal red tape.
As for those who have already entered into a civil partnership and who do not wish to enter into the state of marriage as provided by this Bill, I have to say that it should not be beyond the wit of the Government or this House to frame legislation that would recognise each existing civil partnership until it was dissolved either legally or by the death of one partner, while preventing any more civil partnerships from being entered into. The hon. Member for East Worthing and Shoreham says that he wants full equality. I concede that making civil partnerships available to straight couples is one way of achieving that. Another way would be to make civil partnerships available to no one.
Charlotte Leslie (Bristol North West) (Con)
I want to put on record that I support new clause 10, because the Bill is fundamentally about equality and, to some extent, equality must mean symmetry. If we are going to make the dramatic and historic move to exercise equality across marriage, we must have symmetry. It is extraordinary that, despite the alarms that have been raised and the warnings that have been given about the failure to extend civil partnerships symmetrically to different-sex couples, three amendments have been tabled on this subject only at the eleventh hour. This does not seem to have been thought through before now. That is a disappointing state of affairs for a Bill that so loudly claims to have equality at the centre of everything it does.
If we are to be logically and intellectually consistent, I do not see how we can pass a Bill that extends equality in marriage without extending civil partnerships to different-sex couples. It is not as if such symmetry was a surprise or not much covered in the debate. When would the next opportunity be? We have already seen the amount of controversy created by rearranging marriage, which is so connected with the fundamental roots of our establishment and the relationship between the state and the Church. It is unlikely, I think, that many Governments will rush to introduce such legislation again.