Civil Partnerships, Marriages and Deaths (Registration Etc.) Bill — House of Commons, 2018-02-02
Topic: Civil Rights
Alexander Gordon Martin (Labour, Centre-left): I thank the hon. Member for East Worthing and Shoreham (Tim Loughton) for bringing forward this Bill and commend the hon. Member for Banbury (Victoria Prentis) and my hon. Friend the Member for Washington and Sunderland West (Mrs Hodgson) for their bravery and determination today I support all the elements of the Bill, but I wish to speak to clause 2. The civil partnerships aspect is long overdue. I fully understand why the authors of the original Civil Partnership Act 2004 were focused on their primary purpose of allowing gay men and women to live as couples recognised by the law. The need was great, and hon. Members are well aware that it is often better to put forward a Bill that only fulfils the main purpose, rather than load it down with other, possibly more contentious matters that may delay its transition It was a shame, however, that, in passing the Act, the House potentially compromised one of the most important principles that gay people had been fighting for—the principle that every citizen of this country should be treated as equal before the law. This point was made at the time, and I can remember that some of those making it were seeking to scupper the Act, so I appreciate why it was passed in the form it was. It was incredibly important to me, as a gay man in a civil partnership with my partner, that our relationship be recognised by the law of the land and in consequence treated as equal by all the relevant civil institutions I can remember arguing with a customer service employee of the borough council that neither my partner nor I was living alone and that therefore we should not be in receipt of the single person’s discount on our council tax. We were seeking to pay the borough the correct level of council tax and were denied the right to do so. The officer actually stated, "We do not recognise the existence of same-sex couples" My partner can now be my next of kin, will automatically inherit if I die and is accorded all the respect and accommodations due to someone as one half of a legally recognised couple. However, although I fully support the introduction of same-sex marriages, we had no overwhelming desire to get married. We believe that our civil partnership accords us the respect and protections we need and are happy to leave it at that. And that is the position that a substantial number of opposite-sex couples would also like to be in Two of my constituents, one of whom is well known to me as a former borough council officer, have lived as a couple for 40 years. They have two children—one is 29 and the other 33—but they have never wished to get married because they do not want to feel that they are binding themselves with some sort of moral straitjacket. They feel that going through the act of marriage would be like an admission that they might split up if it were not for the marriage act, but they do want the fact that they are a couple to be recognised by the law. They have the knowledge and ability to have instituted a complicated legal trust to prevent their children from losing their inheritance when they die, but they are very aware that most couples do not have that ability. They do not understand why, if I and my partner can live in a civil partnership, they should not also have that facility.