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?
8.30 pm
My hon. Friend the Member for Bristol West referred to equalising same-sex and opposite-sex civil partnerships as achieving “parity of esteem”. I agree. I do not regard
my conventional marriage of 20 and a half years’ standing to my wife as any more valid than a civil partnership, be it gay or, potentially, heterosexual; it is just different. However, there is a major plus to achieving equality of civil partnerships, and opening them up to opposite-sex couples: family stability, which the Government seem to have ignored completely, although it is something that we Conservative Members strongly support.
The Prime Minister and supporters of the Bill say that they are huge fans of marriage, partly because it helps to create sustainable families and, particularly, stability for the children brought up in them. I agree, so should we not do more to achieve that stability for families who choose not to get married, but who might cement their relationship through the civil partnership route, giving them public recognition and, importantly, rights and responsibilities under the law?
In 2012, the Relationships Foundation calculated the cost to this country of family breakdown at £44 billion—some £1,470 per year to every taxpayer, or 1.8% of gross domestic product. That is a big problem—a growing problem that is costly, financially and socially, in our society. Fewer than one in 10 married parents have split by the time a child reaches the age of five, compared with more than one in three of those who are cohabiting but not married, and 75% of family breakdowns involving children under five result from the separation of unmarried parents. The Centre for Social Justice has produced a raft of statistics showing that a child who is not in a two-parent family is 75% more likely to fall out of school and 70% more likely to be addicted to drugs, and is more likely to get in trouble with the law, be homeless, and not be in employment, education or training. We know that marriage works, but we also know that civil partnerships are beginning to show empirical evidence of greater stability for same-sex couples, including those who have children, be it through adoption, surrogacy or whatever. There is a strong case for believing that extending civil partnerships would improve that stability for many more families in different forms.