If what my hon. Friend has just said were true, I would be delighted, but I think that what the hon. Member for Stretford and Urmston said might have raised a few eyebrows on the Government Front Bench. If she is saying that part of the deal is that the review, which would be an added consultation on the back of the one we had before the Bill was introduced, will take place and result in concrete proposals coming forward that can be added to the Bill before it completes its passage through both Houses, I would be perfectly happy, but I do not think that will happen. I do not see how it can happen given the complexities that the Secretary of State has claimed still need to be addressed as regards all the legislative changes, costs, and so on.
8.45 pm
Perhaps the right hon. Member for St Helens South and Whiston (Mr Woodward) would like to repeat his question to the Minister in the wind-ups. If he gets the answer, “Yes, we think this can be done during the progress of this Bill”, I will be delighted to withdraw my amendment, because that is what I am trying to achieve. I do not care whether it happens tonight in this House or in a few months’ time in another place or when the Bill comes back here; I just want it to happen, because we all seem to agree that it should and that it is right and fair in principle.
When we raised this subject with my right hon. Friend the Minister of State in Committee, he gave five reasons explaining why, supposedly, it was not necessary to act and that we were talking about an irrelevance. His first reason was that the aim of the Civil Partnership Act 2004 was not to provide an alternative to marriage but to give same-sex couples broadly equivalent rights. Yet now opposite-sex couples will be denied those broadly equivalent rights if they are not inclined to marry and are unable to get such civil partnerships. His second reason was that to get the legal rights, responsibilities and protections that marriage brings, people should just marry. The Secretary of State Marriage has described marriage as the gold standard, but the Government are choosing to limit people’s choices.
The third contention by the Minister, whom I like greatly, was that the Government were not convinced that there is a group of people campaigning for opposite-sex civil partnerships. Well, I have quoted the opinion poll. The Government cannot have it both ways. They are scaremongering about the excessive cost of this measure and, at the same time, saying that there is no real demand for it, in which case it would not cost anything. They cannot have their cake and eat it.
The fourth reason that the Minister came up with was that in the Government’s consultation 61% of those who answered an online response form said that opposite-sex couples should be able to register a civil partnership. I like and respect my right hon. Friend, who is not in his place at the moment, and I recognise that he has been dealt a pretty bum hand in having to steer this Bill through the House. However, I think he will regret adding the rider that more than half the people who answered the question identified themselves as lesbian, gay or bisexual. So there we have it: in a skewed voting system that would put Eurovision to shame, the vote of someone who is gay sometimes does not count as much if the Government say so. This needs investigating.
Another example of inconsistency that came out in Committee concerned the hierarchy of people who should be given exemptions if, on an issue of conscience, they cannot carry out various public functions. However, I do not wish to digress and will move swiftly on to the Minister’s fifth reason: that we would need a raft of changes to other legislative provisions that would involve other parts of the United Kingdom. However, this is already being addressed in the Bill and those provisions could be addressed in parallel. I am afraid that this sort of mess and confusion is what happens when we rush through a Bill with far-reaching consequences that have not been properly thought through.
There is no excuse not to do this now, or very urgently. The Government were warned by 61% of people in the consultation but rushed ahead. They should have looked at the wider issues. They could have said that they wanted to abolish civil partnerships and just have marriage, but then what would happen to the people in an existing civil partnership—would they just be sidelined and wither away? It would not be fair on them. That has not been thought through. Where are the impact assessments and cost calculations on the numbers who are supposedly going to convert from a civil partnership to a same-sex marriage? In fact, the number of opposite-sex couples taking up a new civil partnership could produce a saving if less money were spent on family breakdown. We have no details about how the figures have been worked out, about a start date when civil partnerships for opposite-sex couples might be introduced, or about what level of retrospective financial entitlements they may qualify for.
I want to be helpful to the Government because I recognise that this has become a bit of a pickle. As I said, I will be perfectly happy if the Bill continues its progress on the timetable that the Government have set. If the Government agree to my proposed new clause in principle, they will have time, during the later stages of the Bill, to announce specific details about the start date, the commencement of entitlements and so on. I for one would be perfectly favourable to delaying the implementation date of opposite-sex civil partnerships if the Government agree to the principle. If they needed two, three or four years to sort out the detail before the measure would be able to commence, I would be happy with that if the Bill addressed this inequality and we recognised that opposite-sex civil partners have a place— I think it is a growing place—in our society.
The Government would have to acknowledge that, in the meantime, they were creating an inequality, albeit a temporary one. They certainly cannot delay this until 2019. A reviewing amendment represents the worst of
all worlds if the issue is kicked into such long grass. Have the Government learned nothing from recent experiences with Europe about promising votes in the next Parliament? Apparently it is acceptable to defer a decision on an equality issue for at least six years unless it was not promised in a manifesto and has all of a sudden become urgent.
There are no complications involved in my proposal. I want opposite-sex civil partnerships to be offered on exactly the same basis as same-sex civil partnerships. It would not be possible for someone to become a civil partner with a close family member or if they are already in a union, and the partnership needs to be subject to the same termination criteria. It is simple. Surely the case is overwhelming.
I do not do wrecking. I have never voted against my party or my Government in my 16 years in this House, and I do not want to start now. I have been entirely open, transparent and consistent in my opposition to the Bill. I am happy for it to progress on the Government’s time scale, if that is the will of the House. However, the House must respect the right of all Members to act according to their conscience, and my objections to the Bill have not been on primarily religious grounds. I have spent most of my time, like other Back Benchers, scrutinising the Bill’s safeguards on the likely basis that it will become law. The job of Back Benchers is to scrutinise legislation, hold the Executive to account and draw attention to anomalies, inconsistencies, injustices or, as in this case, inequalities, and urge practical action, which is what new clauses 10 and 11 do. A clear inequality is being created and I am sure that all fair-minded Members will want to address it as a matter of urgency. My new clauses would clearly achieve that.
We are in danger of being party to a last-minute stitch-up between those on the Front Benches, but this is a free vote, not on a conscience issue, but on a simple matter of equality that Members can support—indeed, from what has been said so far, many Members do support it—whether they are whipped to support the Bill or whether they defy the Whip to oppose it, and it has the added bonus of improving family stability. The only chance to bring that about is through these new clauses. A delay until 2019 or similar will not hold water. A review without detail and the potential dragging on of headlines until the election certainly will not do Government Members any favours.
If hon. Members believe that this principle is right, now is the time to vote for it. Let us vote on principle. Let us not vote for fudge. Surely we can all earn respect from our constituents for voting for what we believe in and for what we have told pollsters in private that we believe in. We should not be pressured by Whips or by parties. Let’s just do it.