It is a great honour and a privilege—and also a challenge—to follow the right hon. Member for Arundel and South Downs (Nick Herbert), who is very passionate about this issue and who has championed the cause of same-sex marriage with great authority.
People will want to arrange their relationships in a number of different ways. Some will want to have marriages; some will want to have civil partnerships; some will simply want to cohabit. The state should enable all those things to happen. The right hon. Gentleman rightly mentioned the Law Commission report and the Bill proposed in the other place by Lord Lester, and I hope we will see progress on that. I am delighted that my party acknowledges those different options. Three years ago, in a conference motion entitled “Equal Marriage in the United Kingdom”, we said that the Government should:
“Open both marriage and civil partnerships to both same-sex and mixed-sex couples.”
I absolutely stand by that.
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We know that there are people who would like to have mixed-sex civil partnerships. We know that there was a consultation, although that was denied earlier, that expressed a clear view. It has been argued that not many people would want such partnerships, but I do not see that as a problem. Equality matters. Even if only a few people are being discriminated against, we should all want to stop any such discrimination.
Arguments have also been made about costs and, as a matter of principle, I do not think that costs should be a bar to equalities legislation. It would, I suspect, be a lot cheaper to deny women the vote or to restrict voting even further to wealthy men above a certain age, but I do not think that anybody in the House would argue that to save money at election time we should reduce the number of people who could vote.
I am also concerned about the idea of cost as a matter of policy, and I tried to raise that issue earlier with the Secretary of State. It would save the country money in pensions if we actively discouraged people from getting married or having relationships, but I do not think that that is the right way to go. If people would like to have those relationships, the fact that they will get some pension rights should not stop us from allowing them.
I believe passionately in equal civil marriage, but I also agree with the right hon. Member for Arundel and South Downs that we must not give up hope on same-sex marriage to try to get that. That would be the wrong choice. That is why I welcome the review and the fact that it will now be an urgent, prompt review rather than one that sits in the long grass for five years. It is not just a question of when we start it, however, but of when we finish it. That must also be prompt. It is not the starting time that will make a difference to people who want such a provision, but the finishing time.
We also need a commitment to act when the review concludes. I hoped to intervene on the Secretary of State earlier to hear that there would be a commitment to legislation, if such a recommendation is the outcome of the review and consultation. That is what we are all expecting and, whether it happens in this Bill or in a future Bill, we want to see it.
I want to see progress towards equality, equal marriage and equal civil partnerships. We have a decision to make as a House about how best to get there. It is a question of balance and there are those who, for the best of reasons, will want to support new clause 10 so that we can plough ahead. I understand that reasoning and it is a close call, but I think that they are risking a lot. They are risking the failure of the rest of the Bill’s provisions on same-sex marriage and I hope that they will not do that. That might not be the intention of the hon. Member for East Worthing and Shoreham (Tim Loughton), but it might be the consequence, and I am alarmed at that prospect and by the decisions that the Prime Minister might face if that happened. There is a tough balance to be struck in how we make the most progress we can on equalities, but I think that we must support the review and not new clause 10.