I will be very brief. I just want to explain to the Minister why I feel very impatient—she looked grumpy with me for complaining that she was taking a long time. She used words such as “soon”, “as soon as possible” and “quickly”, and while Ministers often use those words, they mean absolutely nothing in parliamentary language.
On the Minister’s timetable, we might get a Bill in the next Session, but I would not be surprised if the next Session was a two-year Session, like this one, which might mean us waiting another two and a half years. Every year, I have straight people coming to my surgeries who had lived with a partner of the opposite gender for years and years in a relationship that had felt in every respect like a marriage, but who never wanted to enter into a marriage and consequently suffered when their partner died due to a lack of a legal arrangement because civil partnerships were not available to them. They suffer exactly the same distress as gay couples did until civil partnerships were brought into law.
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We must reflect on the misery and anguish that such people feel when lawyers then say, “Well, you could have got married but chose not to. Obviously your partner did not intend you to succeed to the tenancy”—or get the house, or whatever it is. Everybody should be treated equally under law and we should all be impatient about that. The right hon. Lady is a wonderful Minister, however, and I am sure she will rush away from the House today determined to make sure that her timetable is beaten, and that we have all this sorted out in months, not years.
Question put and agreed to.
New clause 1 accordingly read a Second time, and added to the Bill.