It is a pleasure to speak in this debate. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for East Worthing and Shoreham (Tim Loughton) again on introducing this important Bill. He said that this was about complete equality, and the Bill is about some basic principles, including equality, fairness, choice and freedom, which I believe in very much. The UK has a proud record in all those areas, and there are many examples of equality that we have championed, whether it be disability, equal pay, same-sex marriage—I was not in this place when the House voted for same-sex marriage, but I certainly would have supported it—race and, most importantly today, religion.
All our thoughts today are with the loved ones of those connected with these horrendous crimes in New Zealand. Everyone who believes in peace and peaceful co-existence just does not understand what could possibly drive someone to perpetrate these terrible, terrible acts.
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I support all the provisions in this Bill, whether it be extending civil partnerships to opposite-sex couples, including mothers’ names on marriage certificates or registering stillbirths. As I said earlier, when we try to explain what we are doing to the public, their natural reaction is to ask why we have not done it already and why it is not already on the statute book.
I pay tribute to my hon. Friend’s prescience. He said that he initially introduced a Bill in 2013, and it was not until five years later that the Supreme Court said that the prohibition of opposite-sex civil partnerships was discriminatory. I congratulate him again on bringing this forward.
One question I have for my hon. Friend or the Minister is about whether the timescale is realistic. There seems to be an awful lot to do between now and 31 December 2019, when the regulations have to be brought into force. I have introduced a couple of private Members’ Bills myself, and it seems to take years to bring such things into full effect. There is a lot of work to do, but I am sure that my hon. Friend has worked through them with officials and Ministers to make sure that this Bill can be implemented.
I also pay tribute to my hon. Friend’s prescience in identifying my hon. Friend the Member for South Suffolk (James Cartlidge) as a smartarse—he is an extremely clever man, and his thoughts on this stuff are always right on the money. On registering mothers’ names on the marriage certificate, 90% of single parents are women and it seems unthinkable that their name cannot be on a marriage certificate. This therefore has all sorts of implications for marriage certificates.
There are other Bills to consider today, so I will briefly discuss the registration of stillbirths, which was addressed at length in my private Member’s Bill on parental bereavement. I have a number of constituents, including the one I mentioned earlier, who had a baby at 23 weeks and six days. If those babies had not survived for two days, the parents would never have been able to register the birth. It is right that the law is changed.