My Lords, I shall not detain the Committee by repeating what I said nine years ago when we debated this issue, and the controversy between those who focused on sexual relations and those who focused on tax and inheritance tax.
I have two points to make. Clause 14 seems to me not to require any amendment because it states:
“The Secretary of State must arrange … for the operation and future of the Civil Partnership Act 2004 in England and Wales to be reviewed, and … for a report on the outcome of the review to be produced and published”.
The clause goes on to say that that,
“does not prevent the review from also dealing with other matters relating to civil partnership”.
One of the other matters relating to civil partnership that has been mentioned by my noble friend Lord Marks, in particular, was referred to by the Joint Committee on Human Rights in paragraph 95 of our report. We said:
“We are not convinced by the Government’s reasons not to extend civil partnerships to opposite sex couples, and we welcome the Government’s announcement that it will review this matter. In doing so, the Government should take into account the potential discrimination that may arise between cohabiting opposite sex couples and civil partners”.
I very much welcome the fact that the Government have made it clear that there will be a review of the operation of the Civil Partnership Act to look at that aspect of the existing discrimination. That point has already been made by several noble Lords and it is important to deal with it. I have always disagreed with the noble Baroness, Lady Deech, as she knows, because I am strongly in favour of cohabitation rights for unmarried opposite-sex couples, and she is firmly opposed to that. That will clearly be a matter that the review will need to take into account to see whether the Government decide to give some protection to so-called common law marriages or not.
I continue to believe in that, as I did nine years ago. I am delighted by the speech of the noble Baroness, Lady Hollis, because she has taught me aspects of social security and welfare that I was not aware of. For all the reasons given, I do not think that one should now fetter Clause 14 by requiring that the review should deal with matters that are truly beyond the scope of the Bill and ought not to be part of the review.