Meeting of the Parliament (Hybrid) 19 May 2020
I vaguely recall the passing of the civil partnership legislation of 2004. It was a major step towards marriage equality for same-sex couples. I was chair of the Justice 1 Committee back then and we did what was known as a Sewel report, which in other words was a report on legislative consent to equalise the law across the UK. Now, 16 years on, we have equal marriage and we require to equalise the law for opposite-sex couples.
Stewart Stevenson, who I know is going to speak in this debate, may recall that we also reformed family law at about the same time, when we accidentally swept away 300 years of Scots law provision for marriage by cohabitation and repute—sometimes known as common-law marriage. We managed to fix that at stage 3 of the Family Law (Scotland) Bill, when we allowed someone to make a statutory declaration if they thought that they were married and were unaware that actually they were not, for some technical reason, perhaps because they had not followed the full customs in another country. That was a relief for me, as I had married in Las Vegas, and for Bruce McFee, who you may remember from the Scottish National Party and who also got married in an exotic place.
It is pertinent that we are discussing the Civil Partnership (Scotland) Bill today. During the meeting of the COVID-19 Committee today, Adam Tomkins’s amendment 36, which the committee and the Government supported, highlighted that the ability to marry or enter a civil partnership is an important right, which confers other rights. Rights conferred by civil partnerships were meant to be identical to those conferred by marriage, but there seem to be some differences that I hope ministers will address in their summing up.
One of those is that death in service confers apparently greater rights on people in civil partnerships than on those who are married. According to the Scottish Parliament information centre, the Pensions Advisory Service noted that, since Walker v Innospec, which was a court case on death benefits and pension rights for same-sex couples, it is now the case that surviving partners of same-sex civil partnerships are entitled to the same death in service benefits as widows of opposite-sex marriages. That usually includes a backdating of pensionable service to 1978, whereas widowers are currently entitled to backdate that only as far as 1988. That is a small technical issue. If civil partnership and marriage should have exactly the same legal basis, then those should be identical.
Ruth Maguire covered my next point very ably, and I also want to record my thanks to the Equalities and Human Rights Committee for the sterling work that it has done. The committee said in its report:
“some people do not wish to marry for symbolic, cultural or emotional reasons and consider these important enough to merit the extension of civil partnership.”
In fact, civil partnerships may provide a valuable alternative for women and many others who have had negative experiences of marriage, including abusive relationships.
There is a right for same-sex couples to choose between civil partnerships and marriage and the same choice should be available to other couples. That point has been made by many other speakers. It is important to increase people’s choices about how they structure their lives.
The bill brings Scotland into line with the rest of the United Kingdom, as civil partnerships for mixed-sex couples have recently been introduced in England, Wales and Northern Ireland.
Clearly, there is a difference between the rights that a couple have from cohabitation and the rights that they would have in a marriage, and the fact that that difference has existed for so long has been the subject of much discussion. The committee’s report highlights the rights, or perhaps the non-rights, of cohabiting couples. That is an issue that I have addressed in the past, and is one that the committee might want to return to.
A legally recognised relationship brings with it many financial benefits. More than that, people find security in being married or in a civil partnership. For those who feel that marriage is not for them, a civil partnership offers an important alternative.
I am pleased that the bill will ensure that people can be in a legally recognised relationship and have the benefits that flow from that so that they can live their lives. For example, it will mean that one civil partner can inherit wealth on the death of another civil partner without a tax charge. In addition, where one civil partner earns £12,500 or less, a proportion of their tax-free personal allowance can be transferred to the other partner if that person is a higher earner, thereby reducing the couple’s overall income tax bill.
There is good reason to think that civil partnerships for heterosexual couples will be popular. In France, the pacte civil de solidarité—I ask members to forgive my pronunciation—is a registered partnership arrangement. Over the years, it has become increasingly popular, and for every five marriages, there are now four PACS. Based on the international experience, the Scottish Government estimates that there could be 109 opposite-sex civil partnerships registered each year, but the French example indicates that the numbers could rise significantly once the option has been in place for a while.
We are closing an important equality loophole in the law and giving all the citizens of Scotland more choice. There is every reason to support the provision and bring it in to our law.
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