Hansard

I, too, welcome the bill. Scotland—and, until very recently, England, Wales and Northern Ireland—is the only country in the world where same-sex couples can choose between a marriage and a civil partnership while different-sex couples only have the option of marriage. It is an anomaly that is both unfair and illegal.

If the subject was considered in a superficial way, one might ask why new legislation is necessary, as civil partnerships and marriage confer almost identical legal benefits. Even the Campaign for Equal Civil Partnerships makes that clear on its website, where it states:

“There is very little difference in legal terms between marriage and civil partnerships, with both conferring the same rights on things like tax, inheritance and pension provision.”

Of course, some weddings are religious, and some traditional ceremonies have echoes of patriarchy in promises to obey. Many people opt for civil services, and marriage itself is often a secular arrangement, just like a civil partnership. However, we know from the campaign for equal marriage that the perceived difference between marriage and civil partnerships was very real when they were reserved for different groups of people.

Civil partnerships were introduced across the UK for same-sex couples only by the Civil Partnership Act 2004, which was considered by the Governments of the day to be a significant social advance, even though it denied gay people equality. At the time, the authorities spoke openly about the danger of undermining marriage by opening it up to couples of the same sex. That seems quite extraordinary to us now, and the campaign for equal marriage correctly identified the distinction in those two different types of union as discriminatory. Many campaigners understandably felt that civil partnerships were second best, and I was proud to be able to correct that wrong, together with colleagues in this Parliament, by voting overwhelmingly for equal marriage.

That achievement perhaps obscured the fact that some same-sex couples were happy with the pragmatic benefits incurred by their civil partnership with regard to pensions, tax, inheritance and so on, so much so that some mixed-sex couples were keen to access similar arrangements. For those heterosexual couples, civil partnerships were not second best at all but were preferable and, indeed, something to which they aspired.

The Equal Civil Partnerships campaign states that

“the history, expectations, and cultural baggage of the two institutions is very different. Many couples can make a marriage work, but for some people – especially women – marriage is seen as carrying far too much patriarchal baggage: the idea that the man would own his wife, given away to him by the father of the bride”

is unacceptable. The campaign also states:

“Still today marriage certificates only have space for the names of the fathers of the bride and groom, whereas civil partnerships include the name of both parents. And in the ceremony partners have to say the words “I take you to be my wife … I take you to be my husband.”

One couple who felt that way were Rebecca Steinfeld and Charles Keidan. Their challenge ultimately led to a Supreme Court ruling on 27 June 2018 that the inability of different-sex couples to form a civil partnership is in breach of the European convention on human rights. The case of Rebecca and Charles was by no means an isolated one. I have been contacted by constituents who feel very strongly about the matter and I know that they will be delighted that we are now setting things right, particularly as mixed-sex civil partnerships are already legal in England and Wales.

I welcome the work on the bill of the Scottish Parliament’s Equalities and Human Rights Committee, which approved the bill’s general principles. The committee’s report notes that, for symbolic, cultural or emotional reasons, some people do not wish to marry. I note that the committee’s call for evidence on the bill received 40 submissions that were overwhelmingly in support of its proposals. Those submissions included one from the Equality and Human Rights Commission, which said that the change to the law would advance

“equality of opportunity for couples who are or who wish to enter into a legally recognised relationship.”

There were also positive responses to the bill from Children in Scotland, Engender and many LGBT groups, as other members have already outlined.

However both the Faculty of Advocates and the Law Society of Scotland pointed out that couples who are married will not be able to change to a civil partnership in the same way that a same-sex couple can currently change their civil partnership to a marriage. I understand that the UK Government has consulted on that matter but no firm conclusions have been reached. I would welcome further exploration of that anomaly.

The bill will affect only a small number of people—an estimated 109 couples in Scotland—but it is the right thing to do. It is clear that the general public are very supportive of the proposals. A British social attitudes survey found that 65 per cent of people back the change to civil partnership. I am glad to count myself as one of those people and I support the bill’s general principles.