Civil Partnerships, Marriages and Deaths (Registration Etc.) Bill (First sitting)

Caroline Spelman Excerpts

Committee Debate: House of Commons
Wednesday 18th July 2018 Public Bill Committees

[Tim Loughton]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Sharma, I think for the first time—as this is the first private Member’s Bill I have introduced in my 21 years in the House, I hope that you will be gentle with me. I thank right hon. and hon. Members who have agreed to serve on the Committee. There was a lot of interest in the Bill. I particularly welcome interest from those so young in the Public Gallery. I also welcome the Minister, who I know is not exactly idling at the moment, given that she is in the midst of the Offensive Weapons Bill and her other duties in the Home Office. Hopefully she will focus resolutely on this Bill for the next few hours.

I will make some introductory comments before speaking to the amendments. I do not want to replicate the many excellent speeches we had on Second Reading on 2 February. Many of the Members who contributed at that stage are on the Committee. I am keen that we should keep proceedings short. It is a complicated Bill of four parts. As I said on Second Reading, I have not made it easy for myself by having such a multifaceted Bill that cuts across at least four different Government Departments and four different Secretaries of State, all of whom have changed since the Bill started its passage.

Many of today’s amendments are formal drafting amendments agreed between the Government and me. Others are—I hope—probing amendments from hon. Members, to which I will be delighted to respond. I want to keep the Bill as intact as possible, and the deliberations as tight, because the Bill is a work in progress. The Bill comprises a number of obligations for Government Ministers to review changes in the law that we would like to see and to report on how they can be brought about, and, in some cases, enabling clauses subject to sunset limitations, so that Ministers can bring the changes to legislation into effect at some stage in the not-too-distant future.

Much has happened over the past five and a half months since Second Reading, with working groups having already been established. They have started their business in various Departments. I will probe the Minister for updates on what progress they have made, when they are likely to report, and how and when their deliberations will translate into changes in legislation and whether that can be speeded up.

A lot in the Bill hinges on its consideration on Report, which is anticipated for 26 October, for those who want to get the date in their diary. I will challenge the Government further on why amendments cannot be added at that stage, when we have more than three months to prepare for it.

So, eyes down—let us get on with the amendments. New clause 2 deals with marriage registration and would amend the Marriage Act 1949, with the underlying intent of addressing the extraordinary anomaly that the names of the mothers of those getting married still do not appear on marriage certificates. The clause is an enabling clause, to enable the Secretary of State to bring about those changes, which have huge amounts of support across the whole House. Numerous attempts to change the law have so far come to nothing, but this time it is going to happen.

New clause 2 seeks to remove the marker provision that is the current clause 1 and replace it with the provisions in new clause 2 of the Registration of Marriage (No. 2) Bill, as per the commitment made on Second Reading on 2 February. In addition, the amendments aim to improve those provisions by limiting the scope of delegated powers in the Bill. For example, any regulations made by the Secretary of State under clause 1(1) will now be limited to amending the Marriage Act 1949. The regulations that amend that Act would be subject to the affirmative procedure and require the approval of both Houses of Parliament, providing ample parliamentary oversight.

Subsection (6) of the new clause inserts a sunset clause that limits the use of the power of the Secretary of State to amend primary legislation to a period of three years beginning on the day on which the regulations are first made. I know that this point—that it could be an open-ended power—has been a bone of some contention, and has hampered the progress of similar private Members’ Bills and legislation in the past. By inserting this sunset clause, and specifically limiting the power to the Marriage Act 1949, the Bill has a very clear intent.

The new clause would reform how marriages are registered in the future, to enable the updating of the marriage entry to include the names of the mothers of the couple, instead of just the names of the fathers, as is extraordinarily currently the case. That is the biggest reform of how marriages are registered since 1837. It is incredible that it has taken 181 years to include the mothers’ details, especially as the arrangements for civil partnerships, when they came in, allowed for both parents.

The new clause aims to introduce a schedule-based system, replacing the current paper registers. That is the most cost-effective way to introduce the change. With the introduction of a schedule system, all civil and religious marriages will be held in a single electronic register, rather than in more than 80,000 paper register books scattered around churches and religious institutions up and down the country. It will make the system more secure and efficient, and it will make it simpler to amend the content of the marriage entry, both now and in the future. The new clause enables the Secretary of State to make the required changes to the Marriage Act by regulations, and to move a schedule-based system for registering marriages. The regulations would change the current procedures in part III of the Marriage Act—Marriage under Superintendent Registrar’s Certificate—to provide that a marriage can be solemnized on the authority of a single schedule for the couple instead of two superintendent registrar’s certificates of marriage, one for each of the couple, which is currently the case.

The regulations would also provide for a member of the clergy to issue the equivalent of a marriage schedule, which is a marriage document, for marriages that have been preceded by ecclesiastical preliminaries, for example the calling of the banns or the granting of a common licence. Once a marriage ceremony has taken place, the signed marriage schedule or marriage document will be returned to the local registry office for entry in the electronic register.

Where a registrar is present at a marriage ceremony, the signed schedule will be retained by the registrar for entry in the electronic register. In all other cases, it will be the responsibility of the couple to ensure that the marriage schedule is returned to the registry office. However, they will be able to ask a representative to take it for them, or they could send it by post. Apparently, in Scotland it is traditionally a family member or the best man—if you can trust him—who returns the signed document.

If a signed marriage schedule or marriage document is not returned within the specified timescale, and after reminders have been sent, the person commits an offence in accordance with subsection (3) of the new clause. My understanding is that in Scotland there are no issues with signed documents not being returned to the registry office. Once the marriage is registered in the electronic register, the couple will be able to have a copy of their marriage certificate.

Subsection (4) of the new clause gives the Registrar General power to make regulations under section 74(1) of the Marriage Act 1949 to prescribe the content of a marriage schedule or document, to make provision to reissue or correct the information contained in the marriage schedule or document prior to the marriage taking place, and to make provision for the keeping and maintenance of the existing paper registers. It is as simple as that.

[Dame Caroline Spelman (Meriden) (Con)]

My hon. Friend briefly mentioned the role of the clergy. For the avoidance of doubt, I make it clear to the Committee that the Church of England consulted on the matter some time ago, and is fully in favour of these practical and equitable changes, which deal with a difficult pastoral situation. At the moment, the clergy often have to break the bad news to a mother that she cannot put her name on the marriage certificate at the ceremony, which causes great distress. The Church of England would like to see this change achieved. The amendments that my hon. Friend referred to are the amendments that the Bishop of St Albans tabled to the identical Bill in the Lords, which is about to return to our House.

[Tim Loughton]

I am grateful to my right hon. Friend, because that is exactly what I was about to say. She has been assiduous in pursuing this cause, and I pay tribute to her. She has her own private Member’s Bill to that effect in this House that is mirrored by the Registration of Marriage Bill, which was introduced by the Bishop of St Albans and which completed its Committee stage in the House of Lords last month. That Bill also met with widespread support. Everybody supports the measure and has done a lot of work on the detail, so we just need to make it happen. Introducing new clause 2 to replace clause 1 will do that, and it is completely complementary with the detail of the Bill that the Bishop of St Albans has progressed through the House of Lords.

The final amendment in the group is amendment 12. Changes to long titles are a common theme—I have spent many hours in Committee debating the details of long titles as well as short titles, rather than the substance of the Bill, but apparently they are terribly important. The amendment would change the words,

“to make provision about the registration of the names of the mother of each party to a marriage or civil partnership”

to simply,

“to make provision about the registration of marriage”.

That is apparently what needs to happen.

That is the purpose of the changes we propose to the first of the subjects in the Bill, namely having the names of both parents on marriage certificates. I am sure that all hon. Members present will want to take the opportunity to support them without further delay. The Minister will throw her entire weight behind them too, so we will be able to move swiftly on.