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Earl Attlee: My Lords, I am grateful that the Minister accepted the suggestion of the noble Lord, Lord Judd.
Can his response include the difference between war fighting operations, peace support operations and counter-terrorism operations?
Lord Bach: My Lords, I will consider the noble Earl's suggestion. I come to his speech now, and I will be brief. He suggests that I write to him about those separate questions, and that is exactly what I will do.
It is always good to hear from the noble Earl because of his experience in the field as a serving officer of the Territorial Army. I thank him for what he has said and I will write to him in due course.
We have had a good debate on an important subject at an important time. I hope that the House will feel that it has been treated fairly this evening.
On Question, Motion agreed to.
Naval Discipline Act 1957 (Remedial) Order 2004
Lord Bach: My Lords, I beg to move the Motion standing in my name on the Order Paper. Moved, That the order laid before the House on 15 January be approved.—(Lord Bach.)
On Question, Motion agreed to.
Planning and Compulsory Purchase Bill
Bill returned from the Commons with the amendments agreed to.
House adjourned at twenty-two minutes past nine o'clock.
12 May 2004 : Column GC115
Official Report of the Grand Committee on the
Civil Partnership Bill [HL]
Second Day
Wednesday, 12 May 2004.The Committee met at half past three of the clock.
[The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Lord Haskel) in the Chair.]
The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Lord Haskel): I should like to say first that there is a revised list of groupings that includes the amendments that have already been debated. The previous list did not, which was a little confusing, as the first two amendments were excluded, but the revised list includes them. So we shall be working from the revised list and I wanted to ensure that everyone has received it.
[Amendments Nos. 15 and 16 not moved.]
Baroness Wilcox moved Amendment No. 17:
The noble Baroness said: This is a probing amendment that would alter Clause 3, which outlines categories of eligibility for registering a civil partnership. The Bill as drafted requires that people thinking of entering civil partnerships are of the same sex, not lawfully married or already in a civil partnership and over 16. Our amendment focuses on the last requirement by leaving out the provision on prohibited degrees of relationship. That goes directly to the heart of an issue that threatens to turn a Bill that is aimed to be about justice for a group of people who live in long and stable relationships but who cannot legally marry, into a Bill that highlights and perpetuates an injustice to other people who have made similar life choices to live together and to care for each other but who, equally, cannot marry.
The Committee will be familiar with the argument, with which I know that many noble Lords—although, sadly, it seems not on the government Front Bench—sympathise. Let me be quite clear where I am coming from. I made that clear on Second Reading. I said then, and I say now, that I welcome the intent behind the Bill, as it is tackling issues of discrimination. I understand the force of feeling and sense of injustice that motivates those who have proposed it. I recall a powerful speech in the Chamber some years ago, when the noble Lord, Lord Alli, spoke passionately about the unfairness that inheritance tax might drive a partner from a shared home when the other partner died. The noble Lord spoke from the heart that day.
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Many noble Lords have recalled the tragic death of Lord Montague of Oxford, which was referred to the day before yesterday by my noble friend Lady O'Cathain. I would like to think that he and all those who support the Bill would have a shared feeling for the same burning sense of injustice felt by those about whom I speak again under this amendment. There should be no conflict between the people of whom I speak and the proponents of the Bill. The Government should not be allowed to play one group off against the other.
The Government said the day before yesterday that this is a Bill about relationships, not finance. That is a cop-out, and a pretty unconvincing one to me. I said on Second Reading that the financial implications of the Bill, which are massive—as, day by day, our discussion in Committee makes clear—should be explored and debated alongside the relationship legislation. That must be so; it cannot be otherwise. Even an increasingly disjoined Government must see that. Indeed, the proponents of the Bill accept that; they know that the Bill has financial implications, both good and bad. The noble Lord, Lord Alli, for whom I have the utmost respect, was wrong to say the day before yesterday that the House could not discuss those financial matters. Of course we can, although the other place has the final say on matters of finance.
Our society offers financial advantages to those who are married—sadly, and troublingly, increasingly few advantages; but advantages none the less. They include, not least, as we discussed, exemption from the vile and destructive inheritance tax on the death of a spouse. It offers those advantages in return for the recognition of the aspiration towards lifelong union that two people stand and make together in public. The people who make that commitment accept responsibility, make sacrifices and become in many other ways financially worse off. For better for worse, for richer for poorer, in sickness and in health—the words are not so bad even four and a half centuries down the line.
Perhaps there are some things that are not out of place even in new Labour's modern Britain. If that is the spirit that illumines this Bill, it would be a great thing indeed. Married couples accept, for example, that they will be worse off in relation to many benefits and, indeed, in relation to pensions, than two single people living separately. We will no doubt explore that later in Committee.
The financial consequences of a vow of lifelong partnership are inextricably bound to the reality of that relationship. You cannot pretend otherwise; those who are behind this Bill recognise that. Indeed, Stonewall is explicit in saying it accepts that in some cases civil partners will be financially worse off, just as they will benefit from other changes such as inheritance tax. So let us have no humbug about this. The Government should bring forward, and be ready to debate fully, honestly and openly, the explicit financial implications of the Bill, as we asked them to do at Second Reading. We still reserve the right to table amendments at a later stage to explore this.
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There was some discussion of inheritance tax in Committee the day before yesterday. The noble Lord, Lord Goodhart, somewhat brutally said that extending the ambit of civil partnerships rendered the Bill a tax avoidance scheme. Do I take it, therefore, that the Liberal Democrat Party opposes an exemption from inheritance tax for civil partners? The noble Lords, Lord Alli and Lord Tebbit, and the noble Baroness, Lady O'Cathain, more humanely were clear that inheritance tax must be an issue. Will the Minister confirm that it is the Government's intention that civil partners should be exempt from inheritance tax in the same way as married couples now are? If that is the case, a great benefit will be bestowed on those same-sex couples who can become civil partners.
But there is another category of people joined by the same affirmation of love and of affection, the same sense of duty to each other and the same commitment to a long life together as the same-sex couples who are the subject of this Bill and who in the same way cannot marry: unmarried siblings who share a long commitment to each other and share the home together for many long years—dare I say, for richer for poorer, in sickness and in health? They cannot marry. They are bound by love and fate not to be able to do so. No society would ever allow that they should. But they are surely just as capable of making and practising the same vow as others who wish to become civil partners.
There is another group too—that quiet, devoted army not so large in number, but weighty beyond measure in its value to society, of family carers who look after aged, often disabled, parents and who stay unmarried in the family home to do so. At Second Reading I gave the example of a son who selflessly lives with an ageing father to look after him in his last years. The same could be said of daughter and mother and, indeed—although I do not open it out in this amendment—of an unmarried son and a mother or an unmarried daughter and a father. All these are cases of people who cannot marry but whose love and ties, and the value they give back to society, should surely deserve the same recognition as the couples allowed new privileges under this Bill. Yet the Government will still discriminate against any such people after the passage of this Bill. There are many other categories of people who will still be discriminated against, for example, many elderly brothers and sisters living together. Perhaps their husbands and wives have passed away or perhaps they have never been married but living with a relative provides comfort and security. They too will still be discriminated against and are not included in the Bill.
I recognise that the day before yesterday the opinions of the Committee were divided on this issue but I am keen to state early on in these Grand Committee proceedings that this is an issue upon which we are unlikely to change our minds. I will not go away. We will fight for justice for these people with the same vigour as many of the people in this room have fought for another group of people who cannot marry.
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How can it be right for a pair of gay civil partners to be given the same protection against inheritance tax as a married couple on the grounds of their chosen relationship and their inability to marry and yet right for an elderly sister or a 60 year-old son who has spent a lifetime caring for a parent to be brutally tossed out of the home in which they have spent their lives by the capricious operation of inheritance tax when a loved one dies? Such people cannot marry each other. They have committed to each other across decades. Surely their devoting cries out to have a mechanism of partnership for its recognition. Surely the injustice done to them by inheritance tax taking away their lifelong home, as we debated, cries out to be addressed just as much as the cases before us in the Bill.
Many of these people are not wealthy. They have made sacrifices to care for others, to care for people in their old age or disability who would otherwise be a major call upon the state. Parliament has the opportunity in the Bill to stretch out a hand to them. Will we do so or will we pass on by? Will we take satisfaction, just satisfaction, in a success for gay rights but turn our backs on a call for natural justice for others whose partnership is just as deep but who cannot marry? I cannot accept that we should. Cannot the Government look at ways to open the benefits and responsibilities, and the burdens and costs, of the Bill to them? Cannot we explore ways to limit any tax costs by confining the benefits to those siblings and other close relations who cannot marry and who have lived together for many years?
Surely that is what this Committee should be for and what this House, which has so often stood up for natural justice, as in the case of war widows for example, should also be for. It is easy to say no to spinster sisters who have shared a life or to the devoted son who has shopped and shared for 50 years. But surely we should take time to see if there is not a better way and so to make this an even better Bill. It does not seem so hard and if the Chancellor is the man responsible for setting the Government's teeth against it, can he not see that in the case of unmarried siblings or unmarried children there is no risk of indefinite erosion of the tax base or the immunity of a property from inheritance tax by passing it on from one partner to another? It is simply a case of liability deferred, but deferred in a way that avoids brutal pain when someone with whom one has shared a lifetime but cannot marry, dies.
I call from the heart to the Government, and I plead with those in the gay community who argued for the Bill and who understand the pain of not being able to affirm a relationship and having to suffer the fiscal consequences, to think again on this matter and to extend some means of affirmation to these people. These are good and deserving people—none better. It is a sad truth that many of them are left in a terrible financial state when one or other of them dies. What a poor reflection it would be on how we look on family and treat the elderly in our society if we heard their call and passed on by. I beg to move.
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3.45 p.m.
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