Clause 3 - Formation of civil partnership by registration
Civil Partnership Bill [Lords]
11:00 am
Mr Chris Bryant (Rhondda, Labour)
I welcome you to the Chair, Mr. Gale.
While I wholeheartedly agree with the direction in which the hon. Member for Rutland and Melton is moving, and while I was intrigued to hear what the Minister said about Government amendment No. 25, some specific issues still need to be addressed.
Clause 3(5) is more or less, though not directly, lifted from section 45(2) of the Marriage Act 1949, which specifies that no religious service can be used at all when a civil marriage is being officiated. That was introduced for a specific reason; people wanted to differentiate between holy matrimony, which was consecrated in a church, and civil marriage. The difficulty is that many registrars throughout the country now interpret that as meaning that there cannot even be a reading from the Bible or the Torah, or from someone such as Kahlil Gibran, at a civil registration of a marriage—an outdated and bizarre prohibition. I am sure that many of us would not want the law to state that churches should register ''holy matrimony'' in civil registration of a marriage, but to proscribe someone from having any form of religious words being used at all in a civil marriage, such as the use of the word ''God'' or a reference to Jesus.
Similarly, although the Government have carefully worded their subsection to say that no
''religious service is to be used while the civil partnership registrar is officiating at the signing of a civil partnership document'',
I still think that it is bizarre solely to proscribe the use of religious forms of any sort. I presume that the Minister will say that while the registration is happening there should be nothing of that sort, but the moment the registrar has gone, people can do whatever they want. If that involves bringing in a clergyman, that is entirely up to the clergyman. If people want to have readings or make vows, that is entirely up to them.
The phrase that we should be taking from the Marriage Act 1949 is the permissive one, which says explicitly that the form and ceremony that people choose to use at a civil marriage is entirely up to those who take part, apart from a couple of elements that have to be present in the civil marriage. The first of those is the declaration that there is no lawful
impediment why those two people may not marry, and the second is the declaration of consent. The 1949 Act has those in more or less prayer book English, along with more modern versions that were added in the 1970s. They are the two elements that I seek to insert into the ceremony. It is not providing a lengthy ceremony; it is simply ensuring that the declaration that there is no lawful impediment to these two people being joined together in a civil partnership, and that they do actually consent, is made in a spoken declaration.