Clause 9 - Notice of proposed civil partnership and declaration
Civil Partnership Bill [Lords]
4:30 pm
Mr Chris Bryant (Rhondda, Labour)
I shall be brief. I wholly concur with those who disagree with the amendments, but for a slightly different reason. The irony in the hon. Member for Christchurch tabling an amendment to extend the residency requirement from seven days to six months is that that parallels the requirement in respect of holy matrimony. If people want to get married in the Church of England, they have to have been resident in the parish for six months in advance. It is curious that the hon. Gentleman, who has been advocating for some days that we should not do anything that makes civil registration parallel with holy matrimony, now advocates a measure that would do precisely that. In the Church, it is bizarre when this happens. Many people who want to get married in the most beautiful churches in the land, even though that is not necessarily where they normally worship, end up managing to get on to the parish electoral register, not the normal electoral register, if the vicar so allows them—sometimes for a small consideration—or if they pretend that they meet the residency qualification by pretending to live somewhere other than where they actually do. The number of people who live in West Wycombe, where there is the rather beautiful Disraeli church, is quite extraordinary, but whether they all live there all the time, I rather doubt.
The second reason why I oppose the amendments is that I think that there will be many people, for example in London, who do not necessarily want to have their registration performed at Camden town hall; they might instead choose to have it in the Mayor's building on the south side of the river. For
that matter, many people in Rhondda Cynon Taff in my local authority may choose to have their registration in Cardiff city hall, one of the most beautiful buildings in south Wales. As the hon. Member for Buckingham put it earlier, eloquently as ever, we should allow people the freedom of choice.