Clause 253 - Commencement
Civil Partnership Bill [Lords]
3:45 pm
Ms Jacqui Smith (Minister of State (Industry and the Regions and Deputy Minister for Women), Department of Trade and Industry; Redditch, Labour)
Amendments Nos. 118 to 125 relate to clause 253, which provides for the coming into force of the provisions of the Bill. All substantive provisions are to come into force by commencement orders, which will be made by the Secretary of State, except in the case of provisions for which legislative competence has been devolved to the Scottish Parliament or would be devolved to the Northern Ireland Assembly if it is re-established. The Scottish provisions will be commenced by the Scottish Ministers and the Northern Ireland provisions will be made by the Department of Finance and Personnel—in both cases, after consulting the Secretary of State. The Secretary of State must also consult the Scottish Ministers or the Department of Finance and Personnel before commencing certain other provisions where the connections between devolved and non-devolved areas are strong.
The consequential amendments ensure that the arrangements for the commencement powers properly reflect the devolution settlement. They correct references to numbering and ensure that the subsections of the clause refer to the relevant related parts of the Bill.
Amendment No. 126 removes clause 254(2), which was added on Third Reading in the House of Lords as a privilege amendment to avoid infringing the privilege of the House of Commons to decide the financial consequences of the Bill. Since a money resolution has been agreed to, subsection (2) can now be removed.
New clause 9 amends the Gender Recognition Act 2004 as a consequence of the introduction of civil partnerships. It ensures that civil partnerships are treated in the same way as marriages for the purposes of that Act. It was not appropriate to include those changes in the Bill earlier because the Gender Recognition Act received Royal Assent only in July 2004. The Gender Recognition Act provides that if an applicant for a gender recognition certificate is married, they cannot be recognised in their acquired gender until the marriage is brought to an end. In order to achieve that, they are issued with an interim gender recognition certificate, which provides grounds for them to annul—or in Scotland, dissolve—their marriage. The court that makes the annulment or dissolution absolute then grants a full gender recognition certificate, which means that the person is subsequently to be treated for all purposes as a person of the acquired gender.
The new clause provides for civil partnerships to be treated in the same way. In particular, it inserts a new section 5A, which provides for the granting of a full gender recognition certificate by the court that makes the final nullity order, or, in Scotland, grants the decree of dissolution, in relation to a civil partnership. That is similar to the procedure already provided in section 5 of the Gender Recognition Act for cases in which an existing marriage is annulled or dissolved. As
in section 5, if the civil partnership comes to an end in a defined period by virtue of annulment, or dissolution on any other ground, or the death of the person's civil partner, an application for a full gender recognition certificate can instead by made to a gender recognition panel. That amendment follows the principles that the House agreed on when considering the Gender Recognition Bill.