Clause 22
Equality Bill
9:30 am
Vera Baird (Solicitor General, Attorney General's Office; Redcar, Labour)
I have partially grasped the concerns. Explanatory note 96 puts pretty simply the point of subsection (3), which is that a civil partner who is treated less favourably than a married person in similar circumstances is being discriminated against because of sexual orientation. As to the issue about the definition of civil partnership and its not necessarily having to be sexual, I suppose that that is just a nod—perhaps an important nod, to some people—in the direction of the fact that, in law, for a marriage not to be void it must have been consummated. There is no such requirement in a civil partnership. That may be where the leeway arose, and it might not be unhelpful leeway to have available, for several reasons.
I suppose that I should say that, for the purpose of discrimination law, marriage and civil partnership are treated the same, so any discrimination between the partner in one of those as opposed to the other will be discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation. I hope that that is comprehensive enough.