improvements

There are three main areas where we suggested to the Government and MP's and Peers that the Civil Partnership Bill could be improved:

1. Pensions

Pension provision for dependent surviving civil partners was not going to be retrospective. This would have meant that if one partner dies in 2010, only the years from the date the Civil Partnership Act would have come into force, about 5 years’ of contributions, would have counted towards the survivor pension of the partner, whereas if the deceased had married, all his contributions would have counted. Lord Goodhart, a Liberal Democrat tabled an amendment dealing with some aspects of this in Grand Committee and LAGLA supported this amendment.

There is no provision in the Act for final salary schemes, such as the police pension, the teachers’ pension or the NHS superannuation scheme or private occupational schemes. All of these provide family benefits for widows and widowers. We felt that since all members of the pension scheme, whether gay or straight, have paid the same contributions they should receive the same benefits. Saying that nobody realised the discrimination against same-sex couples in the past is no justification for continuing it now. The government wanted to leave it to each scheme to decide what to do, but this was not good enough. When the Bill reached the House of Commons, the Government conceded that pension accruals for dependant's pensions would be backdated to 1988.

2. Unregistered couples

We identified three areas where unmarried couples are recognised in law and have rights, which may not be available to unregistered same-sex partners. The government piggy-backed onto the Bill provisions which will mean that all same-sex couples, whether registered or not, will be assessed as a couple for benefits and tax credits. This will mean that poor lesbians and gay men may lose a sizable proportion of their benefits and tax credits. At the same time unregistered same-sex couples were not named on the face of the Inheritance (Provision for Family and Dependants) Act or the Mental Health Act. Although there may be an argument that since the Human Rights Act same-sex couples are included in the definitions of unmarried couples, it cannot be right for bereaved lesbians and gay men to have to fight the human rights issue through the courts before being able to make a claim. LAGLA suggested amendments, which, although they have not been tabled have been noted. We continued to lobbying for inclusion of these provisions. The most important of the three was the Inheritance (Provision for Family and Dependants) Act 1975. The Government accepted our arguments that the Civil Partnership Act should not open an argument that it reversed the ruling in the House of Lords in Ghaidan v Godin-Mendoza and included these provisions in amendments tabled at Commons committee stage.

3. International Law

We took the view that the provisions as set out in Part 5 of the Act will lead to a number of extremely unjust and impractical situations and “limping” partnerships and marriages. We have provided detailed comments on this section of the Bill and suggested amendments. The comments were published in International Family Law in June 2004. This led to a dialogue with the Government resulting in an enabling provision that will allow ministers by statutory instrument to improve the provisions.

In the debate in the House of Lords great confusion arose on which overseas relationships would be recognised. We hope that this chart makes it clearer.