Louis Letourneau looks at how the forthcoming Civil Partnership legislation may affect our finances.
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Last month at the Labour conference, the Prime Minister said that the Queen would announce the introduction of a civil partnership bill in her speech at the opening of Parliament on Wednesday 26th of November.
This is an historic step forward and we must congratulate the all-party support on this issue. But, there is a lot of work to do before we achieve full equality and we do not expect this for many years unless Parliament decides to change the definition of "spouse".
Why not simply add the wording 'registered civil partners' to the definition of spouse, wherever it is defined in law? Doing this would achieve total equality across the board, simply and effectively, rather than the piece meal approach that is currently being proposed.
The current proposals, outlined in the Consultation Document, still leave the potential for discrimination to occur and there will be inevitably many court challenges in the years to come, especially with respect to pension and tax issues.
The government's ' Women and Equality unit ', who are putting together the legislation, is doing a good job with respect to major issues recognising same-sex relationships in general. In particular, during a relationship, Civil Partners will be entitled to the same recognition enjoyed by married couples in most parts of life. These rights will vary from immigration rights to adoption and joint parental responsibility, from protection from domestic violence to hospital visiting and medical treatment. Even giving evidence in court and prison visiting will be covered by the new civil partnership laws.
Of course, with these rights will come obligations. Should the partnership fall apart, the same current divorce procedure as applies to married couples will prevail; from children access and child support to the maintenance of partners and property division. These aspects have been covered very well and we can only congratulate them for it.
Problems arise when a partner dies. The new law would recognise the right of the partner to be considered automatically as next of kin. This is particularly important when we look at funeral access or intestacy laws. For the first time, if a partner dies without a will, the civil partner will be deemed to be the beneficiary of the estate, unlike the situation today where only blood relatives are recognised.
However, contrary to the main press coverage, the original consultation document has not properly addressed the major taxation discrimination issues such as inheritance tax and pension rights in occupational schemes. In fact there is no mention of inheritance tax at all. Let's just hope that this was an oversight on the government's part and that the bill to be announced next month will fully cover the tax issues.
As with other groups, we have made our official representation, of course, and other groups like Stonewall and the TUC have also expressed some concerns, but until we can see the final bill, we must continue to lobby the government hard to get this rectified (see www.gay-partnership-rights.info for details of our official submission and on how to make your voice heard ).
One thing is for sure - occupational pension schemes will not be forced to recognise civil partners in the way that they have to recognise married couples for survivor benefits. This is wrong. This will confuse trustees and will still allow those with homophobic tendencies to discriminate against same-sex couples in their schemes.
The great news is that all major Public Service pension schemes such as the NHS and Teachers, even the armed forces(!), as well as the state pension will see same-sex couples recognised for survivor benefits. However, the jury is still out as to whether this will be retrospective to the whole of the length of service! This is not so great as far as pension rights are concerned and a lot more work is needed to get us to real equality.
At the moment, the new law will only be available to gay men and lesbian couples, not unmarried heterosexuals (the Government's "justification" is that heterosexuals have the option of marriage). Well, it seems that the government has finally realised that hundreds of thousands of gay people deserve to have the option of being legally recognised in our society as legal partners.
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