Sir Patrick Cormack FSA

Conservative Party | Staffordshire South

Cannock Mercury

And so another session of Parliament has begun. The pageantry surrounding the State Opening was as glittering and splendid as ever, in spite of a heavy downpour of rain as the Queen arrived. But the contents of the Queen's Speech are less a subject for rejoicing. Once again Parliament is going to be presented with some thirty Bills and although Westminster sits longer hours than any other parliament in the world we are not going to have the opportunity properly and thoroughly to debate every proposal that the Government is to put before us.

One of the Bills promised is to allow same sex couples to register their partnerships. Naturally, as with every Bill, I shall look carefully at the small print but I am bound to say that I am not immediately attracted by this proposal.

For me, marriage has a unique status. It is a relationship in which children can be conceived and nurtured and where the man and woman concerned have made an exclusive commitment to each other. No comparable situation can ever apply with homosexual couples. Apart from that such a Bill would create unfairness because of its omissions. Two unmarried sisters may spend their lives together, sharing a home and all its expenses, nursing one another during illness and providing companionship. Yet this dependency would not be recognised under the new civil partnership scheme.

Many of us feel an instinctive sympathy for people who care for each other on a long-term basis and who would appear to suffer through the failure of the legal system to recognise that care and dependency. But civil partnership will do little to help in a vast number of such situations. Siblings or friends who provide each other with a lifetime of care would be left out of the scheme whereas two men who have known each other for just a few weeks could benefit.

I think this is a Bill which is unlikely to attract my support.