Your Comments:

The Law Centre agrees.  Long-standing gay couples have suffered a lack of legal certainty in many aspects of relationships often alongside a degree of hostility and discrimination not faced by heterosexual couples.  The proposals are therefore both overdue and welcome.

Your Comments:

We agree The Law Centre does not demure from a position where rights and responsibilities go together hand in hand.  Providing rights and attendant responsibilities is only one part of this process. For example, with regard to hospital visiting and medical treatment the document suggests that the creation of a civil registration scheme will change attitudes. This alone will not be sufficient.  Proper guidance, information and training for staff will also be required.

Your Comments:

We agree.  In addition, there should also be reciprocal arrangements with other like minded countries (along the lines of reciprocal social security agreements) to recognise civil  registration.  Nordic countries already have such arrangements.  In addition, work should begin on looking at how such arrangements can eventually be recognized throughout the island of Ireland.

Your Comments:

The Law Centre entirely agrees.  There should be no drawback or advantage to living in any one part of the United Kingdom.  Taking this into account we would recommend the government commit itself to bringing in similar provision to suitable gay couples to adopt, in line with recently enacted legislation in England and Wales.

Your Comments:

The Law Centre supports this approach.  The government should ensure the legislation is clear and readily understandable.  One way to do this is to make the law of registered partnerships follow the law of marriage.  One model for this is Norway and we include this as an attachment to our response.

Your Comments:

We welcome the proposals with the following observations. 

Immigration – a number of other changes need to be made to treat same sex registered partners as similar to married relationships.  First, where one partner is a British citizen or has indefinite leave to remain and the other partner is a foreign national  - the latter will currently be unable to enter to register a partnership.  New immigration rules will be needed to remedy this.  In a number of cases, foreign nationals can bring spouses into the country (for example, students, work permit holders), similar arrangements should be made for same sex couples.  As with married couples, this will not confer any additional rights. 

Naturalization rules should be changed so that registered partners can naturalize in the same way as married couples.  Current provision for foreign spouses and opposite sex unmarried partners who are bereaved or have been victims of domestic violence should be applied to those in a registered partnership.  Other Home Office policies outside formal immigration rules should recognise registered partnerships (eg DPD/96 which deals with spouses of overstayers and illegal entrants sets out a general presumption against enforcement action if none is started two years after the marriage.  A simple change that all Home Office policies outside immigration rules which mention spouses should be deemed to include registered partners would deal with this.  Finally, unmarried partner immigration rules which apply to same and opposite sex partners should be retained.

Social Security – we welcome the proposal to treat a registered partnership as a family unit.  We would, however, recommend that transitional protection is introduced for couples already on means-tested benefits who register their partnership to avoid a significant drop in financial income.  Protecting those disadvantaged at the point of legislation change is a regular feature of social security policy.

Your Comments:

We welcome the proposals.  On child support for example, there will be a need to make changes to regulations, for example, there is a reduction in child support maintenance payable by a non-resident parent who has children within his household.  An extension to registered couples will be welcomed.  We understand the reasons for making the registrar public but we do believe safeguards around process, for example recording who is seeking the information and the grounds why, should be introduced.

Your Comments:

We believe government should embark on a pro-active and positive strategy to improve social attitudes to gay people.  This should include conducting research into the key issues and types of discrimination facing gay people in Northern Ireland.  This will help to inform the way forward for tackling discrimination and improving societal attitudes.

Your Comments:

A piece of qualitative research should be conducted to examine the impact of the changes by tracking the experience of couples who enter into registered partnerships.