Immigration, Asylum and Nationality Bill

I am grateful to the noble Baroness for raising the point. The DCA is responsible for defining how civil partnerships are recognised and the noble Baroness will know that from time to time I have laid before your Lordships’ House details on additional countries and their agreed status. As we work with our partners across the world and look at how they operate similar systems, we ensure that those details are laid before Parliament so that they are fully recognised. On that basis, the process is very straightforward. The noble Baroness has raised an underlying point here: it is always important and sometimes challenging to ensure that we have in place systems of recognition. On civil partnerships, I think that we have it just about right at the moment, although we are mindful that situations may change. However, this issue points up the need for a degree of flexibility so as to be able to define new categories as they are introduced and when it seems appropriate to do so. We have done that with civil partnerships and so far the procedures seem to be working well.