Civil Partnerships, Marriages and Deaths (Registration etc) Bill signed into law
29 March 2019
What is Civil Partnerships, Marriages and Deaths (Registration etc) Bill?
This Private Member's Bill, presented by Tim Loughton, has the following effects;
- to enable the Government to change the law so that opposite-sex couples can form a civil partnership
- to reform how marriages are registered, and register the names of the mother of each party in a marriage or civil partnership;
- to require the Secretary of State to report on whether the law should be changed to allow the registration of pregnancy losses which cannot be registered as still-births under the Births and Deaths Registration Act 1953;
- and to report on giving coroners powers to investigate stillborn deaths.
The Act received Royal Assent on 26 March 2019, having completed all its parliamentary stages. It becomes the Civil Partnerships, Marriages and Deaths (Registration etc) Act 2019, and will come into force two months after it passed, on 26 May 2019.
You can follow its passage, from first reading to Act of Parliament, below.
Civil Partnerships, Marriages and Deaths (Registration etc) Bill 2019: Parliamentary passage
You can find explanatory information, bill documents, impartial supporting research and links to transcripts and video of proceedings in both Houses of Parliament:
- Parliament News: House of Commons stages
- Parliament News: House of Lords stages
- Commons Library Briefing: Civil Partnerships, Marriages and Deaths (Registration etc) Bill
- Lords Library Briefing: Civil Partnerships, Marriages and Deaths (Registration etc) Bill
- Bill Documents: Civil Partnerships, Marriages and Deaths (Registration etc) Bill
What is Royal Assent?
Once a bill has completed all the parliamentary stages in both Houses, it is ready to receive Royal Assent. This is when the Queen formally agrees to make the bill into an Act of Parliament (law).
There is no set time period between the end of a bill's passage through Parliament and Royal Assent.
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