Official Report: Minutes of Evidence

The Chairperson (Mr O'Toole): This session is Committee deliberations on the Marriage and Civil Partnership Bill. We are discussing our proposed oral briefing from the Registrar General. We spoke to the Registrar General, and I had a brief, informal conversation with him on the subject. I am not breaking any confidences around the practicalities of getting that briefing. For good reasons, it will not be doable until after recess.

The Committee Clerk: No, Chair. There will be a written briefing next week. The Registrar General and the key official will be on leave. I propose to members that we insert two additional meetings. The clause-by-clause consideration of the Bill and the formal and informal agreement on the report are slightly delayed; we wanted to do them sooner. The deadline of 13 November remains hard and fast. I propose that we insert two additional meetings on Tuesday 3 November and Tuesday 10 November at 12.30 pm or 1.00 pm. We can pin down the details, and we have booked the rooms. I have spoken to Dr Wales, and we hope to bring him here on 3 November, which would allow us to do more on 4 November. If members are content with what he says, we can proceed. If there are further issues, we will need the meeting on 4 November to pin those down and allow members to decide how they want to approach the matter and whether that approach necessitates an amendment to the Bill or, preferably, can be done through changes to the explanatory and financial memorandum, which would be the faster, easier and more desirable way. That said, once we have seen the written briefing next week, members will be in a better position to understand what underpins the decision-making on whether or not the organisations that have come forward will be allowed to celebrate marriages. The briefing should be interesting and informative.

We will further update members on that, but we have booked room 29 for 3 November and 10 November, and those dates are both Tuesdays. The meetings will be at 12.30 pm or 1.00 pm, just before or during the lunchtime break. If members can hold those dates, I will send out further messages. This has been necessitated by the new issues that arose after last week's briefing when officials indicated that they are not experts in the application process; the expert body is the General Register Office (GRO) itself.

The Chairperson (Mr O'Toole): OK.

Mr Kingston: Clerk, can you confirm those dates? The information in our pack is 4 November and 10 November.

The Committee Clerk: The briefing in the main pack is a day off, so disregard that week. We will have more information as we go through the session, and we will update it as we finalise it. The new dates for the first additional meetings will be Tuesday 3 November at 12.30 pm or 1.00 pm. It will probably be 1.00 pm because Dr Wales has an Audit Committee meeting first. The second one will be at the same time or slightly earlier on Tuesday 10 November. That will produce two extra days to give us more time to do the other things that we need to do on our normal Committee day. We do not want to be in a situation of trying to do multiple things in one session.

Mr Kingston: OK.

The Chairperson (Mr O'Toole): We have discussed the Registrar General. There is a revised timetable.

The Committee Clerk: The revised timetable is incorrect, and we will issue a further revised timetable.

The Chairperson (Mr O'Toole): More revision.

The Committee Clerk: It is such a live situation. No sooner had we sent out a pack than something new happened, which meant we had to revise it.

The Chairperson (Mr O'Toole): If we are agreed, we will have a little bit more time. We thought that we would finish this topic early. Nothing is insoluble, but, for the Committee's satisfaction, we want to get to the bottom of a couple of questions with the Registrar General to satisfy ourselves that the advice that we give to the Assembly on the Bill is correct, which is totally reasonable.

Further to that, there is the GRO's response to the call for evidence on the Bill. There is also further correspondence from the NI Humanists. Can we publish that?

The Committee Clerk: We now have publishable evidence. Members will recall that we had confidential additional comments from the NI Humanists. We now have a publishable version with additional but still confidential comments. We can now publish the additional evidence. The confidential evidence is beyond the scope of the Bill.

The Chairperson (Mr O'Toole): Is that still in confidence?

The Committee Clerk: Yes; do not read that out.

The Chairperson (Mr O'Toole): OK, I will not read that out. In case anyone is watching, do not worry; it is not that salacious.

The Committee Clerk: It is really not. It is a data protection issue.

The Chairperson (Mr O'Toole): OK. The bit that is publishable has the formatting, logo and letterhead of the Northern Ireland Humanists, who have expanded on their reasons for wanting, as we have discussed, a more detailed set of requirements for belief marriage providers. They also state their scepticism about or opposition to what they call "de facto commercial providers" claiming to offer humanist marriages. That, obviously, differs from the evidence that we received from the other humanist group. Members, given that we will hear more oral evidence on this —. Brian, did you want to come in at this point?

Mr Kingston: No.

The Chairperson (Mr O'Toole): Anyone is entitled to comment now. This may be most useful for us as we approach our oral evidence session with the GRO, at which we will be interrogating those two perspectives and whether the current legislation and reliance on guidance from the GRO are the right way to maintain a degree of seriousness and solemnity in the wedding regime and strike the right balance with those two views: one, effectively, is that there should be a less detailed version of regulation; the other is a bit more rigorous. Of the two models, one is a bit more like the South of Ireland, and the other is a bit more like Scotland. We can come back and discuss that. Are members content to come in and discuss the details of that?