Civil partnerships for straight couples - Tim Loughton MP

Straight couples should be allowed to have a civil partnership, or it would lead to a "glaring inequality", said a former children's minister.

Tim Loughton said it was "just not fair" to extend marriage to gay couples, but not allow straight couples to have civil partnerships that were available to same-sex partners.

The Conservative MP, backing several amendments to the same sex marriage bill, said he was a "great enthusiast of all sorts of equality" and he had backed the introduction of civil partnerships for gay couples.

He said: "This is about fairness, this is about equality", and told presenter Andrew Neil to "get real, get with 2013" as there were nearly six million people co-habiting, a figure which had doubled in 15 years,

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