Yes, civil partnership law is deeply unfair – to relatives like me and my sister

Try as I might, I find it difficult to feel too sorry for Charles Keidan and Rebecca Steinfeld, the cohabiting heterosexual couple who have failed to persuade a High Court judge that the government is wrong to deny them the right to form a civil partnership.

Mr Keidan and Ms Steinfeld do not like the ‘patriarchal connotations’ and other cultural baggage which they say are associated with marriage and they do not see why, when same-sex couples can opt for a civil partnership as an alternative to marriage, they cannot. But, marriage provides all the same rights as a civil partnership and the judge has ruled that the government’s position is justified.

There is, though, a serious discrimination which is not the one of which Mr Keidan and Ms Steinfeld complain. It affects tens of thousands of cohabitees who, like them, are not eligible for civil partnerships, but who, unlike them, cannot get married either.

The government cannot explain why siblings and other blood relations, who live together in long-term, financially inter-dependent partnerships (frequently also acting as carers to each other, for example, when one is old or ill) are specifically excluded from eligibility for civil partnerships.