Newspaper orchestrated the death of Bill

JOHN RENTOUL

Political Correspondent

Until Monday morning this week hardly anyone had heard of the Family Homes and Domestic Violence Bill, a tidying-up measure so uncontentious all parties had agreed to speed it through Parliament under the "fast- track" procedure.

On Monday, the Daily Mail carried a front-page story about government plans to "sabotage marriage" and telephoned one of the Conservative MPs on the committee which "nodded it through".

But the Tory MPs' revolt against the "Live-In Lovers" Bill, which was postponed for "reconsideration" on Thursday, is based on a misunderstanding of the law, according to the former Cabinet minister John MacGregor - another Tory MP who has doubts about the Bill.

Lord Mackay, the Lord Chancellor, halted the Bill after he was visited by eight Tory MPs who said they had suddenly been alerted by the Mail to the true nature of the measure.

Most of the eight are staunchly pro-family right-wing Tories, such as Lady Olga Maitland, Roger Gale and Edward Leigh, who were stirred into action by the Mail article, which declared the Bill "goes most of the way towards abolishing matrimony as a legally distinct state".

But Mr MacGregor, one of the eight, said yesterday that this went "way over the top" and that provisions giving cohabitees the same rights as married couples to protection from domestic violence "are not new".

The other Tory MPs, taking their cue from the Mail, have seized on the Bill, most of which consolidates existing law, claiming that men could be forced to leave their homes if their girlfriends made allegations of violence against them.

William Oddie, the Oxford theologian who wrote the original Mail article, said this could happen because of "the anti-male bias of the courts and their willingness to give judgment in such matters without evidence".

But the idea that the Bill extends rights from married couples to cohabitees is also incorrect, according to the Lord Chancellor's Department and experts at the Law Society. The society said: "They have had the right to be protected from domestic violence since the late 1970s."

This protection can include the right temporarily to exclude a violent partner from property in which a couple have been living.

Mr MacGregor's concern with the Bill is quite different, revolving around the definition of "harm", which he says has been extended to cover mental health as well as physical health. The other Tory rebels found themselves attacked from all sides yesterday, as John Major, the Prime Minister, expressed his irritation and the Opposition attacked them as an "extremist rump".

Mr Major told Sky News that the measure had passed through most of its stages without a hint of controversy. "I don't think anyone expected there to be any controversy. There hasn't been. It has been almost through the House of Commons and the House of Lords without any controversy being discovered," he said.

Asked whether Lord Mackay had misjudged the mood of MPs, Mr Major, who was touring Cumbria, retorted: "Well if the Lord Chancellor misjudged the mood, so did everyone else when it went through the House of Commons and the Lords earlier. To lay this at the door of the Lord Chancellor, who is one of the most civilised, decent and humane men I know, is not accurate.

"If there was a misjudgment, it wasn't simply the Lord Chancellor. It must have been the Law Commission who proposed the Bill, it must have been everyone who examined the Bill when it went through the Commons and the Lords, up until the last minute."

He insisted the Bill did not represent a retreat from the Tory party's commitment to "shoring up the institution of marriage ... We have always been the party of the family, always have been, always will be." Government sources claimed that the Bill would resume its passage, possibly with some "clarifying amendment", the week after next.

But Labour used the Government's embarrassment to repeat its charge that Mr Major was a prisoner of the right. "John Major is hemmed in on all sides by backbenchers and ministers who are determined to move the Tory party further to the right," Chris Smith, Labour social security spokesman, said.

Tessa Jowell, Labour's new spokeswoman on women, said: "Yet again we are faced with the distasteful prospect of the Tories putting their own interests before the needs of the country. Domestic violence is a national disease that needs decisive government action to protect women who are victims. But this government considers placating people on the margins of the Tory party a higher priority."

Labour last week published a consultative document on ways of changing attitudes to domestic violence, Peace at Home.

INDEPENDENT So it was the Mail what won it. It was the Mail that exposed the true anti-family nature of the Family Homes and Domestic Violence Bill. It was the Mail which alerted those giants of the backbenches, Julian Brazier, Roger Gale and Olga Maitland to la famille en danger. So it was the Mail that may well have killed the Bill.

Not that it understood the Bill in the first place. Its characterisation of the provisions as placing cohabitees on the same contractual basis as married couples was plain wrong. What the Bill actually did was extend the definition of domestic abuse and the categories of person (for example, the mothers of abusive sons) who could apply for exclusion orders.

So the Mail wrecked the wrong Bill. But why? Because the idea that cohabitees might have the same rights in law as legally wedded spouses apparently "makes nonsense of morality and common sense".

What moralistic claptrap. Many hundreds of thousands of Britons choose to live together without being married - and the number is growing. Their relationships range from the disastrous to the wonderful - just like those of married people. So by what right does the Daily Mail - and its parliamentary poodles - talk as if they were somehow morally deficient?

Being married is not of itself a moral question, but one of preference. Looking after children properly is a moral issue. And protecting the weak from violence by the strong - that is a moral issue. What an outcome then. A triumph for abusers and a victory for batterers. Oh, and a great day for morality.