Daily Mirror (Northern Ireland)
Foster’s plea to Scots on gay unions is published
THE Scottish Government has published a written request from Arlene Foster asking it to stop gay couples from Northern Ireland converting civil partnerships to same sex marriages there. The publication comes days after the DUP leader said she had no recollection of sending such correspondence to the administration. The letter was penned in September 2015 when Mrs Foster was finance minister. It urged then Scottish local government minister Marco Biagi to exclude couples from here from legislation enabling people to convert civil partnerships into same sex marriages. Mr Biagi tweeted about the existence of the letter in the wake of the General Election, amid increased Uk-wide focus on the DUP’S stance on social issues such as gay marriage. But last week the former Stormont First Minister could not recall sending the request. She told Radio Ulster’s Inside Politics: “I’m not sure what he [Mr Biagi] was referring to but it certainly wasn’t a letter from me and I’ve no recollection of a letter. “If I’d written to him as minister of finance or something like that around recognition laws here I have no recollection of it.” The letter dated September 4, 2015, is signed by Mrs Foster. It was a follow-up to one from her predecessor as finance minister, the DUP’S Simon Hamilton. Neither cited moral or political objections but said complications could arise from “dual status” in different jurisdictions. Mr Biagi rejected the request. In response to the publication, a DUP spokesman said: “This correspondence was exploring technical legal matters and was not personally driven by the minister.”