Some more equal

The Conservative Party leader in Scotland, Ruth Davidson, has quite rightly been lauded for her team’s excellent showing in the general election just passed. Following her party’s link-up with Ulster’s Democratic Unionist Party, Ms Davidson announced that she has received assurances from Theresa May regarding equal rights for members of the minority LGBTI group. In that same announcement, she referred to the Conservative Party as being the party of equal marriage.

That equal marriage claim certainly appears to be backed up by her party’s 2016 legislation on Inheritance Tax, in which a Family Home Allowance worth up to £350,000 was made available to the estates of home-owning parents who are married or in a civil partnership, and whose homes are worth between £650,000 and £1 million, and who pass on their homes at death to their immediate descendants.

This legislation clearly gives home-owning civil partners with children in the minority LGBTI group exactly the same rights as home owning married straight parents, which is commendable.

However, as Ruth Davidson and Theresa May both know, that same legislation guarantees that every child in the