 Welcome to the 14th meeting of 2023 in session 6 of the Equalities, Human Rights and Civil Justice Committee. We have no apologies this morning. Our first agenda item is to agree to take items four and five, which are consideration of our draft annual report and the future discussion of our future work programme in private. Are we all agreed? We are agreed. Our second agenda item is to take evidence on an affirmative statutory instrument, which is the forced marriage provision and jurisdiction Scotland act 2011 application to civil partnerships and consequential provision order 2023 draft. I refer members to paper one and welcome to the meeting, Shirley-Anne Somerville, cabinet secretary for social justice, good morning, and Simon Stockwell, head of family law policy unit of the Scottish Government, good morning. Welcome cabinet secretary, please can I invite you to speak to the instrument that is before us today? Thank you convener and good morning. I'd like to make a brief statement on the purpose of this SSI. This SSI relates to our work to implement the Civil Partnerships Scotland Act 2020, the 2020 act introduced mixed sex, opposite sex civil partnerships in Scotland. 939 mixed sex civil partnerships were entered into in Scotland in 2021 and 2022, and we've been implementing the 2020 act in stages. When the Scottish Government introduced the bill, which led to the 2020 act, we recognised that the introduction of mixed sex civil partnerships could increase the risk of forced civil partnership. We do not consider that the risk of forced civil partnership is nearly as great as the risk of forced marriage, but there are a range of protections against forced marriage, and we wanted to close any loophole that might allow those protections to be circumvented by forcing someone into a civil partnership instead. Therefore section 13 of the 2020 act extends the forced marriage criminal offence to cover forced civil partnerships as well. I have just signed the commencement regulations, the Civil Partnerships Scotland Act 2020 commencement number 5 regulations 2023, to commend section 13 from 30 November 2023. We also noted in the policy memorandum accompanying the bill that part 1 of the forced marriage etc protection and jurisdiction Scotland Act 2011 contains civil measures on forced marriage, including forced marriage protection orders. We noted that we intended to make an SSI, this SSI, to extend forced marriage protection orders so that they can cover forced civil partnerships too. Those orders can contain prohibitions, restrictions and requirements of other provisions intended to protect someone from forced marriage. Therefore the provisions in the 2020 act to extend the forced marriage offence and this SSI to extend the civil measures of forced marriage protection orders provide a legislative package against forced civil partnership. The SSI also makes two technical changes. First it amends the definition of marriage in the 2011 act to include belief ceremonies. This is consequential on the Marriage and Civil Partner Scotland Act 2014, which included provision for the solemnisation of marriage by authorised celebrants of brief bodies. Secondly it provides for decrees declarator of nullity of marriage who are granted by a sheriff to be included in a register of divorces operated by the national records of Scotland. This reflects the fact that the 2011 act extended jurisdiction in proceedings for the declarator of nullity of marriage to the sheriff court. Proceedings could previously only be heard in the court of session. Declarators of nullity are declarations by the courts that in the eyes of the law the relationship never existed. If this SSI is approved by the Parliament our intention is to bring it into force on 30 November to coincide with the forced marriage criminal offence being extended to cover forced civil partnerships. That outlines the purpose of the SSI before the committee to date. Are there any members that wish to ask any questions? No members of the committee have indicated that they wish to ask any questions or make any comments, so we will move straight to agenda item 3, which is the formal business in relation to the instrument. Agenda item 3 is the consideration of the motion for approval of the affirmative instrument. I invite the minister to move the motion. That is just to clarify. It is S6M-08951. Do members have any final comments? If not, are we all agreed? We are agreed. I invite the committee to agree to delegate to me the publication of a short factual report of our deliberation on the affirmative SSI that we have considered today. Are we all agreed? That completes the consideration of the affirmative instrument. I thank the cabinet secretary and her official for attending this morning. That concludes the formal business this morning, and we will now move into private to consider the remaining items of our agenda.