House of Lords

Friday 17th July 2026 Lords Chamber

Friday 17 July 2026

10:00

Prayers—read by the Lord Bishop of Newcastle.

Conduct of Undercover Policing and Surveillance Operatives Bill [HL]

2nd reading
Friday 17th July 2026 Lords Chamber

Second Reading

10:06

Moved by

[Baroness Hamwee]

That the Bill be now read a second time.

[Baroness in Waiting/Government Whip (Baroness Ramsey of Wall Heath) (Lab)]

My Lords, before we begin our debate, I remind the House that the advisory speaking time for Back-Bench contributions is four minutes. This is to allow all colleagues to participate fairly and the House to rise at a reasonable time, around 3 pm.

[Baroness Hamwee (LD)]

My Lords, our reaction to rape, to violence against women and girls, to coercive control and to grooming has intensified over recent years, along with greater understanding of what it means to be a target, and the protection of human rights is always topical. This includes the prohibition of inhuman or degrading treatment. All these are what underlie the Bill. It has been known for some time that some undercover police officers entered into intimate sexual relationships with women members of organisations they had infiltrated. It is still not known how many women were deceived into long-term relationships with “boyfriends” who had assumed false names. It seems that there were upwards of 68. In some cases, children were born.

The Bill looks to the future, aiming to learn from the past. These women were activists, not terrorists. They went on protests and they were involved in planning protests. I do not suggest that the activities were insignificant, although I think some were fairly minor. Nor am I arguing that there is no place for undercover surveillance: that is not a matter for today. It would need a psychologist properly to describe the life-changing impact on the women targeted. They were in apparently close, forever relationships, only for their partners suddenly completely to disappear. That caused such anxiety, as it would. You would be distraught. They made huge, extraordinary efforts to find them. Disturbing information started to come to light: true identities, wives and children, and assumed names taken from dead children. It is not difficult to understand why such an experience means it is so hard—for some people, impossible—ever to trust again, including trusting themselves.

In 2015, the then Prime Minister Theresa May—the noble Baroness, Lady May—established an inquiry which, in its 11 years so far, has identified 30 officers who used this technique, although the total is not known. The inquiry has brought together many of those targeted. They found one another and found that their experiences were so similar, as they would be. The spy cops had managers, even regarding them as mentors: a whole structure behind them. Their seniors did not turn a blind eye. On the contrary, there was a so-called “tradecraft manual” in use, so no wonder their stories echo one another.

This is not a matter of a few bad apples, or even a barrel-load. Intimacy, the very closest, has been an instrument of surveillance by the state, not a risk at the margins which could be managed by better safeguards. The women targeted cannot have been seen as human beings capable of being injured. Indeed, some of the officers have blamed the women—something we hear about with regard to domestic violence.

The very system regarded as acceptable is and was simply wrong. The state has recognised this. Apologies have been made and damages paid. In 2015, the Met accepted that the relationships were

“deceitful, manipulative and wrong … a violation of … human rights”.

In 2021, a tribunal said that

“we are driven to the conclusion that either senior officers were quite extraordinarily naïve, totally unquestioning, or chose to turn a blind eye to conduct which was, certainly in the case of”—

a particular officer—

“useful to the operation”.

There was a finding of a violation of human rights and discrimination.

The Bill makes such conduct an offence. It uses the term CHIS, covert human intelligence source, which is defined for the purposes of the Bill. I accept that there are arguments for and against using a term already in use in other legislation. However, an intimate sexual relationship cannot be “organised”, as what would otherwise be law-breaking surveillance can be under the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act. The penalty is the same as that for rape. It is a distinct offence in order to avoid the issue of whether the conduct is rape under existing legislation. Inciting or

“intentionally encouraging or assisting an offence”,

to cover the role of managers handling undercover operatives, is itself an offence. There is provision for a defendant who is in the intelligence services to apply for an anonymity order in proceedings, as I am aware of the issue of identifying intelligence officers. A duty of candour and assistance is included, although that may be overtaken by the Hillsborough Bill, or Act as it will be. Causing a person to engage in sexual activity without consent under the Sexual Offences Act is not affected: this Bill applies in the narrow situation of undercover surveillance.

Often, when we are passing legislation, noble Lords suggest guidance as a means of addressing a tricky issue. There is guidance. The College of Policing’s Authorised Professional Practice, published in 2021, says:

“It is never acceptable for a UCO”—


undercover officer—

“to have an intimate sexual relationship with those they are deployed to infiltrate and target or encounter during their deployment. Having an intimate sexual relationship must not be used as a tactic by a UCO”.

So far, so good. But there is a “but”. It continues:

“If a UCO engages in an intimate sexual relationship (for example, they perceive an immediate threat to themselves and/or others if they were not to do so) this activity will be restricted to the minimum conduct necessary to mitigate the threat”.


It goes on to provide procedures to be followed. So, the authorised professional practice is not an absolute bar. I wondered what situation this might be addressed to: a female UCO, perhaps, or a UCO being forced at knifepoint to take part in a gang rape. But would there not be a defence to the charge, namely self-defence?

I am conscious that I have not mentioned the people who seem to have been regarded as collateral damage: the wives and families of the UCOs, and the parents of the dead children whose names were assumed. I am afraid that my Bill is too narrow for that; actually, I feel a bit bad about that.

I am sure that the Minister will tell the House that the Government must await the outcome of the Undercover Policing Inquiry before addressing the situation, and I know that they have announced a consultation on the future of the inquiry. I do not accept that we need the outcome to know that this conduct is wrong. It must be outlawed. Otherwise, the apologies that have been made will seem pretty hollow and the future could hold further distress and damage, and then more apologies. No woman should experience this form of abuse again. These are means which cannot justify the end. I had never thought to use this term, but this was state-sponsored abuse. I beg to move.

10:15

[Baroness Kennedy of The Shaws (Lab)]

My Lords, I strongly support the Bill, and I do see it as a Bill dealing with state-sanctioned abuse. The Bill directly responds to the abusive nature of these sexual relationships which were built on deception. The deception that is involved negates a person’s ability to exercise autonomous choice about who they are having sex with, not merely what act they are consenting to, and can be morally equivalent to non-consent. Applied here, the woman cannot be considered to be in a position of consenting to sex with the actual person—the serving police officer or a member of our secret services—because that identity is concealed as a matter of operational necessity. That cannot be a rationale.

Over the years, I have seen and met a number of women directly affected by this. There is no doubt as to the nature of the pain and the emotional and psychological harm that it has done to them: one day, suddenly, this person disappears, and it transpires that they had another wife and children elsewhere. I have met one of the women who had a child by the man, who was using her to access an environmental group. The deception perpetrated by undercover police violated her right—and the other women’s rights—to sexual autonomy and resulted in severe emotional and psychological harm to many of them. They are having to have psychological help for post-traumatic stress disorder. The women say:

“Our ‘consent’ to sexual activity with those men was fraudulently obtained. They knew that we would never have consented to sex with them had we known who they really were. Their deception removed our ability to meaningfully consent—our freedom to make decisions based on our own priorities and values”.


I am sure that the response of the Government will be that we should await the outcome of the inquiry, which is currently taking place and is due to carry on right through the summer. I suspect that it will suggest all manner of protocols that already exist about what is proper behaviour for those who are running informants or who are involved in information-gathering activities. I agree with the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, that the Bill should not need to await that outcome.

This is absolutely reprehensible behaviour. It was accepted by senior officers on a “Don’t ask, don’t tell” basis. They knew that the officers were involved in relationships, but they did not know what to ask about the nature of those relationships and they chose not to ask. That, in itself, shows a lack of candour. We have been talking recently about the Hillsborough changes and the need for candour in public services and from all those who might be involved in processes of justice. I strongly urge the House to go forward with the Bill, and I commend the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, for bringing it to our attention, because this remains a scar on the lives of many of those women—over 50 women that we know of—and a scar on our system.

10:19

[Lord Garnier (Con)]

My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, for her introductory remarks about her Bill. Unquestionably, the conduct of undercover agents of the state—be they police officers or members of the secret services—is a matter of great public interest. For women who have had relations with men who they thought were, for example, fellow protestors but turned out to be undercover police officers—and for their children—it is a matter of acute and distressing private interest as well, as the noble Baronesses, Lady Hamwee and Lady Kennedy, explained so movingly.

The Bill moves us into new or different legal territory. There is, as the noble Baroness said, College of Policing guidance on undercover operatives having intimate and sexual relations with those they are deployed to infiltrate and so on. However, that behaviour—as long as it is consensual—is not currently a criminal offence. We also have the Mitting inquiry, to which the noble Baroness, Lady Kennedy, referred, but that is yet to produce its final report; I accept that report has been far too slow in coming.

I entirely understand the motives of the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, in bringing the Bill to the House. However, my concern is that it criminalises, via a Private Member’s Bill, activities that, at the time of the behaviour in question, were consensual. We are debating very delicate and very difficult questions, and I do not want to be misunderstood. I certainly do not condone rape or serious sexual assaults. I appreciate that a person who has sexual intercourse with another on the express understanding that they will wear a condom, but then does not wear one, can be prosecuted. Someone who has sexual intercourse with another who dishonestly states that they do not have a sexually transmitted disease, or dishonestly fails to state that they do have one, and infects the other person cannot claim that the victim consented to the sexual intercourse and thus the infection brought about by that lie.

Now, however, is not the time to lay out detailed arguments about the statutory definitions of rape or of consent, or to contrast and compare the provisions of the Sexual Offences Acts of 1956 and of 2003, or the Sexual Offences (Amendment) Act 1976. I say in passing that Section 3 of the 1956 Act made it an offence to procure a woman to have sexual intercourse by false pretences or false representations. That provision was repealed by the 2003 Act but it has not been replaced. Perhaps it should be, but I am not sure that this Bill is the right way to do that.

Under this Bill, we have a dilemma about what we properly disapprove of and what we ought to make a criminal offence. Whether consent to intercourse was given by a woman to an undercover police officer who she did not know at the time was an undercover police officer was considered in Monica’s case—formally known as R v DPP [2018] EWHC 3508. In essence, the Divisional Court held that the deception regarding an undercover police officer’s true identity and profession did not vitiate consent to sexual relations. The woman in question, whose name was disguised as Monica, claimed that she would not have agreed to her sexual relationship with the police officer had she known that he was a police officer masquerading as an environmental protester and, her agreement having been procured by his deception, her consent to sexual activity with him had been vitiated. The DPP refused to prosecute the policeman for raping Monica, and she sought to challenge that decision in the Divisional Court, which refused her application. It ruled that deception vitiating sexual consent is strictly limited to fraud regarding the nature of the act or the identity of the person. It also went on to say that if the law is to be changed, it should be changed here in Parliament, and here we are.

I hope I am not making a dull procedural point, but it seems that a matter of this importance—and it is important—should be dealt with by the Government, with the advice of the Law Commission and/or government lawyers, but it should not, despite its merits, be a matter for a Private Member’s Bill. I entirely sympathise with what the noble Baroness is after; I merely question whether this is the vehicle through which to achieve it.

10:23

[Baroness Manningham-Buller (CB)]

My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, for alerting me to this legislation; I have been out of action from the House for nearly six weeks and I had failed to spot it. She knows broadly what I am going to say, which is that I have sympathy with what she is trying to achieve, for the reasons the noble Baroness, Lady Kennedy of The Shaws, mentioned and qualified by what the noble and learned Lord, Lord Garnier, just said.

The noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, alerted me to the Bill because she said it had an application to the Security Service. There is no reference to the Security Service in the legislation because, I would argue, it is poorly drafted. You cannot suddenly change the terms of reference for this world. RIPA and the Covert Human Intelligence Sources (Criminal Conduct) Act 2021 make it clear that a covert human intelligence source is a member of the public who provides intelligence in secret to the authorities. The people listed at the beginning of the Bill who are defined as CHISs are actually the authorities who run those CHISs. I am afraid that this is deeply confusing, so if this Private Member’s Bill survives it needs to be redrafted to make that clear.

We are talking about undercover policing. We are, obviously, waiting for the Mitting report. I make no apology for that behaviour; it was disgraceful in every way and it has done considerable damage. If an undercover member of the Security Service had been found to behave like that when I was there then they would have been sacked, and they should be today. Whatever the Government’s reaction to this, the Bill has to be rephrased. You cannot just say that, from now on, an elephant is a giraffe. A CHIS is a member of the public who gives information in secrecy—in some cases at risk of their lives—to the authorities to illuminate a threat. You cannot just suddenly say that the authorities are CHISs. However, I repeat my gratitude to the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, for alerting me to what she is, correctly, trying to do. Sorry for being pedantic, I just do not think the terminology is right.

10:26

[Lord Paddick (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, I declare my relevant interests as a non-executive director of the Metropolitan Police, but at no time during my service as a police officer did I have responsibility for undercover officers and I have no professional expertise in this area.

I congratulate my friend the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, on her Private Member’s Bill. I absolutely agree in principle, as other speakers have, with what she is trying to achieve: undercover officers should be prohibited from engaging in intimate sexual relationships with those who they are deployed to infiltrate and target, or encounter during their deployment, and that such activity should be unlawful and subject to criminal prosecution and sanction if it does occur. I believe that Section 78 of the Sexual Offences Act is too broad, as suggested in the Bill, as prohibition should be limited to physical intimate sexual activity; non-physical intimacy may be necessary and proportionate.

Rather than the Bill as drafted, under Section 29B(10) of the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000, the Secretary of State may, by order,

“prohibit the authorisation … of any such conduct as may be described in the order”.

I believe that the Home Secretary should prohibit the authorisation of intimate physical sexual activity between an undercover officer and those he is deployed against, or encounters in the course of such deployment. I am told that authorising officers would never, nowadays, pre-authorise such activity, but this change would also prohibit retrospective authorisation. This would not require primary legislation. I believe that it should also be enshrined in primary legislation that those deceived as to the identity of the person they had engaged in physical intimate sexual activity with cannot be said to have given informed consent to such activity, whether the person is an undercover officer or not, to address the points that the noble and learned Lord, Lord Garnier, has just made.

Taken together, these two changes would mean that an undercover officer who deceived someone as to their true identity could be found guilty of indecent assault or rape, for example, and, if found guilty, could be subject to the relevant penalty for that offence. The police may say that this could put undercover officers in danger—for example, knowing the law had changed, those targeted could test a suspected undercover officer by forcing them to have sex. However, undercover officers are now closely monitored, often in real time, and their handlers should be able to withdraw the officer before the situation gets to the stage where physical intimate sexual activity takes place. Undercover officers are regularly supervised, to ensure that they are not being drawn into inappropriate relationships. I believe that the greatest threat to women from police officers no longer lies with undercover officers, who are now among the most closely supervised and monitored of all police officers.

However, if an officer does end up engaging in such sexual activity—for example, because his life or the lives of others would otherwise be endangered—a statutory defence should be available to an undercover officer charged with an offence to prove that life was in danger if he had not engaged in such activity. It would then be a matter for a jury to decide. Instances of undercover officers engaging in such activity today should be exceptionally rare, but, if they do happen, officers should be prepared to defend themselves in the criminal courts. That is the four-minute summary. A full version is available on request.

10:30

[Lord Thomas of Cwmgiedd (CB)]

My Lords, I too add my congratulations to the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, on raising this point. It is important for two reasons: first, the terrible damage done to those who have suffered as a result of what happened; and, secondly, and to my mind importantly, the damage this does to the police force. On this issue, the law needs to be clear.

We look to when the CHIS Act, if I might call it that, was before this House and the prohibition of the authorisation of certain activities. Lady Massey of Darwen’s amendment was passed in this House, and it would have prohibited sexual relations being authorised. There were reasons put forward as to why that was wrong. The other place took a different view and there was no prohibition. However, as the noble and learned Lord, Lord Garnier, has explained, the issue of consent in sexual relations is a very unclear part of the law. It needs looking at. There have been many proposals for reform, and it seems to me wholly impossible to try to deal with the problem through an easy amendment to the Criminal Justice Act relating to sexual relations. We are therefore concerned with making it clear that under no circumstances can a person who is an undercover officer engage in sexual relations.

I must say I found the College of Policing’s guidance to be deeply unfortunate. There is no reason why it tries to qualify the very clear statement that people should not engage in sexual activity. The one solution to this problem would be for the College of Policing to be more sensitive to these issues. It is accountable to the Home Secretary, and no doubt there are good reasons why the Home Secretary does not want to go into the details of advice given. However, the College of Policing should itself have a means of examining the guidance it gives, because, in the part read by the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, what it states is plainly unacceptable. There is no excuse for engaging in sexual relations.

I therefore broadly welcome—I think everyone does—the attempt to put the law right and to prohibit undercover officers from engaging in sexual relations, full stop, with no qualification. I wish the police would put the matter right themselves—that is their duty. If they do not, I hope the Home Secretary will do it. I certainly do not think this should await the conclusion of Sir John Mitting’s inquiry, and, in any event, we have no idea when that will end. I note that, from what they stated last week, the Government are consulting on the future of the inquiry.

Action needs to be taken. I do not want to go into the technicalities—there is no time to do so—but the police should be the first step and the Home Secretary the second step, and it must be made clear that this activity should be permitted under no circumstances.

10:34

[The Lord Bishop of Newcastle]

My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, for bringing this Bill before your Lordships’ House. It is an honour to follow the noble and learned Lord, Lord Thomas of Cwmgiedd, in this debate. I acknowledge the contributions from your Lordships who have drawn on their expertise and experience, which is far beyond my own.

Before turning to the substance of the Bill, which I support, I wish to acknowledge the extraordinary service that our police officers give to this country. In doing so, I pay tribute to PC Jess Turnbull of Northumbria Police, who tragically died in the line of duty at just 19 years of age. Her funeral was held in Newcastle Cathedral last Friday. We continue to hold her family, friends and colleagues in our thoughts and prayers, giving thanks for her life and her willingness to serve others at such a young age. Her death reminds us that policing is a vocation of public service, often carried out at great personal cost. It is in that spirit that I approach the Bill.

This Bill is not about preventing legitimate activities. Rather, it addresses one specific question, which, at its heart, is an ethical question before it is a legal one. The Bill concerns one of the most fundamental aspects of human life: the ability to trust another person. When an intimate relationship is deliberately entered into or maintained under a false identity for the purposes of surveillance, genuine consent is fundamentally compromised and profound harm can result. We have heard the testimony of those whose lives have been permanently affected by such experiences.

Recognising that harm is not a criticism of policing or the secret services. Rather, it affirms that those engaged in covert work, and those who authorise it, deserve clear ethical and legal boundaries within which to carry out their responsibilities. I therefore believe the Bill rightly recognises an ethical boundary that should not be crossed. Clear statutory limits are not a sign of distrust in such operations; they provide clarity for those exercising exceptional powers, protection for the public, and confidence that those powers are exercised within a clear moral and legal framework.

Public trust is one of the greatest assets that our police possess. It is painstakingly built but easily diminished. Effective policing depends upon not only the lawful exercise of power but public confidence that such authority will be exercised wisely, proportionately and with integrity. As the Bill progresses, I hope we will give careful attention to whether its provisions are sufficiently clear, oversight is sufficiently robust, and those undertaking covert work are themselves given the guidance and protection they need. Ethical clarity is not an obstacle to effective policing; it is one of its foundations.

The tragic death of PC Jess Turnbull reminds us of the courage that policing demands. We honour that courage by ensuring that those entrusted with extraordinary responsibilities are supported by laws that reflect the highest ethical standards. In doing so, we strengthen not only our policing but the trust between the police and the communities they serve, upon which our common life ultimately depends.

10:37

[Baroness Berridge (Con)]

My Lords, I am grateful to come late in the list, as most of the drafting problems in this Private Member’s Bill have been spoken to.

I recognise that the statutory guidance says that these relationships should not happen, or only in desperate circumstances, but a breach of criminal law gives victims better redress. It would then not only be in the annual IPCO report but would be investigated by the police, with fuller disclosure to the victims. Despite 11 years of a statutory inquiry, the number of victims is not reliably known—I think it is 68 adults and four children.

The added protection of criminal law is especially important for young people who, in desperate circumstances, may have entered into a relationship with a juvenile CHIS. I recognise there are very few juvenile CHISs, but victims could be young people, due to contexts outside the domestic context, such as that of youth violence, in which juvenile CHISs are deployed. I hope His Majesty’s Government will consider a role for the Children’s Commissioner and her view on this, and consider the long-term outcomes for juvenile CHISs. It seems that only current juvenile CHISs are within the remit of the IPCO’s report. Evidence on the long-term effects on a juvenile would aid the detailed risk assessments made by senior authorising officers on how to conduct or deploy a juvenile CHIS.

While today the media is seized of the case of agent X and lies told on three occasions by MI5 to our courts, I am grateful that this Private Member’s Bill allows me to put on public record my surprise at discovering, in my last-minute research, that it was only yesterday that a public consultation on the statutory inquiry was announced, along with that other significant news. I proposed and sat on the Select Committee on the Inquiries Act, and I cannot recall in evidence such a situation—if it exists, I suggest it is probably in Northern Ireland—where the commissioning department seeks to possibly end a statutory inquiry. Was that at the request of the victims? I suspect not, and I hope the Minister can confirm that they had advance notice of the consultation.

If I were a victim and knew that the inquiry had cost £138 million and that the Home Secretary, the decision-maker, had been asked to save over half a billion pounds from her budget by 2028-29, I would wonder how she is going to manage such a conflict of interests. Also, how does the Home Secretary by way of a consultation manage the allegations that there has been an inequality of arms? Core participants with deep pockets have apparently launched lengthy legal challenges, such as asking for blank anonymity orders, that have delayed matters significantly. Is the Home Secretary going to be supplied with how much money each of the 250 core participants has had for their legal fees? If the inquiry is ended, I spy a judicial review on the horizon.

These women were victims of violence—VAWG, which is a government priority—so I suggest that issuing publicly the consultation yesterday, and I have a printed copy here, was at best disrespectful to them. Yesterday’s findings by Sir John Goldring are of course taking the media presence and are disappointing. I want to believe that MI5 and MI6 are the stuff of Operation Mincemeat and James Bond, that rules are bent sometimes but only in a higher, noble cause. Agent X, this situation and the peculiar case of Gareth Williams in 2010, when I lived in Pimlico, undermine such trust. I hope that the Minister, in the enhanced oversight of MI5 that was promised yesterday by the Home Secretary, will thoroughly consider the role of the Intelligence and Security Committee of Parliament, and perhaps even whether the inquiry should continue, because they are parliamentary representatives of the victims and the undercover police.

10:42

[Baroness Neuberger (CB)]

My Lords, I too thank the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, for bringing the Bill forward, and I support it. I am speaking today to express my shock and outrage that after all the publicity this issue has had, there is still no absolute bar on sexual relationships between undercover police operatives infiltrating organisations and women within those organisations.

The noble Baroness, Lady May, set up a public inquiry into all this 11 years ago under the chairmanship of Sir John Mitting, and we have been hearing about that from the noble Baroness, Lady Berridge. That inquiry has already cost more than £135 million and, as we have heard, is not yet complete. Yet it is important to recognise that its interim report for tranche 1, published back in June 2023, made it clear, in the case of the special demonstration squad, that the ends did not justify the means and that

“had the use of these means been publicly known at the time, the SDS would have been brought to a rapid end”.

Meanwhile, the CPS decided not to prosecute any of the police officers who were known to have had intimate sexual relationships while operating undercover. It was that decision particularly that has led to campaigners calling for a change in the law. The Bill provides for such a change. It also provides women with some reassurance that they will not be treated in this way by police or any other undercover operative, and I note what my noble friend Lady Manningham-Buller has said.

The Bill should go some way to restoring trust in the police. We need to be able to trust the police; I wholly agree with my noble and learned friend Lord Thomas of Cwmgiedd. I am a rabbi, and as somebody who has witnessed some incredibly impressive and brave policing by the Met in recent months and years, protecting the Jewish community, I am exceptionally grateful to them. But my more general confidence would be even greater if the Government would support the Bill, or at least the principles within it, give clarity and reassurance to those who fear that such behaviours could still happen, and make it clear that should that happen, the penalties would be huge.

Sir John Mitting said that if the public had known such things occurred within the SDS, it would have been brought to a rapid end. I hope the Minister will give the Bill his support and bring even the slightest possibility of such undercover intimate relationships, particularly by the police, abusive by their very nature, to a rapid end.

10:44

[Baroness Miller of Chilthorne Domer (LD)]

My Lords, I am very pleased to be able to support my noble friend Lady Hamwee’s Bill and her absolute determination to close what is a clear gap in the legislation.

I am not a lawyer or any sort of expert on this. I am moved to speak today because my noble friend Lady Hamwee and Justice organised a meeting where we could hear from some of the women about their experiences. In my time in this House, I do not think I have had a more upsetting experience. Moving would be the wrong word, when you started to think what they had been through. Their lives had been stolen. Not only had their time been stolen but their ability to trust had also been stolen, as my noble friend said. That is very hard—probably impossible—to ever get back. Then, of course, there is the issue of the children. People have said there are four, but there might be more. Do they have fathers? They obviously have biological fathers, but they actually have no fathers. Do they have half-siblings?

All those questions lead me to think that for all the arguments that the noble and learned Lord, Lord Garnier, made—which I will not repeat, because noble Lords have heard them—this change to close this loophole in our law really needs to happen. Our national institutions allowed, encouraged or condoned these in effect premeditated crimes, which went on for years. This needs to be clearly outlawed, and I support the Bill.

10:47

[Lord Davies of Gower (Con)]

My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, for bringing the Bill before your Lordships’ House today. I begin by declaring an interest: I was a police officer for 32 years, serving in the Metropolitan Police and the then National Crime Squad, where, as a senior investigating officer, I conducted a number of covert operations.

I should start by saying that I entirely understand the concerns that the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, has raised. There have been scenarios where covert human intelligence sources and undercover officers have acted in a manner that is totally unacceptable. These have been acknowledged, and I fully appreciate her intent with the Bill.

We need to also acknowledge that undercover policing has been a developing aspect of criminal investigations through the years and, by its very nature, is intended to push the boundaries and test the law through the courts in order to arrive at an agreed level of acceptance. Above all, it is an essential tool in the investigation of serious and organised crime. Knowing what I know and having been there on the front line, I cannot support the Bill. A blanket ban on undercover officers forming these kinds of relationships is something we should be very cautious of indeed. The simple fact is that undercover operations are incredibly dangerous—potentially the most dangerous aspect of policing, but also one of the most necessary. Some of the biggest successes in policing have come from undercover operations.

To successfully and safely deliver these operations, uncomfortable decisions often need to be made. We may not like these decisions, and they may offend our liberal sensitivities, but they are necessary decisions none the less. Sometimes those decisions require officers and sources to break the law or to engage in unethical behaviour. In 2021, Parliament legislated to create a framework in which covert human intelligence sources could be granted authorisation to break the law in the course of their operation. We did that because we recognised that a statutory footing was required, with the necessary oversight that goes with it, but also because we understand that there are occasions that warrant such action.

In some deployments, the operational environment necessitates the covert officer establishing a romantic or intimate relationship with a target, and this has to be weighed against the national interest. That may be a hard truth, and one that the noble Baroness might not wish to hear, but it is the truth none the less. It might be that establishing such a relationship is the only way to keep the source close enough to the target, so it might even be the only option to keep the source alive.

I am even more concerned about the breadth of the offence in Clause 1. It states that a CHIS commits an offence if they engage in an intimate sexual relationship with any person they have been deployed to target, a person who is a member of the group they have been deployed to target or, and this is the problem, a person whom they encounter during their deployment. But the Bill does not define what is meant by deployment, nor does it place any restrictions on what would be considered to be the bounds of a deployment. What if an officer is involved in an operation that requires them to be undercover and involved only at certain times of day? What if, outside the times they are embedded in the operation, they are in a genuine intimate relationship? They may have a partner or romantic interest whom they have just started seeing. This might not apply to most undercover operations, but it may very well apply to some. The language in the offence is so broad and loose that it could be taken to mean any person whom the CHIS encounters at any point during the operation, irrespective of whether that person is connected with the operation. I suggest to the noble Baroness that the drafting of the offence in Clause 1 does not live up to scrutiny.

I also take issue with the maximum criminal penalties that the noble Baroness has included. An officer or source found guilty of committing this new offence would be liable in conviction to a sentence of life imprisonment—for forming a relationship with a person in the course of investigating serious criminality. Ultimately, these people put their lives on the line. They deserve our support and our respect, and they deserve Parliament giving them the tools they require to get on with their operations. A Bill such as this would simply hamper their ability to infiltrate and disrupt organised crime groups, terrorist cells and the like, and could put them in greater peril. This is not something I can ever accept and that is why, on this side of the House, we cannot support the Bill.

10:52

[Lord in Waiting/Government Whip (Lord Katz) (Lab)]

My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, for tabling this Bill. As we have seen, it has rightly generated an impassioned debate across the Chamber on the important issues it raises. I share the concerns of all noble Lords over the historic allegations about police undercover operations. Such behaviour, which we have discussed this morning, is appalling and should rightly be condemned. The noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, is right to describe the impact of these events on their victims as life changing, and I completely appreciate the intention of the Bill.

Public trust in the police is important, as the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Newcastle said. I join her in paying tribute to PC Jess Turnbull, who, as she said, paid the ultimate price for serving and protecting us. As the noble and learned Lord, Lord Thomas of Cwmgiedd, said, the reputation of the police is an important part of our discussions. I pay tribute to the noble Baroness, Lady Neuberger—once, and technically still, my rabbi at West London Synagogue—and what she said about their acts that we see daily and the way they protect all communities, particularly, over recent weeks and months, the Jewish community. When we talk about things that harm the reputation of the police, we must do so with great care and deliberation.

As noble Lords know, and as was mentioned many times in the debate, the Undercover Policing Inquiry was established to get to the truth of those events that we heard about and to ensure that lessons are learned for the future. Yesterday, my noble friend Lord Hanson of Flint announced his intention to run a focused public consultation to decide the future of the inquiry. The information gathered from this consultation will inform the next phase, ensuring that any new approach is effective, proportionate, timely and firmly grounded in the needs and priorities of those affected. The Government will, of course, carefully consider the inquiry’s findings and any recommendations in due course.

That said, the current landscape around undercover operatives is much changed. Steps have been taken to address many of the concerns and to help prevent that sort of historical activity from occurring again. This includes enhanced measures that apply to certain law enforcement agencies introduced via the so-called relevant sources order 2013. It provides a specific regime for the authorisation of undercover operatives for the police and certain other law enforcement agencies. Authorisation of such deployments is subject to an enhanced authorisation process—broadly, at assistant chief constable level—and furthermore ensures that deployments lasting over a year are subject to authorisation by a chief constable as well as prior approval by a judicial commissioner.

These enhanced arrangements are complemented by the independent oversight provided by the Investigatory Powers Commissioner, the right honourable Sir Brian Leveson. As noble Lords will be aware, he will soon be joining us in your Lordships’ House, and I congratulate him on his appointment. I am sure he will bring much clarity and insight to our future debates. The commissioner provides robust independent oversight of CHIS powers and has a mandate to audit and inspect compliance by public authorities. Where issues are identified, Sir Brian takes effective action, and public authorities exercising these powers must take remedial steps in response to his findings. Furthermore, the Investigatory Powers Tribunal provides an independent right of redress for anyone who believes they have been subject to unlawful activity by a public authority using covert investigatory techniques.

I have spoken thus far about undercover operatives. However, under the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000, a covert human intelligence source—I apologise for using the acronym earlier without expanding it—is defined in such a way that it also includes members of the public tasked with gathering intelligence as informants, who I will refer to henceforth as informant CHIS.

As the noble Baroness, Lady Manningham-Buller, so eloquently set out—it is very good to see her back in her place—it is unclear whether the Bill is intended to include both undercover operatives and informant CHIS. Informant CHIS use their real identities and existing relationships to obtain information that is passed back to their handlers, generally for intelligence rather than evidential purposes. Their status as an informant CHIS should remain a secret and may not be revealed even to those closest to them, such as a life partner. Therefore, if this Bill extends to informant CHIS, many such individuals may be captured by the Clause 1 offence by virtue of having an existing relationship where no deceit as to their real identity or intentions is involved.

CHIS play a vital role in preventing, detecting and safeguarding the public from some of the most significant threats we face. We should be under no illusion that they do so at considerable personal risk to themselves, as the noble Lord, Lord Davies of Gower, set out. The Bill, while well intentioned, will unintentionally increase significantly both the threats to the public and the risks to those acting as sources.

There is an issue around the clarity on sexual offences, which the noble and learned Lords, Lord Garnier and Lord Thomas of Cwmgiedd, referred to. The Clause 1 offence is tied to Section 78 of the Sexual Offences Act 2003, which does not specifically define intimate sexual activity and includes reference to “any other activity” considered by a reasonable person to be of a sexual nature. I mention this because the use of online undercover operatives can be a particularly effective tool in the identification and prosecution of those engaged in online child sexual exploitation. As part of that, it may be necessary for undercover operatives to communicate with those suspected of engaging in such vile behaviour. This leaves open the prospect of any communications with subjects of interest which are considered by the recipient to be of a sexual nature to be caught by the Clause 1 offence. The result of this would be a life sentence for the online undercover operative and, if taken with the provision of Clause 6(6), his or her name and marital and family status being disclosed to a paedophile as part of any proceedings.

Let me give noble Lords a case study to illustrate the potential harm the Bill could cause to vital undercover policing operations. Over a two-year period from 2023, Kurt Devoy-Foster attempted to engage in sexual communication online with girls aged between 12 and 15 years old. However, they were not children; they were undercover police officers. Devoy-Foster was ultimately charged with attempting to engage in sexual communication with a child, attempting to cause or incite a child to engage in sexual activity and failing to comply with his notification requirements. He was jailed for seven years and six months and made subject to an indefinite sexual harm prevention order. The Bill would cause a significant impact to the work that undercover operatives are able to undertake in scenarios such as this.

If your Lordships will indulge me I will give a further example, which is close to my heart and, I suggest, all our hearts—perhaps particularly that of the noble Baroness, Lady Neuberger. Three individuals were recently convicted in connection with a foiled terrorist plot intended to target the Jewish community in Greater Manchester. In 2023, Walid Saadaoui came into online contact with a man he believed shared extremist views like his own. However, unbeknown to him, he was in contact with an undercover police officer. During these discussions, plans were made to import firearms from abroad which could be used in an attack. The individuals involved are serving police sentences.

I hope these examples show how crucial the CHIS capability can be, and what the impact would be of creating a checklist to test undercover officers and CHIS against. If this undercover operation had not been stopped, a terrible terrorist act may have ensued. The Bill would create a means for some of the most sophisticated actors to identify those who may be acting against them by, as I said, effectively creating a checklist to test suspected CHIS against.

I do not say this lightly, but, given the offences in scope of the Bill, such as those related to sexual conduct, this would in all likelihood be inadvertently responsible for creating a deeply troubling method of vetting by the most violent criminal groups. Those seeking to join such groups will likely be instructed to engage in profoundly immoral behaviour to prove themselves, or face significant repercussions, which may include serious injury or death. For those not acting on behalf of the state who are seeking to join such criminal groups, this increases the likelihood of being ordered to inflict sexual harm on innocent members of the public.

In contrast, for undercover operatives, published guidance, which noble Lords referred to, states that it is never acceptable for them to have an intimate sexual relationship with those they are deployed to infiltrate and target, or encounter during their deployment. However, that is caveated, for good reason, where they perceive an immediate threat to themselves or others, in which case such activity must be kept to the minimum conduct necessary to mitigate the threat. Any such conduct must immediately be reported and steps taken to investigate and establish the facts.

I turn briefly to some questions the noble Baroness, Lady Berridge, asked about the inquiry and juvenile CHISs. Juvenile CHISs are used only in exceptional circumstances; I believe that in 2024, there were only four out of around 1,100 and none under the age of 16, and enhanced safeguards are in place. The duty of care that a public authority has towards a juvenile CHIS does not end when their authorisation or deployment ends.

The noble Baroness asked about the ISC, which of course already plays a significant role in the assurance, accountability and oversight of MI5 on behalf of Parliament. On the consultation, no outcome, such as ending the inquiry, is pre-judged, and it depends on the response received. I hope that that addresses the questions that the noble Baroness raised. I am aware that there were a few, but I will of course reflect on Hansard and I undertake to write to her if necessary, and that of course goes for all contributions from noble Lords in today’s debate.

The Bill would result in CHIS capability being diminished and vital intelligence and investigative leads being lost. At the same time, the public would be less safe from the most serious threats we face. It is for these reasons that I find the Bill troubling, and it is likely that the Government will seek to block it when it reaches the other place.

11:03

[Baroness Hamwee (LD)]

My Lords, I am very grateful to all noble Lords who have taken part in this debate. An objective of a Private Member’s Bill is to get the Government to think again about the issue, not about the words used by amateurs like me. [Laughter.] I am not sure how to take that laugh. I hope that, in that spirit, the Government will consider the substance of what has been said today. We are still awaiting the outcome of the inquiry, but that does not mean that the issue will go away; nor does the fact that it has been referred to in historical terms mean that it should not be addressed. It should be dealt with by the Government, and I would be very happy if they produced a Bill to do so; or, as a second option, to deal with what has so neatly been referred to as “deeply unsatisfactory” guidance on the part of the College of Policing. It is clear that there is scope to improve that, as the noble and learned Lord said. For me, this has always been an ethical issue, to which the law should respond—ethical before legal.

I have one other specific point. I am quite deliberately not referring to noble Lords individually, because otherwise people feel that they have been left out, and I do not want to take up the time of the House by running through everyone. Some of the wording to which the noble Lord, Lord Davies, referred was taken directly from the College of Policing guidance, in particular the words encountered during deployment.

I have at least the Minister’s encouragement that the Government will not block the Bill going to Committee in this House. There will be opportunities to deal with matters of definition and interpretation of existing legislation, and I appreciate the care that noble Lords have taken to address those issues. Therefore, without taking more of the House’s time—I am aware of the business to come—I beg to move.

Bill read a second time and committed to a Committee of the Whole House.

Genocide Determination Bill [HL]

2nd reading
Friday 17th July 2026 Lords Chamber

Second Reading

11:07

Moved by

[Lord Alton of Liverpool]

That the Bill be now read a second time.

[Baroness in Waiting/Government Whip (Baroness Curran) (Lab)]

My Lords, before we begin this debate, I remind the House that the advisory speaking time is strictly four minutes for Back-Bench contributions.

[Lord Alton of Liverpool (CB)]

My Lords, on this politically auspicious day, as we mark the appointment of Andy Burnham Member of Parliament as the new leader of the Labour Party, we know that we have a parliamentarian who is passionately committed to the principle of public accountability and justice. It is serendipitous, perhaps providential, that a Bill which seeks to entrench both accountability and justice for genocide—the crime above all crimes—should receive its Second Reading in this House today, and I thank all noble Lords from all Benches who are participating.

Today is also International Criminal Justice Day, which marks the anniversary of the adoption of the Rome statute on 17 July 1998—the founding treaty of the International Criminal Court, which seeks to protect people from genocide, crimes against humanity, war crimes and the crime of aggression. What better day, then, to have the Second Reading of the Genocide Determination Bill, which manifests all these values and commitments to victims and survivors, to justice and peace? Noble Lords should be clear that the Bill is not actor or territory specific; it is about the crime above all crimes and our willingness to make a reality of the intentions of the 1948 convention on the crime of genocide.

Only a few weeks ago, with the noble Baroness, Lady Kennedy of The Shaws, we had a constructive and helpful meeting with the Attorney-General, the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hermer, and he told us that genocide is the “apex crime”. There is no surprise there.

Over the years, whether in this House or the other place, I have raised the appalling genocides, crimes against humanity, that have occurred in too many parts of the world. As a young MP in the House of Commons, I raised the appalling genocide of Pol Pot against the Cambodians, and subsequently the atrocities in Darfur, western China, Burma, northern Iraq and elsewhere, all of which are documented in a book which I published with Dr Ewelina Ochab of the International Bar Association and the Coalition for Genocide Response, of which I am a patron. A few weeks ago, I also raised the dire situation of women and girls in Gaza.

There is no shortage of suffering globally. We need, however, to be very careful about the words we use, how we use them and the actions which must follow. So why does the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hermer, describe it as the “apex crime” and why is our response to this crime above all others so inadequate? The word “genocide”, of course, was coined by the Jewish lawyer Raphael Lemkin, over 40 of whose family had perished in the Holocaust. It is a hybrid word combining the ancient Greek word “genos”, meaning race or tribe or family, and the Latin suffix “cide”, meaning killing. It is a specific word with a specific meaning and is not to be used as a slogan. Genocide is an identity-based crime and describes the systematic destruction of a national, ethnic, racial or religious group. It is the cutting of the human family.

We have heard it being used for situations globally, but genocide has a strict legal definition, and we always need to go back to it. Genocide and the 1948 convention which bears its name require us to show not only the underlying and prohibited acts, and I spell them out, of killing members of the group, causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group, deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction, in whole or in part, imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group or forcibly transferring children of the group to another group. To become genocide, these acts must be directed against one of the protected groups, whether racial, national, ethnic or religious, and this with specific intent to destroy the group, in whole or in part. Lemkin’s definition of genocide, as contained in Article II of the convention, was meant to establish genocide as what the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hermer, called the “apex crime”, the crime above all crimes, with the hope that, after the Holocaust, we would never witness anything of that sort again.

However, defining genocide did not stop such atrocities being perpetrated. More importantly, the convention is not only about defining what genocide is; it imposes duties on the signatories, of which we are one. Let us disassemble, if we may, the neglected duties. There is prevention. While not explicitly explained in the convention, it was later expanded and explained by the International Court of Justice. It is a duty to prevent and—I spell out its words—for states

“to employ all means reasonably available to them, so as to prevent genocide so far as possible”.

The trigger for this duty is when the state learns or should normally have learned of the serious risk of genocide.

As for protection, consider the plight of women and girls in Sudan, the world’s worst humanitarian catastrophe. In a report I published for the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Sudan in April 2023, we specifically warned of the danger of a new genocide in Darfur. Of course, that has happened in El Fasher. We did not act on the warnings and the requirement to protect—not in relation to that genocide and not in relation to the genocide two decades ago. In Darfur, the first ever arrest warrant was issued by the ICC, but 200,000 to 300,000 lives were claimed, 2 million people were displaced and the warnings had fallen, then and again 20 years later, on deaf ears. There are no blue helmets and no protection for the civilian population. It is as if, in the grand scheme of things, these African lives do not matter.

As for punishing perpetrators, we are equally deficient. Let us be crystal clear: the impunity for the genocide two decades ago in Darfur has a direct link with the genocide that is being perpetrated before our very eyes now. So duties to predict, prevent, protect and punish at the moment are not worth the paper on which they are written.

I first introduced the Genocide Determination Bill only a few months after I laid amendments here and with colleagues in another place following a unanimous vote that had determined that the atrocities committed by ISIS against Yazidis, Christians and other minorities in northern Iraq and Syria was a genocide. It was the first time that the House of Commons had made such a determination. But, despite the calls from across the political spectrum for genocide determination and action to stop those atrocities, to prevent further atrocities, to protect the populations at risk and to avert the risk that the communities would be annihilated, the Foreign Office refused to accept the determination made in another place, arguing that such a determination could be made only by an international judicial body or a competent court, despite knowing only too well that there was no international judicial body that was going to look into those crimes committed by ISIS in Syria or Iraq. The Government also made it clear that they were not willing to move on that position.

That made me consider what would need to happen to implement the Government’s declared policy that only a court can decide and how we could create a route into our own courts to make that happen. If indeed the Government wanted court determination, my question was: could our domestic courts make such a determination? As it stood at the time, the only legislation pertaining to genocide was the International Criminal Court Act 2001, legislating and domesticating the Rome statute of the ICC. It enables our court to prosecute individuals for their involvement in international crimes such as genocide, but it equips domestic courts with only very narrow jurisdiction over international crimes: namely, active personality jurisdiction, which means that the alleged perpetrators must be British citizens or residents to fall within the purview of the legislation.

In the case of the Yazidis, it is very significant that the Foreign Office has changed its position and has said that a genocide is under way, and has done so because a court in Germany has declared it to be a genocide. While I welcome that, why is it that we are closing off a route to our own English High Court and to the Court of Session in Scotland: courts that would be more than competent to deal with this matter here? It was my noble and learned friend Lord Hope of Craighead who said that the 1948 convention was no longer fit for purpose—his words. He gave us his valuable expertise and help in drafting the original Bill, and I have talked this Bill through with him. I hope we will not hear from the Government that this is not practical or doable when such an illustrious Member of your Lordships’ House is one of the many who have given it support.

Instead of the cynical merry-go-round that we have at the moment, we need to establish an independent British judicial process to sift the evidence and make a preliminary finding triggering the provisions of the convention. If this is the apex crime, genocide has a high burden of proof, and rightly so. It is not a term to be thrown around lightly or to be misused. My Bill seeks to give force to the hopes of Raphael Lemkin and of Winston Churchill, who said that there was not a word in our language capable of describing the monstrosities which had occurred in the Holocaust. There were genuine attempts in the post-war period to address those questions. We need to return to those issues now and do something practical about it. I commend this Bill, which enjoys all-party support, to the House, and I beg to move.

11:18

[Lord Wills (Lab)]

My Lords, it is a privilege to follow and support my friend, the noble Lord, Lord Alton. Although he sits in a different part of the House, I regard him as a friend, and I am very glad to have this opportunity to pay tribute to the tireless way that he has campaigned year after year on this critical issue. He has already outlined how his Bill will work, its purpose and its merits far better than I can, so I will try not to rehearse the points that he has made.

However, I do want to say why this Bill is so important. At first glance, it may seem like a limited measure tackling anomaly in process, but it speaks fundamentally to what sort of country we are and how far we are prepared to prioritise abiding moral imperatives over perceived geopolitical interests. These need not always be in conflict, of course, and even when they might be, it is worth remembering the immortal words of a past Member of your Lordships’ House, Lord Palmerston:

“We have no eternal allies, and we have no perpetual enemies”.


Geopolitical interests can be transitory and subjectively defined, but our eternal and perpetual interests, to use Lord Palmerston’s words, must include those moral imperatives that this Bill pursues. As we have heard already from the noble Lord, it is not focused on a specific case or situation but seeks to ensure access to justice for victims and survivors of genocide who otherwise would not have such access.

The Joint Committee on Human Rights has argued that there are limitations on what international courts can do to secure such justice, and the noble Lord has outlined them. For example, in relation to the genocide perpetrated by ISIS against the Yazidi people, neither Iraq nor Syria, where the genocide took place, is a party to the Rome statute, the treaty establishing the ICC. The ICC would therefore need the UN Security Council to refer the situation in Iraq and Syria to it, but no such referral has been made. Such a draft resolution in the case of Syria has been blocked in the Security Council, particularly because of vetoes by Russia and China, which appear to derive from their political interests in that region.

Sadly, this is not the only example of perceived geopolitical interests overriding action against genocide. Recently, the human rights academic Nathaniel Raymond—also mentioned by the noble Lord—alleged that the UK received more than two dozen briefings that the Rapid Support Forces in Sudan were preparing an assault on the city of El Fasher. Mass atrocities were highly likely. The UK was well placed, as a member of the UN Security Council, to galvanise international action, yet it did not escalate its response sufficiently—apparently because it prioritised its strategic relationship with the United Arab Emirates, a prominent backer of a rapid support force, over stronger action to prevent the anticipated atrocities in El Fasher.

Tragically, those were realised. Yet our Government continue to insist that action against those perpetrating genocide, or creating the risk of genocide, can be taken only by such international courts and competent courts. As a result, there has not been a single prosecution in this country of ISIS members for the crimes of genocide perpetrated against the Yazidi people, despite some estimates suggesting that there could be hundreds living in this country who should be prosecuted for such international crimes. China has been accused of dreadful atrocities in recent years against the Uyghur people and of systematic policies aimed at eradicating the indigenous Tibetan language, religion and cultural identity, yet the issue of genocide in the country has still not been adjudicated.

When US forces liberated the Buchenwald concentration camp in April 1945, handmade signs displayed by the prisoners read “never again”. Sadly, that did not turn out to be the case. Genocide has been perpetrated again and again. The Government’s policy on genocide aims to protect and preserve the rights of people at risk of genocide and those who have suffered from it. However, this needs to be delivered. This Bill does that, and that is why I support it.

11:23

[Lord Garnier (Con)]

My Lords, as a general rule, I support most of the ideas the noble Lord, Lord Alton, brings to your Lordships’ House, as he is motivated by a genuine desire to improve the state of the world and those who live in it. I join the noble Lord, Lord Wills, in the tributes he paid to the noble Lord, not least because I share with the noble Lord, Lord Alton, a desire to see China—a country which can claim a long and civilised history, and which has brought great intellectual, artistic, scientific and many other benefits to us all—behave in the 21st century in a way that matches the best traditions of that great nation. However, there are far too many contemporary examples of Chinese government conduct towards their own citizens that rightly attract international criticism and condemnation—for example, what they are doing to the Uyghur people, Christians, free thinkers and supporters of freedom of assembly and expression, and to the man whose name should never be forgotten in this Parliament or any other democratic assembly: Jimmy Lai.

However, I query what practical effect this Bill would have on, say, China. My hunch—and it is only a hunch—is that the court would be reluctant to engage in an essentially political question, or at least, one with huge non-legal implications over which it has no control. Unlike Members of Parliament, judges do not table Early Day Motions. They do not initiate 10-minute rule Bills or Adjournment debates in the other place or in Westminster Hall. Although courts sometimes make findings of fact in the absence of contested evidence, I wonder how a court would look at evidence of, say, the alleged killing or mass incarceration of members of an ethnic group by the Chinese Government when we know that China, for good or ill, asserts its innocence of such crimes and the court is unlikely to have received direct evidence of guilt.

Arbitrating political arguments, as opposed to defining the hard facts and legal consequences of a given set of facts, would not be a welcome task for the court. Even if a United Kingdom court made a preliminary determination of a case of genocide, or that there existed a serious risk of genocide in, for example, the case of the Uyghurs, the relevant Secretary of State—for all sorts of good, bad and indifferent trade, political and diplomatic reasons—will have to ask whether, all things considered, it is in our national interest to make a reference under Clause 3 of the Bill. It does not take much imagination to work out what the answer is likely to be. The court will have been used to make a point over which it had no control and which it could not enforce. In reality, the court will have no power over the Secretary of State and even less over the international courts or bodies set out in Clause 3.

To take another regime, the military junta in Myanmar deserves nothing but vilification for what it has done to the Rohingya population. The Gambia brought a case to the International Court of Justice in November 2019, alleging that state-sponsored atrocities in 2017 which forced over 700,000 Rohingya to flee to Bangladesh were committed with genocidal intent. In 2020, the ICJ unanimously ordered Myanmar to take provisional measures to prevent genocidal acts against the Rohingya and to preserve evidence. As far as I can tell, Myanmar has also been accused by rights groups of violating those orders, and it is highly unlikely that they have paid any attention to them at all. During hearings in January, the Gambia presented evidence, including testimony from Rohingya survivors, to demonstrate Myanmar’s genocidal policies. Of course, the Myanmar Government denied these allegations, arguing that the 2017 operations were legitimate counterterrorism measures rather than genocide. Eleven countries, beyond the Gambia, including the United Kingdom, have intervened in those proceedings against Myanmar. So far, so good—and all achieved, if anything has been, without the enactment of this Bill.

At the risk of being unhelpful or jumping on the cynical merry-go-round the noble Lord referred to a moment ago, neither China, Myanmar or any other possible candidate state or Government for censure will change their behaviour if this Bill becomes an Act. We need determined diplomatic, bilateral, internationally organised movement of power. What will affect China and Myanmar is sanctions, is trade being denied. The noble Lord referred to Lord Palmerston. He sent battleships to Piraeus and bombarded that city because one of our citizens had been treated in a disobliging way by the Greeks. We must get real about this. While I entirely accept what the noble Lord is trying to achieve—and yes, I can see the time—this is probably not the best way to do it.

11:29

[The Lord Bishop of Newcastle]

My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Alton of Liverpool, for introducing this Bill, which I support, and for his unwavering commitment over many years to the prevention of genocide, the protection of persecuted communities and the advancement of human rights.

At the heart of the Bill lies a simple yet profound principle that every human life possesses equal and inherent worth. There is a clear inconsistency in our present arrangements. Successive Governments have rightly maintained that genocide is a matter for a competent court. However, in practice, the international courts capable of making such determinations are not always able to do so because of jurisdictional limitations or political deadlock. The result is that credible allegations of the gravest crime recognised in international law may never receive judicial determination. The noble Lord, Lord Wills, made this point compellingly in his speech.

There are legitimate questions about how the mechanism at the heart of this Bill will operate and about its relationship with foreign policy, as my friend the noble and learned Lord, Lord Garnier, pointed out in his speech. Those are proper matters for Committee, but they do not undermine the principle behind the Bill. Rather, they challenge us to ensure that any mechanism is proportionate, carefully designed and properly resourced.

I have seen the importance of these principles close to home. My great-uncle, Mandy Morris, was a Holocaust survivor who, as a young boy, came to Yorkshire as a refugee with his family and rebuilt his life. In Newcastle, more recently, I have had the privilege of working alongside Smajo Bešo, a survivor of the Bosnian genocide, who found refuge in the United Kingdom and has dedicated his life to education and remembrance. Most recently I attended a Bosnian Genocide Educational Trust event at Newcastle Civic Centre, which was organised and led by Smajo. What struck me most was the response of the young people who took part. They expressed their reflections on the subject through art and poetry, and their work demonstrated remarkable empathy and compassion. They understood that behind every legal definition are individuals, families and communities whose lives have been for ever changed.

Recognition cannot undo the past, and it cannot restore those who have been lost or erase the suffering endured by survivors, but truth and justice matter. A willingness to examine credible evidence through an independent legal process affirms the dignity of victims and strengthens our resolve that such crimes should never be repeated. The Bill is ultimately an expression of confidence in the rule of law. It simply asks whether, where there is credible evidence of the gravest crime recognised in international law, there should be a lawful and independent means by which that evidence can be examined and in a timely manner. In that regard, I have a question for the Minister: what mechanisms do the Government believe are sufficient to ensure timely and independent identification of the risk of genocide? The Bill also gives an opportunity to strengthen our leadership in the area of foreign policy.

As we debate this legislation, I think again of those young people in Newcastle. In many ways, the young people in Newcastle captured the ethical foundation of this Bill better than any legal text could. They understood that every life has equal worth and that indifference is never an acceptable response to human suffering. I therefore support the Bill and look forward to its careful scrutiny in Committee.

11:32

[Baroness Sugg (Con)]

My Lords, in previous debates on atrocity crimes, I have said that we cannot continue to look away when there is credible evidence of genocide. The Bill before us today is an opportunity to address this challenge, and I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Alton, for his continued efforts to find a way to formally determine genocide. His introduction clearly set out why that is needed.

The House of Lords Library briefing sets out the central problem with clarity. For decades, successive Governments have relied on the position that determinations of genocide should be made by competent courts, rather than by Governments or non-judicial bodies. Yet despite this position’s longevity, no Government have ever introduced legislation to give effect to it. As a result, when credible evidence of genocide emerges, British courts have no mechanism to assess it.

We have a policy that says, “Leave it to the courts”, but no legal pathway for our courts to act. As a Minister at the FCDO, I found this position inconsistent and difficult to defend, and I have supported the noble Lord, Lord Alton, in his earlier efforts aimed at creating a mechanism for genocide determination linked to trade agreements. The Bill provides us with an opportunity to ensure that the UK does not turn away when credible evidence of atrocity crimes is presented. As the noble Lord, Lord Alton, has said, the Bill will ensure that the UK Government act quickly on their existing obligations under the genocide convention, which legally binds signatories to prevent mass atrocities the moment a serious risk is recognised.

In earlier debates I have emphasised the importance of a survivor centred approach. This Bill embodies that principle. It empowers victims and survivors to seek a preliminary determination of genocide or serious risk of genocide from our own High Court or equivalent courts in Scotland and Northern Ireland. It gives those targeted by atrocity crimes a route to be heard in a British court. Once a determination is made, the Secretary of State must act. That action—referring the situation to the International Criminal Court, the International Court of Justice or other bodies—is not an expansion of government power. It is simply the implementation of our existing duties under the genocide convention: the duty to prevent and the duty to punish.

There may well be a concern that our judicial system is not structured to deal with cases of this nature, but if the Government wish to maintain their long standing policy of leaving genocide determinations to competent courts then, recognising the issues with the international courts that have been set out, they must introduce legislation that allows British courts to fulfil that role or provide any alternative. Otherwise, “Never again” is honoured only in rhetoric and never in practice.

Inaction empowers perpetrators. It signals that the United Kingdom is unable or unwilling to recognise genocide even when the evidence is overwhelming. It leaves victims without recourse and it leaves our international obligations unfulfilled. This Bill offers a principled, judicial, survivor centred mechanism that aligns with the Government’s own stated policy and with our obligations under international law. If we are serious about preventing genocide, we must be serious about recognising it.

11:35

[Baroness D'Souza (CB)]

My Lords, if, as the Government constantly assert, only a court ruling can determine acts of genocide, the courts must have the powers to carry out this function. At present, they do not. This renders the 1948 genocide convention no longer fit for purpose, and the commitment, following the Holocaust, to “Never again” becomes almost meaningless, as we have heard. This modest Bill seeks to enable any person or representative organisation affected by genocidal actions to apply to the UK courts to decide on whether genocide has taken, is taking, or is likely to take place. In so doing, a response from the Government is required and the relevant Minister would be obliged, within time limits, to refer the case to the appropriate international bodies—the International Court of Justice, the International Criminal Court or other international bodies.

The arguments for such powers have been well rehearsed over many years, and equally so too have the arguments against. Both sides were expressed in some detail in the course of the atrocity crimes debate in June in this Chamber. The arguments that this focused Bill is urgently needed can be in no doubt. The evidence lies in the numerous credible reports on past acts of genocide and on current threats of genocidal action.

A recent book, Genocide in Gaza, by the world-renowned Israeli scholar, Avi Shlaim, sets out in forensic legal details the actions—which he states are the absolute antithesis of Jewish values—perpetrated by the Netanyahu Government between 2023 and 2024 in Gaza in response to the murder of Israelis on 7 October 2023. Shlaim describes the Netanyahu policy as one of deliberate killing or persecution intended to partially or wholly destroy the people of Gaza. It is difficult to refute his conclusions of genocidal intent and actions on the part of the Israeli Government.

The independent International Commission of Inquiry, following the case brought before the ICJ in 2024 by South Africa into Israel’s conduct in Gaza, cites intentionally directed attacks on civilians, of whom many were women and children; forcible transfer of civilian populations; destruction of water and electricity infrastructure, which is indispensable for survival; starvation as a method of warfare; and wilfully impeding relief supplies. These actions more than fulfil the criteria for genocide as set out in the 1948 convention.

In April 2016, the House of Commons unanimously recognised the atrocities committed by ISIL against the Yazidis and other religious minorities in 2014 as genocide. At first, the Government declined to act due to the lack of formal determination by the courts, itself guaranteed by absence of both legal and procedural mechanisms to lodge a case. This underlined the disconnect between the policy of reliance on a competent court, where no court possessed the jurisdiction to make such a determination.

The UK continues to supply the Israeli Government with arms and political support and has refrained from naming the atrocities in Gaza as genocidal. Meanwhile, some UK members of ISIL involved in the Yazidi slaughter remain free and unencumbered by criminal charges. The UK is failing in its international obligations under the genocide convention to prevent and to punish genocide. In his response to the atrocities debate, the Minister, the noble Lord, Lord Collins, stated that although the Government agreed with the underlying objectives of the Bill, they did not support the means proposed. It is to be hoped that this Bill will be allowed to reach its final stages, but if not, that the Government will instead publish their own Bill to meet the underlying objective, and in so doing meet their international obligations.

11:40

[Baroness Kennedy of The Shaws (Lab)]

My Lords, it always gives me pleasure to be able to support my friend, the noble Lord, Lord Alton. He and I have worked extensively over many years, and I pay tribute to him, as others have. He comes to us again with this Bill, which aims to establish a formal legal mechanism to allow British courts to make preliminary determinations on whether genocide is occurring or is at risk of occurring. When we signed the Genocide Act we not only agreed to condemn genocide and bring perpetrators to justice but committed to preventing genocide. That is one of the major things about this. Prevention means monitoring for indicators, such as dehumanising language used by politicians with an undercurrent threat of annihilation, human rights abuses of minorities or of neighbouring peoples, dispossessing people of their homes and lands, the displacement of people, making conditions of life so intolerable that people are forced into exile, sexual violence against despised groups and all those signs of ethnic cleansing. We are seeing these things happening in many conflicts around the world. There were more than 60 conflicts ongoing at the last count.

I want to ask a number of questions of the Government about why there might be opposition to the Bill. I smile at my learned friend, the noble and learned Lord, Lord Garnier. Saying no and being a naysayer are the steps that lead to accountability. These are the things we need to do if we want to have a just world. We must not nod our head and say, “It’s not going to work”, or “Who is going to listen? Are the Chinese going to listen?” I have worked very hard on the Uyghur issue. I know how hard it is, but we keep on keeping on.

It is easy when we can identify genocide, as we have in China, Myanmar and the Congo, and are currently doing in Sudan, but what do we do when a friendly state goes rogue? There is plenty of evidence of the UAE arming the RSF in Sudan and we do not say a peep about it. What about Israel, which has fallen into the hands of an extreme right-wing Government who are committing serious crimes against people? There has been a lot of silence in this House about that—a sort of omertà where everyone is frightened of being accused of being an antisemite when we are calling out things that we happily call out in other places.

I particularly want to talk about the Yazidis. The noble Lord, Lord Alton, and I met the war crimes unit of the Metropolitan Police. It was very interesting and it made me wonder. Will the Minister say what kind of training the Met Police unit is getting? Does it meet sufficiently the Foreign Office and the atrocity unit that certainly used to exist within the Foreign Office? I hope it continues to do so.

This country saw quite a number of young people going off to ISIL, the Islamist terrorist organisation. Some returned. We know that several hundred did. Most of them have been prosecuted and jailed, but they were prosecuted for membership of an international terrorist organisation. The horrors of ISIL were the slaughter of many hundreds of Yazidi men and boys and the enslavement of women and girls, the constant and repeated rapes that they experienced, their impregnation, the way in which they have suffered the consequences, the trauma of that and how ongoing it is. Yet we asked the war crimes unit whether it ever asked any of those who returned, “What were your domestic circumstances there? Did you have a wife? Did you have a second wife?”, but I am not sure it did. I want to know what kind of training is going on about genocidal behaviours. Did we ever find out how it was possible for Germany, along with Amal Clooney, to charge and convict people of genocidal crimes, and what makes the difference in its law?

I recommend the Bill to the House. It will make a change. It will be another brick in the wall that we are building for justice.

11:44

[Baroness Helic (Con)]

My Lords, last week marked the 31st anniversary of the genocide in Srebrenica, where 8,372 Bosniak men and boys were systematically murdered in what the United Nations had declared a safe haven. Their wives, daughters and sisters were subjected to rape and expulsion as part of a calculated campaign of ethnic cleansing. In March 1995, Radovan Karadžić, president of the self-declared Republika Srpska, issued directive 7, ordering the creation of, in his words,

“an unbearable situation of total insecurity with no hope of further survival … for the inhabitants of Srebrenica”.

Four months later, those words were translated to ethnically motivated mass slaughter. In 2007, the International Court of Justice confirmed that Srebrenica was genocide. Srebrenica did not occur because the world lacked information. Karadzic’s interventions were set out in plain terms. The warning signs were unmistakable. UN peacekeepers were in Srebrenica. Diplomatic cables were incoming. The failure was not of knowledge but of political will.

The lessons have still not been learned. Only two days ago, a serving Serbian Government Minister declared that if she had been Slobodan Milošević, she would have ethnically cleansed Kosovo in 1998. Three decades after Srebrenica, language that seeks to justify ethnic cleansing is still being voiced from public office. That should alarm us all. We have since witnessed Daesh’s attempt to destroy the Yazidis and the ethnic cleansing of the Rohingya, and today there are grave reports of mass killings in Gaza and Sudan.

Whatever conclusion courts ultimately reach, these crises expose the same fundamental weakness: that legal processes move more slowly than the atrocities they are intended to address. This is why the Bill introduced by the noble Lord, Lord Alton, matters. It does not ask Ministers or politicians to determine whether genocide has occurred but gives practical effect to the Government’s long-standing position that genocide is a matter for competent courts by providing timely judicial mechanisms through which evidence can be assessed while there is still time to prevent further atrocities.

International courts can take years, sometimes decades, to reach their conclusions. By then, the victims are dead, communities are destroyed and the opportunity for prevention has long passed. This Bill may not prevent genocide, nor can it overcome the geopolitical divisions that so often paralyse the international community, but it would strengthen the United Kingdom’s authority and its ability to fulfil its obligation under Article I of the genocide convention, not merely to punish genocide after the event but to try to prevent it before it reaches its murderous conclusion.

I have three questions for the Minister. First, will the Government make unequivocally clear that the United Kingdom stands firmly behind the International Criminal Court, its independence and its officials in the face of the threats now being directed against it? Secondly, what urgent steps are being taken to prevent the atrocities feared in El Obeid becoming another El Fasher? Thirdly, what measures are being taken to ensure that the United Kingdom does not become complicit, directly or indirectly, in the atrocities that may ultimately be found to constitute genocide in Gaza and Sudan?

History’s greatest failures have seldom resulted from ignorance. More often, they have resulted from a failure to act on what was already known. Srebrenica stands as a permanent reminder of the cost of that failure. The Bill seeks, in a modest but important way, to ensure that we do not repeat it.

11:48

[Lord Griffiths of Burry Port (Lab)]

My Lords, I add my tribute to the noble Lord, Lord Alton, for keeping matters of this kind before us and demanding that we give them our attention. I am most grateful.

In a briefing paper that I was very impressed by, I saw a formula showing the atrocities that have existed in Iraq, Sudan, China, Ethiopia, Tigray and Myanmar. At the end of each section, it said:

“If, as stipulated in Clause 1 of the Genocide Determination Bill, a determination of genocide was made, Clause 3 actions could include”—


and then it laid out those possible actions.

I come at the Bill and this discussion from the perspective of the end of Claude 3—I am sorry, Clause 3. There must be somebody here named Claude who I keep on subconsciously thinking about. A month ago, in Stockholm, with the Syriac Eastern Orthodox congregation, I laid a wreath at the monument for the victims of the Armenian genocide early in the 20th century. My son-in-law is Cambodian. His parents were drafted forcibly into Pol Pot’s army and their lives completely wrecked, and he was raised in a Buddhist monastery. I have sensed in Cambodia, on my regular visits, the awful things that happened there. I was in Bosnia in 2010, and I was with the families of people who were still crying uncontrollably at the aftermath of what had happened—under Dutch protection, so they thought—with the killing of those boys and men. There was slaughter in East Timor, and I have met Timorese people too. I was at the plebiscite that brought Eritrea into existence in 1993 and had occasion to meet people who for 30 years had been subject to the depredations and warmongering of nearby Ethiopia. In Haiti—I need not rehearse this too much; people will have heard me speak on Haiti many times—after a military junta forced a democratically elected President and Government out, the United Nations proved totally incapable of handling the ensuing chaos. I have performed the marriage of a young woman who was the only survivor of her whole community who were eradicated in Kigali.

I have got too close personally to some of the victims in these manifold places where atrocities occur for me to feel that I can keep any distance from it at all. Consequently, I have to ask this critical question: why are those mechanisms that exist—in the Security Council, the International Court of Justice, the International Criminal Court and so on—so ineffective at bringing charges in order to bring these things to light and pass judgment on them? Some of these cases have been waiting for ever while some, as in Myanmar, have been totally overlooked, marginalised and forgotten about—they hope. So my attention is focused on Clause 3 and the injustices that occur, not by missing a determination—let others talk about that—but by waiting for justice.

11:52

[Baroness Uddin (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, it is a pleasure to salute and thank my friend, the noble Lord, Lord Alton of Liverpool, for allowing us to consider this Bill. The noble Lord has spent a decade fighting for the Bill and far longer refusing to let the House look away from the Yazidis of Sinjar, from Tigray or from Darfur. While sometimes I do not agree with some of his analysis, I have long admired his consistent courage and persistence. He has taught us that recognition without consequences and action is a dangerous inertia. That lesson challenges us to examine atrocities regardless of where they are happening when we find it too difficult to name the many counts of barbaric inhumanity that we are witnessing.

Genocide does not hide; it broadcasts itself in the desecration of Sudan, the mass graves of El Fasher, the Rohingyas of Myanmar, the famine and mass slaughter of Palestinians in Gaza and the murderous cleansing of the West Bank and Lebanon. The human cry for survival has so often been unheeded in this Chamber and the other place, so I am very grateful to the noble Lord.

We cannot say we did not know, for it lays dormant in our conscience and in the discretion of our will to protect some and not others. We have selectively chosen to voice atrocities but be silent on others as innocent families and communities remain buried under rubble and are dying today while we deliberate. Which human beings deserve our attention politically and financially, and for whom do we choose to prevent access to food, electricity and water? If the Bill were supported and passed, it could indisputably compel our Government to meet their obligations under the UN genocide convention. However, would what I have described meet the test of any Government for reference to the courts for a preliminary determination on genocide? Sadly, we have seen that that has not been the case.

I am therefore concerned about the context in which our Government would refer matters to a preliminary determination, given the political distinction that they have already applied to the wars in Gaza and Ukraine, for example. For decades, our Government have hidden behind the sentiment of leaving it to the courts rather than it being a treaty obligation—a neglectful policy repeated so often that it has become a shield for looking the other way, not mandating any obligatory action and by default guaranteeing that no mechanism exists to fulfil their obligation. The Bill would end that evasion. It would avoid politicians and officials and empower the victims and survivors and the organisations representing them before an independent court, encouraging victim-centred justice.

The Bill does not stop at recognition. Clause 3 would compel the Secretary of State to refer any determination to the ICC, the ICJ and the Security Council, turning a finding into a legal duty, thus taking a step towards meeting our obligations under the genocide convention the moment a serious risk was known and identified, not years after the graves were counted.

On the eve of my 28th year in this House, I wish to stay hopeful that truths will weigh heavier in our deliberation, forcing us to act over the thunderous noise of those who have ignored public calls to stop genocide, confident that there will be no consequences for them. It is an honour to support this Bill in the hope that it will secure lasting and meaningful justice.

11:56

[Baroness Hodgson of Abinger (Con)]

My Lords, I too congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Alton, on introducing the Bill. I respect his tireless work on this topic.

States have a legal obligation to prevent atrocities, including genocide, and the Bill would ensure that the UK Government, as a signatory to the genocide convention, would be able to act quickly to fulfil their existing duties the moment a risk was recognised. I declare my interest as co-chair of the Women, Peace and Security APPG.

I first came across genocide when I visited Rwanda in 2007 and, although it was 13 years after the genocide, the horror was still present. In around 100 days in 1994, nearly 1 million Tutsi people were killed and thousands of Tutsi women taken away to become sex slaves. I met women across the country, many of whom had seen their husbands and children hacked to death in front of them. I sat and heard their stories. It was utterly shocking. A few years later I visited Bosnia, and walking in the graveyard with the widows and wives of the missing was harrowing; it was one of the most difficult things I have ever done. There, any young man or male child over seven was taken away and shot. I remember meeting a young man whose twin brother had been killed, who said, “This should never happen again”—but it has. Years on from the horrors of the Holocaust, as we have heard, we have seen repeated incidents.

As has been laid out by the noble Lord, Lord Alton, genocide is an identity-based crime trying to bring about the destruction of a group, sometimes through preventing births, mass rape and the forcible transfer of children to another group. Despite the powerful wording of mechanisms such as the genocide convention, the fact remains that the mechanisms are globally weak and therefore commitments are not integrated into policy or programmes.

In the UK today, who decides when a genocide is occurring? As we have heard, in 2016 the House of Commons unanimously determined that atrocities against the Yazidis by Daesh amounted to genocide but the Government would not formally recognise that, wanting it determined by competent courts but deciding that no British courts could make a determination. Thus the UK had no legislative vehicles to identify genocide and the UK Government formally recognised the situation with Yazidis as a genocide only in 2023, years too late to do anything.

The Bill is designed to address this situation. Of course the ultimate aim is to prevent conflicts occurring, investing more into conflict prevention so that atrocities are never committed in the first instance, saving lives and averting the mass costs of war. However, a report by Mercy Corps and Saferworld last year revealed a sharp decline in the UK’s investment in peacebuilding, violence prevention and conflict resolution over recent years.

Given that the development budget has been slashed and the FCDO seems to be rolling back our soft power, can the Minister advise whether the FCDO considers its current work to prevent atrocities to have been affected? What conversations have been had with other countries which are reassessing their stance on genocide?

Last year, I was lucky enough to visit Lalish, which is the sacred temple of the Yazidis in northern Iraq. They have worshipped there for about 4,000 years. The ISIS attack on the Yazidis was the most horrendous crime, with so many innocent people killed and around 6,000 women taken away to be sex slaves. As the noble Baroness, Lady Kennedy, has already spoken about, some 12 years later there are still 2,000 women missing, and the children born of rape have not been accepted back into the community.

We should not forget these terrible crimes, so I support this Bill, as it will help fix a gap in our system and help us to fulfil our genocide convention commitments. Hopefully, it will aid the prevention of genocide in the future.

12:01

[Baroness Deech (CB)]

My Lords, this Bill is not the right mechanism that I would wish for the prevention and punishment of genocide.

First, it asks the courts of the UK to do something they are not equipped to do. The most fundamental problem is evidential. Genocide determinations have to be carried out in accordance with international law and in full possession of the facts. The time lag would be self-defeating. The closest thing we have had was the action by David Irving against Penguin Books based on his being called a Holocaust denier. In effect, the famous judgment was whether the Holocaust had taken place or not. From start to finish, the case took three years and seven months.

Secondly, the Bill risks drawing our courts into geopolitical controversies. We know very well that the applicants who will rush forward if this Bill is enacted are less likely to be the Yazidis, the Sudanese and Uyghurs, but more likely to be those who want to continue their campaign against Israel, regardless of the fact that what has happened in Gaza does not meet the definition of genocide. It would be a way of continuing a political and distorted campaign, no doubt funded by Iran.

Thirdly, the Bill cannot do what it means to do. Our courts might make a determination of genocide, but that would have no binding effect on the ICJ or the ICC. Only 75 countries accept the compulsory jurisdiction of the ICJ, the UK being the only Security Council member to do so. The Bill would expose the weakness of international law, whether it comes to keeping the peace or preventing genocide, while setting up a scenario involving different definitions of genocide, under which some states would be at risk because they accept international jurisdiction, and others would not be. It is also hard to see how actions by terrorist non-state groups, such as Hamas or Daesh, could be caught.

Successive UK Governments failed to prosecute Nazi war criminals who came to this country under the War Crimes Act 1991. The UK spends much time and money on Holocaust memorialisation and education but did nothing to punish those responsible for it. It let them slip through our fingers.

The Bill before us is retrospective, with no limitation. There could be complaints by New Zealanders, Australians and Americans about the real genocide carried out by white settlers against the indigenous populations of those countries.

What we need are genuine UN peacekeeping forces. They can be used only if the Security Council authorises their use under chapter 7 of the charter, which it never does. The Security Council itself could act, but it is stymied by the veto. It has a doctrine called the responsibility to protect, directed against genocide, but it has failed to achieve it. It did not act in Sudan. It was ineffective in Rwanda and Srebrenica because of the political realities. The action by former Prime Minister Tony Blair in Kosovo was much more effective, even though Kosovo might not technically have qualified as a genocide. NATO intervened. I suggest that action by determined leaders and NATO, which shares our values more than the UN bodies, would be more effective than the handing over of responsibilities to international bodies prescribed by this Bill, well intentioned though it is.

12:04

[Baroness Goudie (Lab)]

My Lords, I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Alton of Liverpool, on securing the Bill’s Second Reading and on his persistence, which spans a decade from its first introduction in 2016. Today, as an adviser to the Georgetown Institute for Women, Peace and Security, and someone who has spent many years, like others in this House, working on conflict-related sexual violence, I welcome today’s opportunity to speak in support of the Genocide Determination Bill.

I would like to ground my support in an example. I have addressed the House before on Sudan’s wider humanitarian crisis. I return to it through the lens of accountability. In February this year, the United Nations independent fact-finding mission for Sudan concluded that the Rapid Support Forces’ siege and takeover of El Fasher bore the hallmarks of genocide against the Zaghawa and Fur communities. The mission documented mass executions, enforced disappearances and widespread sexual violence, deployed alongside starvation as a co-ordinated campaign to destroy these communities. Yet, as with Darfur two years earlier, there remains no mechanism in United Kingdom law through which survivors can ask the courts to make the kind of determination that successive Governments have said should properly be made by judges rather than Ministers.

This is the problem the Bill seeks to fix. It is victim centred. It allows survivors and organisations representing them to bring evidence before the courts. That principle should not be underestimated. The United Kingdom has formally recognised only five instances of genocide since the convention was adopted in 1948, despite being one of the 154 state parties, and having acceded to it in 1970. The gap between our obligations and our practice is precisely what this Bill seeks to close.

The Joint Committee on Human Rights identified shortcomings in our domestic legal framework relating to accountability for international crimes. This Bill would not resolve every aspect, but it would give our courts a defined role in identifying when the threshold of serious risk has been reached. The procedure in the Bill should be genuinely accessible to survivors of sexual violence: confidential, trauma-informed and mindful that the evidential realities of atrocity, particularly for women, rarely fit conventional courts.

This is a practical Bill. It does not ask the Government to abandon their long-standing position that determination is a judicial matter; it simply asks that our own courts be equipped to do what that position already assumes they should.

12:07

[Baroness Sanderson of Welton (Con)]

My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Goudie. I would also like to thank the noble Lord, Lord Alton, not just for his perseverance on this Bill, but for his lifelong advocacy on behalf of so many.

I am not a regular contributor on foreign affairs, but I was moved to speak today because of a radio programme, specifically a dispatch from Afghanistan on Radio 4’s “From Our Own Correspondent”. It is about a little girl, five-year-old Shaiqa. I realise that her story is not unique and there are many such stories noble Lords can tell, and have told, from personal experience. Sometimes a story just grabs you, so I hope noble Lords will not mind if I share it as the focus of my contribution. This is as I heard it, in abridged form.

“Five year-old Shaiqa has a striking face, with brown hair and big black eyes. She stares at us suspiciously, clinging on to her father, 34 year-old Sayed Ema, her small arms wrapped around his neck. ‘She thinks all strangers might be doctors, that’s why she’s scared’, he tells us, as he holds her close, comforts her and kisses the top of her head. A month ago, Shaiqa spent two weeks in hospital after she had surgery for appendicitis. Sayed and Shaiqa live in Ghor province in the Hindu Kush, but amid a severe hunger and jobs crisis, Sayed barely makes enough money as a labourer to provide food for his family. Funding medical treatment is simply out of reach.”

“So, Sayed made an unbearable choice. ‘I sold her to a relative so I could pay for her operation’, he says, his eyes welling up with tears. ‘If I had money, I would never have taken the decision to sell my daughter. But then I thought, what if she dies without the surgery? This way at least she is alive. That is enough for me’.”

“Sayed negotiated with the buyer—a better-off distant cousin—to keep Shaiqa at home for as long as possible. ‘If I had taken the whole sum at once, he would have taken her away immediately’, he explains. ‘So, I told him, just give me enough for her medical treatment and over the next five years you can give me the rest. Afterwards, you can take her. My wife and I don’t talk about the situation in front of her, but I think Shaiqa has started to understand. I do not have the strength to think of the moment when she will have to leave’. As they sit hugging each other, the close bond that Sayed and Shaiqa share is evident, as is the grief of the father who believes he has failed his daughter.”

Sayed, of course, is not to blame for the poverty, the desperation or the Taliban’s recent decree that legalises child marriage while hardening the already severe divorce laws—the result being that, when she is older, there will be no chance of Shaiqa leaving this “relationship” of her own free will. But the Bill from the noble Lord, Lord Alton, could potentially change things for Shaiqa and the many other girls and women in Afghanistan being persecuted on the basis of their gender. It is known that this persecution may amount to genocide when targeted at particular groups, and in Afghanistan there is a deliberate targeting of Hazara women and girls.

As we have heard, the Genocide Determination Bill would enable vulnerable groups to apply directly to the UK court, thereby offering a legal pathway that would give victims a voice, and perhaps girls such as Shaiqa a chance. In our domestic politics, we now set great store by putting victims and survivors at the heart of our policy-making, so I have one question for the Minister: is it perhaps time to do the same in the international arena? I very much support this Bill, if only—as the noble Baroness, Lady Kennedy of The Shaws, said—as another brick in the wall.

12:12

[Lord Cashman (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, as other noble Lords have done, I congratulate my friend, the noble Lord, Lord Alton of Liverpool, on this extremely important Bill and on his commitment to this issue, which reaches back across decades. I am proud to speak along with others who support the Bill. I wish to associate with every word from my noble friend Lady Kennedy of The Shaws.

We have witnessed acts of genocide around the globe and, despite the weasel words of denial, we are still witnessing nothing short of the attempt to extinguish national, ethnic, racial, religious and other groups. Srebrenica, Rwanda, Sudan, Cambodia, China, the Palestinians in Gaza—sadly, the list goes on. These are genocides that happened and are still happening before our eyes. The atrocious events that are often cited to excuse the inhumane onslaught against a national, ethnic, racial or religious group can never be justified. Innocent women, men and children are maimed, injured and killed, and protests are dismissed by the politicians enacting such inhumane behaviour. They pronounce the dead and maimed as collateral damage or cite that innocents are being used as shields by their enemies.

The House does not need me to explain that modern warfare provides means and methods that do not need to bring about such human carnage. How is it ever legitimate to kill innocent people who are used as shields? It can never be legitimised, and, in a civilised world, it can never be excused or accepted. Whenever genocide, or the attempt at genocide, occurs, we need to call it out, otherwise the legal order is lost and will sink into an unimaginable void where the lives of innocents, the weak and often the impoverished—women, children and men, the elderly and the infirm—are targeted by the strongest and sacrificed by cowards.

There are those who will question and argue with my opinions and my submission. That is the luxury we enjoy at the moment in our democracy. There will be those who point the finger at me and potentially make accusations, especially in relation to my statement on the treatment of the Palestinian people in Gaza and the genocide there, but I stand by my words with no excuse. The acts of genocidal politicians must be scrutinised by the courts, and each of them must be held accountable. Otherwise, the international legal order on which we have relied for so long will be lost for ever—particularly, and sadly, given that the United States under President Trump has joined those states blatantly disregarding the rule of the international legal order. Despite what the Minister may say at the Dispatch Box, and despite what other Governments have said, I believe it is time for the UK to simply give a lead. I say this to the Government and to others: silence or appeasement will only embolden the bully and encourage others, and lead to the sacrifice of the lives of millions more innocent people.

12:15

[Lord Cromwell (CB)]

My Lords, I join in the shower of congratulations on the noble Lord, Lord Alton, for sponsoring the Bill, which I support, and for his many years of work in this field. The Bill is not about labelling current or past actions as genocide; that often passionately contentious area diverts attention from what the Bill is about. It is simply about giving effect to the long-standing government policy of referring questions on genocide to the courts. The crucial word there is “referring”—not leaving a possible case to find its haphazard way to international courts, either directly or via domestic courts in other countries. That is why the Bill needs our support: to bridge a legal gap. This has already been fully and clearly detailed by excellent earlier speakers, and I will spare your Lordships from repetition of it.

Today we stand on one side of this gap. We look across at awful events occurring on the other side, and modern technology means that we see these events in full colour and in real time. Questions may get raised in Parliament. The Government perhaps wring their hands and even strongly condemn the actions we see, and they may send some material aid to those surviving or affected. But, despite our genocide convention obligations, Government after Government have stood and looked across the gap but never built that simple bridge towards what the Bill represents: perpetrators being held to account at some point, or the prevention of genocide happening—perhaps as part of a set of other actions outlined so well by the noble Baroness, Lady Deech.

I will not go over the previous attempts to address this gap in our law and match our obligations with enforcement, or why these have failed. I simply note that we do business around the world. In some cases, the argument runs that we must, in that familiar phrase, do business with people whose systems of government or human rights records we do not like. But I ask the Minister: how bad do things have to get before gestures of general disapproval are not enough? How bad do things have to get before we can at least enable a UK court to give a preliminary determination, on a legal basis, as to whether a genocide is imminent or occurring, and enable the Secretary of State to refer that determination to an international court?

While I underline again that the Bill does not label specific events as genocides, I used to live and work in Sudan. I have been in villages in those parts of the country where people are now being tortured, raped and murdered in numbers and on a scale of cruelty that is scarcely imaginable. I have stood on a hilltop in central Africa and had pointed out to me where mechanical diggers had dug huge pits to be used as mass graves for people slaughtered in the Rwandan genocide. I have met Yazidis and others subject to deliberate attempts to wipe them off the world’s consciousness. When some likely genocidal acts are being perpetrated elsewhere, it is almost absurd, even complacent, to hear in Parliament expressions of outrage and demands that “something must be done” in the knowledge that this legal bridge—something practical, achievable and vital—remains unconstructed. That is why I wholeheartedly support the Bill, and I hope that the House will do the same.

12:19

[Lord Wolfson of Tredegar (Con)]

My Lord, I pay tribute to the noble Lord, Lord Alton of Liverpool, not only for introducing this Bill but for decades of tireless work exposing some of the gravest human rights abuses across the world. Whether campaigning for victims of religious persecution, standing up for prisoners of conscience or ensuring that those suffering unimaginable atrocities are not forgotten by Parliament, he has shown remarkable consistency and moral courage. He referred to himself as a young MP. When he was a young MP, my parents were his constituents, so I blame the noble Lord for my interest in politics thereafter. I say to any Members of this House who share that concern: refer it to the noble Lord, Lord Alton. I also thank the noble Lord for the time he gave me, together with Professor Ochab, whose work on genocide prevention and accountability has enriched this debate and from whom I learned a lot in our discussion.

Having listened to the debate, I suggest that there is remarkably little disagreement on the principles across your Lordships’ House. Genocide is rightly described as the “crime of crimes”. It is an assault not only on individual victims but on humanity itself. We, the United Kingdom, are a party to the genocide convention. We accept, therefore, both morally and legally, obligations to prevent genocide and punish those responsible.

I do not doubt for a moment the sincerity of the objective that underlies the Bill. The noble Lord, Lord Alton, seeks to ensure that, where there is credible evidence that genocide is taking place or there is a serious risk that it might occur, there is an effective legal mechanism capable of triggering action. That objective deserves the support of the whole House. The noble Lord is entitled to put a difficult question to Governments of every political persuasion because, for many years, different Governments of all colours have maintained that genocide is a matter for determination by competent courts and not by politicians. Yet, in some of the situations that have caused the greatest concern to this House, there has been no international court capable of making such a determination. So the noble Lord is entitled to ask whether there is a gap between the Government’s long-standing policy and the practical means by which that policy can be implemented. That is not a frivolous or political point; it is a serious constitutional question and it deserves a serious answer.

But identifying a problem does not necessarily mean that every proposed solution is the right one. The question before us is not whether genocide should be prevented: plainly, it should. It is also not whether those responsible should be brought to justice: plainly, they should. The real question is: does this Bill address that perceived gap in a way that is constitutionally coherent and practically effective? With the greatest respect to the noble Lord, I am not yet persuaded that it does. There is, I suggest, an important constitutional principle at stake. Our constitution works best when each branch of the state performs the function for which it is institutionally equipped: Parliaments legislate, Ministers govern—at least they are meant to—and courts adjudicate. Each is independent of the others, but each has its own constitutional role, and we should hesitate before asking one branch of the state to assume responsibilities that properly belong to another.

This Bill would confer upon the High Court in England and Wales, the High Court in Northern Ireland, and the Court of Session in Scotland a wholly new jurisdiction to make preliminary determinations that genocide is occurring overseas, that it has occurred overseas or that there is a serious risk that it may occur overseas. Having listened to speeches from across the House, I understand why that proposal has an obvious attraction. It seeks to remove profoundly difficult questions from the political arena and place them before an independent judiciary. But our judges do not conduct the foreign policy of the United Kingdom. They do not determine diplomatic priorities. They do not assess intelligence. They do not balance national security considerations. They do not negotiate with foreign Governments—and nor should they. These are functions entrusted by our constitution to Ministers, who are accountable to Parliament for the decisions they take. It is one thing for the courts to determine legal rights; it is quite another to ask them to make findings that may have immediate and profound diplomatic consequences for the United Kingdom’s relations with other sovereign states.

That brings me to what, for me, is perhaps the greatest constitutional concern raised by this Bill. Von Clausewitz famously said that war was a continuation of politics by other means. Too often today it appears that law has become politics carried on by other means. We call it “lawfare”. We see it internationally. We sometimes see it domestically, and we should be careful before encouraging more of it before our own courts. We should be cautious before inviting our own courts to become yet another arena in which international political disputes are pursued through litigation.

That concern is reinforced by the remarkable breadth of the jurisdiction that this Bill proposes to create. Noble Lords should have a quick glance at Clause 1. An application can be brought by a person

“belonging to a national, ethnic, racial or religious group, or an organisation representing such a person”.

There is no requirement that the applicant be a British citizen or a British resident, or that the perpetrator be before our courts. Indeed, there is no requirement that the actions have any connection whatever with the United Kingdom. In substance, therefore, Parliament would be conferring on our domestic courts what would amount to a roving international jurisdiction to make judicial findings in relation to allegations of genocide occurring anywhere in the world. Contrary to the words used by the noble Baroness, Lady D’Souza, who called this a “modest” Bill, I suggest that that represents a very serious and major constitutional step.

This is not a criticism of those who would use the Bill to bring such applications. If Parliament creates a jurisdiction, people will understandably want to fill it. My concern is directed not at the litigants but at the legislation, because proceedings of this nature will inevitably be used, at least in some—and, frankly, probably in many if not most—cases not simply to vindicate legal rights but to advance political objectives. That is the reality of modern international litigation. My concern is that we should not likely draw our own courts into that sphere. Our courts exist to determine legal controversies with legal consequences. They do not exist to issue advisory opinions on international disputes.

When I was at university, I had the idea that, in order to get a first, I would try to predict the questions and issue an application asking a High Court judge what the answer would be—until my supervisors pointed out that courts do not exist to answer hypothetical questions or give advisory opinions. They do not give advisory opinions. The ICJ might, but the High Court of Justice of England and Wales should not. Our judges command international respect precisely because they determine actual legal disputes independently and impartially, and we should hesitate before placing them at the centre of some of the most politically sensitive controversies in international affairs.

There is then the practical operation of the Bill itself. Like the noble Lord, Lord Griffiths, I focused very much on Clause 3, which requires the Secretary of State to refer a preliminary determination from our courts to the International Court of Justice, the prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, the Security Council or other competent United Nations bodies, but only where jurisdictional requirements are met. That immediately raises an important question: what happens when none of those bodies has jurisdiction? What practical consequences would follow from the preliminary determination of our domestic court? Have we simply therefore created a mechanism that results in a judicial declaration that no international body is capable of acting on?

All these points seem to me to be legitimate questions. I respectfully suggest that they require fuller answers before Parliament creates an entirely new jurisdiction for our highest domestic courts. I note that the Bill provides that the Minister can make regulations, but that is not a proper way to legislate in this field. Parliament is entitled to see exactly how it would work in practice before deciding whether to pass the Bill.

Of course, none of this should be taken as diminishing the horror of genocide. That ought not need to be said, but I say it anyway. Nor is this a criticism of the noble Lord’s motives. On the contrary, I say respectfully that the noble Lord, Lord Alton, has provided us a great service by forcing us to confront this very uncomfortable question. How do a Government, whose long-standing policy is that genocide should be determined by courts, respond when no competent international court is realistically capable of acting? That is the question underlying the Bill. It is a serious challenge and deserves a serious response. My point is: the fact that there may be a gap does not mean that this Bill fills it.

For those reasons, while I look forward to engaging—always, I hope, constructively—with the noble Lord as the Bill proceeds, and while I hope we can continue to explore ways of strengthening the United Kingdom’s ability both to respond to and to prevent genocide, I cannot support the Bill in its present form. The noble Lord has identified a very important problem. At the moment, I simply remain unpersuaded that this Bill provides the correct constitutional answer.

12:31

[Lord in Waiting/Government Whip (Lord Katz) (Lab)]

My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Alton of Liverpool, for presenting this Bill. Like all noble Lords in today’s debate, I pay tribute to him for his tireless campaigning, both in this House and indeed in an earlier life in the other place, on these issues on behalf of so many who have no voice. I thank all noble Lords who have contributed to the debate. As the noble Lord, Lord Alton, said, it is taking place on the Day of International Criminal Justice, with today being the 28th anniversary of the founding of the International Criminal Court.

How we consider the crime of genocide is among the most serious foreign policy responsibilities of any Government. As the noble Lord, Lord Alton, said, my noble and learned friend the Attorney-General calls it the “apex crime”. That the genocide convention was adopted unanimously by the General Assembly of the United Nations in 1948 underlines the international community’s shared commitment to ensuring that the horrors of the Holocaust occur never again. It is critical that the UK Government’s position on genocide determination is robust and consistent with our obligations under the convention. The long-standing position of successive British Governments fulfils this. The position is that any formal judgment as to whether genocide has occurred is a matter for a competent national or international court after considering all necessary evidence and as part of a credible judicial process, including appropriate jurisdiction. This ensures that any determination is impartial, independent and evidence-based.

I must say at this point that I have sympathy with both the noble Baroness, Lady Deech, and the noble Lord, Lord Wolfson of Tredegar, in their critique of some of the technical aspects of the Bill, especially the legal points around jurisdiction. Key partners, including France, Italy and Japan, also refrain from making determinations without a court judgment. In contrast, this Bill would introduce the novel concept of a preliminary determination by the UK courts. As we have heard, this has no settled or solid basis in international law. At present, I am afraid that the noble Lord’s Bill does not suitably consider this point.

As the noble Lord, Lord Wolfson, said, there is also the issue of constitutional independence between different branches. It is Ministers who are rightly accountable to Parliament for decisions around diplomacy and foreign policy, and we should never want our courts to be engaged in that sort of decision-making. However, this Bill might well lead them to straying into such an area, placing what we might call political as well as legal obligations on the Foreign Secretary.

I stress, though, that the UK position does not and has not prevented the UK taking action. Indeed, atrocity and conflict prevention capability is central to the FCDO. By the end of the year, the department will have run 16 training courses and numerous capability-building events for staff. The newly established conflict resources hub integrates guidance, training and evidence-based practice, improving accessibility and utility. This ensures that when risks escalate or atrocities occur, we act decisively and quickly, working through diplomatic channels and international institutions to raise the alarm, build consensus and co-ordinate action. This includes at the UN Human Rights Council, where our human rights ambassador recently raised the UK’s deep concern around the situation in Xinjiang.

The right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Newcastle asked some specific questions about measuring risk and prevention. The indicators of risk of genocide are obviously context-specific. The genocide convention does not provide detail, but we are committed to investing in our systems for early warnings of atrocities. We monitor risks around the world using datasets to assess factors that indicate where atrocities may occur in line with the UN framework of analysis for atrocity crimes.

In response to the noble Baroness, Lady Hodgson of Abinger, and others, I say that our atrocity prevention strategy saves lives, upholds international law and breaks cycles of violence. In the financial year 2025-26, we gave £150,000 to support the Global Centre for the Responsibility to Protect to help those at risk of atrocities. Dedicated atrocity prevention capability continues at the FCDO, as I have said. It has now been integrated into the humanitarian directorate, which means better-integrated analysis and delivery. I also say to the noble Baroness, Lady Hodgson, that we are engaging with regional partners and through international organisations to prevent atrocities, particularly in terms of conflict-related sexual violence, which she raised. This is of course a breach of international law, and we will work with the UK-founded International Alliance on Preventing Sexual Violence in Conflict. This is, to be clear, a real priority for the Foreign Secretary.

In response to my noble friend Lady Kennedy of The Shaws, I stress that the FCDO works with the Metropolitan Police through the War Crimes Network, which brings together relevant parties across government, both in terms of policy and operationally. The last War Crimes Network meeting was in April 2026, which ensured closer integration and joint working.

At this point, I want to respond to some of the issues raised with regard to specific conflicts. First, in the context of the suffering caused by Daesh, the UK was a fierce advocate for justice for the Yazidi people long before we determined that acts of genocide had taken place. At the UN Security Council, we played a leading role in establishing the United Nations Investigative Team to Promote Accountability for Crimes Committed by Da’esh. We provided £2 million to support the collection of evidence against Daesh’s crimes and we worked closely with our Iraqi partners to pass the Yazidi survivors law in 2021, enabling reparations and support for the survivors. While much progress has been made, Daesh of course remains a threat. We will continue to work tirelessly with our partners in pursuit of its enduring defeat. I recognise the heart-rending testimony provided to your Lordships’ House by the noble Baroness, Lady Sanderson, of Sayed and his daughter Shaiqa; it is a heartbreaking story. What is happening is akin to gender persecution. It is abhorrent. Women and girls—I emphasise girls—have been specifically targeted and subjected to abductions, forced conversions, forced marriages, rape and sexual violence. This is horrific. We will continue to work closely with Iraqi partners to ensure that all those working with or for Daesh are held accountable, including through our work as members of the Global Coalition Against Daesh.

I turn to Sudan, mentioned by many noble Lords but particularly my noble friend Lady Goudie and the noble Lord, Lord Cromwell, who has direct personal experience of living in the area. The scale of suffering in Sudan is unimaginable. The findings of the UN’s fact-finding mission following the fall of El Fasher last year were alarming. This makes recent reports of the imminent Rapid Support Forces offensive at El Obeid extremely concerning. The world failed the people of El Fasher; we cannot let that happen again. In February we launched the coalition for atrocity prevention and justice in Sudan, uniting the international community around the goal of preventing another El Fasher. The coalition has already condemned the Sudanese Armed Forces strike on El-Daein Teaching Hospital and the growing uses of drones in this conflict.

The noble Baroness, Lady Helic, and my noble friend Lord Wills raised the action with respect to El Obeid. I want to be clear that, earlier this month, the Prime Minister raised the situation and issued a statement at NATO, and there was a UK-penned Human Rights Council resolution condemning the atrocities and calling for an urgent inquiry by a UN fact-finding mission, which was adopted by consensus. The noble Lord, Lord Cromwell, said that we were simply making gestures. I do not think this is quite fair to our actions. We are doing more than making gestures. In the case of Sudan, we have sanctioned 24 individuals and entities since the outbreak of the conflict in 2023. I also point to the action of my noble friend Lady Chapman, the Minister, who wrote to the Commons International Development Committee earlier this month outlining UK action around El Fasher and saying how our relationship with the UAE had not impacted our actions and our determination to call out atrocities when we see them.

I turn to Gaza and remind your Lordships’ House, and in particular the noble Baroness, Lady D’Souza, who raised it, that one of the Government’s first acts was to review and suspend export licences for items that might be used by the Israel Defense Forces to commit or facilitate serious violations of international humanitarian law in Gaza. In making export licensing decisions, we carefully assess all relevant evidence relating to our obligations under international law, including, where relevant, the genocide convention.

At this point, I gently point out to my noble friend Lady Kennedy of The Shaws, who talked about an omertà in discussing Gaza, that, having spent a lot of time on the Front Bench having various debates over the past year-plus, Gaza has been discussed, I would say, more often than any other foreign policy issue. I am not saying that there is not a good case for that, but I do say that, sadly, it has been, not only in this House but in the other place, potentially at the expense of other places that require attention: for instance, Sudan. I am very pleased that, in today’s debate, we have not had that imbalance but have paid attention to a wide variety of places where, sadly, there are issues that we need to look at. I stress that we continue to raise our concerns with the Israeli Government and counterparts at all levels. In light of the ceasefire, there has been deep relief felt around the world, but we must now see full and unimpeded provision of humanitarian assistance into Gaza.

The noble and learned Lord, Lord Garnier, and my noble friend Lord Griffiths of Burry Port raised the issue of Myanmar. In March 2025, the UK submitted written observations to the ICJ in case of The Gambia v Myanmar. This case is now entering its deliberative phase and we welcome the ICJ’s consideration. Since 2021, the UK has imposed 19 rounds of targeted sanctions, including 10 individual sanctions targeting the aviation fuel sector in Myanmar.

We continue to stand by the International Criminal Court and its mission to end impunity. To be clear, since the noble Baroness, Lady Helic, raised it, we very firmly support the ICC. We are proud to be one of the court’s biggest funders, providing £14.3 million of support this year alone. Our approach to universal jurisdiction is that, where there is no apparent link between the UK and the crime, we support the principle that international crimes are best investigated and prosecuted close to where they are perpetrated. This reflects the practical advantages of securing the evidence and witnesses necessary for a fair investigation and prosecution. Our approach, as I have said, is similar to that of key partners, including the US, Italy, Japan and France. The most serious international crimes not covered by our approach to universal jurisdiction are often already subject to the jurisdiction of the ICC, which is generally better placed to prosecute such offences where they are not dealt with by the relevant domestic authorities.

We are all in agreement that a robust, credible process to determine whether a genocide has occurred is essential to ensuring that perpetrators are held to account. Like others, I thank and pay tribute to the noble Lord, Lord Alton of Liverpool, for giving us yet another opportunity to debate, discuss and try to understand the issues that are at play here as we seek to end the most awful crimes that can be committed around the world.

As both the noble Lord and the noble Lord, Lord Cromwell, rightly said, using the term “genocide” lazily, irresponsibly and inappropriately can be harmful in this country to individuals, to communities and to our society. I suggest that perhaps that has happened in recent weeks and months. This is a serious issue and so we must, as we have all said, treat this seriously.

As I have made clear, genocide determination is no place to introduce novel concepts, and the preliminary determination, which has no basis in international law, is one of those concepts. That is why we express reservations about the Bill, and, as a counterpoint, why the noble Lord, Lord Alton, and others deem it necessary to bring the Bill before our House to allow us to discuss this. I assure him that my noble friend Lady Chapman, the Minister, would be very happy to continue discussions with the noble Lord about this important issue.

We stand firm in our belief that any formal judgment is a matter for competent courts that have come to a reasoned conclusion, after considering all the evidence available, as part of a credible judicial process, including appropriate jurisdiction.

In response to the very powerful words of my noble friend Lord Cashman, I say that, where we can prosecute the crime of genocide, we will. Where we cannot, we will do all we can to help others to do so. Through robust legal processes and close international partnership, we can ensure that there is no safe haven for perpetrators and that those responsible for these heinous crimes are brought to justice. I hope that I have addressed—

[Baroness Kennedy of The Shaws (Lab)]

When I referred to an omertà, I was not suggesting that there had not been discussion in this House about Gaza or the West Bank. I was suggesting that many people around this House feel inhibited about raising this issue or speaking to it because they fear that they will be accused of antisemitism.

[Lord Katz (Lab)]

I apologise if I misunderstood my noble friend. To be absolutely clear, somebody can be very critical of the actions of the Israeli Government, as I am, but that should not be conflated with antisemitism. But I also do not think that necessarily inhibits any Member in your Lordships’ House from making a clear and dispassionate case about actions that are being undertaken by the Israeli Government, or, at the same time, from calling out antisemitism where it occurs in this or any country. On that matter, I hope that we are agreed.

I hope that I have addressed as many questions as I possibly can in, probably, far too much time. I will reflect on Hansard and I undertake to write to any noble Lords if I have missed their question.

12:47

[Lord Alton of Liverpool (CB)]

My Lords, I thank all noble Lords who have contributed to today’s important debate. I am grateful even to those who have disagreed with the principle, the practicalities or the specifics of the Bill, because I think I heard from the noble Lords, Lord Wolfson and Lord Katz, from their respective Front Benches, their willingness to go on discussing this. That is why I hope that the Bill will be given a Second Reading today and that it will go on to Committee, so that we can have those discussions. I also had a note from the noble Lord, Lord Purvis of Tweed, who would very much like to have taken part in today’s debate, and I thank those noble Lords on his Benches who have indicated their support for the Bill.

To noble Lords who have spoken against or who have entered reservations, I say straightaway that I am very willing to go on discussing those. As a preliminary, I say to the noble Lord, Lord Wolfson, that I am very happy to take the blame for his becoming involved in politics during his schooldays in Liverpool and I thank him for the contribution that he made today, and for the discussions that we have had outside the House about the Bill. Yes, there is a gap; he is right about that. I am perfectly content to accept that there may be various ways of filling it and I accept the point that has been made across the House that this would be only one contribution to the filling of that gap, but we are right to be having that debate.

I agree with the noble Lord that we do not want lawfare or vexatious cases. Where I do not agree with him is on the question: would our courts be capable of examining this? I have a particular regard for the noble Lord, Lord Wolfson, because he comes from the best traditions of our judiciary and our legal profession in this country. My noble and learned friend Lord Hope of Craighead, for whom I have particular regard—he helped in the framing of this Bill and has given me encouragement in pursuing it—believes that the Court of Session in Scotland or the High Court of England and Wales would be perfectly competent to deal with this question.

As for the noble and learned Lord’s reference to Article I in the Bill, he was right to gently remind us there is an Article II, and therefore a gatekeeper. This would not lead to every vexatious claim appearing before our courts and we could be quite discriminating in those we accept and those we do not. There would be a political contribution to that, but for me this is not a political issue, which really goes to something that the noble and learned Lord, Lord Garnier, said to the House in his speech earlier. He said that genocide is a political question and, in that, I for once disagree with him. It is a legal question, as this Government and previous Governments have said on many occasions.

The noble Baroness, Lady Sugg, reminded us that the Government have always said that this is a matter for the courts to determine. Genocide is an international crime. It has a legal definition and therefore requires a legal assessment. The regimes in China, Myanmar and many more may disregard the determination by British courts but, as emphasised by my friend the noble Lord, Lord Wills, and the noble Baroness, Lady Kennedy of The Shaws, the international rules-based order requires us to take an approach that is principled and not overshadowed by political considerations, something which—too often, I fear—has been the case.

I thank the noble Lord, Lord Katz, and the noble Baroness, Lady Chapman, who cannot be here today, for the meeting they had with my friend, the noble Baroness, Lady Kennedy, and me where we discussed a number of these issues. I will not go over all the arguments, but I will mention two points the noble Lord made. He rightly referred to the many contributions that mentioned Sudan. Twenty years ago, after I visited Sudan—where 200,000 to 300,000 people died and 2 million were displaced—the International Criminal Court, in a remarkable decision, arraigned the Head of State, Omar al-Bashir, and said he had committed the crime of genocide. The fact that he still walks the earth, never having been brought to justice for any of those crimes, is surely proof positive as to why we need to do something more than simply rely on the courts.

I agree with my noble friend Lady Deech about the International Criminal Court itself and the ICJ, and why we need to look again at how they operate. The French said some years ago that we need to look at the veto—a point I raised with the noble Lord, Lord Katz, yesterday. The veto can, has always been and always is used. Take China, for example: it is not going to allow an investigation into the genocide referred to by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Garnier—“genocide” is the word the House of Commons decided to use to describe what has happened to Uyghur Muslims in Xinjiang. In response to a veto always being used, the French suggested that maybe we should at least exclude from the right to veto the determination of acts of genocide or other crimes against humanity. I think there is scope there.

The noble Baroness, Lady Kennedy, raised the point yesterday that we need further discussion around the definition of “crimes against humanity”. That was an unsettled point when Lemkin gave us the genocide convention, and there is still a serious discussion taking place on what to do about that. I hope we will go on having those discussions.

The noble Lord said that it is better to do things in the locality, but look at what happened in northern Iraq and northern Syria. The British Government collected the evidence. The last Government did a terrific job of collecting evidence, which is stored in New York, and no one is doing anything about it. One reason for that is that the local courts in Iraq would use the death penalty, so we are understandably very hesitant in saying they should bring these cases to justice. We need to have a rather deeper think about some of those questions.

To the noble and learned Lord, Lord Garnier, I want to say that someone I have enormous regard for is Sir Geoffrey Nice KC, who was the prosecutor of Milošević. We heard an amazing contribution from the noble Baroness, Lady Helic, today, reminding us of the horrors in Yugoslavia. Sir Geoffery Nice chaired an independent tribunal, the equivalent, in many ways, of a court in this country. It had jurors who listened to the evidence, and he found that in four instances there was no genocide, but in a fifth there was. He therefore declared there to be a genocide. It was based on that finding that the House of Commons took its decision. Therefore, the idea that we would not be competent, capable or right to do such a thing through our courts is not something on which I can agree with the noble and learned Lord.

I cannot, and should not, take all the time that might now be left, but Mr Justice Kirby, a brilliant Australian jurist, was asked by the United Nations to chair a commission of inquiry into human rights in North Korea. He found that there had been crimes against humanity. He said it was a “state without parallel” and should be taken to the International Criminal Court. Guess what—it never has been, and the United Kingdom, to its shame, has never asked the Security Council even to consider the request of a commission that was established by the United Nations and found conclusively that there are crimes against humanity. I disagree with the idea that no one takes any notice of these things, because we heard evidence recently from a man called Thae Yong-ho, the number two in the North Korean embassy in London. He defected and told me that the reason he left was that he had often come to Parliament and was so taken by our beliefs, our system of democracy and our rule of law. He said that when the commission of inquiry made the decision that they could be arraigned for crimes against humanity, a frisson of fear spread through the upper echelons of the regime in North Korea. The relief, he said, was palpable when it was decided that nothing was going to be done about it.

That is the challenge to us: to do something about it. The right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Newcastle said that this is an opportunity to strengthen law. My friend, the noble Baroness, Lady Sugg, a former Minister, said that we cannot go on repeating the same mantra about a competent court when there is not one to do it. My noble friend Lady D’Souza said that this is a focused Bill that is urgently needed. The noble Baroness, Lady Kennedy, said that there should not be exceptions, whether they are our friends or foes, and I agree with her. She pointed to the German precedent of a court able to determine a genocide—not against a German citizen, but someone who committed genocide against Yazidis. The noble Lord, Lord Griffiths of Burry Port, pointed to Clause 3 and the failures of international institutions. The noble Baroness, Lady Uddin, asked what is the point of recognition without consequences, and I agree with her.

The Bill empowers victims and courts, and disempowers political activists who, in many cases, have no intention of doing anything, because so often they follow the money rather than the morality. The noble Baroness, Lady Hodgson, who is a good friend on so many things, the noble Baroness, Lady Sanderson, and others referred to Afghanistan. They go and put their hands into the wounds, as did the noble Baroness, Lady Kennedy. They are not unaffected or left unchallenged, and nor should any of us be. These are real stories about real people, about whom we have duty to do something. The noble Baroness, Lady Goudie, emphasised this through her work with Georgetown. My friend, the noble Lord, Lord Cashman, talked about human carnage and the danger of silence and appeasement.

I finish with words about silence and appeasement. A great hero of mine, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, spoke out against the horrors of Nazism. He was one of the few who did; too many collaborated or were indifferent. That great Protestant theologian said:

“Not to speak is to speak. Not to act is to act”.


This may not be a perfect Bill, but it gives us an opportunity to act. In that spirit, I commend it to the House and I beg to move.

Bill read a second time and committed to a Committee of the Whole House.

Cohabitation Rights Bill [HL]

2nd reading
Friday 17th July 2026 Lords Chamber

Second Reading

12:59

Moved by

[Lord Marks of Henley-on-Thames]

That the Bill be now read a second time.

[Baroness in Waiting/Government Whip (Baroness Ramsey of Wall Heath) (Lab)]

My Lords, before we begin the debate, I remind the House that the advisory speaking time is four minutes for Back-Bench contributions. This is to allow all colleagues to participate fairly and the House to rise at a reasonable time around 3 pm.

12:59

[Lord Marks of Henley-on-Thames (LD)]

My Lords, this is not the first time I have introduced a Bill in this form that closely follows the Law Commission recommendations for financial relief for cohabitants in 2007, and for improving a cohabitant’s position on the death of an intestate partner in 2011.

However, we now have a real prospect of achieving worthwhile reform for cohabitants. That is because this Government made a manifesto commitment to strengthen the rights and protections available to women in cohabiting couples. As part of fulfilling that commitment, on 5 June the Government opened a consultation on a set of proposals they were considering. It is due to close on 14 August and is very good news for those of us who have long sought reform in this area, including a majority of practitioners, judges and the specialist family law associations, including Resolution, the Family Law Bar Association and others.

Why is there a need for reform? The House of Commons Women and Equalities Committee reported in 2022 that there were an estimated 3.6 million unmarried couples cohabiting in the United Kingdom—roughly a fifth of all couples and well over double the figure in 1996, 26 years earlier. Yet, although cohabitation is so widespread and increasing so quickly, nearly half the public still believe that cohabitation over a period, or a couple’s having a child, gives rise to a so-called common-law marriage, bringing with it financial rights if they separate. This false understanding, the common-law marriage myth, is just that—a myth. There are, in reality, virtually no financial rights protecting cohabitants who separate.

It is true that couples can enter into formal cohabitation agreements to regulate their financial affairs, providing for ownership of assets and for the consequences of separation. But very few couples make them, and if they do not, they are thrown back on outdated and unwieldy trusts law, by which a partner can claim a share in the property that is in the name of the other, if—but only if—they can establish that this was the joint intention of the parties. Even then, the shares are difficult to determine. There is also an entitlement to child maintenance, but even that is limited in extent, and to secure more requires an application under the Children Act, which is costly and complex, and very few such applications are in fact made.

Currently, one cohabitant, who may have given up a career or home, or both, to live with the other, or invested all their efforts and resources into supporting their partner’s business, home life or childcare needs, is left, on separation, without any recourse. Then, if one partner dies without a will, current intestacy rules provide nothing for the surviving partner. The deceased’s estate, often including the couple’s home, goes to the relatives of the partner who died, often children from a previous relationship who may have no good will towards the surviving partner. So, unless the surviving partner’s name was on the deeds, they get nothing and may be left homeless. There may be a right to apply for some provision under legislation passed in 1975, but that requires proof of dependency.

Both the Bill and the Government’s consultation proposals seek to address this unfairness by providing for financial relief on the breakdown of cohabitation and by reforming what happens on the death of an intestate partner. The two sets of proposals have much in common. Both would require either three years of cohabitation as a couple, whether same sex or opposite sex, or the arrival of a child, before any claim could arise. Both would require that any claim be brought within two years of separation. Both would exclude couples who would be prohibited to marry because of close family relationships. Both would permit couples to enter into formal opt-out agreements, excluding applications under these proposals. Both would allow a broad range of remedies, including property adjustment orders, lump sum orders and pension-sharing orders. The consultation proposals would also allow for maintenance for a limited time in exceptional cases. My Bill would not provide for maintenance orders, although a lump sum could be payable in instalments.

Importantly, neither set of proposals would treat cohabiting couples as if they were married or in a civil partnership. Marriage and civil partnerships have a special status in law and conscience. The consultation considers separate proposals to develop, simplify and clarify financial relief on divorce or dissolution, but those are irrelevant to the Bill. They recognise that marriage embodies a commitment to mutual support and sharing, hence the provision on divorce for continuing maintenance, where income dependence is established. The proposals in my Bill for relief for separating cohabitants are intended to address unfairness and exploitation. Contributions by one partner, who makes financial sacrifices for the other, should carry recompense.

My Bill reflects the Law Commission’s proposals for what it called “retained benefit” to be removed and for any residual economic disadvantage to be shared between the parties. That may seem to some a complicated approach, but it addresses equitably the unfairness of one party profiting from a cohabiting relationship and walking away the richer from it, leaving the other party correspondingly poorer on separation. That is unjust. At worst, it is exploitative, and it needs addressing.

There are, however, two differences of substance between the proposals in my Bill and the thrust of the proposals under consideration in the consultation paper. First, the Government’s proposals expressly mark a step towards fulfilling their manifesto commitment to halve violence against women and girls in a decade. I applaud and share that aim. I agree that financial relief for separating cohabitants would support that aim in cases that involve violence or coercion, but these proposals need to be of general application: whenever separation after cohabitation would lead to unfairness and less relief were granted, whether or not domestic abuse is a feature.

The second difference is more significant. Although the concepts of reversing retained benefit and showing economic disadvantage may be overcomplicated—I would readily consider amendments to simplify them—I am concerned that the Government seem to have rejected compensation as a basis for relief on cohabitants’ separation. Their proposals are based only on the financially weaker party’s financial needs. However, the requirement for relief often arises because one party has unjustly benefited from sacrifices made by the other, so that the benefiting party ought, in fairness, to disgorge benefit achieved at the expense of the other. This injustice arises irrespective of need.

To pose an example, a man gives up his lucrative career to look after the party’s child and to work on renovating his partner’s house, all to enable his partner to pursue her acting career. She becomes a successful actor, partly on the back of his efforts. Why should she keep the house and all the benefits of his contributions, for which he gets no recognition? The injustice does not arise from his needs—he may be able to earn a living himself; it arises from his sacrifices for her benefit.

These are interesting issues, on which there may be competing answers. I have not sought to go through all the provisions of my Bill in detail, because what is now important is for the Government to collect and consider the consolation responses. However, I much look forward to engaging with the Minister and the Government on these proposals, and to making progress on this difficult area, where there is now widespread recognition of an unmet need. I beg to move.

13:10

[Lord Garnier (Con)]

My Lords, I am delighted to be able to support the noble Lord, Lord Marks, in introducing his Second Reading of this Cohabitation Rights Bill. In lay man’s language, I suppose one could call it the “unmarried couples divorce Bill”. The Bill reflects modern societal habits and ways of living, and it is time that Parliament legislated for this reality.

The noble Lord brings with him considerable experience. I believe that, when he began his career at the Bar, he was a family law practitioner, so he brings to the Bill his expertise in that field. I am none the less somewhat fearful that the person succeeding me in this debate is the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Butler-Sloss, a former President of the Family Division, so I shall keep my remarks short but also, I hope, moderately uncontroversial, as I hope the Bill is.

I also hope, following on from what the noble Lord said a moment ago, that the Government, who gave a manifesto commitment along these lines, and the noble Lord can amalgamate their efforts to produce one Bill which all of us can support. If it has the advantage of government backing, the assistance of the Civil Service and so on then we can produce at speed a Bill which is fit for purpose and will achieve the justice and the humanity the noble Lord speaks of.

I am sure that there will be many issues of detail in relation to financial settlement orders and financial relief, the difference between whether periodic payments or simply lump sum payments should be allowed, and so on. However, I hope that these matters can be discussed between the two parties—the Government and the noble Lord—and, if necessary, ironed out in Committee.

Essentially, this is an idea that has been long in development, as the noble Lord, Lord Marks, indicated. I seem to remember supporting a Bill similar to this, if not exactly the same, which was introduced into the other place by the late Lord Davies of Stamford, who was then the Member of Parliament for Grantham and Stamford. It had broad support there but never got much further than a Friday morning’s debate.

As I said, the Bill recognises contemporary societal norms and, above all, protects the children of these unions in a way which is fair and right. I recognise the good sense of the example that the noble Lord, Lord Marks, mentioned just a moment ago about one of the couple working and the other not working, and so on, which seems highly important in modern family law.

Unlike so many Private Members’ Bills, this one has a decent ancestry: that is to say, it flows from a Law Commission recommendation. It is detailed and clear. I am sure it is capable of improvement but, none the less, it is clear in its purposes and its effects. I hope that the House will give it its support today and allow it to pursue its further passage with the assistance of the Government.

13:13

[Baroness Butler-Sloss (CB)]

My Lords, I am very happy often to bow to the expertise of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Garnier. It is unnecessary for him to be quite so polite about me, although I am grateful to him for it.

I supported the earlier Bill from the noble Lord, Lord Marks, and he was kind enough to send me the link so that I could read what I had said previously. This is a sensible and moderate Bill, but the question is, of course, much broader: should there be any sort of legislation for cohabitation? The Government clearly want it in their manifesto.

I have been married for 64 years and I am a patron of the Marriage Foundation, so I have thought with considerable care about the extent to which I should—as I do—support the Bill. One bears in mind that marriage is and remains the longest living partnership between parties, and that is greatly to be welcomed. Therefore, the question has to be: how far, if at all, will a cohabitation Bill affect marriage? I have come to the conclusion that I really do not think it will, because as the noble Lord, Lord Marks, said, there are the number of people living together. They have been living together regardless of marriage, and I do not think giving them any rights is going to make very much in the way of change.

I remember the noble Baroness, Lady Deech, who is speaking today, referring in a previous speech to the fact that some cohabitants do not want to have any rules, but I suspect that the majority of cohabitants—certainly those in my family—have drifted into that relationship and just stayed in it. As the noble Lord, Lord Marks, pointed out, there is a particular group of people where one has a distinct advantage over the other, who is very often women, but not always; the noble Lord’s example was of a man. I will not repeat what he said, but there is a manifest injustice in the points that he has been making.

The other group, which I think your Lordships probably would not know about, which is why I raise it, is the women coming from many parts of the world, often Pakistan, in an arranged marriage—a proper arranged marriage—living in a family in England where they go through the Muslim marriage, nikah, but they do not register the marriage. When they part—very often when the husband now has children, particularly a son, and he does not want this woman any longer—she is not married. She has no rights. She has no visa—not that I think the noble Lord, Lord Marks, will include that in the Bill, but the fact is that she is completely lost. Some form of cohabitation right would at least give her the opportunity to live in this country, at least for some period, and not be completely lost, probably with very little English. I am very concerned about this group.

I have come to the conclusion that regulation is needed. I would like to think that the Minister will pick up this Bill, run with it and add to it the various points that the Government would wish to add. That seems a very neat way of doing it, but I strongly support the noble Lord’s Bill.

13:17

[Lord Bailey of Paddington (Con)]

My Lords, listening to the speech from the noble Lord, Lord Marks, has entirely ruined the speech I had prepared. I was about to come heavily down against the Bill, because I come from a very poor community where marriage is almost non-existent and many of our poor social outcomes are related to that fact. But, listening to the way that the noble Lord, Lord Marks, laid out the details gives me some ability to engage in this process and give it another hearing.

I still want to make my point. I declare an interest: I have been married for 21 years. Marriage is the gold standard. The Government tell us that there are now 3.5 million cohabiting couples in the country, that the law must respect modern relationships and that that is why the Government have put this before the House. My worry is the effect that this will have on poorer communities. Marriage has increasingly become the preserve of the better-off part of our community. Some 87% of those in high-income households are married; in the lowest-income households, that figure drops to only 24%. Surely our ambition should be to close the marriage gap, not legislate as if it does not matter.

This debate is not about judging people. I come from a single-parent family. I watched my mother fight tooth and nail every day for the well-being of my brother and I. In fact, she is still expressing her views on every little thing I do to this very day, even though I am 55 years old.

Almost half the teenagers in this country are not living with both their natural parents. This reflects the scale of family instability in our society. This matters, because a secure family is consistently associated with better educational outcomes, better emotional outcomes, and better economic outcomes and life chances for young people. Ian Rowe, who works with disadvantaged young people in New York, teaches what he calls a success sequence: finish school, get a job, marry, have children—I think the last bit is optional. Research shows that following this sequence gives young people a 97% chance of avoiding poverty. For me, that is the function that marriage performs. I come from the community in this country that has the lowest social outcomes, and that is a direct consequence of low instances of marriage.

The noble Lord, Lord Marks, talked powerfully about the cohabiting myth or the common-law marriage myth, but if we weaken the legal uniqueness of marriage then we run the risk of setting up another myth: that you do not need to be married. Marriage provides a powerful social uplift. The sequence that I talked about is not ideology; it is social mobility in action. If we really are interested in boosting outcomes for the poorest communities in this country, we must support marriage, not legislate against it. If we want to tackle inequality, improve social mobility and reduce poverty then our task is to make marriage not less distinctive but more distinctive. It is to make stable, committed family life more achievable for everyone. For that reason, I remain slightly sceptical of the Bill, but I found the comments of the noble Lord, Lord Marks, very powerful and I will engage in the process and see how we can build this in order to support the poorest community and do justice to those who are cohabiting.

13:22

[Baroness Gohir (CB)]

My Lords, I welcome this Bill and thank the noble Lord, Lord Marks, for introducing it. The Bill would provide important legal protections for many financially vulnerable people in cohabiting relationships. It would benefit women in religious-only marriages, so I am going to focus my comments on Muslim women.

Around 25% of Muslim women are in marriages that are not legally recognised because they have undergone a religious ceremony in the UK and have not had the additional civil marriage, often through no choice of their own. I declare an interest, as that figure is from the Muslim Women’s Network helpline, and is from 11 years-worth of data.

I want to pick up on a point that the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Butler-Sloss, mentioned about spouses arriving from abroad. I point out that for any spouse who arrives from abroad, if their marriage is registered abroad according to the laws of that land, it would be recognised as being a legally valid marriage.

Through our helpline, we have seen the devastating consequences of the legal gap. Women who have been in a religious marriage for many years, sometimes decades, can find themselves homeless overnight when that relationship ends, with no legal right to the family home or financial provision. That situation is often compounded when women have given up their careers to become homemakers, have been subjected to domestic, financial and economic abuse, and have not been able to build up their own savings or have their own income. Some are older women whose husbands have simply decided that they want a younger partner and feel that they can discard their wife without any accountability. During the Covid pandemic, we supported women whose husbands died unexpectedly. Since their marriages were not legally recognised, there were cases where they were evicted from their home by adult children who asserted legal ownership of the property. For these reasons, I strongly welcome the legal and financial protections this Bill would provide.

However, I believe the Bill needs further clarity on how it would operate where an individual maintains more than one household. For example, a person may remain legally married but separated, begin a cohabiting relationship with another partner and then that second relationship breaks down. In other cases, some individuals live with two different partners at separate addresses, with neither partner being aware of the other as the person spends long periods of their working life away from home. Within some Muslim communities, there have been cases where a man is legally married to one woman through a civil marriage and then enters into a religious-only marriage with another woman. How would competing claims be resolved? Clarity is also needed on whether the Bill would apply irrespective of a person’s immigration status, particularly for those with insecure immigration status, who are often most vulnerable to financial and relationship exploitation.

Finally, I welcome that the Bill provides a safety net but does not place cohabitation on an equal footing to civil marriage.

13:25

[Baroness Deech (CB)]

My Lords, this Bill would impose a far-reaching legal regime on millions of adults who have expressly chosen not to marry or enter a civil partnership. The fact that some may think they have rights is no justification for taking away the liberty of others. Some may not know the law but a majority do, and we should respect the majority who have acted consciously, not those who will say they did not know there were no rights.

Article 8 of the human rights convention protects the right to private and family life, which will be attacked by the Bill. Some of the comments that the public have made are interesting. They say in response to my article:

“I thought that forced marriages were illegal”


and

“more of the authoritarian state”.

The scheme is gravely lacking certainty and predictability. Litigation will flourish and costs escalate. There will be blackmail to settle, coercion and fear. Knowledge of a three-year time limit will lead many to walk out, as they have said, before three years is up. Retrospectivity is contrary to the rule of law. What amounts to cohabitation? There will be investigation of sexual, domestic and financial scenarios—the exposure of which should be private and informal.

The inheritance rights proposed here would bring more trouble. Why should a surviving cohabitant, not named in any will, take priority over the children of a previous relationship, creating immediate conflict and unfairness? In fact, cohabitants already have rights under the Inheritance (Provision for Family and Dependants) Act 1975.

I want to examine the much-used words “protection” and “vulnerability”. Those words are brandished to appeal to our emotions and to drive this issue forward. For a woman, typically, the protection she might need at the end of a cohabitation is definitely not the possibility of embarking on litigation with a former partner, without legal aid, designed to extract from him a meagre amount, most of which will be taken up in costs, for cohabitants tend to be less well off than married couples.

The litigation will take a long time. The lead judge of the London Financial Remedies Court has calculated that there would be an extra 10,000 case applications a year, while sitting days are being cut and 88,000 cases are waiting. It would be litigation fraught with definition problems of the sort that appeal to lawyers.

Have noble Lords noticed that it is in fact only the lawyers who support this legislation? The public do not. The majority of the comments on my article in the Guardian on this issue reject the proposed law. “If you want marriage rights,” they said, “get married. Keep the Government out”. The consultees to the Law Commission said the same in 2007.

Who is really vulnerable? The children are, and there is nothing here to help them, and the Government have not reformed the maintenance law. Equally vulnerable are single women who may be saddled with childcare and lower pay, and the woman who has cared for her elderly parents for years but is not entitled to anything from them, and the sisters who live together but are disregarded by the law. I wonder why it is that only a sexual relationship brings women within the purview of a law to benefit them. I can find no good answer.

Cohabiting couples can choose to marry, enter a civil partnership, make a will, sign an agreement, insure each other’s lives, become joint tenants and gain property by contributing to the improvement of the other one’s property. That respects autonomy; this Bill does not. It intrudes into private life, it makes for uncertainty and expense and it opens up new avenues of judicial discretion and lots of lucrative litigation. If there is a problem with Muslim unrecognised marriages, that needs to be solved elsewhere.

The Bill is well intentioned but profoundly misguided. It is illiberal, intrusive and a bedroom tax—“share your bedroom and you will pay for it for evermore”. Noble Lords should protect freedom to choose one’s lifestyle and freedom of contract over deprivation of rights. It is your relationship and your choice.

13:30

[Baroness Hamwee (LD)]

My Lords, this may have been one of those occasions when noble Lords felt that they should have started their speeches with, “As I was saying”. I do not think I have spoken on this subject before, although I have listened to a number of debates. My noble friend has taken every opportunity over quite a long time to seek to have the law recognise how so many couples choose to live their lives—and still do, despite the introduction of civil partnerships. I agree with the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Butler-Sloss. I am not an expert and I have done no polling, but I do not believe this will affect the numbers deciding to marry. I hope it will not. I take what the noble Lord, Lord Bailey, said very seriously. His was an interesting perspective that we need to take into account.

I recall an occasion—the noble Baroness, Lady Deech, referred to some of this debate—when there was a determined effort to extend cohabitation rights to people sharing a household when one was acting as a carer for the other, or particularly when siblings were living together. I was never persuaded by that. Relationships can be very close indeed but are entirely different from cohabitation.

I heard a discussion on the radio a few days ago on the Government’s current consultation. One of the speakers, a woman—I say to my noble friend that I do not overlook the fact that either party may find himself or herself brutally discovering that cohabitation is not the same as marriage—described how, having supported her partner when she was the higher earner, she saw his career take off while she had children and, to care for them, reduced her working hours and lost chances for promotion. She had not realised that she could have kept up her national insurance contributions, nor what an effect this would have on her future financial situation, including her pension, in stark contrast to his.

The Bill deals not only with financial matters, including intestacy and the opportunity to arrange insurance cover on a partner’s life, but with the right to register the death of a partner. The block on that must be so hurtful. The noble Baroness, Lady Deech, referred to Article 8. I am sure we will have opportunities in a different context to discuss Article 8 in the near future, so today is not the day to discuss how far it must extend.

Unsurprisingly, my noble friend has done a very thorough job on the Bill. I will be interested to see what comes out of the Government’s consultation and any negotiations my noble friend will be able to have based on his Bill. I hope we may end up with a system that is as simple as possible and does not need the involvement of lawyers. The people who can readily afford them are probably the people who are least in need of this Bill. My noble friend seeks to modernise the law and to provide rights that many people mistakenly think they have. So do the Government, I assume, because you should not consult on something you do not want to do. Anything else would be too cynical.

13:34

[Lord Wolfson of Tredegar (Con)]

My Lords, I pay tribute to the noble Lord, Lord Marks of Henley-on-Thames, who has pursued this issue with—if I may say so—characteristic persistence and conviction over many years, introducing substantially similar Bills on a number of occasions. These Bills undoubtedly raise important questions of law, policy and fairness.

I do not begin from the proposition that there is no problem to be addressed. There plainly are cases in which the breakdown of a long-term cohabiting relationship can leave one party, often the economically weaker party, in circumstances of genuine hardship. There also remains a widespread misconception that common-law marriage exists, and that couples who live together automatically acquire legal rights equivalent to those of married couples. They do not. That misunderstanding has been recognised by Governments of different political persuasions and is reflected in noble Lords’ speeches and the Government’s current consultation. The question is not whether there is an issue, nor whether some cohabitants deserve protection, but whether this Bill provides the right legal and constitutional answer.

I approach this debate not only as a lawyer but as someone who believes that there is an important constitutional principle which underpins much of our private law. That principle is autonomy. I would put it this way: the common thread running through our private law is not paternalism, but autonomy. The law exists to enable adults who are capable to make deliberate legal choices for themselves and not to relieve them of the need to make those choices. That principle runs through countless areas of our law. When two people decide to marry, they voluntarily assume a legal status containing both rights and obligations. If they prefer, they can enter into a civil partnership. If they want to regulate their financial affairs without marrying or without a civil partnership, they can execute an agreement or a declaration of trust governing ownership of property. If they want to decide who inherits, they can make a will. While they still have capacity, people now can determine who makes decisions on their behalf if they one day lose that capacity in the form of a lasting power of attorney. Each of those legal mechanisms expresses a simple but very profound principle. The law provides a framework, but adults make the choice.

This Bill, however, proceeds from a very different premise. In effect, it says that significant legal obligations should arise not because people have chosen to undertake them but because Parliament has inferred them from the existence of a relationship. That is a significant constitutional step. Of course cohabitation deserves respect. Millions of people choose to live together without marrying for different reasons. Some might marry later, some will never marry and some consciously reject marriage; that is entirely a matter for them. The issue is whether Parliament should transform what, at its heart, is a factual relationship into a legal status without the conscious and voluntary agreement of the people whose lives it governs.

That is why the difference between marriage and cohabitation is fundamentally important. Marriage and civil partnership are not simply descriptions of a relationship; they are legal institutions. They arise because two adults consciously decide to assume legal obligations towards one another before the law. Cohabitation is different. It is a factual circumstance. People may cohabit for months or years. They may intend eventually to marry. They may positively decide never to marry. They may have religious reasons for cohabiting. There could be financial reasons or family reasons. Those could also be reasons why they have chosen not to marry. They may simply prefer not to enter into a legal relationship. The reasons ultimately do not matter. The critical point is that the choice is theirs and belongs to them. I listened carefully to the very interesting speech from my noble friend Lord Bailey of Paddington, who made some of these points very sharply. He also pointed out very clearly that the characteristics of Jewish mothers are not limited to mothers who are Jewish.

One of the themes running through the noble Lord’s Bill is that after a period of cohabitation, or immediately where there is a child, the law should intervene by default unless the parties have taken positive steps to opt out. That reverses what I suggest is the proper constitutional starting point. I understand why the noble Lord has adopted an opt-out model; indeed, the Government’s current constitution proposes a broadly similar approach. But there are issues, and I look forward to the Law Commission’s report, with an opt-out model. The choice between an opt-in and an opt-out model is not a drafting detail but a fundamental issue. I am sure the noble Lord the Minister will have something to say on that. There may be a point between us on this.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Ministry of Justice (Baroness Levitt) (Lab)]

The noble Lord called me “the noble Lord”.

[Lord Wolfson of Tredegar (Con)]

I am sorry. I did slip into that. I know that sometimes people say “the noble Lord”; I was not trying to be rude or forget that the Minister is in fact a noble Baroness. I hope she will forgive me; it was entirely accidental and unintended.

My Lords, and the noble Baroness the Minister, there is another reason why I have reservations about the Bill, and this is a serious point. There is a constitutional principle engaged here as well, which is the rule of law. One of the points about the rule of law is that the law has to be certain. People have to know where and when legal rules, rights and obligations arise. The law should not leave people guessing where they have inadvertently entered into a legal relationship carrying significant financial consequence. Marriage does that; you know when a marriage begins and when a marriage legally ends. There is no uncertainty when those legal obligations arise. The same is true of a civil partnership, but this Bill is fundamentally different.

One of the first questions the courts will have to answer is: when precisely did these two people become cohabitants for the purposes of the Act? Was it when they first stayed together most nights, when they gave up one property, when they opened a joint bank account or when they began introducing each other as partners? Those are fact-sensitive questions.

To pick up a point made earlier, if you want to increase the role of lawyers and increase legal costs, you introduce a lot of fact-sensitive questions. The decision in Kimber v Kimber illustrates that there is no single, decisive test for determining whether two people are living together as a couple. I fear the Bill would increase uncertainty by increasing judicial discretion, and that makes outcomes more difficult to predict.

It is sometimes said that these proposals simply recognise the reality of modern life. I agree that, at least at some point, the law should come into some sort of contact with reality. But recognising reality is not the same as creating legal status. The Bill would come close to creating what has sometimes been described as marriage without consent. The state should be slow to impose legal obligations that people might have deliberately chosen not to assume.

Freedom means more than the freedom to make choices. It also means accepting responsibility for those choices. The law should support people in making informed decisions but should not too readily relieve them of the consequences of deciding not to enter into legal relationships carrying defined rights and obligations. That does not mean we should be indifferent to genuine hardship. Where children are involved, in particular, their welfare must be of the greatest importance. I look forward in particular to what the Law Commission says in that regard.

I will take a moment to pick up the points made by the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Butler-Sloss, and the noble Baroness, Lady Gohir, about religious marriage and women being left in a very difficult position if they have had only a religious marriage and not also a civil marriage that gives them civil legal rights and protections. I think I am right in saying that the United Synagogue will not marry you religiously unless, at the same time, it marries you civilly. That is worth looking at; I know it has been brought before this House on previous occasions. It is worth looking at from the position not of treading on people’s religious freedoms but of protecting women in particular and making sure they have the legal rights they ought to as members of our civil society. But we do not need this Bill to do that, and we should not use it to do that.

While I have serious concerns about the Bill, I am also conscious that the Law Commission is looking at this very issue. The Law Commission is one of the unsung heroes of our legal and constitutional settlement. I look forward to its work, which is invariably of an extremely high quality. For those reasons, although I have concerns about the Bill as drafted, I look forward to continuing conversations around this issue and the Bill in light of the work of the Law Commission.

13:45

[Baroness Levitt (Lab)]

My Lords, it is always a pleasure to speak after the noble Lord, Lord Wolfson. Of course I accept his apology for what was obviously a slip of the tongue. Before I turn to the points he made, which are interesting and valid as always, I start with the noble Lord, Lord Marks of Henley-on-Thames, whom I congratulate on securing a Second Reading for his Bill. I pay tribute to the noble Lord for his long-standing interest in cohabitation reform, his thoughtful and principled engagement on this important area of family law and his determination in bringing this Bill forward again. He and I spoke yesterday; I hope it was the beginning of a number of conversations on this important topic.

I want to make it absolutely clear from the outset that this Government share his view that cohabitation reform is an important and pressing issue. That is why we committed in our 2024 manifesto to strengthening the rights and protections available to women in cohabiting couples. Broadly speaking, it appears that agreement has broken out all over this House, with the exception of the noble Baroness, Lady Deech, and to some extent the noble Lords, Lord Wolfson and Lord Bailey. I will come back to them in a moment.

I begin with the case for reform. As the noble Lord, Lord Marks, said, there are currently around 3.5 million cohabiting couples—more than twice the number 30 years ago. Despite this, cohabitants have very limited financial protection when they separate or when their partner dies having not made a will. This lack of protection can leave the most vulnerable, including women, children and victim survivors of domestic abuse, exposed to significant financial hardship. It can also leave victims of domestic abuse with an impossible choice: leaving their abuser but then having no financial security at all or staying in a dangerous relationship. These problems are compounded by the fact that many people do not know they have no rights until it is too late.

The noble Lord, Lord Wolfson, agrees with the Government and the noble Lord, Lord Marks, when he says that almost half the population believe that there is such a thing as a common-law marriage—the idea that a person will accrue some kind of financial rights simply by living with a partner for a number of years or having a child together. It is a myth. It is simply untrue. Some of your Lordships, in particular the noble Baroness, Lady Deech, have raised the point that many individuals choose not to marry. That is a choice that they are entitled to make, and we respect that. But we must be careful not to assume that such choices are always made with a full understanding of the law and its consequences. Children should not be left in a vulnerable financial position as a result of the decisions made by their parents.

The noble Baroness, Lady Deech, and the noble Lord, Lord Wolfson, asked, “If they want those financial rights, why not just get married?”, but that risks overlooking the fact that many cohabitants are not aware of their financial rights, as many noble Lords have agreed. Some simply drift into having cohabited. Maybe they thought about getting married but never quite got around to it. I will return in a moment to the points made by the noble Lord, Lord Bailey, but for some getting married is too expensive and too hard to deal with. I simply disagree with the noble Baroness, Lady Deech, that more than half the population understand their rights. All the evidence suggests that public awareness campaigns do not improve this understanding at all.

We are aware that we all risk the state overstepping into what are ultimately deeply personal choices about how individuals choose to live their lives. However, concentrating on the freedom of choice aspect ignores the imbalances of power that can exist within relationships and the point that a perpetrator of abuse may refuse to marry a victim precisely to ensure that they have no rights at the end of the relationship. The noble and learned Baroness, Lady Butler-Sloss, and the noble Baroness, Lady Gohir, made an important point about religious-only marriages. I will return to that in a moment, because that is something about which the Government are really concerned and about which we intend to do something.

I recognise the concern expressed by a number of your Lordships that offering a framework of protections for cohabitants could undermine marriage. I reassure the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Butler-Sloss, that there is no evidence from other jurisdictions that have cohabitation protections that it has undermined marriage at all. The Government are proposing two very different regimes on relationship breakdown: a regime for divorce that is based on sharing, and a regime for cohabitation that is based on need.

The Government support and value marriage. I hope that your Lordships’ House will forgive me for saying that I am always pleased when I see the name of the noble Lord, Lord Bailey, on the speakers’ list of a debate in which I am taking part. He and I come from very different political parties but he always says something interesting, and I thought his speech gave us things to think about. The reason why we say that we are in favour of and support and value marriage is that yesterday we launched our consultation on reforms to weddings law. This forms part of a piece with the consultations on what happens to finances after the breakdown of relationships. We recognise that marriage can be too difficult and too expensive for many people, so we propose—but we are very interested to know everybody’s views about this—moving from a buildings-based to an officiant-based regulation system. That would, for example, permit those who conduct religious marriages to also conduct civil marriages at the same time, so that those who take part in, for example, Muslim marriages can have the protections afforded to others in that situation.

Although the Government agree with the noble Lord, Lord Marks, on the vital need for cohabitation reform, we do not believe that this Bill is the right vehicle in which to deliver it. I have four reasons for saying this. The first is our ongoing consultation. It will not have escaped your Lordships’ attention that we launched our A Fairer End to Relationships consultation last month, which sets out our approach to cohabitation reform, together with proposals to reform financial remedies on divorce. It represents one of the most significant opportunities in decades for the reform of family law. As part of the consultation, the Government are engaging with a wide range of interested parties to test our proposals and try to achieve consensus about the direction of reform. Legislating at this stage would pre-empt the outcome of that consultation.

The second reason is that the Government are not persuaded that the Bill’s proposed model for cohabitation reform meets the policy objectives set out in our consultation. Our objectives include prioritising a fair outcome for children, protecting the vulnerable, and providing a clear and accessible framework—I take on board what everybody said about lawyers; I think I had better pass on quickly—whereas the Bill proposes a compensation-based approach to cohabitation reform. In broad terms, this means giving the court power to compensate a cohabitant if they have been economically disadvantaged as a result of contributions made during the relationship. The Bill would also allow the reversal of an economic benefit gained in the relationship. This would require the courts to retrospectively assess how contributions create advantage or disadvantage. This would be complicated, it may be hard to evidence, and it would be hugely likely to increase conflict and cost. We know that very acrimonious court proceedings are bad for families and particularly bad for children.

Most importantly, the compensation model does not reliably ensure that needs, particularly the needs of children, are met. For these reasons, the Government prefer a needs-based approach to cohabitation reform which prioritises meeting the financial needs of cohabitants when they separate. For example, this would capture needs which have arisen completely independently of the relationship, such as serious illness or disability, which might not be catered for under a compensation model. Under the Bill, a cohabitee who got a serious illness—for example, ME—shortly after the relationship began and, as a result, could not “contribute” to the relationship would be left unprotected. That cannot be right.

This is particularly important in the cases of families with children, as it is children who are most often affected by the financial consequences of relationship breakdown. A needs-based approach also offers a clearer and more accessible framework, as it respects the choice of people not to marry but is also designed to look after the economically weaker parties in the relationship. I point to the fact that compensation, as a principle, is rarely used even in divorce cases, although we are consulting on whether it should have a place there. We will think about it, but at the moment our view is that the needs-based model is more likely to achieve our objectives.

I note that the Bill reflects the proposals recommended by the Law Commission, but they were made almost two decades ago and things have moved on considerably since then. In particular, there is now much greater awareness of domestic abuse, including economic abuse. It is right, therefore, that we consult on our own approach. I reassure the noble Lord, Lord Marks, that our approach would benefit not simply victim-survivors of domestic abuse but all cohabitees, once the relationship breaks down, if they are in need of economic support.

Our third reason, which I can deal with very quickly, is coherence across the system. The Government believe that cohabitation reform and the law in relation to finances on divorce should be examined together. Although we propose distinct and separate regimes, we are of the view that we should draw on the Law Commission’s 2024 scoping report on financial remedies, which raised important questions about how the law for divorcing couples could be made fairer and more certain—a topic on which the noble Baroness, Lady Deech, has spoken often. I have listened to everything she has had to say, together with the contributions of the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Butler-Sloss, on this topic, with great interest.

Our consultation therefore makes proposals aimed at improving the system for divorcing couples who go through financial remedies proceedings. By contrast, the Bill would deal with cohabitation reform in isolation. In our view, that risks missing a wider opportunity. What we want is a coherent, consistent and modern family justice system for married couples who divorce and for cohabitants, whether on separation or on death. We want a system which respects freedom of choice in how families arrange their lives while protecting the vulnerable. That is why we are consulting on all these three areas of reform together.

Finally, the Government have concerns about the Bill’s approach towards intestacy and inheritance claims, because the Bill’s proposed definition of “cohabitant” and its qualifying criteria would create a broader entitlement to intestacy rights than the Government are currently considering.

I hope I have made it clear that the Government are committed to cohabitation reform. We have already begun that work and have committed to legislating when parliamentary time allows, having considered the results of the consultation. Our consultation sets out a clear framework for cohabitation reform that will meet the needs of women, children and those otherwise vulnerable.

Although the Government cannot support the Bill from the noble Lord, Lord Marks, for the reasons I have given, I hope he will be reassured by the Government’s clear commitment to reform in this area. We share his objective. He and I have talked over many months about various Bills that have come before the House and about other topics. I profoundly hope that we will continue to do so. We want to deliver vital financial protections for cohabitants, so any difference between us is not about whether reform is needed but simply about how best to achieve it. I therefore respectfully invite all noble Lords to engage with the consultation and to give us their views. We want to get this right and we want to do it in a way that is fair, workable and lasting.

13:59

[Lord Marks of Henley-on-Thames (LD)]

My Lords, I am very grateful to everyone who has contributed to this debate on a Private Member’s Bill. It is an unusual position that we find ourselves in, with my Private Member’s Bill, which was introduced just after the King’s Speech, and the consultation, which was announced on 5 June. The two are proceeding in parallel, which is unusual, and which is why I did not go into the detail of my Bill. We nevertheless had a very interesting debate, with some very important points being made.

I should start with my friend—he is a chambers colleague as well—the noble and learned Lord, Lord Garnier. I welcome his support for this legislation, and his urging the Government and me to see whether we cannot get together to produce a single Bill that perhaps has the best and avoids the worst of the proposals on either side. In so doing, I should make it clear that I see a great deal of merit in almost all the consultation proposals. My doubts about the needs-based scheme and the compensation-based scheme, which the noble Baroness, Lady Levitt, explained, can be capable of resolution where there is some case for righting injustice and unfairness, where there is a need for compensation, where one party has been exploitative of the other. That is a real danger; unlike the needs-based regime that the Government are consulting on, this involves addressing the needs of cohabitants who are left.

I also take the point about the other difference that I mentioned between us: the role of abuse and violence in relationships, where the weaker partner is coerced by the stronger partner into accepting a position whereby they have very limited rights. They do not get married, and they are left without resources and often with children. That is, of course, a very powerful argument for the needs-based approach. I hope that we can achieve most of our objectives. The very fact that there is this consultation and that we are going to get legislation is the most important aspect of this debate.

I particularly welcome the support of the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Butler-Sloss, which has been consistent since I first introduced this Bill. I welcome it particularly because, as a member of the Marriage Foundation who is committed to marriage—as indeed I am, and I think all the supporters of this Bill are—she has considered carefully whether there is a risk of an adverse impact on the institution of marriage from proposals for cohabitation support. I agree with and am warmed by her belief that there would be no adverse reaction.

I thought that the noble and learned Baroness and the noble Baroness, Lady Gohir, raised a very important point, which the Government are going to consider, about religious-only marriages. I quite understood the point raised by the noble Lord, Lord Wolfson, that the United Synagogue may have got it right in insisting on a dual marriage, but there are nevertheless many cases where a religious-only marriage, in a Muslim context, can result in serious injustice to women who are later left.

I turn to the central point made by the noble Baroness, Lady Deech, and the noble Lord, Lord Wolfson, on autonomy. I accept that autonomy has an important place in English law, but relationships and marriage both develop over time. Many relationships start with cohabitation and then move into marriage, of course, then they adopt the regime that we apply to marriage or to civil partnership. But it is a gradual process, and people sometimes fall into cohabitation without considering either a cohabitation agreement or whether they should opt out of such legal protections as we introduce.

Then children come along, not always entirely expected and not always intentionally, but nevertheless they change the dynamic of a relationship. I believe it is incumbent on society and on the law to keep up with that and to recognise that injustices and unfairnesses can follow and relationships then break down—it can also happen when one partner dies—if the law has not made sure that there are protections in place.

I am very grateful also to my noble friend Lady Hamwee for her reflections on this Bill and her support for it. It is indeed Liberal Democrat policy to have this kind of reform, although I should say that I moved the conference motion that brought that about, so I may take some responsibility for that.

I am hopeful. I heard everything that the noble Baroness, Lady Levitt, said in reply. We have had conversations and I hope we will have many more during the course of the consultation. We need to go forward with both for now, and I hope there will be a time when we may come to an amalgamated position.

Bill read a second time and committed to a Committee of the Whole House.

Rights of Boat Dwellers Bill [HL]

2nd reading
Friday 17th July 2026 Lords Chamber

Second Reading

14:06

Moved by

[Baroness Bakewell of Hardington Mandeville]

That the Bill be now read a second time.

[Baroness Bakewell of Hardington Mandeville (LD)]

My Lords, I am grateful to the National Bargee Travellers Association and the Public Bill Office for their help in drafting this piece of legislation, which is long overdue and very important to those who make their homes on Britain’s rivers and canals. I thank those few noble Lords who are speaking this afternoon for taking part.

The 2021 census counted 105,000 people living on boats and other mobile homes. Many living on boats did not receive the census information at all. They have no postal address and cannot receive mail in the way everyone else takes for granted. Housing law does not apply to boats. Boat dwellers who travel have no access to health services, as you need a permanent postcode to register with a GP. A marina or canal-side address is not accepted, and I will return to that.

Since 2015, the Canal & River Trust has enforced a policy that pushes boaters without a permanent mooring to travel a distance and pattern that can cut them off from work, from their children’s school and from family. This goes well beyond what the British Waterways Act 1995 requires. For those with children—which admittedly is a very small percentage of boat dwellers—gaining access to education is problematic if they are forced to move on every 24 hours. I fear it is difficult to comprehend the Minister in the other place saying in December 2024, in answer to a Parliamentary Written Question:

“Those with children who choose to live on a boat without a permanent mooring are responsible for ensuring they have access to education”.


If a family were to live in the middle of Dartmoor, miles from the local school, would the education authority say it was the parents’ responsibility to provide access to the relevant school?

It is time that boat dwellers who travel have recognition and enjoy the same rights as the rest of society. I have received emails from those with views from both ends of the spectrum of support and antipathy, and I take that as a sign that this subject needs a proper airing.

The Bill is short, and one or two of the clauses appear to be causing some concern: Clause 4, on the right to access public services, and Clause 5, on security of tenure for boat dwellers. This is what debate in the House of Lords is all about: airing concerns, modifications and agreements.

I am not personally a subscriber to social media. However, I have been sent a copy of the National Association of Boat Owners’ Facebook page from 11 to 29 June, anonymised. There were a wide range of views, for and against, with many who have boats for leisure activities worried about how the Bill will affect their use of the water. I understand this. However, I will just quote from one contribution:

“Giving rights to someone does not take away from anyone who already has that right. It just makes it fair to all”.

I agree with this statement.

One boat dweller, contacting me via email—I have taken out the venue he has listed to protect his anonymity—says:

“In the spring, summer and fall, I travel. In the winter, my boat is in a static place. However, I cannot register with a GP in this static area. I would like to know, if this Bill became law, would it require financial services—banks and credit agencies—to treat boat dwellers equally and not a reason to lower their credit ratings?”


The RBOA has welcomed the Bill and the debate that will arise as a result. It says:

“The Bill addresses a number of long-standing issues affecting resident boaters, including recognition of boats as lawful homes, access to public services, security of tenure and treatment of those living aboard without a permanent mooring”.


I return to the issue of access to health services. I have received an email from a travelling boater—whose name I will not mention—who illustrates the difficulties:

“Recently, my wife has been able to register temporarily with a GP, and this has its problems. Because they use a different computer system from the one our home GP uses, they are unable to access her past records. Also, because we are now moving away, we now have to incur expensive and time-consuming train travel to get back to the hospital, because appointments cannot be transferred without going back to the bottom of the waiting lists”.


It is obvious that boaters who travel have significant disadvantages compared to those living in permanent moorings or bricks and mortar. Those objecting have particular difficulties with Clause 6, on cruising patterns and licensing conditions. Those who cruise for leisure instead of as a way of life believe they will be adversely affected. Those with fixed addresses appear not to understand the difficulties of those who are unable to register an address to receive mail, register to vote and enrol with a GP. These are the basics of life to which everyone should have access. There are those who, having moored their boats, appear to seek to block the towpath, causing difficulties for others, and I do not support their actions. I am grateful to those who have made contact with me to tell me of their concerns, but not always of the way in which they have expressed themselves.

The debate is moving on. In 2006, Sir Vince Cable secured a Westminster Hall debate on this subject, so I am following in his footsteps. On that occasion, the Leader of this House, the noble Baroness, Lady Smith, responded as the relevant Minister. Boat dwellers deserve rights and the same access to services as you and I in this Chamber enjoy. Governments from both sides of the House believe that boat dwellers are not a housing issue. This may well be true, but this is certainly an accommodation issue, and those who choose this lifestyle should not be looked down on or ignored.

My Bill is not in the same class as others debated this morning, but it deals with those who are at a disadvantage. I am not a lawyer, but I hope my Bill, having started a very serious discussion, will be successful. I look forward to Committee, where we can explore the pros and cons that have arisen, and I look forward to the Minister’s comments.

14:14

[Lord Cashman (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, I am pleased to speak in support of the Bill in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Bakewell. I congratulate her on her exposition in moving Second Reading and, indeed, in outlining the rights and benefits as well as the problems. I have long taken an interest in this subject, since the decimation of the rights of people with houseboats at the club of the Chelsea Yacht & Boat Company along the Thames on Lots Road, and their subsequent attempts to try to seek justice and security of tenure against rogue developers and landlords. The Bill addresses the rights that we need to protect boat dwellers along the riverways and canals of the United Kingdom.

During the passage of legislation in your Lordships’ House, I have tried to bring forward amendments to address these issues, particularly on the rights of access to public services and security of tenure for boat dwellers with permanent mooring and for those without. Sadly, I have been unsuccessful, and the Government have not been willing to address this in legislation—although they recognise the problem sympathetically.

I was a little alarmed to learn that the Canal & River Trust had heavily lobbied civil servants when we were dealing with the Renters’ Rights Bill and my amendments. I was alarmed because it did not address their concerns to me, and, as far as I know, it did not address its concerns to all Members of your Lordships’ House but directly to civil servants. When we previously discussed this issue during the passage of the Renters’ Rights Bill, I was told that it was too difficult to address, and this was reinforced by the civil servants. I am aware that it is a difficult situation but, as I have said before, we come into politics to address and try to solve such difficult situations, not prolong them. It is about outcomes, and the Bill rightly seeks to address positive outcomes for boat dwellers.

At the moment, the United Kingdom faces a housing crisis, and we need to look at every available opportunity to address that crisis. Houseboats, residences and ownership are ways that we can deal with homelessness and overcrowding, and provide a ladder on to the housing market. Indeed, there are developers currently offering a “luxury life on the water waves”, interestingly accompanied by the offer of flexible moorings—for flexible moorings read non-permanent moorings, where people can be evicted and their licence not be renewed, as they are moved on, while on the canals they are forced, as the noble Baroness, Lady Bakewell, said, to play a forward game of ping-pong in order to remain in their licensed boat or barge. Developers see potential and are making inroads across London at the marinas—in Limehouse in east London, the Surrey Docks in south-east London, and places where people have lived in boats and barges for decades and, in some instances, centuries. These are now being taken over by companies seeking to make a quick buck, such as those at Lots Road. It is happening in riverways across the country. That is why we need the Bill.

I have gone on for too long. Sadly, I think the Government will reject the Bill. They will repeat that it is too problematic and that it covers too many Whitehall departments. However, this will not be an acceptable excuse. Without such rights people will be moved along, evicted, have their homes taken from them and their licences will not be renewed. They will be denied basic rights, as outlined earlier. We who do nothing must shoulder the responsibility of such inaction. That is why I wholly support this important Bill.

14:19

[Baroness Miller of Chilthorne Domer (LD)]

My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Cashman, in his long campaign on this issue. My noble friend Lady Bakewell of Hardington Mandeville has long fought for those members of society who have found it hard, or impossible, to have their non-traditional homes recognised as a home, be they Travellers, Gypsies or, in this case, boaters. She has laid out extremely well why this Bill is needed. I lived on a houseboat on a rented mooring in the 1980s. Frankly, even nearly 50 years later, the issues have not really changed.

My noble friend talked about how difficult it is to access services because a boat address is not recognised by many authorities. Clause 4 is absolutely key. Last year, the noble Lord, Lord Cashman, introduced an amendment to the then Renters’ Rights Bill on this issue and, on 14 May 2025, the noble Baroness, Lady Taylor of Stevenage, who will reply today, mentioned a couple of points that are worth thinking about.

First, she told the House that a boat is regarded as a chattel, not a home, so security of tenure is—I paraphrase—already in the “too difficult to consider” government box. Nevertheless, that chattel is someone’s home. The boat needs to be redefined; it is insulting to call it chattel these days when it is somebody’s home. She also mentioned the implications for the navigation authorities. The Canal & River Trust is well aware of the issue but has no duty to have regard to a boat being someone’s home. Then there is the added complication that some boat owners own their moorings, some rent their moorings and some have no mooring and must move on every 14 days.

This Bill would give all these groups some extra security, particularly in the recognition of a home. With no such definition, boat dwellers fall down the gap in the legislation that should recognise the status of a home. There are also the duties of local authorities. They have a duty to recognise someone as homeless if they can no longer live on their boat, but they make very little or no effort as a planning authority to address the need for more moorings, both temporary and permanent. That is possibly because land-based communities do not want to see more permanent moorings, but it still needs to be addressed.

My noble friend expounded very clearly why Clause 4 is essential. It is very hard to see how you can get through life when you are denied the rights to healthcare, financial services and voting. There may be a need to amend the definition in Section 99 of the Housing Act 2004 to include boats.

Recently, the Canal & River Trust commissioned a report on the future of boat licensing. It has reported, and is now working through the recommendations. It is worth reflecting on its CEO Campbell Robb’s comment on receiving the report:

“It is … clear that some of the issues the Commission has highlighted are a symptom of the wider housing crisis, driven in part by the cost of living. More people are finding it harder to afford somewhere to live … and more people are vulnerable. We know that the recommendations in the report will not solve this. While the Trust is not a housing charity, we do recognise this reality”.


That is a welcome and constructive statement. The very least that the Government can do is to take a far more engaged attitude to the issue. It is complex, but there are amendments to legislation and to guidance that would be really constructive and helpful. I hope that my noble friend’s Bill will help the Government to move forward in this direction.

14:24

[Lord Jamieson (Con)]

My Lords, I think I ought to declare a tangential interest, as my brother-in-law is a boat dweller. I am grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Bakewell, for bringing forward this Bill and for how eloquently she raised the issues faced by boat dwellers, supported by the noble Lord, Lord Cashman, and the noble Baroness, Lady Miller of Chilthorne Domer.

I do not think there is any doubt that there are genuine issues that need to be addressed. It is only fair and right that everyone in this country should have access to public services, whether it is medical or having the ability to vote, and so forth. Boat dwellers are a diverse community. For some, living afloat is a lifestyle choice but, for others, as has been mentioned, it is an affordable housing option in an increasingly expensive housing market—and we have discussed the housing crisis many times. Whatever their circumstances, many boat dwellers undoubtedly face practical challenges in accessing services. The principle that people should not be denied access to public services, mainly because they live on a boat, is one I think we can all get behind across the House.

However—and I am sorry that there is a however—sympathy for the object of the Bill is not necessarily the same as support for the legislation before us. This House must ask not only whether a problem exists but whether the proposed solution is proportionate, workable and compatible with existing law. In that context, a number of provisions in this Bill raise concerns.

Clause 2 defines “boat dwellers” as those

“for whom a boat … is their primary residence”.

The term “permanent mooring” in the Bill risks confusion and, in our view, would be better replaced with “residential mooring”. In the case of the Canal & River Trust inland waterways, where a person chooses to make their boat their primary residence, they are required to have either a residential mooring or a continuous cruiser licence and to abide by the conditions of those licences. Where boaters fail to comply with licence conditions or moorings’ anchorage regulations, the relevant authorities must be able to take appropriate enforcement action, but many of the provisions in this Bill would impede their ability to do so.

The Bill also seeks to elevate a boat dweller’s right to secure a home above many existing statutory responsibilities relating to the management of the waterways. In doing so, it risks creating considerable legal uncertainty. The Bill requires authorities to refrain from enforcement action wherever such an action might affect a person’s right to a secure home, yet it provides little clarity on how competing rights and responsibilities are to be balanced in practice. Inevitably, this will risk litigation and uncertainty for both authorities and boat dwellers alike. Nobody wishes to see vulnerable residents lose their homes, whether that is on land or water, but we must consider the wider implications for creditors, navigation authorities and the rule of law. The Bill appears to create protections that go considerably beyond those available to homeowners or tenants on land. This House must be cautious before establishing a category of property that becomes effectively immune from certain forms of law enforcement.

Perhaps the Bill’s most striking provision is that which requires relevant authorities to give greater weight to the rights and interests of boat dwellers than to those of commercial, sporting and leisure users or riparian owners, including homeowners, whenever the rights of boat dwellers may be affected. That is a very far-reaching proposition. Britain’s waterways are shared spaces: they support economic activity, recreation, tourism, environmental purposes and residential use. Good governance requires fair balancing between all legitimate interests. Whatever one’s views on the current enforcement practices, we should recognise that mooring space is a finite resource. Navigation authorities already struggle to enforce these essential regulations, particularly in premium sites. If authorities are deprived of the ability to manage that resource effectively, there is a risk of congestion, tension between different users and unintended consequences for the very communities this Bill seeks to assist.

There are also questions about whether this Bill inadvertently imports concepts from the housing law into circumstances for which they were never designed. In previous debates, as has been mentioned on related matters, concerns were rightly raised about whether concepts such as dwelling house, tenure and residential occupation can simply be transposed into a waterways context.

Finally, I raise the issue of council tax, as the Bill potentially raises a number of issues of when a boat is a home or not. Currently, a boat with a permanent mooring on which you reside is subject to council tax, but not if you do not permanently reside there. If, in effect, all boats have a right of residence, would they all be subject to council tax or second home tax? I do not have the answer, but it is a question that needs answering.

None of this is to dismiss the concerns that have motivated the Bill. We should continue to examine whether barriers to public service can be reduced and whether existing protections are operating fairly. But legislation must be carefully targeted and evidence based. In its current form, the Bill risks upsetting long-established legal frameworks, constraining the legitimate functions of navigation authorities and creating uncertainty for all users of our waterways. For those reasons, while I respect the intentions behind the Bill and we believe that something needs to be done, I remain unconvinced at this stage that it provides the right legislative answer. I look forward to hearing the contribution of the Minister and whether she is able to answer some of those flummoxing questions.

14:30

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government (Baroness Taylor of Stevenage) (Lab)]

My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Bakewell, for bringing forward this Private Member’s Bill. The noble Baroness raises a very important issue, which, as she knows, we have debated before in your Lordships’ House. The Government recognise the important role that the waterways play in enriching people’s lives by providing homes for those who live on boats. With the housing crisis that we are only now beginning to tackle, the option is being considered by more and more people.

The Government are committed to tackling insecurities across all housing sectors, including boat dwellers. The question before us is about not only housing rights but the practical management of finite public waterways and the ability of navigation authorities to discharge their statutory responsibilities. The noble Lord, Lord Jamieson, referred to this. Several of the Bill’s provisions would substantially reduce the ability of navigation authorities to enforce licensing requirements and to manage the network fairly. While the Government accept the need for proportionality and appropriate safeguards, navigation authorities must retain the ability to deal with persistent non-compliance, licence evasion, unsafe vessels and potential obstruction of the network.

To use a boat as a main and only home, the boat owner will require a licence, a mooring with planning permission for residential use and the agreement of the mooring owner. The agreement with the mooring owner will grant the boat owner a licence to occupy the mooring and will set out how long the boat owner can stay on the mooring. A boat owner on a residential mooring may also benefit from the Protection from Eviction Act 1977. This requires a mooring owner to obtain a court order to evict a boat owner who continues to use the mooring after their licence agreement has ended.

Boat owners using their boats for other purposes, including recreational use, will have access to other types of moorings, including utility and short-stay visitor moorings. On waterways managed by the Canal & River Trust, if a boat is licensed without a home mooring, it must move on a regular basis and must generally not stay in the same place for more than 14 days.

The Bill aims to formally recognise the rights of people whose main home is a boat, the definition of which in Clause 2 includes a number of floating structures. The Government do not consider that the proposed legislation would achieve its intended outcome. The Bill proposes that boats should be brought within the definitions of “house” and “dwelling” in Section 99 of the Housing Act 2004 and that other legislation be amended as required, so that boats would then be considered as lawful homes and boat owners would have access to public services.

The existing definition of “house” in Section 99 of the 2004 Act currently refers only to a “building”. A “building” is defined in common law as a structure which forms part of the realty, changes the physical appearance of the land and requires some degree of permanence. Section 99 also defines the term “house” as it applies to the selective licensing regime. The proposed amendment would therefore have practical effect only where a boat is located in an area already designated for selective licensing. The amendment would not have any impact if the boat was not located in an area subject to selective licensing.

Clause 5 places a duty on the Secretary of State to, within one year of enactment,

“publish a report to assess the extent to which boat dwellers with and without permanent moorings have security of tenure within the meaning of the Landlord and Tenant Act 1954”.

In simple terms, “security of tenure” under the Landlord and Tenant Act 1954 means that certain tenants may have a right to stay in occupation or seek a new lease when their existing lease comes to an end. That regime applies only in specific cases, including some long residential tenancies at low rents and certain commercial tenancies.

Boat owners on a residential mooring will not be party to a commercial lease: rather, they will have a licence to occupy the mooring. Boat owners without a residential mooring will also not have a lease agreement: rather, they must comply with the terms of the boat licence agreed by the relevant navigation authority. Therefore, the concept of security of tenure, as it applies to long tenancies at low rents and to commercial leases, is not relevant here. The Bill also places certain requirements on relevant authorities, which include navigation authorities, port authorities, the Environment Agency and riparian owners. There would need to be extensive consultation with those authorities on the Bill’s proposals to ensure the effective operation and management of the waterways.

I turn to some of the specific points raised by the noble Baroness, Lady Bakewell, and the noble Lord, Lord Cashman, whom I thank for his long campaign on this subject. He and I have had many conversations on this issue. On security of tenure, boat owners with a residential mooring have that licence to occupy the mooring, and their security of tenure will depend on the terms of the agreement they entered into with the mooring owner. As I said earlier, they may also be protected under the Protection from Eviction Act 1977.

Some boat owners will not want a residential mooring but instead prefer to move frequently around the waterways, and it is important that boat owners continue to have that choice. A tenancy arises when a landlord grants a person a legal right to exclusive possession of premises for a specified period of time in return for the payment of rent. In law, a licence arises when there is no right to exclusive possession and there is no intention to enter into a legal relationship of landlord and tenant. A boat owner’s security of tenure will depend on the terms of the agreement with the owner of the residential mooring.

Access to public services is a key point and I understand the concerns about it. Boat dwellers who have a residential mooring will have security of tenure based on their mooring agreement and will be able to access public services. Giving boat dwellers without a residential mooring the same rights as those with a residential mooring would have significant implications for the management of the waterways. Any changes that may impact the management of waterways should be taken after consultation with navigation authorities and key stakeholders and must also take account of the findings of the review commissioned in 2025 by the Canal & River Trust, one of the largest navigation authorities.

The noble Baroness, Lady Bakewell, particularly mentioned issues of GP and other services. For GP services, there is no regulatory requirement to prove identity, address or an NHS number to register as a patient, and there is no contractual requirement for GPs to request this. If anyone is turned away by a GP, the NHS has published guidance online on what their rights are. A residential mooring will usually have a fixed address attached to it, which will enable the boat owner to access public services just like anyone else in the catchment area. They can register with a local GP and dentist, access local schools and vote.

On the issue of education for people not in residential moorings, I will write to the noble Baroness. I know that LEAs have responsibility for people who move around the country, because they do for Travellers, but I am not sure how that applies to boat owners, so I will write to her on that.

On different GP IT systems, I am not sure that that is an insurmountable issue, because GPs will treat you in a different part of the country if you are there on holiday, for example. So I am not clear why that should be an issue for people who move around the country for other reasons. So, if the noble Baroness perhaps has some evidence on that, I would be happy to look at it and find out more about where there is an issue.

Banks, the DVLA and HMRC will all generally accept a residential mooring address in the same way as other addresses. Many banks may insist on a fixed residential address for identity checks, though.

The noble Baroness, Lady Miller, raised housing needs assessment, which is a good point. Planning policy of course requires local authorities to assess the size, type and tenure of housing needed for different groups in the community, and to set policies to address those needs. Those groups include Travellers and boat dwellers.

I recognise and welcome the commitment of the noble Baroness and my noble friend Lord Cashman on the issue of boat dwellers. The Government’s opposition to the Bill is based not on any lack of respect for those views but rather on a lack of clarity on what the Bill intends to achieve. Any changes to the security of tenure of boat owners must be carefully considered, together with the views of all navigation authorities and the findings of the 2025 review on the licensing of boats, commissioned by the Canal & River Trust.

The noble Baroness and my noble friend Lord Cashman will appreciate the current pressures on resources in my department and the many competing demands to add additional priorities for work to be carried out on policy. That said, I am sure that with a fair wind, to use a boating expression, I will be happy to continue discussions with them about how we work to make things better for boat dwellers. With that, I am very grateful to all noble Lords who have contributed to this debate.

14:40

[Baroness Bakewell of Hardington Mandeville (LD)]

My Lords, I thank all those who have taken part in this very short debate, especially the noble Lord, Lord Cashman, for his expertise, as he has been dealing with this matter for a very long time. He is right that, when we tried to amend the Renter’s Rights Bill, it was said that it was just too difficult to do. There is a housing crisis and this is possibly part of the solution. The issue around flexible moorings, which the Minister referred to, produces the ability to evict, so it does not provide what we are looking for in the Bill. The fact that it is too problematic to do something is not a good enough reason for not taking any action.

I am grateful to my noble friend Lady Miller of Chilthorne Domer, who is right that it is about the rights of those who choose a different lifestyle. Sometimes it is very difficult for people who are following 99% of the population’s choice of lifestyle to accept that some make a different choice. We need to protect that, because if we do not protect minorities that diminishes us all.

I was very interested in a boat being a chattel. My noble friend is right that it is still a home. It is not like a wine glass or a chair; it is the home, and homes are important to everybody’s well-being. You shut the door, and that is your home: that is where you feel safe. It does not matter whether it is on land or on water.

Somebody said that the Canal & River Trust has different types of moorings. It has permanent and temporary moorings. That is good, but those who do not have a permanent or a temporary mooring get moved on. I heard what was said about being moved in 14 days. That is not always what happens. Sometimes people are moved on within 24 hours, and it is distressing for them.

I welcome the contribution by the noble Lord, Lord Jamieson, that all should have access to public services. I agree with what he said about council tax and about people who are looking for more security on rivers and canals. It is absolutely about more rights, but with more responsibilities. The one is not going to come without the other. I sign up to that completely. It is not a question of giving people rights through the backdoor for which they have no responsibility. It is about making sure that those who live on boats can maintain a nomadic lifestyle and have access to services at the same time.

The Minister is quite right to raise the issue of the navigation authorities. They are agitated about what is in the Bill and I have had contact from them, but moving forward on the issue of moorings is key. I am not sure that Section 99 of the Housing Act is likely to be amended so that it includes boats, but it is something we could look at, and we have to consider that.

I have to find a way, through this Bill, to get some kind of security for boat dwellers who travel. They do not just mosey up and down the river on a leisure activity; they are moving as part of their lifestyle and, in some cases, as part of their business. They are using their boat to conduct their business where they go, then they move on and do it again somewhere else. They have to be able to do that.

The Minister says that GPs cannot turn boaters away because they do not have a postcode and that they should be able to access the health service. Unfortunately, that is not what happens in every case, and GPs have refused to take on people because they do not have a postcode.

I thank everybody for the debate. It is really interesting. We have started the debate, and I do hope that we can move it forward.

Bill read a second time and committed to a Committee of the Whole House.

House adjourned at 2.46 pm.