Love Matters (Archbishops’ Commission on Families and Households Report)

Baroness Butler-Sloss Excerpts

Friday 8th December 2023 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Butler-Sloss (CB)]

My Lords, I am very sad not to continue with the suggestion of “Coronation Street”. I congratulate the Archbishop’s commission on its brave report. It is very welcome. It chimes with much work that I have done over many years. I found it very difficult, when looking through the report, to decide which of its many subjects to say something about today, but I shall pick up on children, building a fairer society and dysfunctional families. It is no wonder that I chose dysfunctional families, because I was a family judge, so nearly all my work has dealt with dysfunctional families or oligarchs hiding their money so they did not have to pay their wives.

In 1987-88 I chaired the Cleveland inquiry on child abuse. One of its recommendations was that the child is a person, not an object of concern. I add, having heard for years since then how so many children are treated, that children are absolutely not packages.

I am impressed by this report’s emphasis on children, particularly on listening to children and young people and taking seriously what they have to say. Unusually, perhaps, children used to come and see me in my room, and I found that quite young children gave me astonishingly accurate reports of what they were concerned about and how they thought I, as a judge, might be able to put it right. I have seen a great many videos made by child psychiatrists and social workers with children as young as five or six giving an entirely accurate account of what has happened. I have to say that many times I preferred to hear that from a six year-old than from a 15 year-old, who might well have an agenda.

I do not underestimate the information that children can give. It is crucial to listen to them and take them seriously. We should not necessarily agree with what they have said or do what they want, but we must give them a chance, as the report underlines, to play their part in what goes on. I add that it is important to recognise child trauma, and the lack of sufficient facilities to deal with it.

A few years ago I chaired the Commission on Religion and Belief in British Public life. Its report was called Living with Difference. I am interested in Love Matters recommending the building of a kinder, fairer and forgiving society, because in our report we suggested that

“It should be a high priority, not only for interfaith organisations but also for all religion and belief groups, educational institutions, public bodies and voluntary organisations, to promote opportunities for encounter and dialogue”,


particularly for young people and children. Again, we learned the importance of listening rather than talking to other people and of learning from what other people could teach us. That seems to chime with the report from the Archbishop’s commission.

It seems also to me that the Church of England can do even more to promote the inclusive discussions between the Abrahamic and the dharmic traditions. That seems the one part of the work done by the Church of England that may not be as fruitful as it could be.

I am very fortunate: I came from a stable family and was very lucky to be married for 64 years—to one person, I might add. I also had the tragedy of losing one of my three children. One of the important things that I would like to share with the House is the problems of dysfunctional families, some of which I will refer to briefly. There is a lack of legal aid in family disputes. This was, very sadly, identified when very recently a judge was attacked by a litigant in person, obviously overcome by the appalling trauma for him of the court case. We obviously need not only more legal aid but more counselling and mediation. We need help for families who are troubled.

I declare that I am chair of a commission on forced marriage, which has learned how most families love their children but that it does not necessarily mean that, objectively, they do the best for them. Parents’ view of love, honour and duty pushes some families into marrying a son or daughter without their consent to a person whom the family considers is appropriate for marriage and to join the family. This occurs, I must tell the House, well beyond south-east Asia and it happens throughout the United Kingdom. In some particularly sad cases, there is a gay son or lesbian daughter who is married, in a form of conversion therapy, to honour the family and with the parents loving that adult child. I hope that the excellent suggestions of the Archbishops’ report will help to solve some, at least, of these problems and that the Government will support its recommendations.