Financial Provision on Divorce
Baroness Deech Excerpts(5 days, 10 hours ago)
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Baroness Deech
To ask His Majesty’s Government, following the Law Commission’s Financial Remedies Scoping Report published in December 2024, what consideration they are giving to the reform of the law relating to financial provision on divorce.
Baroness Deech (CB)
My Lords, for nearly 50 years I have been calling for reform of the way assets are distributed on divorce, a law now contained in the Matrimonial Causes Act 1973. In that time, divorce law itself has undergone profound changes and is now entirely no fault and administrative. In 1973, the financial provisions were based on the difficulties that had arisen when divorce was first detached from fault, and women and the Church had argued that the husbands should pay for what they saw as the abandonment of their wives. It was a sop to them.
In the past decades, society has changed. Sadly, the harm to children remains, and it is shameful how their maintenance is neglected and not enforced—one of the ills that I am seeking to remedy. The statutory law, however, has remained frozen in a 1960s state. Over the years, the noble Baroness, Lady Shackleton, the great expert, and I, have pointed out that it is so full of discretion that it is unpredictable to the point of being in breach of the rule of law. It is unstable, being thrown into fresh disarray every time there is a Court of Appeal or Supreme Court decision. It still contains gaps in coverage. For example, to what extent do pre-matrimonial assets become matrimonial, on which the case of Standish has opined after 52 years? There is the treatment of pensions. Does domestic abuse make a difference, even if general conduct does not? Why should an oligarch’s wife such as Mrs Potanina be able to clog up our courts, with only the slightest link to this country, in order to seek millions more to add to the £31 million she had already been awarded in Russia?
All this has a devastating effect on litigants. There is no legal aid, and I have witnessed less well-off couples in court, ignorant of even the basics, such as the paramountcy of the child’s welfare. I have seen them weeping at the adversarial nature of the proceedings, needing more judicial guidance than there is time for. I have seen much of a couple’s assets dissipated in legal costs—for example, assets of £1.5 million running up costs of £280,000 in EC v JC.
Let there be no misunderstanding: this is a lucrative field for lawyers representing better-off couples, and their opposition to reform is understandable. I have seen what were thought to be watertight nuptial agreements torn up by judges in different ways. It is disgraceful, too, that the law’s uncertainty keeps the door open for blackmail by husbands in religious divorces.
Some discretion is a good thing, but it has reached a pitch that is too costly and too damaging to the parties. As the Law Commission explained, Scotland and some Australian states have statutory guidelines that promote mediation and settlement without ruling out judicial nuance. I no longer need to make the case for reform. The noble Baroness, Lady Shackleton, and I have been totally vindicated by the Law Commission’s scoping report of December last year, which in hundreds of pages explored the deficiency of the law and determined that it has to be reformed.
The existing law is an intellectual delight for the lawyers, an accountants’ bonus, solicitors’ sustenance, an area of judicial creativity, a windfall for the wives of oligarchs, an academic goldmine, an impoverishment of children, but a desert for the average divorcee. We are out of step with most of Europe and the common-law world, especially Scotland, where the default position is a 50:50 split of assets acquired after the marriage, very limited ongoing maintenance and prenuptial contracts that are binding. This is what I have tried in successive years to achieve in my Private Member’s Bill. Now we are nearly there.
The Law Commission identified four potential models for reform and invites the Government to choose one. The first is codifying the existing law, but that would lead only to the continuation of the discretionary scheme and all its attendant ills. The second is guidelines-based discretion, which would retain judicial discretion within a structured framework. This, too, would keep the door open to too much uncertainty. The third is, as I recommended in my Bill, a matrimonial property regime which limits division to assets acquired during marriage, excludes premarital, inherited or gifted assets, aligns with Scotland and other European countries, and limits maintenance. If that sounds harsh, remember that wives, typically, who are in receipt of universal credit will have their maintenance reduced pound for pound. The husbands in that category are unlikely to have any income to give away in any case. The fourth option is a community property model without discretion—just dividing equally all post-marital assets. That may be a step too far for now.
Whatever model the Government choose, they should be mindful of artificial intelligence: ChatGPT has entered family law. There are already online models for clarifying which assets are in play and suggesting a settlement. The way forward is obvious. Once the law is reformed and has clear principles, AI will gather the information and predict the resulting split that should occur, leaving only the very dissatisfied to continue to fight in court at huge expense.
The other imperative is that there is no point in legislating for cohabiting couples to join the fray while the law is unsettled. That would only open the door to blackmail and a waste of assets. All the Government have to do is choose one of these models and the Law Commission will get on with the work of transposing it into statutory form for enactment. We have waited long enough. If this House believes in reducing child poverty, as I know it does, a law that prioritises child maintenance from divorcing parents and stops wasting their assets must be a good thing.
In the meantime, the Government could immediately bring forward for enactment the Bill already drafted by the Law Commission for the statutory enactment of pre- and post-nuptial agreements with conditions. That would enable all those who dislike the present law to get around it. It would also enable cohabiting couples to make agreements with some confidence that they will be upheld. It is imperative that the Government choose one model now for the sake of litigants, the general economy and peace of mind of families. Vested interests and uncertainty about direction can now be put aside. I ask the Minister to say which model the Government will go forward with.
Baroness Levitt (Lab)
I am afraid I am going to have to disappoint the noble Lord, Lord Sandhurst, because our assessment is that looking at these matters piecemeal will run the risk of creating new disputes and injustices. In the end, it is about making sure principally that children are protected when the relationships from which they are born end up dissolving.
I assure the noble and learned Baroness—
Baroness Deech (CB)
Perhaps I might point out to the Minister that the consultation on cohabitation was carried out very thoroughly by the Law Commission. It did it some years ago and, as far as children go, you cannot protect them if the splitting couple—which is very often the case with cohabitants—have no money, and we are not enforcing child maintenance in this country. So do not do the work all over again—it has been done.
Baroness Levitt (Lab)
I am afraid that I will disappoint the noble Baroness. This is a manifesto commitment, and it will happen. We will issue our consultation by spring next year.
Criminal Cases Review Commission
Baroness Deech Excerpts(5 months, 3 weeks ago)
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Lord Ponsonby of Shulbrede (Lab)
I thank my noble friend for that question. I shall write to him. I do not have an answer to the point that he raises, but I shall ensure that it is brought to the attention of the CCRC board.
Baroness Deech (CB)
My Lords, does it not add insult to injury that, after a person has spent the whole of their life wasted in jail, they do not get immediate compensation as soon as they are released? I have read that one of them has been waiting for years. There should be no cap on the compensation; it should be given absolutely immediately so that the person emerging from prison has something to fall back on. We cannot let them loose on the streets with no compensation.
Lord Ponsonby of Shulbrede (Lab)
The Government are actively looking into the concerns raised about the compensation cap and will provide an update on that matter in due course. We would encourage Mr Sullivan to make an application to the miscarriage of justice application service, and we will prioritise his application because of the length of his prison sentence.
Prenuptial Agreements
Baroness Deech Excerpts(8 months, 2 weeks ago)
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Baroness Deech
That this House takes note of the law relating to prenuptial agreements.
Baroness Deech (CB)
My Lords, it may interest noble Lords to know that I am often taken to one side by elderly female Peers to beseech me to reform the law in this area. They are reluctant to marry, or remarry, long-term partners because of fearing the loss of assets should there be a subsequent break-up, a loss that would deprive the children of the first marriage of their expected inheritance. One might be surprised at the energy of the beating hearts under the ermine. One should not be, because the Office for National Statistics has shown that the number of so-called silver splitters—divorcees over 65—has increased by 75% in the last 20 years and lawyers are advising them to make prenuptial agreements, commonly known as “prenups”.
Those who have been through a divorce once do not want to experience the financial consequences a second time. Others decide not to remarry legally. Judging by the number of letters I get from members of the public when the possibility of reform is reported, they are well aware of, and intensely anxious about and upset by, financial provision law; that is, the law about splitting assets on divorce. I have never received a letter in support of the existing law on this topic.
A prenup is an agreement made between a couple, either before or during their marriage or civil partnership, which governs the way in which their assets are to be divided on divorce. Many foreign jurisdictions expect couples to enter such binding arrangements. They are not, however, legally binding in England and Wales, although the Supreme Court ruled in the case of Radmacher v Granatino that they should be upheld if fair and freely entered into. They are popular here with couples with inherited wealth, or wealth acquired before marriage; couples who have children from a previous relationship; foreign couples; same-sex couples; and young career people who have built up assets before they marry.
Various studies have tried to estimate the number of couples who do make prenups, albeit, as I said, with no guarantee that they will be respected by the courts. The estimates vary from 13% to 20%. Certainly, prenups have become more common in the last few years. They no longer feel unromantic, unusual or just for the rich. They do not predispose to divorce, which is an argument used in the past. Indeed, in countries where prenups are more common the divorce rate is lower than ours. Such agreements are more likely to provide less ongoing maintenance for a spouse, in keeping with the trend away from such support, but should—and usually do—provide for support for the children. All this applies equally to post-nups; that is, similar agreements entered into during an ongoing marriage. Couples believe these agreements to be binding, following the judgment in Radmacher v Granatino.
What is the problem that requires reform—and this debate? In summary, the Supreme Court judgment opened the door to challenges to those agreements by requiring them to be “fair”, a concept that lies in the eyes of the beholder judge. That has meant that excess judicial discretion has undermined their usefulness and led to constant challenges to the validity of agreements which the couple, having had legal advice at the outset, believed were valid, until advised that it might be worth attacking them when the break-up occurs and one of them wants a larger award than that provided for in the prenup.
There are many examples. A case called KA v MA, which concerned the effects of alleged duress, ended up with the wife getting £1.35 million to meet her housing costs on top of what she had already agreed, with £300,000 in legal costs. The rest of the fees had to come from that allocation to the wife, no doubt severely depleting it.
In another case, Ipekçi, the ex-husband had signed a prenup with his wife. She was the heir to the Avon cosmetics fortune. Nevertheless, he was still awarded £1.3 million for a house and an allowance for the rest of his life, in part because his legal advice was suspect. They met when he worked as a concierge at the Le Parker Meridien Hotel in New York. Later, he was employed at a well-known London hotel, at which I have stayed, but these things do not happen to me.
It is this doubt about enforceability that is wrecking the usefulness of prenups. The doubts centre on what is fair and what are the needs that some judges hold must nevertheless be met. The accumulation of cases leaves real doubts over the ability to predict the validity of any current prenups. Judges still insist on applying their own vision of what is fair and exercising the much-criticised set of factors in Section 25 of the Matrimonial Causes Act. Discretion, I am afraid, is what we know to be the source of the problems in financial provision law.
A problem in today’s divorce law is how to define the needs of the divorced spouse, usually from the wife’s perspective, and who should meet those needs. That is why that word needs clarification. Judges have given so many different interpretations that we do not have a workable standard, not even under the guidance of the Family Justice Council. Some judges are more parsimonious than others where there is a prenup, but they all agree on the need for housing where there are children, provided there are sufficient assets. What is fair, and whether that standard should be applied to a freely entered-into prenup, is another undermining issue.
So we come to reform. The Law Commission has done detailed and profound work in this field, as I shall describe and which I support. Nearly all the other organisations in the family law field have come out in favour of statutory enactment of the enforceability of prenups. It has even been suggested that we should follow the example of some civil code countries and expect engaged couples to see a lawyer and choose from a menu of financial models to govern their financial relationship during and after the marriage. Such discussions would be less intricate and cheaper than what people spend on an average wedding.
I have on several occasions taken a Bill through this House—the Divorce (Financial Provision) Bill—which would reform the whole of that law, not just prenups. In it, I suggested that prenups should be as binding as any other contract, provided that there was no duress, that the couple had legal advice before signing, and that there was full disclosure. But the Government have failed to act on this and have ignored the Law Commission’s recommendations to put prenups on a statutory basis. Think how much money and how much court time would be saved if the tens of thousands of prenups that are challenged now could be presumptively binding. Think how much money and court time could be saved if couples could avoid all the fees and general waiting times and aggravation of fighting in court over their assets on divorce if the law was reformed.
It is true that many couples settle before a court hearing, but they would have started proceedings, and that too is expenditure that could be avoided. Recent court statistics show that the court process can take from six to 12 months; that there were 44,563 financial provision applications in 2023; and that in 2024 they were up by 7%. Tens of thousands of cases might never have to come near court. Millions would be saved if the Government would reform the law.
In 2014, the Law Commission’s report on matrimonial property needs and agreements recommended that prenups should be put on a statutory footing and should be made by deed no less than 28 days before the marriage, after legal advice and with disclosure. In my view, it was unfortunate that there was a potentially destructive discretionary element in this proposal; namely, that the parties could not, by agreement, opt out of meeting financial needs, undefined.
Indeed, with advances in AI, it has been suggested by the pre-eminent family judge, Sir Nicholas Mostyn, that the time will soon be with us when AI can produce an agreement that would be bound to be upheld as valid, because AI would know what was meant by “needs”, and that would satisfy a judge. This country is lagging behind in achieving that cost-saving certainty. Scotland and New Zealand, for example, have legislated for binding prenups and have experienced no difficulties.
The Law Commission presented a draft Bill to enact its prenup recommendations, and it is oven-ready, as we say, needing only to be heated up to the right degree by this Government. Not only is the Bill ready but, in December 2024, the Law Commission reported again and recommended the statutory enactment of a prenup law. It has been 16 years since the fundamental decision in Radmacher and 10 years since the Law Commission prepared the ground for statutory reform. We are decades behind most other countries, wasting money and court time and upsetting couples’ legitimate expectations of certainty. If the Bill were enacted, it would persuade older couples to take the plunge; I envisage a queue of weddings taking place in St Mary Undercroft. It would bring us into line with Australia, Ontario, the French civil code, New Zealand and the Hague Convention on the Law applicable to Matrimonial Property Regimes. It would respect autonomy and the freedom of contract, but our Government have said no more than that they are considering the reform as part of a wider consideration of family law reform.
Governments have failed to take up reform because they are unable to address the issues of principle about who maintains whom, to what level and for how long, and the effect of social changes. The lawyers who act for the highest earners on divorce—with the honourable exception of the noble Baroness, Lady Shackleton—may well fear a loss of business, although I am sure that the wealthiest couples will always have complex arrangements that will require legal advice. At the other end of the scale, most couples do not get any legal aid for divorce, and are left without the knowledge and framework that they need at the most emotional time of their lives. A straightforward law on prenups would be of immense value to them.
Prenups are popular, harmless and protective. They offer an escape from the bad, unreformed financial provision law, and represent freedom of choice and contract. Why can we not legislate for them now? What has held it up is the ill-founded belief that all financial provision law must be reviewed and amended at the same time. That is simply not the case. Prenups are a free-standing area, and even if wholesale reform is delayed, enacting prenups would enable couples to avoid the uncertainty, expense and bitterness of the current law and any future law to come.
I mention future law because the Law Commission’s report of last December was only a “scoping” report. It put forward four models for reform, and, unfortunately, scoping gives the Government an excuse to do nothing. I wish that the Law Commission had been allowed to get on with a wholesale reform of financial provision law, which is now over 50 years old and costs the state and couples so much expense and aggravation. I hope that it will not be brushed under the carpet; it could take a long time to occur. The noble Baroness, Lady Shackleton, and I were promised a review of financial provision law within three years of the passing of the divorce Bill in 2020, and we dropped amendments to the Bill in reliance on that promise, which has not been fulfilled.
The current financial provision law—all of it, not just prenups—is so uncertain and unpredictable that it could well be said to be in breach of the rule of law. I urge the Government to get on with reforming it and to take up the challenge in the latest Law Commission report. In the meantime, will the Minister get on with putting prenups on a statutory basis? The Bill is ready and there is no reasonable opposition. We need to get on with this and not wait for the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, which is wholesale reform of our antiquated financial provision law. I beg to move.
Baroness Deech (CB)
My Lords, as a mere academic lawyer, I am grateful to and impressed by all the real lawyers who brought their wisdom to bear in this debate. I say to the Government that their commendable concern for financial prudence ought to guide them in this respect: there is no doubt that couples and courts will be spared unnecessary expense if they go ahead and legislate.
I will pick up a number of points, and I hope noble Lords will forgive me if I do not address all of them, bearing in mind the time. I was moved to hear the right reverend Prelate talk about marriage, but it is not its financial elements and prenups that have degraded—as he might say—marriage to the level at which he and others have expressed concern. Marriage has been emptied of all its former aspirations by changes in the law. The recent change in divorce law, while welcomed by many, means that one can get a divorce without presenting any reasons and relatively quickly. That sort of change must do more to affect a couple’s entry or not into marriage than anything about the finances that may face them when that marriage comes to an end.
I wish, like the right reverend Prelate and others do, that divorce was not so common, but it is so we have to be realistic. The burden of many impoverished divorcees falls on the state anyway. No amount of contracts or provision for settling financial matters in the court takes us away from the fact that many couples have few assets and that their divorce means two sets of housing rather than one, an increased reliance on state benefits and that whatever is paid as maintenance is clawed back in universal credit. The presence or not of prenups will do little to affect that financial element.
I absolutely agree with all noble Lords who have expressed concern for children. Children cannot and should not be part of prenups or post-nups, because those are agreements between two adults. I do not think we have shown enough concern for children. I have read many judgments concerning wealthy couples, running to many dozens of pages, and on the last half-page is a throwaway comment about so much per month or week for the children and their school fees. That is it. There is no concern about how the huge amounts expended on legal fees detract from the children or general concern about how many fathers—it is usually fathers—are allowed to walk away from their responsibilities to their children without any recourse and without state child maintenance legislation having much effect at all. It is high time we took more concern for children’s financial situation in divorce.
I do not think that we should worry too much about the cost of making a prenup, as the noble Baroness, Lady Featherstone, spelled out, because those costs are but a pinprick compared to what people have to spend when they enter into an acrimonious divorce which needs to go to court. Nor should we be concerned about this convoluted argument that the Law Commission put forward that, if the overall law were to change, one would have to go back and alter the prenup law. After all, the law relating to money and divorce keeps on changing. Every time there is a Supreme Court judgment or a Court of Appeal judgment, things change profoundly and might require couples to revisit their prenup, so I do not think that is a firm argument. I urge the Government once again to go ahead and enact prenups because that will save money all round and it is a discrete issue, as most people have said. In fact, virtually everyone here this evening has said that prenups should be enacted statutorily.
As for cohabitation, if one changes the law relating to cohabiting couples now without reforming the law relating to financial provision, then cohabiting couples going to court will find themselves caught up in the same network of inefficient, uncertain financial provision as existing married couples do. There is no reason to delay statutory enactment of prenups law. The Minister—whichever Minister—will find in the Ministry of Justice files and files gathering dust. I have dealt with seven different Ministers over this issue over several decades and somewhere there is foot-dragging which is no longer justified. The Government want to save money, to help couples and to support children. Now is the time to do that, so I end by urging the Minister to go back to the ministry and tell them to get on with it.
Asylum Seekers: Legal Aid
Baroness Deech Excerpts(9 months, 3 weeks ago)
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Lord Ponsonby of Shulbrede (Lab)
I was not aware of the suggestion of a centralised legal aid representation facility. If that is still being actively considered, I will write and confirm that to the noble and learned Lord. Nevertheless, he makes a reasonable point about building up the resources to be able to process these cases effectively, efficiently, fairly and humanely.
One other factor is that Duncan Lewis, the well-renowned law firm, has written that it believes that the new rates, which are very likely to be agreed, will help it to do more work in this area.
Baroness Deech (CB)
My Lords, anyone who reads the newspapers can see the huge gulf between the Rolls-Royce justice system available to those with bottomless pockets and what is available to those who have no legal aid and no money. Justice is not done if it is not affordable. I have in mind family law, which has a claim as great as asylum seekers, where people are left at the most stressful moments in their lives with no legal aid. Will the Government commit to some evening out of legal aid across all cases so that every citizen can get the legal aid and advice that they need?
Lord Ponsonby of Shulbrede (Lab)
I am very sympathetic to the question and the point that the noble Baroness raises in it. As she may know, my personal background was as a magistrate in the family law space, and I saw many hundreds of litigants in person when dealing with those cases. It is true that they very often were not adequately able to put their case forward. We are looking at various initiatives in that space, such as mediation vouchers and possibly early legal advice, and different approaches, but the fundamental point the noble Baroness makes is fair.
Miscarriages of Justice
Baroness Deech Excerpts(2 years, 5 months ago)
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Lord Bellamy (Con)
Discrimination in the criminal justice system is not acceptable to the Government. The Government are conscious that there are concerns about the way that ethnic minority persons are treated within the system and are determined to ensure that those problems are ameliorated and addressed in the longer run.
Baroness Deech (CB)
My Lords, what justice can there be in retaining on the statute book sections of a statute of 1861, whereby a mother can be sent to prison for procuring an abortion? Surely it is time that we consider the lack of benefit to society, to her family and indeed to all women in retaining such an outdated and barbaric method of punishment.
Lord Bellamy (Con)
My Lords, all women have access to safe and legal abortions on the NHS up to 24 weeks of pregnancy. It is not appropriate for the Government to comment on any particular case, although your Lordships will no doubt be aware of the case to which the noble Baroness is referring. This is a contentious issue and the Government maintain a neutral position on possible changes to the relevant criminal law.
Nuptial Agreements
Baroness Deech Excerpts(2 years, 6 months ago)
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Lord Bellamy (Con)
My Lords, I thank my noble friend Lady Shackleton for her question. The answer is twofold: first, the Government consider that the present root-and-branch review of financial provision is better than looking at a particular outcrop within that landscape. Secondly, any Government have to prioritise. In recent years, priority has been given, for example, to the Domestic Abuse Act 2021; the Divorce, Dissolution and Separation Act 2022, which introduced no-fault divorce; and the Marriage and Civil Partnership (Minimum Age) Act 2022, which made it illegal to marry under the age of 18. These are all fundamental reforms and I make no apology for prioritising those measures.
Baroness Deech (CB)
My Lords, may I start by wishing the Minister a happy birthday—and ask him whether there is any prospect of this Bill being enacted in his lifetime and mine? He has mentioned all these other statutes, which are not really relevant. The failure to enact this Bill undermines the no-fault divorce law, because the failure to have binding nuptial agreements leaves couples in as antagonistic and expensive a situation as before. Will he please get on with it?
Lord Bellamy (Con)
My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness for those birthday wishes. It is often said that life begins at 40 but experience shows that it is very much later than that. I very much hope that we will be able to legislate in her lifetime, if not my own. Prenups are undoubtedly an important issue. Since 2010, the law has been that there is a presumption in favour of enforcing prenuptial agreements unless it is unfair to do so. Secondly, although this is an important question, it affects a relatively small and privileged cohort, and it must take its place in the queue on that basis.
Divorce: Financial Provision
Baroness Deech Excerpts(2 years, 8 months ago)
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Baroness Deech
To ask His Majesty’s Government what progress they have made with their three-year review of the law governing financial provision on divorce since the commitment made by the then Advocate General for Scotland Lord Keen of Elie in his letter dated 16 March 2020 (DEP2020-0150) to gather evidence, consult and develop recommendations on this matter.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Ministry of Justice (Lord Bellamy) (Con)
My Lords, the letter to which the noble Baroness refers was sent during the passage of the Divorce, Dissolution and Separation Act 2020. Since then, we have prioritised the implementation of that Act and the digital systems that go with it, the court recovery programme during and after the pandemic, the Domestic Abuse Act 2021, the Marriage and Civil Partnership (Minimum Age) Act 2022 and further work on the family courts. I hope to announce a review of financial provision very shortly.
Baroness Deech (CB)
My Lords, I fear that the noble Baroness, Lady Shackleton, and I were misled when, three years ago, we were guaranteed a review of the financial elements of divorce. Relying on that, we refrained from pressing amendments. The law that relates to splitting money on divorce is so antagonistic and unreformed that it undermines the alleged good points of the no-fault divorce law. We are lagging 50 years behind nearly every other country in the western world, including Australia. The amount of discretion in our law makes it very hard for unrepresented parties. Money that should go to the children is being spent on legal costs. Even judges have called this law “apocalyptic” —accessible only to the rich. When will the Government reform this very bad law?
Lord Bellamy (Con)
My Lords, I pay warm tribute to the noble Baroness, Lady Deech, my noble friend Lady Shackleton and many others for their work in this area. Respectfully, I do not accept the characterisation that the Government have misled everybody; we have had our hands somewhat full in recent times. The Matrimonial Causes Act 1973 reaches its 50th anniversary this year and a review of financial provision is indeed opportune. The Government are in close consultation with the Law Commission, which we consider the most appropriate body to carry out that review.
No-fault Divorce
Baroness Deech Excerpts(3 years, 8 months ago)
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Baroness Deech
To ask Her Majesty’s Government, further to the letter from Lord Keen of Elie to Baroness Deech on 16 March 2020, what progress they have made on reforming the law governing financial provision on divorce to align with the introduction of no fault divorce.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Ministry of Justice (Lord Wolfson of Tredegar) (Con)
My Lords, the letter from my noble and learned friend Lord Keen was sent at the conclusion of the parliamentary process for the divorce Act. In the intervening two years, we have prioritised the implementation of the fundamental reforms of that Act, which will commence on 6 April. Following that commencement, we will consider how best to proceed with the commitment in that letter, and we will announce our intentions in due course.
Baroness Deech (CB)
My Lords, the new no-fault divorce law is coming into force in three weeks’ time, but the most miserable and litigious part of it will remain: the law about splitting assets and paying maintenance. That law is so bad that the ministry is paying couples £500 each to mediate and avoid it. The promise was made two years ago to review it; where is that review? Gathering evidence is no excuse for not formulating principle, and I can offer this piece of evidence right away: legal costs eat up chunks of the assets. Unless it is reformed, the no-fault divorce law will fail to achieve its aims. Will the Minister assure the House that vested interests are not blocking reform, and will he give a timetable for completion of the financial provision project?
Lord Wolfson of Tredegar (Con)
My Lords, I do not make any apology for the mediation voucher scheme; it is important to encourage mediation in family law, as indeed across the civil justice system more generally. However, we have committed to exploring the financial provision aspects of divorce after the Act comes into effect. I cannot give the noble Baroness a timetable, but I assure her that we will look at this as a matter of principle and will not be bowed down by vested interests, whether legal or otherwise.
Marriage and Religious Weddings
Baroness Deech Excerpts(4 years, 4 months ago)
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Lord Wolfson of Tredegar (Con)
My Lords, I think my noble friend will have seen my letter to various groups on that point. Marriage at 16 and 17 has the significant risk of people being forced into marriages and their life chances reducing. Therefore, my noble friend can take it from me that we will be looking very carefully at the Bill introduced by the Member for Bromsgrove, who now appears to be otherwise occupied.
Baroness Deech (CB) [V]
My Lords, I am sure the Minister believes that there should be equality among religions in relation to divorce, and that the law should bring justice to women who are mistreated by religious husbands and religious courts. So will he ensure changes to the Matrimonial Causes Act 1973, so that the court can refuse to finalise a civil divorce until an Islamic religious divorce has been obtained, if unfair pressure is being used in the religious proceedings? This would bring Islamic divorce in line with the Jewish get.
Lord Wolfson of Tredegar (Con)
My Lords, the premise behind the question of the noble Baroness is that the bars to effective relief are the same in Judaism and Islam, but that is not in fact the case. As I understand it, it is significantly easier for a woman to obtain a divorce in Islam than it is for a woman to facilitate or obtain a divorce in Orthodox Judaism. Therefore, the Act that the noble Baroness refers to—I believe it is Section 10A—would not have the same advantageous effect in Islamic marriages as it does in Orthodox Jewish marriages.
Anti-Semitism: University Campus Incidents
Baroness Deech Excerpts(4 years, 9 months ago)
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Baroness Deech
To ask Her Majesty’s Government what assessment they have made of the report by the Community Security Trust Campus Antisemitism in Britain 2018–2020, published on 17 December, and in particular, the finding that the number of anti-Semitic incidents in universities has increased.
Baroness Deech (CB) [V]
My Lords, I am particularly pleased to welcome the noble Lord, Lord Wolfson of Tredegar, to his new post in the Ministry of Justice. The noble Lord comes to us garlanded with the highest praises that the Bar can bestow. Like other well-known public figures, he was once a prolific Twitterer, and showed a great sense of humour and a rare knack for conciliating different points of view. All those qualities will stand him in good stead here. We wish him well and look forward to meeting in person.
I have spoken about campus anti-Semitism on previous occasions and sadly there is a great deal more to report. It is equally sad that an organisation such as the Community Security Trust, whose report we are debating, should have to exist at all. It is a charity that protects British Jews from anti-Semitism and provides security. How regrettable it is that every Jewish building and every Jewish gathering has to be protected by CST guards. I take this opportunity to thank the Government for the funding they provide to help the CST to continue to provide safeguards for the Jewish community.
The CST report uncovered the highest number of university anti-Semitic incidents ever recorded, notably online. Shockingly, they included anti-Semitic action by university staff—the very people who should be teaching students to reason and tolerate. Nothing leaves a Jewish student more unprotected than to find that the anti-Semitism he or she faces is from his or her lecturer, and that the panel set up by the authorities to investigate it is peopled by colleagues and devoid of Jewish members.
The treatment meted out, the failure to discipline and the reaction would not be tolerated for a moment by other ethnic minorities. But somehow racist and religious prejudice against Jews is given short shrift, and its specific nature glossed over. Just as Jeremy Corbyn’s response to allegations of anti-Semitism was that he was anti-racist, ergo could not be guilty, so the university authorities and Universities UK are trying to disguise this prejudice by folding it up into other racisms. In November, UUK put out a report on anti-racism in universities, but relegated anti-Semitism to a passing mention in a footnote.
The situation is not all bad. There is light at the end of the tunnel, as under the exceptional leadership of the noble Lord, Lord Mann, more universities—about 51—are adopting the IHRA definition of anti-Semitism, which has the effect of concentrating minds on its expression as well as its definition. But first I will give noble Lords just a very few examples of the sort of behaviour taking place in our universities. These are the young people who will be our leaders in due course.
At Warwick University a student complained about a lecturer who dismissed the notion that the Labour Party could be anti-Semitic as an attempt to discredit it by the so-called Israel lobby. That lecturer emailed the whole class to suggest that claims of anti-Semitism against Labour are orchestrated. Amazingly, it was the student who was then investigated by the university at length. Although that came to nothing, what a deterrent effect that will have on any other Jewish student thinking of complaining. It was the victim who was put on the stand.
The School of Oriental and African Studies maintains its poisonous reputation for Jewish students. A Canadian student was forced to abandon his studies there because of the toxic atmosphere. He was branded a Nazi supremacist for disclosing his support for Israel and was refunded his £15,000 fees. At SOAS, others complained, being Jewish means you are called fascist. The Malaysian Prime Minister was invited to speak at both the Oxford and Cambridge Unions, was openly anti-Semitic and was greeted with laughter.
Lecturers have spontaneously called the Holocaust “too Jewish” or indulged in the old slander of over-powerful conspiring Zionists. How ironic that the practice of no-platforming is so acceptable in universities but not when it comes to anti-Semitic speech. What an indictment of the failure to deal with the problem, that some Jewish students choose a university not by the course content or the quality of teaching but by the extent of anti-Semitism that they might encounter. Some academic staff have been shown to work together to foster an atmosphere inimical to Jewish students and teach and supervise others handing on the same antagonism to the next generation.
The International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance definition of anti-Semitism helpfully draws the distinction between legitimate criticism of the Israeli Government, like any other Government, and anti-Semitic calls for Israel to be destroyed or compared to a Nazi regime. Legitimate criticism of Israel is to anti-Zionism what literary criticism is to book burning. I mention the Israel element because of the wise observations of the late Lord Sacks. Antisemitism, he said, mutates like a virus. It used to manifest itself as religious discrimination, then it was racial, and now it focuses on attacking the self-determination of the Jews in their only, tiny, state.
The IHRA definition is not intended to be legally binding but to help perception and eradication of anti-Semitic activity. Why then is it not more widely adopted and why have some academics pushed back at it in a way that undermines their students’ protection? Notable among those is University College London. An academic board was set up there to try to reverse the college’s adoption of the definition which did not even include a Jewish student; can one imagine today a panel about campus racism without a black student? It argued against protection of Jewish students by saying that to define anti-Semitism is exceptionalism and blocks free speech. But anti-Semitism is exceptional in its length and breadth. As for blocking free speech about Israel, there are no examples ever of the definition having resulted in any reduction in academic freedom or research. Hardly any other country is so widely discussed. The definition is unequivocal about free speech. The irony is that the rejectionists are the ones seeking to stop Israel-connected speakers and to block academic research co-operation. What is to be done about this?
Holocaust education, which is compulsory for schoolchildren, sadly has not worked. How is it possible that an entire generation who has studied the holocaust can arrive at university and behave in the ways I have outlined? It is because they have studied the Holocaust in a vacuum, as an example of generalised hate, and have resigned it to history. They have learned nothing about the contribution of Jews to civilisation, about the millennia of persecution, and how that, and religious teaching, led to genocide; they have not learned of the overwhelming need for a safe haven and how Jewish self-determination in Israel is the best protection against genocide in the modern world. All they learn is that Jews were killed in their millions and all they see is pictures of death camps and bodies. It is not surprising that the brute reaction of some is to replicate Nazi slogans when they vent their hatred at universities. There is a need to widen Holocaust education into education about Jewish history. That is why the planned Holocaust memorial in Victoria Tower Gardens, at a cost of over £100 million and a destroyed park, is such a wasted effort. It will present the Holocaust again as something in the past, something over there, not here. It will enable alleged anti-Semites to continue to pay their respects to 6 million dead Jews, badge themselves as anti-racist and then carry on attacking Jews of today and their only state, Israel. How much easier it is to mourn the lost generation than to respect the living Jews of today. It will give the impression of “job done”.
So will the Minister take steps to ensure that more universities adopt the IHRA definition and incorporate it in their codes of conduct? Will he also promote a complete overhaul of Holocaust education so that students learn about Jewish history, why Jews were persecuted and how unwarranted are attacks on today’s community?