Marriage and Religious Weddings

Debate between Baroness Meacher and Lord Keen of Elie

Tuesday 30th June 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Keen of Elie]

My Lords, if a religious ceremony of marriage or purported marriage does not conform to the requirement of Lord Hardwicke’s Act of 1753 or the marriage Act of 1836, then there will be no marriage. In these circumstances, a couple would be regarded as cohabiting and that would clearly have an impact upon any circumstances in which they ceased to cohabit.

[Baroness Meacher (CB) [V]]

My Lords, it is seven years next month since the same-sex marriage Act was passed, enabling Governments to bring about legal recognition for humanist marriages by ministerial order. Since then, successive Ministers have been very supportive but have had a series of reviews rather than taking action. Meanwhile, 6,000 couples who have had humanist weddings have also been required to have a second marriage ceremony with a registrar to get legal recognition of their ceremony. This cannot be justified. Will the Minister help to achieve legal recognition of humanist marriages, which has the support of the majority in all religious groups?

[Lord Keen of Elie]

My Lords, the Law Commission is proposing to look at the matter of where and in what circumstances marriage should be celebrated. I understand that its consultation document will be available in September.

Divorce, Dissolution and Separation Bill [HL]

Debate between Baroness Meacher and Lord Keen of Elie

Committee stage & Committee: 1st sitting (Hansard - continued) & Committee: 1st sitting (Hansard - continued): House of Lords
Tuesday 3rd March 2020 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Meacher (CB)]

My Lords, I rise to speak to Amendment 6, proposed by the noble Baroness, Lady Chakrabarti. I apologise to the noble Baroness that I did not get a chance to have a chat with her before this evening, as I had originally added my name to the amendment. As the noble Baroness explained, the Bill as it stands proposes minimum periods of 20 weeks and six weeks for the two stages of divorce and dissolution proceedings. I thank the Minister for the very helpful meeting we had last Wednesday, where he clarified that a statutory instrument to shorten the period for divorces would indeed be subject to the affirmative procedure. The question has been whether there is any reason at all why the Lord Chancellor should be given a Henry VIII power to reduce the length of either of the two periods through delegated legislation.

The Bill is very clear that, in a particular case, an application may be made to the court to shorten the period for the proceedings. For example, if one of the partners is dying and wants to sort out their affairs before they die, it would of course be perfectly reasonable for them to make an application to the court to reduce the period required. Also, if there is a need to protect an abused spouse, time may be of the essence. However, to shorten the minimum period for divorce or dissolution in all cases is quite another matter. We have to think about that.

The then Minister for Justice, Paul Maynard MP, emphasised in the Commons Public Bill Committee on 2 July 2019:

“The 20 week period is a key element in a reformed legal process.”


There is currently no minimum period, and with respect to the second stage, the Minister said that part of the objective was

“to improve the financial arrangements. People may wish to delay a little longer until such a point. It is not a maximum period; it is a minimum, and the process might well take longer.”—[Official Report, Commons, Public Bill Committee, 2/7/19; col.35.]

As the Minister knows, I expressed my concern at Second Reading about a future Lord Chancellor having the power to allow for a more rushed process, without proper parliamentary scrutiny. Certainly, the decision to apply the affirmative procedure to any statutory instrument reducing the time period is, in my view, an important improvement. The Government argued in a memorandum that the Lord Chancellor

“will be able to make adjustments to the time periods, for example, if policy considerations meant that it would be appropriate to shorten one or both of the time periods.”

I do not want to be difficult, but when I asked the Minister during his presentation to the Cross-Bench meeting what policy considerations might justify reducing the timeframe for divorces in a general sense, neither he nor the civil servants present could provide an answer. However, during the meeting last Wednesday, the noble and learned Lord, Lord Mackay of Clashfern, came—probably quite inadvertently—to the rescue and suggested a justification for the use of this power. The noble and learned Lord suggested that if, for example, there were repeated applications to the court to reduce the length of time from 26 weeks, then a more general reduction in the minimum period would be helpful. Repeated applications to the court are unhelpful to the people immediately affected; I imagine there are delays and all sorts of things, including perhaps costs.

This sounds a very sensible justification for the Henry VIII power. The concern of the Delegated Powers Committee, on which I sit, had been that Ministers at that point had offered no rationale for the Henry VIII power. Now, thanks to the noble and learned Lord, Lord Mackay, to whom I must give due credit, we have such a rationale, as well as confirmation from the Minister that the affirmative procedure would be applicable. I am therefore personally satisfied that this matter has been acceptably resolved—I had intended to say “satisfactorily resolved”, but it has certainly at least been acceptably resolved. However, I must emphasise that I am not, of course, speaking for the Delegated Powers Committee as a whole; I am speaking purely as one member.

[Lord Keen of Elie]

My Lords, under the procedures set out in this new Bill, something like 80% of divorces will now take longer than they otherwise would have done. Having regard to that, it is considered prudent that the Lord Chancellor should have the opportunity as matters develop to be able to adjust the timeframes under which provision is made for divorce in this Bill. What I refer to are future, unforeseen policy considerations, which might indicate that it is appropriate to shorten the length. As was observed, the noble and learned Lord, Lord Mackay of Clashfern, cited, as an example, a situation in which there were a multitude of applications to reduce the timeframe and it was felt that this directed us towards a conclusion that there should be an overall reduction in the timeframe, because it was creating particular difficulties. That is why these powers exist.

There are essentially there of them: one in respect of divorce, one in respect of partnership and one in respect of nullity of marriage. As the Bill was drafted, these statutory instruments would have been subject to the negative procedure, but, as I indicated during meetings with a number of noble Lords, it is our intention to amend that and to apply the affirmative procedure in order that Parliament may have oversight of any such proposed step. In these circumstances, and with that undertaking to amend before Report stage of the Bill, I invite the noble Baroness to withdraw her amendment.

Terrorist Offenders (Restriction of Early Release) Bill

Debate between Baroness Meacher and Lord Keen of Elie

2nd reading & 2nd reading (Hansard) & 2nd reading (Hansard): House of Lords
Monday 24th February 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Keen of Elie]

The sentence itself reflects the entire period ordered by the court. It is then an executive action to decide at what point during that sentence somebody may be released on licence. Let us remember that it is not a right to be released on licence. There is simply a parliamentary provision by statute that places a duty on the Secretary of State to allow release on licence. And it is not an absolute release: you may be recalled, depending on the conditions of the licence and whether you adhere to them. In that sense, the true retrospectivity of the Bill lies in the imposition of the Parole Board decision-making, not in anything else.

The question then raised is: why impose that at the two-thirds stage of the sentence rather than at the halfway stage? As I say, there are a number of reasons why the Government consider that appropriate, the most immediate being the point I made about the need for a breathing space. We face a number of instances in which such terrorist offenders are due to be released and, under present legislation, would be entitled to be released without qualification or test in a matter of days. To accommodate that is simply not possible. That is why a breathing space is appropriate and why we consider that in these circumstances we should shift the point at which the Parole Board becomes involved to a point consistent with other sentences, which is the two-thirds point.

As I say, this has the additional benefit of incapacitating those terrorists and preventing them engaging in activity for a further period. We suggest that this, in turn, would confer a degree of public confidence in the way in which we are dealing with such terrorist offenders. So clearly the Bill cannot achieve its intended effect unless it operates with retrospective effect, and the retrospective effect here is the imposition of the requirement that the Parole Board be satisfied about the release—rather than the existing legislative provision, which places a duty on the Secretary of State to release without any further consideration in respect of that matter.

[Baroness Meacher]

Can the Minister explain something to me? Perhaps I have misunderstood it, but my understanding was that if this legislation passed, somebody due for release in a few days could not then be released until the Parole Board had got around to reviewing whether they could be released. So, if the Parole Board is not ready for a month, two months or whatever, the prisoner would have to wait for that process. Is that correct, or have I misunderstood the point?

[Lord Keen of Elie]

My understanding is that under the present legislative regime, there is a duty on the Secretary of State to release the prisoner at the halfway point. We require a regime in which the Parole Board is able to act in determining whether it is satisfied that the prisoner could be released—but you could not hold the prisoner simply on the view that the Parole Board might take a few months to get round to considering his case. That is why it is necessary to look at what was referred to as a breathing space: the requirement to allow time to implement this process. As I say, it is also consistent with other sentences, where release is at the two-thirds point, and it allows for the incapacitation of the terrorist offender for a slightly longer period—which in turn, we suggest, assists in maintaining public confidence in the way in which we are dealing with these offenders.

While I understand the concern about retrospection, it has to be seen in its proper context. The Bill will not achieve its intended objective unless there is that element of retrospectivity in it. The noble Lord, Lord Anderson, alluded to a situation in which a prisoner might remain in custody until the very end of their sentence and then be released without licence. It is in those circumstances that one can find provision for TPIMs, for example. I acknowledge that they have been utilised only to a very limited extent until now, and it may be that their use has to be looked at again. They are very resource-intensive, which may explain to some degree why they have been employed only in limited numbers until now. Again, we are looking at the need to employ such procedures.

The noble Lord, Lord Anderson of Ipswich, also raised Northern Ireland, which I believe the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, also referred to. The Justice Minister felt that she would like to see the legislation extended to Northern Ireland. We have discussed the matter with officials in Northern Ireland, and there are very real technical difficulties regarding the way in which sentencing policy is implemented in Northern Ireland. It is quite different to sentencing policy in England and Wales in a number of respects. We fully intend to take forward this legislation, which is why we intend to look at this in the context of the counterterrorism Bill that we intend to bring forward—but at present we feel that it would be too complex an issue to try to deal with in the context of this emergency legislation.

The noble Lord, Lord Pannick, asked why, if this is emergency legislation, there is no sunset clause. The Government’s view is twofold. First, it could create uncertainty and confusion, because a prisoner would not know whether they were to be subject to the regime that we are introducing. Secondly, we are intending to bring forward a more substantive and wide-ranging counterterrorism Bill, properly addressing these issues, when the various committees of the House are available to examine the proposed legislation. I hope that that goes some way towards satisfying the noble Lord.

I am conscious of the time, so let me say this in conclusion. In extending parole release to all terrorist offenders, the Bill provides a sensible and proportionate safeguard against the problem of automatic release. The consequences of such automatic release are reflected at Fishmongers’ Hall and in Streatham. Further releases of prisoners are due within a matter of days. If the Bill is to achieve its desired effect, early commencement of the provisions, including retrospection, is vital. We are concerned not only with public confidence, but also with public safety. That is the first duty of any Government and one that we take extremely seriously. I invite the House to do likewise.

Bailiff Reforms

Debate between Baroness Meacher and Lord Keen of Elie

Thursday 17th October 2019 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Meacher]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what plans they have to publish policy recommendations following their consultation on the review of bailiff reforms, which closed on 17 February.

[The Advocate-General for Scotland (Lord Keen of Elie) (Con)]

My Lords, in a Statement on 22 July, the Government set out their initial response to the call for evidence on the enforcement agent reforms. We intend to make body-worn cameras mandatory for private enforcement agents and the complaints system against agents more effective. We are also considering strengthening regulation of the industry. Officials have since met further with a range of stakeholders; we hope to set out our proposals as soon as possible.

[Baroness Meacher (CB)]

My Lords, as we debate Brexit for hours and days on end, some of the most vulnerable people in our country are suffering. Every minute of every day, somebody in dire poverty is suffering the humiliation and fear of a bailiff banging on their door. In about 300,000 cases a year, the bailiffs break the rules. Self-regulation is not working. They may send strings of texts to the person concerned threatening that the whole debt must be paid immediately—or else. None of that is legal, and none of it will be resolved by body-worn cameras. The Justice Committee reported on the bailiff problem in April and recommended an independent regulator. Twenty organisations worked for two years on this and came to the same conclusion. Will the Minister be so kind as to meet at least two of the main experts and me to discuss the best way forward on this very tricky issue?

[Lord Keen of Elie]

My Lords, we appreciate the work done by the Justice Committee, which was published in April 2018, and have taken up some of its recommendations already. There are discrepancies over the number of complaints, but that may in part be explained by difficulties that some people perceive in following through on complaints. We are concerned when enforcement officers do not comply with the law and with regulations, but we must remember that there is not only a group of people out there who are “can’t pays” but a very large group who are “won’t pays”. Individuals and small businesses need the ability to recover money lawfully due to them. I am happy to meet the noble Baroness and her experts and associates to discuss the matter further.

Suicide Act 1961: Prosecutions

Debate between Baroness Meacher and Lord Keen of Elie

Thursday 23rd May 2019 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Meacher]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what assessment they have made of whether the threat of prosecutions under the Suicide Act 1961 is causing suffering to mentally competent, terminally ill people at the end of their lives.

[The Advocate-General for Scotland (Lord Keen of Elie) (Con)]

My Lords, the Government recognise the challenges faced by those suffering from a terminal illness, and the desire of some to have choice over how to end their lives without fear of prosecution of themselves or those close to them. In a recent case, the High Court found that Parliament’s decision not to change the current law strikes a fair balance between the interests of the wider community and those of people who are terminally ill and wish to be helped to die.

[Baroness Meacher (CB)]

My Lords, the Minister will be aware that Ann Whaley recently took her husband, Geoff, to Dignitas for a peaceful death. Geoff suffered from motor neurone disease and faced the complete loss of any movement and the ability to speak, swallow, eat, drink or breathe without a ventilator. In answer to a question from Ann, Lord Sumption, our Reith lecturer, said that the assisted dying law—that is, the prohibition of assisted dying—should remain but that compassionate families should break the law. I find that remarkable. If a former Supreme Court judge is telling people to break the law, does that not indicate that the law itself is broken and should be reformed? What plans do the Government have to prepare for a change in this broken law so that terminally ill people who suffer unbearably—there are a number of them—and have only six months to live can have a peaceful death?

[Lord Keen of Elie]

My Lords, the Government do not plan to change the law at this time. Lord Sumption is a distinguished author and retired judge, of course. In his retirement and in delivering his Reith lecture a few days ago, he is entitled to express his personal opinions on morality and the law. I remind noble Lords that, while sitting as a Justice of the Supreme Court in the case of Nicklinson and Lamb in 2014, he said that,

“there is a diversity of opinion about the degree of risk involved in relaxing or qualifying the ban on assisted suicide, but not about its existence. The risk exists and no one appears to regard it as insignificant. There is a reputable body of experienced opinion which regards it as high”.

Assisted Suicide

Debate between Baroness Meacher and Lord Keen of Elie

Thursday 14th February 2019 Lords Chamber

[Lord Keen of Elie]

No, I do not. As I say, only in a small minority of cases has there been a successful prosecution. I should also add, however, that there have been a number of instances in which the case taken forward involved prosecution for homicide, not assisted suicide.

[Baroness Meacher (CB)]

My Lords, indeed Geoff Whaley did die a dignified death in Switzerland last Thursday, but most people cannot afford to take their family to Switzerland for such a death, or they cannot get the medical report from their doctor to enable them to have such a death. Does the Minister agree that, in a civilised society, someone in Geoff Whaley’s position should be able to avoid months of being unable to swallow, eat, drink, speak or move—totally, therefore, cut off from communication? Will the Minister discuss with his colleagues what can be done to change the law?

[Lord Keen of Elie]

It is not the intention of the Government to seek to change the law in this area. I emphasise that every case has to be considered according to its own particular facts and circumstances. I readily acknowledge that many of these cases are extremely tragic.

Assisted Dying: Legislation

Debate between Baroness Meacher and Lord Keen of Elie

Monday 16th January 2017 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Meacher]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government whether they have any plans to legalise assisted dying for terminally ill capacitous adults, with appropriate safeguards.

[The Advocate-General for Scotland (Lord Keen of Elie) (Con)]

My Lords, the short Answer to the Question is no. Like previous Governments, we have always made it clear that such legislation is a matter for Parliament, not the Government. When the other House considered a Bill to legalise assisted dying in September 2015, it rejected it by 330 votes to 118.

[Baroness Meacher (CB)]

My Lords, I thank the Minister for that reply. As he indicated, there has never been a Government-supported Bill on this issue. The Minister will be aware of Noel Conway, a terminally ill mentally capacitous patient who is taking his case to the High Court and, no doubt, ultimately to the Supreme Court. Noel is challenging the current law, which denies him his fundamental human right, when his suffering becomes unbearable, to have help to achieve a dignified death. Does the Minister agree with the 82% of the population and the 86% of disabled people who support Mr Conway and want a change in the law so that when their turn comes to face death, they can live their last months in peace, safe in the knowledge that if their suffering becomes unbearable, they can have professional help to end it? Will the Minister seek the support of his colleagues for an ethical Bill along these lines in the future?

[Lord Keen of Elie]

My Lords, it remains the Government’s view that any change to the law in this area is an issue of individual conscience and a matter for Parliament to decide, rather than one for government policy. I am aware of the case of Noel Conway. As it is now in court, it would not be appropriate for me to comment on the circumstances of that case.

Prisons: Self-inflicted Deaths

Debate between Baroness Meacher and Lord Keen of Elie

Thursday 3rd November 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Keen of Elie]

The noble Lord is right to highlight the fact that mental health is a very material issue so far as prison populations are concerned. As I indicated earlier, it is one that we are addressing but it is not just increased staffing levels that will deliver improvements. How prison officers are deployed and the training and support they receive are equally important elements for any workforce strategy.

[Baroness Meacher (CB)]

My Lords, I welcome the Government’s decision to reduce some of the cuts that have already been made to the prison budget. The Minister will be aware, as has been alluded to, that the vast majority of very vulnerable prisoners are those with mental health problems. In fact virtually none of those people, who mainly suffer from anxiety and depression, gets effective treatment. Last month the medicines regulator, the MHRA, declared that products with CBD in them—one of the key elements of cannabis—are effective medicines. The word “medicines” is crucial. Will the Minister ask his officials to look at the evidence of the efficacy of CBD on anxiety and other mental health disorders? Will he then meet me to discuss a possible way forward?

[Lord Keen of Elie]

I am not in a position to comment on the efficacy of CBDs in this context but one has to address the much wider issue of mental health, and the drug abuse which is connected to it in prisons. I will ask my officials to consider the matter raised by the noble Baroness and once I have that advice, I would be happy to write to her.