Cohabitation Rights Bill [HL]

Baroness Wilcox Excerpts

Friday 12th December 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Lester of Herne Hill]

I am grateful for the intervention, but it does not match the facts. Resolution, for example, indicated what it called,

“strong public support for change: almost 90% think that a cohabiting partner should have a right to financial provision on separation if the relationship has been either long-term, involved children, or has involved prioritising one partner’s career over the other’s”.

It gives other evidence as well, in which I am sure the noble Baroness would be interested.

Going back to the judiciary and the Supreme Court, my noble friend Lord Marks referred to the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Hale. Although she is outstanding in all respects, what was impressive about the Gow case was that the three English members of the Supreme Court—Lord Carnwath, Lord Wilson and the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Hale—all said the same thing. They all referred to Professor Elizabeth Cooke, the Law Commissioner who leads the commission’s work on this. They quoted her as saying:

“‘We hope that implementation will not be delayed beyond the early days of the next Parliament, in view of the hardship and injustice caused by the current law. The prevalence of cohabitation, and of the birth of children to couples who live together, means that the need for reform of the law can only become more pressing over time’”.

The other two members of the Supreme Court were Scots. Since it was a Scottish case, they dealt with the Scottish issues. However, these were the three English Supreme Court judges speaking as one. They said:

“As Prof Cooke also pointed out, the ‘existing law is uncertain and expensive to apply and … often gives rise to results that are unjust’ ... There was no need to wait for experience north of the border to make the case for reform”.

I know perfectly well, because the coalition Government have said so, that they have no intention of doing anything about this during the lifetime of this Government. I also know perfectly well that the Conservative part of the coalition is deeply opposed to such a measure because it is considered to undermine marriage in exactly the way that the right reverend Prelate was worrying about. I repeat that there is no evidence whatever for that. I think that having a modest safety net, which is all that this Bill is, is better than saying to couples who do not understand the law or understand the limits of being in a so-called common law marriage, “It is better to marry than to burn”. That was said by St Paul, but I do not regard it as a guiding principle for legislation.

This being Liberal Democrat core policy, I can only say that I am delighted to await the views of the Official Opposition on this, as the only hope that I can see for such a measure being adopted is a change of government. It will not happen under a Conservative Government and it probably will not happen under a Conservative coalition Government; it can happen only if there is a Labour Government or a Labour coalition Government. I am sorry that that is the position because I would have hoped that the issue could transcend party politics. I am sure that there must be some within the Conservative Party who understand that this is a conservative measure doing limited justice to a very vulnerable group.

[Baroness Wilcox (Con)]

My Lords, I am only intervening here to make sure that I understand what is going on, having heard the noble Lord’s expectation that the Labour Party is likely to take this through. If I remember correctly, when I was on the opposition Benches speaking for my side on the Civil Partnership Bill and we discussed this matter, the Labour Party, which was putting the Civil Partnership Bill through, did not agree with this.

[Lord Lester of Herne Hill]

That is absolutely right, but it was not this measure; it was civil partnership applying to both kinds of couples. The Government did not agree with that. I tried to press them and I failed. These provisions—

[Baroness Wilcox]

My Lords—

[Lord Lester of Herne Hill]

Perhaps I may just finish. These provisions relate not to civil partnership but to limited cohabitation rights. During the lifetime of the Labour Government, we discussed my Bill and it was indicated to me by Labour that the Bill had come very late in the Session and was therefore unrealistic as a measure at that time.

[Baroness Wilcox]

I was not referring to the Bill that the noble Lord was trying to put through. I was referring to the Civil Partnership Bill, in which the cohabitation question had come up. At that time, the Labour Party had said no. It then said no to you when it said that there was only a small amount of time and it could not do it. But that is twice Labour has said no, so before the noble Lord tells the House that it would be only under a Labour Government that this would come through, I suggest that he votes for and returns to the side that he came from in the first place.

[Lord Lester of Herne Hill]

I am grateful for the advice about how I should vote. Since I will not have a vote, it does not make much difference.

I want to say something about British Muslims. It is a very important subject. There are 2.7 million British Muslims, I believe, in this country. There are 300,000 British Jews in this country. Because of the injustice of British Jewish orthodoxy about the so-called chained wives, I and others introduced a Private Member’s Bill, which was supported by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Mackay of Clashfern, to enable an injustice done to a very small number of orthodox Jewish women to be remedied. How did we—the noble and learned Lord, Lord Mackay, and the rest of us—do it? We did it by saying to orthodox Jewish men, “If you want to leave your wife for somebody else without getting a get”—a written consent—“you will not be able to get a civil divorce and you will therefore not be able to remarry”. We put that in a Bill because the Chief Rabbi and a small number of Jewish victims needed it.

I was then told that my Bill was discriminatory because we did not give the same benefit to Muslims, so we amended it to give the same benefit to Muslims if they asked for it to be applied to them. The male-dominated hierarchy of British Muslims did not do so and the position is exactly as the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Butler-Sloss, said: many Muslim women are now extremely vulnerable because they do not have registered civil marriages; instead, they have unsatisfactory arrangements that give them no protection if the men treat them very badly. I am not suggesting that the whole of this Bill is designed to deal with that—not at all—but I am suggesting that it is not something that we can ignore on the grounds that this is a small minority, if that is what the noble Baroness, Lady Deech, meant to say.