Civil Partnership Act 2004 (Amendment) (Sibling Couples) Bill [HL]

Baroness Wilcox Excerpts

2nd reading (Hansard): House of Lords
Friday 20th July 2018 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Wilcox (Con)]

My Lords, it was 14 years ago last month that the Lords passed an amendment to the Civil Partnership Bill, which was then going through Parliament, to extend its scope so that adult family members who lived together permanently could come within it. I supported the amendment at that time but it was of course overturned in the Commons. Looking back, I have all the paper from that time—there was loads of it—and the bit which has stayed with me most of all from the speech which I made at the end, which I have highlighted in yellow, is when I said to the Committee:

“I will not go away”.—[Official Report, 12/5/04; col. GC 117.]


I told them that I would return one day to see this provision through. I hope that this is the day when it will happen. I am only too delighted to be standing here to say not very much except, “Gosh, we’re on the road again”.

Since then the noble Baroness, Lady Deech, the noble Lord, Lord Pannick, and others have reminded the House from time to time of this unresolved issue, which perpetuates injustice to blood-related cohabitants. The rights which they are denied include inheritance tax exemptions, the rights to inherit a tenancy and pension rights. In the most distressing cases, as we have heard this morning, the bereaved survivor of a long-term platonic partnership is forced to sell the joint home to meet an inheritance tax bill. This has happened so many times. Many of us today could look back, as I could, to examples such as the two sisters who ran our local post office. When one of them died, the other lost not only the person she loved so much but the house that she had, and the business as well.

This Private Member’s Bill would extend civil partnerships, as we have heard, to sibling couples aged over 30 who have lived together continuously for 12 years. The issue and the injustice that it creates goes much wider, but my noble friend Lord Lexden’s Bill would help draw attention to it at a time when the future of civil partnerships is under consideration, with a formal review of them a strong likelihood.

I did not win on 12 May 2004 but protecting people from legal vulnerability became important to me following that failure. I could see how many times it was happening to people who really did not understand the law or their rights. They could not turn to what we are, I hope, going to achieve from today onwards in protecting people from legal vulnerability. Gosh, what a change those 14 years have made. What a wonderful thing it has done for gay people, who have been able to find a lovely way to be together in life. I remember being here when the original Bill went through. There were two people sitting watching who had been briefing me; they had been together for 37 years. I was the first person to stand at their wedding, when we all cried, including the poor dear lady who was trying to pull it all together that day. She could not work out which words she was supposed to use, so she put some music on to cheer us up, threw the paper down and did it her way. I will always remember that.

I will be delighted if we are able to go forward with my noble friend’s Bill. I can only believe that it is to the good and for the good. I hope that our Minister will today be able to give us a little of the reply that we have not managed to get thus far.

Creditworthiness Assessment Bill [HL]

Baroness Wilcox Excerpts

2nd reading (Hansard): House of Lords
Friday 24th November 2017 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Wilcox (Con)]

My Lords, I am grateful to be allowed to speak in the gap because it gives me an opportunity to say that I am now back in the consumer world, having just taken on once again the presidency of the National Consumer Federation. Some 10 years on, I am listening to very similar things.

It has been marvellous to see the noble Lord, Lord Bird, stand up and speak in words that he would say are not very clear or clever, or that no one knows quite what he is talking about, but we all do know what it is that the noble Lord speaks for. The noble Baronesses, Lady Thornton and Lady Grender, have also spoken in the debate. They do not sit on my side of the table, but I have great respect for both of them because they know what they are talking about and we have been there before.

What I am happy about is the fact that we can get people to talk about their debt issues in public. We never got to the position of the French and Germans where you could borrow money only if you actually had money—the only way to get money was to go into the black market. One thing that we have managed to do, in all the various ways this country has been run, is to allow people to stand up and say, “I am in trouble”.

I like to think that my noble friend Lord Bates, whom I have known for a fair time, will give us a very good answer. Having listened to the debate, after all these years it seems to me that it is the same story: those who can will get it and those who cannot do not. It is important that people in difficulties must be seen so that we can get to them in order to help. I hope that the Minister will do that today.

Queen’s Speech

Baroness Wilcox Excerpts

Wednesday 15th May 2013 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Wilcox]

My Lords, the gracious Speech includes a defence Bill and I speak to encourage the Minister of Defence to hold the Government’s position on recruitment and training of 16 to 18 year-olds to the Armed Forces, because siren voices are complaining that Army recruitment of under-18s is a waste of money. Other voices say that the Government should reconsider allowing 16 year-olds to enlist.

Here I should declare my interests. I am a member of the Defence Study Group of your Lordships’ House; I am from Plymouth, the home of the Navy and Marine Commandos, in which my family has served for generations; and I have employed many young people in fish processing units—not the most happy places to be, but useful—while they wait to go into the Army. It used to be a great tradition that they would go off and return within a year or so in uniform, for us all to gaze at them and glory at how much they had changed and improved.

In these difficult years of recession, many young people find it very difficult to find a job at all, and the social cost of the unemployed young is huge—youth on the loose, bored, losing confidence, depressed, prey to gangs in some places and obesity in others, in single-parenthood, dependent on government payouts, and open to temptations of all sorts. This is not the way to start a life and represents money wasted. The earlier that we can offer opportunities to these young people the better. We can give them greater confidence and pride by setting them on the road that perhaps their fathers or mothers took before them to apprenticeships, BTEC qualifications, training, and personal and team success. It may even be that they can learn to drive a tank.

The cost of recruiting these 16 to 18 year-olds is not wasted. In the year 2012-13, the Army identified that just 12% of under-18s leave before completion of their training, as against 14% of those over 18 who do so. It is the youngest entrant soldiers who stay as soldiers for the longest. It is they who become the best NCOs, and they are a great investment for us. This House is witness to the many years served here by our Staff Superintendent, Peter Horsfall. He was a member of the Coldstream Guards at the age of 16. Many of our Doorkeepers have backgrounds as boy soldiers and apprentices, and many of them became NCOs. They tell me that it is the NCOs who actually run the Army.

I turn to my second point, on allowing 16 year-olds to enlist. The Government believe that their policies on under-18s in service are robust and comply with national and international law. They have taken steps to bestow special safeguards on young people below the age of 18, under the Optional Protocol to the Convention on the Rights of the Child on the Involvement of Children in Armed Conflict. It continues to be the rule that they do not go to the front line to fight until they have reached the age of 18. Of course, a comprehensive welfare system is in place for all service personnel. I hope that the Minister—a soldier himself—will continue to support this Government’s route.

Finally, the voices “against” are against preparing the next generation for circumstances which are not abstract but real. Those same voices would, I suspect, leap to praise the youngster—the 16 year-old—who has performed well during a local crisis such as a flood, a fire or an accident. So often that youngster is a scout or a guide but is also an Army cadet, a Navy cadet, an Air Force cadet, or a boy or girl soldier.