Arbitration and Mediation Services (Equality) Bill [HL]

Lord Elton Excerpts

2nd reading (Hansard): House of Lords
Friday 27th January 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Elton (Con)]

My Lords, I do not want my noble friend to be bowed down with the compliments she receives in this debate but I would like to put them in context. She has been congratulated many times on her persistence in going to the aid of this particular oppressed minority in our community, and it should be seen in the light of the last decade or two having been spent doing exactly that and in much more perilous and exacting circumstances right round the world. Let that not be overlooked.

The case made by my noble friend is very simple: it is that a large number of people in this country are being misled as to the powers of bodies which adjudicate on how their lives are to be lived in a very fundamental, important and intimate way. Some of them are under a misconception when they arrive in the process; others are given the misconception by the people managing the process. Where an official of any of these bodies is represented as having the power and authority of the English common or statute law, they deliberately mislead and make a false statement, which has damaging consequences—sometimes almost lethally damaging consequences—on the people appearing before them.

My noble friend’s Bill is directed at remedying that by criminalising a false statement with that effect, and the House is definitely very much behind her on that. Personally, I would go further. I think that giving that impression to, or gratuitously leaving it in the mind of, a person using the services of that body by what the lawyers call either suppressio veri or suggestio falsi—in other words, knowingly allowing them to be misled as to the force of what is decided—should itself be a punishable offence.

I want to touch on just one other aspect in this prolific debate, in which so much has been covered, and it is rather a large point made earlier by my noble friend. The Government will be making up their mind on the scale of this phenomenon—there are those who say that it is very small—and will take advice from a body that they appointed to give them that advice. I ask the Government, through my noble and learned friend on the Front Bench—to be sure to assess that advice with very great care in the light of the positions and experience of the people giving it. That is not to question the probity of their advisers; it is simply to recognise that a person’s view is determined to a large extent by the viewpoint from which they take it, and their perceptions are to some extent qualified by their preconceptions. It is very important that none of the evidence should be lost from sight.

I am sorry: I said that I had only one point to make but I have one other. An article in a periodical about law and religion in the UK has suggested that my noble friend is attacking this problem from the wrong end. Rightly, she targets the people who are misleading the clients—if that is the right word—of these courts. The article suggested, with apparent authority, that this was quite wrong and that really the problem was the consent given by the victims. That is a fairly extraordinary assertion from our point of view. It may not be so from the point of view of others who are part of the culture, to which my noble friend Lady Flather referred; but in fact the victims are not fluent in the English language. If the victims were fluent in the English language and familiar with the customs and practices of British society, there might be half a case in that statement, but they are not. Typically, they do not have one word of the English language and therefore are completely unaware of their rights. This Bill will restore to those people rights which have been theirs since they set foot in this country, and I hope that it is accepted by the Government.