Cohabitation Rights Bill [HL]

Baroness Butler-Sloss Excerpts

Friday 12th December 2014 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Butler-Sloss (CB)]

My Lords, it is perhaps time for someone to speak in support of the Bill. I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Marks, on bringing it forward. Given the atmosphere that has so far been engendered since he spoke, it was brave of him to do so. I should like noble Lords to know that I have been married for 56 years. I was married in church and am a not-necessarily very good but practising Anglican. I am also a patron of the Marriage Foundation and strongly support marriage. However, I do not see the Bill as an attack on marriage.

One of the important things that has not so far been referred to is that marriage requires the consent of both parties, of an age and ability to make that consent. The freedom that is talked about is very often a freedom for one cohabitant but a sentence for the other, who is left on an inadequate income to cope with the children. Although the noble Baroness, Lady Deech, talked about the Children Act 1989 providing, where appropriate, some help for the mother or father of children, that goes only to the age of 18. I profoundly disagree with the noble Baroness, Lady Deech, the noble Lord, Lord Farmer, and, to some extent at least, with the right reverend Prelate.

It is important to remember that there is a major detriment to children from the parting of any couple. In my view, the detriment is as much from the parting of a couple who are not married as a couple who are, and, as I have already said, there is the added detriment that the mother may not have very much money and may not be able to get much from the father.

I do not see “the panoply of family law” as an appropriate phrase for the very modest proposals that the noble Lord, Lord Marks, has put forward, particularly in Clause 8 of the Bill. These are modest proposals: you have to show either a benefit acquired or an economic detriment. I wonder whether two years is right; I would have thought this more likely to be an economic detriment over a much longer period. If the Bill went forward—as I fear it may not, but I would like to see it do so—I would be likely to table an amendment that would require a rather longer period of cohabitation. However, that is perhaps a minor thing compared with the good that I think the Bill would do.

This modest adjustment on the economic disadvantage would affect two groups of people, about whom I would like to speak briefly. The first has been referred to: generally it is the woman, but could be the man, who has been living with the other partner sometimes for 25 or 30 years. I was a family judge; I saw these cases. That woman very often either did not have a job because her partner was well-to-do and wanted her to stay at home, or she had a modest job that was not compatible with her considerable abilities. When she is left by that man, who, after 25 or 30 years, looks for a younger woman—that is quite a usual situation to happen for those whose relationships continue beyond the rather shorter period of many—she is absolutely stuck. She has no house because the house is very often in his name and she did not suggest that it should be in both names. That is particularly the case with older women; I suspect that younger women are savvier about this than women in their fifties and sixties. They are left on their own with the children growing up; they are not required to have maintenance; they are homeless and without a proper job, and they have to find something to be able to keep themselves, or live off benefits. Of course, they also have no pension.

The other group—which was briefly referred to by the noble Baroness, Lady Deech, I thought in a rather unfair way—are the women in this country who are Muslim and who marry under Sharia law. Many of them have little English and most of them have no knowledge whatever of English law. Recently I went to the London-based Islamic Sharia Council. Its representatives said that they spend a lot of time trying to help these women. They have married under Sharia law without any knowledge of the fact that there should be a registration of that marriage by a registrar at the registry office. They are completely stuck because they are not married. Sharia law is not the law of the land. It is all very well for the noble Baroness, Lady Deech, to say that the Sharia court can make a money payment for the Muslim wife, but that has absolutely no position in English law. If the man chooses not to pay, there are no enforcement proceedings in the Sharia court—quite rightly, in my view, because the English court should be dealing with English people and English financial matters that relate to a couple. However, in no way can one say that the Sharia court can do anything very useful.

If the parties have not yet separated, the London Sharia council offers mediation, but I heard many sad stories of women in this country who are either English or living with someone they are permitted to be with under our immigration laws and who, as I say, are completely stuck. That is the second group. The fact that they are a minority group and that they are Muslim women should not lead us to say that they should be less regarded and less interest taken in them. They are being equally unfairly treated under our English law.

Perhaps I may add that these women are unlike the first group where the noble Baroness, Lady Deech, says that both sides have the right to suggest marriage, but they both choose not to. Perhaps I have not said this, but I meant to do so. Quite often one half of the couple does want to marry, but the other half does not. You cannot force a marriage. Again, regarding the woman, if she loves the man and has had children by him, what is she to do? Should she leave him and become a single mother, or should she stay with him, hoping that the relationship will continue? However, she lives in fear that when it ends, she will not have any of the rights, however limited, that this Bill would provide.

I also want to mention that support after death on intestacy is an excellent measure for the reasons that have already been given. So, as the first voice in support of the noble Lord, Lord Marks, I would like to see the Bill go further and for the House to reflect on the fact that it is not all one way. There are women and some men out there who are seriously disadvantaged in a financial way. We cannot brush that aside and say that it does not matter. It is actually wrong and something should be done.