Arbitration and Mediation Services (Equality) Bill [HL]

Baroness Donaghy Excerpts

Friday 19th October 2012 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Donaghy]

My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Cox, for her Bill and support it in principle for two reasons. First, as a former chair of ACAS, where arbitration and mediation are its bread and butter, I feel strongly that the law in this area should not be brought into disrepute. Secondly, as someone who has played a part in fighting for the rights of women, I feel that we cannot allow the clock to be turned back.

ACAS uses both mediation and arbitration. Arbitration is where two or more parties agree on an independent person who will decide on their dispute. The terms of reference have to be mutually agreed beforehand and there has to be acceptance of the final outcome. Mediation involves a neutral person trying to help the parties to a dispute identify common ground and reach a mutually satisfactory agreement. It is the parties which settle, not the mediator.

ACAS has panels of experts for both arbitration and mediation and I believe it is still one of the jewels in the crown of our national services. That is all the more reason therefore to be concerned about the many reports that mediation and arbitration are being confused in the name of the law and that their remit is sometimes unclear and sometimes exceeded. I am also concerned that the definition of mutuality is sometimes being stretched to such limits that a women is said to consent to a process when in practice, because of a language barrier, huge cultural or family pressure, ignorance of the law, a misplaced faith in the system or a threat of complete isolation, that mutuality is as consensual as rape.

Listening to and reading some of the stories of women who have experienced some of the abuses of a system that claims to follow Sharia law take me back to women’s rights 45 years ago. I lived in Chiswick Park, where a women’s refuge had just been opened for victims of domestic violence. It was not called domestic violence of course; it was called “domestics”, as if it was some kind of cleaning product. The police would never get involved in “domestics”. If you were a man, you could batter the living daylights out of a woman and the police would not get involved, mainly because a woman would never dream of going to the police. The people who ran the refuge were regarded as weirdos and the women who were desperate enough to flee there were often shunned by their own families.

All this was brought back to me when I listened to some of the women asking for this change in the law. My own experience at that time was that I went along to the electricity showroom—which still existed— on Chiswick High Road to take out a hire-purchase agreement on an electric fire and was told that I needed my husband’s signature, for something I was paying for. I turned into a feminist overnight. I am not trying to compare something as trivial as the hire of an electric fire to decisions now being taken on behalf of women about their marital status, inheritance or personal safety. However, I am trying to remind the House that it is not that long ago historically that women were unequal before the law, that “domestics” were not a police matter and that women lived in fear and anonymity.

As long as some women live in fear and are trapped in their situation, we should act. The Government may well feel that this Bill is unnecessary as the law in this area is adequate. I would argue that turning a blind eye to fear and exploitation is not adequate. I do not believe that this is confined to Sharia law or the Muslim religion. These parallel laws that discriminate against women exist, sometimes, in other religions. It is important to emphasise that this is not an attack on one particular religion or, indeed, on any right to worship. It could also be said that the Bill does not go far enough and that it is too weak to make a difference. I would argue that this can be dealt with by means of amendments to the Bill.

No one pretends, as the noble Baroness, Lady Cox, said in her able and moving speech, that passing this Bill into law will solve all the problems of women who live in fear and at risk of exploitation. However, it is about equal rights for women and will go some way to promoting what one of the campaigners called,

“a shared vision of citizenship”.

I support the Bill.