Arbitration and Mediation Services (Equality) Bill [HL]

Baroness Donaghy Excerpts

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

[Baroness Donaghy (Lab)]

My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Cox, for her doughty championship of equality and the importance of access to justice. She is a life force on so many issues. This is the third time that I have followed, or rather limped, in her slipstream to support the Arbitration and Mediation Services (Equality) Bill or similar versions, and I do so with pleasure and on the same three grounds that I have before.

First, as a former chair of ACAS, I understand the importance of arbitration and mediation. It was our bread and butter. It relied on the genuine consent of the parties, a clear knowledge of what they were entering into and an understanding that they were equal before the conciliator or arbitrator. Any system which might be seen to misuse these procedures would be a reputational risk for arbitration and mediation in general.

Secondly, we should all be equal under the same laws. I say “should be”, because equal access to justice today is a right which is becoming rather flimsy due to major cuts in legal aid and advice agencies imposed by coalition and Conservative Governments. Nevertheless, equality is a fundamental right.

Thirdly, I feel strongly that women’s equality has to be fought for as vigorously today as in previous generations. Too often, it takes second place to other considerations: it is too sensitive, it might be seen to be anti-religious or anti-Muslim or—my favourite—women have gained all the rights they need and existing laws are sufficient as they stand.

If any women in this country today fail to get justice because they are misled about their rights or are surrounded by family who elevate custom and practice to the status of a right, then we are still a long way off from equal rights for women. As the noble Baroness, Lady Cox, said, the majority of women who marry under sharia law in this country are not aware that this does not give them legal rights under UK law on marriage, which places them at a potential disadvantage.

In the last debate on the subject, reference was made by the then Minister, the noble Lord, Lord Faulks, to the Home Office’s counterextremism strategy, which was published in October 2015 and reported that the Government intended,

“to commission an independent review to understand the extent to which Shari’a is being misused or applied in a way which is incompatible with the law. This is expected to provide an initial report to the Home Secretary in 2016”.

I remember feeling concerned that the issue of women’s rights had been referred to anywhere in the Home Office, let alone the counterextremism strategy. It seemed at the time an insensitive and inappropriate thing to do. Nevertheless, my question to the Minister is: where are we now, 15 months later, on this independent review?

Also in the previous debate, the noble Lord, Lord Faulks, referred to the Law Commission’s preliminary scoping study of marriage in England and Wales. The commission was due to report in December 2015 and we were assured that the Government would be considering the next steps. What progress, if any, is being made?

I would like to say something about custom and practice. It is very influential in all walks of life, for good or not so good. As a former trade unionist and still a strong supporter of trade unionism, I know all about custom and practice. To repeat an example I gave in a previous debate, I turned up to the electricity showrooms on the Chiswick High Road in the late 1960s to take out a hire purchase agreement on an electric fire for our rental accommodation, only to be told that I needed my husband’s signature to take out that agreement. He had even less money than I did but he had the power of the signature. That was custom and practice, and it was only two generations ago. I remember the way in which women subjected to appalling domestic violence could be informed by the police, if they were brave enough to go to the police in the first place, that it was a domestic and they could do nothing. That was custom and practice.

In summing up the last debate, the noble Lord, Lord Faulks, said:

“Integration requires changes to society, not necessarily changes to the law”.—[Official Report, 23/10/15; col. 904.]


That may be the truth, but it is not the whole truth. There comes a time when something that a society accepted as custom and practice has to be changed by the law in order to make it unacceptable. The Bill is an attempt to say that the law needs to step in, not necessarily to move us forward but to stop us moving backwards.

In conclusion, I really hope the Government will not continue to drift along in the brackish waters of scoping studies, Home Office counterextremism strategies and hoping-it-will-go-away working parties. I look forward to the Minister’s positive response.