Arbitration and Mediation Services (Equality) Bill [HL]

Baroness Flather Excerpts

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

[Baroness Flather (CB)]

My Lords, I am proud to call the noble Baroness, Lady Cox, my very dear friend. She is a bully, you know, and what is so good is that she does her bullying in such a way that you do not mind it—you are pleased to help her. I also congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Donaghy, on her speech. The speeches related well to each other and set the scene for us.

I am concerned about a number of things. First, I lay the blame squarely at the door of the Government. There is no way that a Government should be allowing a parallel system to affect their citizens. We have first to decide whether the Muslims and the Muslim women are citizens of this country. If they are, they all deserve, and ought to be given, equal treatment. There should not be another system of so-called law which is a religious law—not a law of the land—and which interferes with and decides how people, particularly women and children, are treated.

Through my noble friend Lady Cox I have met women and heard stories about events which you cannot believe are happening in our country. I have come from elsewhere to live in this country and I respect this country. It has never interfered with my belief—I am not a Christian—and the important thing is that I respect its laws and culture.

I want to say something important about the word “culture”. A lot of the people who deal with minority women are told, “This is our culture”, but what does that mean? If they are beaten and chastised, that is their culture. If they are not given any money, that is their culture. If they are not given a divorce, that is their culture. But what is culture? I always imagined that it was something that developed for the good of society—not something that is no better than a social practice. You can have social practices which are appalling or social practices which are wonderful, but you cannot have an appalling culture. Hiding behind something called “culture” is one of the worst things to have come about, particularly when it is cited by social workers and other people who deal with these issues.

According to scholars, sharia law is discriminatory against women in every respect. No matter what we do, it will never provide equality. Therefore, it is our Government’s job to make sure that women are not discriminated against under sharia practice. Pakistan has only just passed a law saying that honour killing is now viewed as murder. It has taken a long time but it came about because a woman burned her daughter. India is now trying to stop multiple marriages, saying that everybody is entitled to marry only one person. Strictly speaking, we do not allow multiple marriages here, but when the Home Affairs Committee tried to tackle that, it discovered that it would cost the Government a huge amount of money to take care of all the so-called non-wives, because under that system there is always a wife, a nanny, a cousin or somebody else to look after the children.

As your Lordships know, when a Muslim man divorces his wife, with great ease, he puts her out on the street. When people ask why he is doing that, he says, “Why does it matter? The Government will look after her. She won’t starve or sleep on the street. I don’t have to worry about that”. As somebody has already stated, fathers are entitled to take children who have reached the age of seven. You can get a British divorce if you have a British marriage, but if you go to Pakistan or any other Islamic country the husband can take the children away because the woman is not divorced in the eyes of Islamic law. I learned this graphically from a woman who had had a British divorce and tried for six years to get a sharia divorce. This is an absolute scandal.

When the noble Lord, Lord Faulks, was a Minister, I discussed with him the possibility of at least registering the marriages of all the people who come to live in this country. Their marriages, at least, should be registered and, once they are, questions of bigamy and rights come up. Without that, the women have nothing. Let us get on with it and change things.