Cohabitation Rights Bill [HL]

Baroness Gohir Excerpts

2nd reading
Friday 17th July 2026 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Gohir (CB)]

My Lords, I welcome this Bill and thank the noble Lord, Lord Marks, for introducing it. The Bill would provide important legal protections for many financially vulnerable people in cohabiting relationships. It would benefit women in religious-only marriages, so I am going to focus my comments on Muslim women.

Around 25% of Muslim women are in marriages that are not legally recognised because they have undergone a religious ceremony in the UK and have not had the additional civil marriage, often through no choice of their own. I declare an interest, as that figure is from the Muslim Women’s Network helpline, and is from 11 years-worth of data.

I want to pick up on a point that the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Butler-Sloss, mentioned about spouses arriving from abroad. I point out that for any spouse who arrives from abroad, if their marriage is registered abroad according to the laws of that land, it would be recognised as being a legally valid marriage.

Through our helpline, we have seen the devastating consequences of the legal gap. Women who have been in a religious marriage for many years, sometimes decades, can find themselves homeless overnight when that relationship ends, with no legal right to the family home or financial provision. That situation is often compounded when women have given up their careers to become homemakers, have been subjected to domestic, financial and economic abuse, and have not been able to build up their own savings or have their own income. Some are older women whose husbands have simply decided that they want a younger partner and feel that they can discard their wife without any accountability. During the Covid pandemic, we supported women whose husbands died unexpectedly. Since their marriages were not legally recognised, there were cases where they were evicted from their home by adult children who asserted legal ownership of the property. For these reasons, I strongly welcome the legal and financial protections this Bill would provide.

However, I believe the Bill needs further clarity on how it would operate where an individual maintains more than one household. For example, a person may remain legally married but separated, begin a cohabiting relationship with another partner and then that second relationship breaks down. In other cases, some individuals live with two different partners at separate addresses, with neither partner being aware of the other as the person spends long periods of their working life away from home. Within some Muslim communities, there have been cases where a man is legally married to one woman through a civil marriage and then enters into a religious-only marriage with another woman. How would competing claims be resolved? Clarity is also needed on whether the Bill would apply irrespective of a person’s immigration status, particularly for those with insecure immigration status, who are often most vulnerable to financial and relationship exploitation.

Finally, I welcome that the Bill provides a safety net but does not place cohabitation on an equal footing to civil marriage.

Prisoner Early Release

Baroness Gohir Excerpts

Wednesday 1st July 2026 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Gohir (CB)]

Can the Minister tell us the projected number of rapists and child groomers who will be released, and over what period? Are we expecting hotspots around the country?

[Lord Timpson (Lab)]

What is important is that we get the numbers right. While we are here today, our incredibly hard-working and talented staff in our offender management units are working out the release dates of a large number of people who are currently in prison. We have already stated that we think, as part of our impact assessment, that there will be 7,500 prison place savings, but there is more work to be done. We have a quarterly update that we publish, and that is where this sort of information goes. But the most important thing throughout all this is that we cannot run out of prison places. We need to make sure we do this safely, with great communication with victims, but we need to make sure we do not run out of prison places again.

King’s Speech

Baroness Gohir Excerpts

Monday 18th May 2026 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Gohir (CB)]

My Lords, I will focus on the plans in the gracious Speech to modernise hate crime legislation. I declare my interests as CEO of the Muslim Women’s Network and non-executive member of the Law Commission board. The Government must confront a growing and dangerous reality: anti-Muslim hatred is normalised. Successive Governments have failed to address this with the seriousness it demands.

One of the clearest failures lies in our hate crime legislation. The law provides stronger protection against stirring up racial hatred than it does against stirring up religious hatred. In practice, deeply abusive and inflammatory statements about Muslims, Jews and other faith communities can be made without legal consequences, unless they are explicitly threatening. Extremists understand these loopholes and exploit them deliberately to radicalise others who then go on to commit hate crimes. If the Government are serious about reform, they must implement the Law Commission’s recommendation to bring offences relating to stirring up religious hatred in line with those covering stirring up racial hatred. Social media platforms must also be held accountable.

I will share some examples of the impact of anti-Muslim hatred. A Muslim man was murdered in 2013, and another in 2017, by far-right extremists. More recently, there have been attempts to run over Muslims with vehicles; 19 year-old Alina Burns expressed a desire to kill all Jews and Muslims and attacked a Kurdish man in the street with an axe; men entered a mosque in Manchester armed with an axe; 60 year-old Thomas McKenna stockpiled guns and explosives and planned to kill Muslim migrants; 19 year-old Alfie Coleman planned a mass shooting and was going to target London Mayor Sadiq Khan and a mosque; and two Sikh women were raped because the perpetrators believed that they were Muslim. Muslims continue to face verbal abuse in the streets and on public transport, and mosques are being vandalised. Graves are being desecrated—even the dead are not spared hatred.

Muslims do not feel safe, and Muslim women particularly do not feel safe. We saw on Saturday how Muslim women were targeted yet again. Three women got on the stage at the Tommy Robinson rally dressed in a burka, with a crowd shouting, “Take it off, take it off”. The women then took off that clothing to a cheering crowd. It was a deliberate public display of anti-Muslim hostility, aimed at dehumanising visibly Muslim women. The action signalled that targeting visibly Muslim women with intimidation and abuse is acceptable. Where is the condemnation from Government Ministers or indeed in your Lordships’ House? We feel invisible.

Almost half of religious hatred is aimed at Muslims. More than 4,000 incidents are reported annually to the police, but 80% of victims do not report and the actual figures are more likely to be 20,000-plus and growing. They do not report because they can see that Muslim safety does not matter to this Government. Jewish communities also understand the devastating consequences of religious hatred being ignored. They too continue to face rising hostility and abuse.

I have stood here many times in the Chamber and asked about anti-Muslim hatred and about the safety of Muslim women. I get the same response from Ministers: that funding has been provided for mosque security and a national helpline. However, these initiatives were introduced by the previous Government, and the only change we have had is a different service provider for the helpline. Repeating the same examples time and again creates the impression that the Government are failing to listen to the scale of fear, anxiety and frustration felt by Muslim communities. There has been no initiative specifically targeted at Muslim women. When will the Government listen to Muslim women? Perhaps the Government also have stereotypes about Muslim women—that they can too easily be dismissed.

The Government’s recent definition of anti-Muslim hostility is welcome, but, without implementation, without a strategy and without dedicated support, communities will continue to feel that Muslim safety does not matter to this Government. I therefore ask the Minister: does Muslim safety matter to the Government, and will the Home Secretary make a Statement unequivocally condemning the anti-Muslim hatred promoted—

[Lord in Waiting/Government Whip (Lord Wilson of Sedgefield) (Lab)]

Can the noble Baroness bring her remarks to an end? It has been five minutes, and the time limit is four.

[Baroness Gohir (CB)]

I had ended.

Crime and Policing Bill

Baroness Gohir Excerpts

Committee stage
Tuesday 9th December 2025 Lords Chamber

This is about more than law; it is about a culture, and saying with one voice that violence is not intimacy and harm is not entertainment. This is a moment to protect women and girls particularly, because it disproportionately affects them, but as someone said in an earlier debate: a big shout-out for the fact that men are also affected by this violence and, obviously, this violent porn. We need to build an online world that reflects our values, not our worst instincts.

[Baroness Gohir (CB)]

I too would like to thank the Government for these amendments, because helplines have seen a rise in non-fatal strangulation offences, and not everything gets reported to the police. We have seen a rise at the charity that I run, the Muslim Women’s Network helpline. Research shows that if a victim is subject to a non-fatal strangulation, they are seven times more likely to be a victim of domestic homicide. Analysis of the domestic homicide data shows that strangulation is one of the two main methods of killing women. I hope that the long-term trend, once these amendments are introduced, will be a decline in these types of offences being reported on helplines. I commend the Government.

[Baroness Doocey (LD)]

My Lords, these dangerous practices of strangulation and suffocation are often used to control, intimidate and silence in domestic abuse situations. The growing normalisation of strangulation during sex risks giving abusers a veneer of acceptability and a false sense of impunity. Strangulation was the cause of death of over a quarter of the women killed between 2014 and 2025—about 550 in total. In that context, the case for criminalising such images is compelling. Mainstream platforms must be put under a duty to remove this material or face sanction.

The related amendments in this group are welcome, in order to ensure that the new offences operate coherently across England and Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland. We on these Benches very much support this group of amendments, which sends a clear signal that such material is totally unacceptable.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Ritchie of Downpatrick (Lab)]

My Lords, I add my support to the amendments in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Owen. Since she arrived in your Lordships’ House, she has made the issue of online abuse her passion and her life’s work, and for that I congratulate her. These amendments deal with intimate image abuse, spiking, domestic abuse and the online abuse of women, by and large. Although there are many positive attributes of the internet and online and digital technology, there are also the downsides and how it is used as a weapon of abuse. Will the Minister see what she can do with her ministerial colleagues in the Home Department to try to accept some of these amendments by way of government amendments on Report? They are worthy of inclusion in this Bill.

[Baroness Gohir (CB)]

My Lords, I was unable to speak at Second Reading about the amendments to which I have added my name. I am extremely grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Owen, for her persistence in pursuing the issues that she raised about a year ago. I highlighted the problem of sexually explicit audio recordings during the debate on her Non-Consensual Sexually Explicit Images and Videos (Offences) Bill. I am therefore thankful that she has brought forward amendments to this Bill to address audio abuse. I too admire her tenacity. I fully support everything that she has said today.

I will speak specifically about audio abuse and those amendments. Although I commend the Government on strengthening the law relating to non-consensual recording of intimate images and film, I cannot understand why audio has been excluded. It appears as though the Government wish to wait for there to be a significant number of cases before taking action, but why wait? How many cases do we need? It should surely be enough to recognise that this abuse is already occurring and that it can easily escalate further. Intimate audio can easily be captured on mobile phones. We can clearly foresee the consequences of sharing such recordings and how they can be used to humiliate and intimidate, and cause alarm and distress, because voices are recognisable. As I indicated last year, the helpline that my charity, Muslim Women’s Network, runs has had cases, and the noble Baroness, Lady Owen, gave examples of cases, so how many more do we need?

We are perpetually playing catch-up when it comes to responding to new forms of abuse. Perhaps for once we can get ahead of the problem before audio abuse becomes widespread. I want to borrow a phrase from my noble friend Lady Kidron, who said we should lay the tracks ahead of the train—or something like that. Today, time and again we have heard that the Government need to be one step ahead. The question is why they do not want to be one step ahead on so many of the amendments we are talking about today. As legislation around image abuse tightens, perpetrators will inevitably look for other avenues through which they can control, threaten and shame victims. I therefore urge the Minister to address intimate audio recordings in this Bill.

[Baroness Sugg (Con)]

My Lords, I support the amendments in the name of my noble friend Lady Owen, which have been signed by noble Lords across the Committee. I welcome the Government’s Amendment 300 to extend the time limit for the sharing offence, which my noble friend’s amendments also seek to do.

My noble friend’s amendments on deletion, audio abuse, doxing, semen images and the definition of “taking” already aim to deal with activity that is, sadly, on the rise, and to recognise the real trauma that these activities cause the victims—trauma that sadly continues long after the initial offence. The technology around non-consensual images is very complicated, but we have some precedents where solutions have been found elsewhere. I am particularly interested to hear from the Minister on two issues: the 48-hour takedown, which we seen happen in the US, and the hash registry and hash sharing—I was grateful to my noble friend for setting out so clearly what they do. It strikes me as a bit chicken and egg here. The tech is there, but we need to demand progress in order to see progress.

Extending pre-existing domestic abuse protection orders would recognise another development that we are sadly witnessing, with perpetrators using the online world to further their abuse. Taking this opportunity to extend the scope of domestic protection orders will help stop this form of abuse and reflect the reality of the digital age that we are living in.

Technology is rapidly evolving, as we have heard in the example of audio abuse. It is a challenge to ensure that our legislation continues to be fit for purpose, but that is what these amendments seek to do, and in some cases to future-proof it as well. Non-consensual intimate images are an escalating harm. These amendments address critical operational gaps and work towards the systemic protection that we should have in this area.

Prisons: Mothers and Babies

Baroness Gohir Excerpts

Monday 7th July 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Gohir (CB)]

My Lords, is the Minister able to share what support is given to women once they leave prison and how long it is provided for?

[Lord Timpson (Lab)]

The general rule is that babies can stay with mothers in prison for up to 18 months, but there is flexibility so they can stay longer if required. It is really important that when women leave prison with their babies, they have somewhere to live and a wraparound support network. That is why it is important that we give them a soft landing when they leave prison. This is where probation comes in and where the £700 million in extra funding that we have will be really important to make sure that we get that first night accommodation, because we do not want anybody leaving prison with no fixed abode.

Non-Consensual Sexually Explicit Images and Videos (Offences) Bill [HL]

Baroness Gohir Excerpts

2nd reading
Friday 13th December 2024 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Gohir (CB)]

My Lords, I declare my interests as set out in the register. I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Owen, for proposing this Bill and her powerful introduction.

Taking and creating intimate images without consent is a violation of privacy and dignity and a form of abuse. The Muslim Women’s Network helpline has received calls from Muslim women distressed because boyfriends and husbands have taken intimate images without their consent. Victims often report that, when a relationship ends, former partners reveal that they have made secret recordings, such as of sexual activity or nudity. We have also had cases where women have been tricked into relationships via catfishing so that intimate images can be taken or created, including through online interactions.

Perpetrators of intimate image abuse can instil fear, humiliate and make victims feel unsafe without even sharing, or threatening to share, the images. They can stay within the law and still manipulate and control their victims. Making victims aware of covert recordings or fake images is often sufficient to inflict psychological damage.

On the Muslim Women’s Network helpline, we have had cases where perpetrators have shared intimate images, including digitally created fakes, and shown them to other people to humiliate the victim. However, it is difficult to prove, because they are not circulated and remain in the person’s possession. They use the images to maintain a hold over the victim. In communities where there is a culture of honour-based abuse, victims will be made to feel even more fearful of repercussions. An additional offence should therefore be created which criminalises exposing victims to increased risk of such harm.

I know that this Bill is about recording intimate images without consent; however, another perhaps lesser talked-about problem is recording audio of sexual activities without consent, including sharing or threatening to share them. A person’s voice is recognisable to the people who know them. For example, one woman who called the Muslim Women’s Network Helpline in distress reported that her ex-boyfriend had made a secret audio recording of them having sex, which was then added to a pornographic film and shared online. Whether it is original audio or digitally created fake audio, I would like to see the law amended to prevent this type of abuse. Could this be considered in this or another Bill? Unless it is covered elsewhere, there will be grey areas.

The Labour Party pledged to halve violence against women and girls. Therefore, I hope that the Government are fully supportive of the Bill proposed by the noble Baroness, Lady Owen, and I will be very disappointed and surprised if they are not.