Inheritance (Cohabitants) Bill [HL]

Baroness Kennedy of Shaws Excerpts

Friday 19th October 2012 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Kennedy of The Shaws]

My Lords, I pay tribute to the noble Lord, Lord Lester, for introducing the Bill. This House often groans when lawyers seem to dominate debates and I often hear the proud declaration being made by non-lawyers when they stand to speak that they are untainted by law and that they come as sensible lay persons. However, I believe that occasionally a lawyer has something to contribute, and if there is one lawyer who should be marked out for his seminal role in legal reform from the 1960s to this day it is the noble Lord, Lord Lester. He has been at the heart of almost every great legal reform towards a fairer and more decent society, where discrimination is jettisoned and compassionate and just outcomes are sought. Women particularly have gained considerably from his efforts.

The Bill echoes many of the campaigns and arguments the noble Lord has made over time for legal reform. Indeed, he made a similar argument, which I supported, in 2004 when the law was reformed to create civil partnerships for gay couples. We argued then, as now, that there are miserable consequences for committed unmarried heterosexual couples when one of them dies. Losing the home they have shared and in which they have brought up their children is often a consequence of the death duties they are required to pay under our current intestacy and tax regimes.

I see the Bill as part of the slow progress towards equal justice. The resistance to change has always been about preserving marriage, based on the notion that cohabiting couples have a remedy—to get married. Indeed, I know couples who have lived together for many years and when they have turned 50, and suddenly felt the hints of mortality, they have rushed off to the registry office.

I want the House to understand the misconceptions that exist within our wider society. People think that living together as common-law man and wife, as they describe it, provides them with protections that in law do not exist. That is a common misperception and much of the research in this field shows that such views are widely held. The law has to reflect changing social reality, and many couples in the United Kingdom, as the noble Lord, Lord Lester, said, live together as a family unit and bring up their children like any other couple. The predicament they face on death, particularly early death, is unjust.

Yes, as the noble Lord, Lord Lester, described, they can make a case under the 1975 legislation and they can apply to the estate for maintenance, but I remind the House about the changes that have been made to legal aid and the kind of stress and emotional turmoil that is created for families if they have to take that route.

I say to opponents that Members of this House, for the most part, have enjoyed longevity—we are usually much older than the people who might make use of the Bill—and it may be that over our lifetimes we can see the purposes of marriage and the reasons for preserving it. A powerful argument is that a public statement of commitment is important. Whether it is in the eyes of God or only in the eyes of your community it provides an anchor in the challenging business of sustaining relationships. That is the argument to make for the importance of marriage, not the finding of mechanisms around the laws of intestacy, which work so powerfully against the interests of, particularly, women and children.

The loss to the Treasury, which may be in some people’s minds, is not as significant as the savings to the state in many other ways. Families who are left unable to continue living in the family home, for example, end up having to be provided for by the state because they are in extremis and unable to function in the way that they once did.

I hope the Government and the House will support the Bill. To argue that this is somehow an attack upon marriage is to misunderstand the purposes of this effort to change the law.