Brexit: Justice for Families, Individuals and Businesses (EU Committee Report)

Baroness Shackleton of Belgravia Excerpts

Wednesday 20th December 2017 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Shackleton of Belgravia (Con)]

My Lords, I pay tribute to our chairman, the noble Baroness, Lady Kennedy, who not only rules us with a rod of iron but seems able to make us all turn up and make our committee meetings fun. We get a lot of work done. I thank her.

The common law rules the noble Baroness refers to are, as most witnesses said, except the one non-practising witness, a recipe for confusion, expense and uncertainty, particularly in family law, in which I practice. I will pick three different topics to illustrate this.

The reality of life is that European citizens intermarry and inter-divorce. We have for some time been ruled by the Brussels convention, where the first past the post wins. You may have two French nationals living in this country with French passports. It would be possible for them to divorce in France or in England—the first person to file a petition wins. That takes away a lot of law. It takes away a long-contested forum conveniens argument and a lot of anti-suit injunctions, such as Hemain injunctions, to prevent the foreign jurisdiction proceeding until the English jurisdiction catches up, for example.

We have not used this in European law for many years. The judges are not qualified to deal with it or have little practice in it because we have not been doing it. There is no legal aid. The judges are completely overwhelmed with very serious child matters. Absent Brussels II being reinvented, we will be flooded with litigants in person trying to plead before a judge as to whether the jurisdiction in England is more convenient for the family than the jurisdiction in, say, in the example I gave, France. That will have a very serious effect on our already overburdened courts.

The second area is the enforcement of maintenance regulations. Lugano exists, but it is not the same as what we have under European law. It is a poor relation. It is of some significance, but nobody can find out how many people obey the law because they are too scared not to. If there is a void in the law, it is likely that more people will default. If there is not proper enforcement, the applicant will not be able to collect their money. The same is true in relation to children. We have been told that the Hague convention is not as good as the Brussels II Regulation. More children may be abducted. This is all at a time when legal aid is practically non-existent and judges are overwhelmed by litigation.

The Government’s response to the concerns caused by the loss of this EU legislation to the UK’s family law system post Brexit is, to put it mildly, disappointing. The committee was not convinced that the Government had a coherent or workable plan. To suggest that we can just be “wound down”, as the noble Baroness, Lady Kennedy, mentioned, is purely defeatist and inadequate. Proper law has to be put in place. The good that has been done by harmonious European relationships—a judge in England phoning a judge in Italy to try to retrieve a child; the cross-border co-operation between member states—cannot be underestimated. It has taken decades to build up such relationships. If we do not continue with them, we as a country will be poorer.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Keen of Elie]

Indeed so. I am familiar with it—absolutely ghastly stuff.

It is not stuck; it so happens that the convention has moved more slowly than Brussels in this context. Lugano was essentially in parallel with Brussels I. When Brussels moved on to Brussels Ia Lugano did not accelerate at the same speed, but that is not to say that it is in aspic.

I may have misheard the noble Baroness, but she suggested, in the context of arbitration, that there was no allowance for enforcement of arbitral judgments. That is not the case, because the New York convention provides for enforcement of arbitral judgments. That applies right across the world. It is not limited in any sense to the EU. Again, it seems arbitration—and commercial arbitration, which is particularly important in the context of the City of London, for example—is not affected by these issues of reciprocal judicial agreement and enforcement.

The noble Baroness, Lady Shackleton of Belgravia, suggested that the Government’s response was disappointing. I hope we have moved on from that point. She suggested that the reference to things being wound down would not do, but with great respect, we have no desire to see any of this wound down. We seek certainty, predictability and an outcome that we can say is in parallel with Brussels Ia, Brussels II and the other regulations referred to.

The noble Lord, Lord Cashman, referred to the Brussels regulations having a significant role. He is absolutely correct about that and we acknowledge it. Indeed—I believe I can get this far—we certainly agree as to our goal. He may feel that we are a little less certain than others about how we get to it, but there is no suggestion or intention of us walking away from these regulations. We will have to address the question of the direct jurisdiction of the CJEU and we acknowledge that.

[Baroness Shackleton of Belgravia]

I apologise for interrupting, but I did not invent the phrase “wound down”. I can quote it directly back to the noble and learned Lord. The Government’s reaction to our report was,

“in the event that we do not agree an arrangement for future civil judicial cooperation with the EU, it will be important to have reached a common view on the general principles that would govern how ongoing cooperation in this area could be wound down”.

[Lord Keen of Elie]

That is absolutely correct, but the noble Earl, Lord Kinnoull, brought this out more fully when he distinguished between cases in the pipeline and those that arise post Brexit. As paragraph 91 of the joint report points out, there will essentially be agreement—or consensus; let me put it that way—on how we deal with existing cases at the point when we leave the European Union. But there is no desire to see us walk away or wind down the existing regulatory regime.

The noble and learned Lord, Lord Hope of Craighead, posed two questions in the context of the Government’s response, where we talk about a “close and comprehensive agreement”. It cannot be a mirror of what is already there, because of the jurisdiction of the CJEU, but “close and comprehensive” is what we seek.

The noble and learned Lord’s first question was whether we could give an assurance that the aim is to achieve the same degree of certainty and predictability. The answer, I would suggest, is yes. The aim is most certainly to achieve that. I assure him that there will be no cliff edge. We have no desire for there to be any cliff edge anywhere, but that will be the subject of negotiation because we are now entering the second phase. Perhaps it is more important to point out that the Government’s aim in this context is to ensure that we have certainty, predictability and continuity.