Arbitration and Mediation Services (Equality) Bill [HL]

Lord Anderson of Swansea Excerpts

Friday 23rd October 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Anderson of Swansea (Lab)]

My Lords, like the noble Lord, Lord Cormack, I join the consensus of concern. I agree with my noble friend Lady Donaghy that this is essentially a women’s issue. I join, too, with the noble Lord, Lord Dholakia, in praising the noble Baroness, Lady Cox. I have long admired her tenacity and the way in which she has fought for human rights abroad in an even-handed way, be it for Muslims in Burma or Christians in South Sudan. She is no less keen in promoting human rights at home, as is shown by her persistence in bringing forward this Bill after the failure in 2012.

As she has pointed out, there is a danger of vulnerable people being misled as a result of a misunderstanding of the relationship that they are forming. Contrary to their beliefs, their so-called marriage ceremony may be of no legal standing in this country, and all too late at the time of their divorce they find that they are without remedy. For example, Islamic religious weddings cannot be recognised if they take place abroad, but of course a licence can be obtained, just as for non-conformist churches. Aurat, the women’s rights organisation, found in its case studies on Muslim women living in the West Midlands that around 90% who said that they were married were not actually in marriages recognised by our law. The Times of 3 July stated that it is considered that as many as 100,000 couples in Britain are estimated to be living in Islamic marriages not recognised by UK law.

My experience, both as a long-term constituency MP and as a barrister whose practice included some family law, gave me experience of women who came to the UK to marry, often from traditional societies, who accepted without question that the marriage was legally valid in the UK. Often they lacked adequate language skills, were timid and subject to community pressure, and would remain ignorant unless properly advised. The problem now appears to have been recognised by the Home Secretary, who said in March this year:

“There is evidence of women being ‘divorced’ under Sharia law and left in penury, wives who are forced to return to abusive relationships because Sharia councils say a husband has a right to ‘chastise’, and Sharia councils giving the testimony of a woman only half the weight of the testimony of a man”.

Surely there is a danger of a parallel legal system being created. Women should not be subject to that sort of pressure to submit and not pursue their rights under our law. It is therefore all the more surprising that there was such a weak response from the Government in 2012: that every woman has access to her rights under the law of the land. We look forward to a more positive statement from the Minister this morning. I accept that in their Written Answer of 24 September the Government have now conceded that,

“Sharia councils may be working in a discriminatory and unacceptable way”,

and have undertaken to commission a full and independent review. I say in passing that I hope the review will not be of Chilcotian length and will have very clear terms of reference.

Nevertheless, I hope that the Bill will receive a Second Reading, that the question of the legal validity of marriages will be assured, that the principles against our own law—giving more weight to a man than to a woman, intestacy and so on—will be examined and that if these key procedural principles of English and Welsh law are not fulfilled, the proceedings can be struck out. If these practices are not stopped, not only will they continue but they are likely to be extended. I therefore welcome the fact that the Government have now changed their position and recognised that there is a real problem. The principle of equality before the law should be upheld. I trust that the terms of reference of the proposed review will be sufficiently wide to encompass all the concerns expressed so well by noble Lords in this debate.