European Union (Withdrawal) Bill

Lord Berkeley of Knighton Excerpts

Committee: 4th sitting (Hansard - continued): House of Lords
Monday 5th March 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Berkeley of Knighton (CB)]

My Lords, I certainly would not attempt to trade cudgels with the noble and learned Lord but Amendments 37, 38 and 69 seem common sense to me. If one thinks in terms of child trafficking and one particular area that personally concerns me, female genital mutilation, there is the taking of young girls out of this country to be mutilated and brought back, and sometimes they are brought here to be mutilated. It surely makes sense that we have the strongest possible cross-border co-operation, whether we are in the EU or out of it.

[Baroness Deech (CB)]

My Lords, my noble and learned friend Lord Brown is of course right. There is a simple proposition in law, which is that the United Nations convention, like others, is not directly enforceable in this country—let alone between two individuals—until and unless it has been incorporated into our domestic law, which it has not been. On the face of it, if one brought it as it stands by our decision tonight, or later, how would we tackle things such as where the charter and the convention say that every child has the right to know and be brought up by his parents? How would we reconcile that with our very complicated and subtle laws about, for example, sperm donors or surrogate parents? How would we reconcile a child’s right to education with our very lax attitude towards home schooling and our inability to bring that under control? How would we reconcile it with the very sad fact that the majority of divorced and estranged fathers do not turn up to see their children, even though their children would like to and have a right to see them?

In other words, it is extremely complicated. It is not enough simply to wave a flag for what a good thing the United Nations convention is, which indeed it is, unless it is incorporated in a careful and detailed fashion into our law, which it has not been. It therefore cannot be by a side wind as this Bill goes through Parliament.