Arbitration and Mediation Services (Equality) Bill [HL]

Lord Cormack Excerpts

Friday 19th October 2012 Lords Chamber

[Lord Cormack]

My Lords, it is a great pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Singh, in his thought for the day. I would just ask him to take comfort that Sikhs are not the only people who fail always to live up to their religious ideals. Christians are quite good at that too. I join the universal thanks and tributes to the noble Baroness, Lady Cox. She really has been a lodestar for so many people for such a long time that we are all, directly or indirectly, in her debt. She goes where many of us ought to go and she does what many of us ought to do, and in introducing this Bill today she has performed another signal service for which we are all very grateful.

I do not like to see the law of my country sidestepped, overridden, ignored or, even worse, subverted, and I am therefore extremely grateful, as I am sure we all are, for the initiative taken by the noble Baroness, but the Bill is not enough. She has been extremely generous in what she has said about her willingness to listen to amendments. She has been very generous in recognising that any Private Member’s Bill is an imperfect vehicle for change. I give the Bill my support. I hope that it proceeds and is amended in Committee, and I would like to see it on the statute book, but I repeat: the Bill is not enough, because what we have got to seek to do in this country is to ensure that the rule of law, which means the protection of the law, is available for everyone. The Bill, whenever enacted, is not going to reach out into every community. I am just sorry that not one of our Muslim Peers is taking part in this debate today— I am sure that there are excellent reasons for that—because we have some very fine men and women of the Muslim faith who could have further enlightened our deliberations.

Yesterday, we had a very interesting debate on education. We were all constrained in the time we had to speak, but one point that I made, I should like, if the right reverend Prelate will forgive me, to repeat in part. A number of Peers in this House, from all parties and the Cross Benches, have been meeting in recent months to discuss citizenship and our young people. We are very anxious to reach the stage where every young person leaving school in this country has had a proper course in citizenship and goes through a citizenship ceremony and receives a certificate. What is the connection with the issue before us today? Well, it is a very simple one: it is only in that way that you can get across to every young man and woman in this country just what the rule of law is, what it means and what it means for them individually and collectively. Among the reading matter for such a course, I would certainly include Lord Bingham’s magisterial short volume, The Rule of Law, a fine distillation of the wisdom of a great mind.

It is very important that all the young people in our schools, who have such diverse ethnic and religious backgrounds, realise that we are all subject to the same law and that we all have the same obligations, responsibilities, rights and protection. It is only by getting that across to every young person coming out of school that we will achieve what the noble Baroness is seeking to achieve with this Bill.

We have a golden opportunity for this. The noble Baroness, Lady O’Loan, made a very brief, passing reference to Magna Carta. On 15 June 2015, we will be commemorating what these chaps up there, the statues of the Barons of Runnymede, achieved in 1215. Magna Carta is not, as somebody said recently, the end of the divine right of kings and the beginnings of democracy. It is the bedrock of our liberties and every one of us owes something to it, as does every citizen in every free democracy in the world. If we made it a target date and said that, in 2015, we would like every school leaver to leave school with a certificate of citizenship showing an understanding of their responsibilities to their community and their own rights and protection under the law, we would have achieved a very great deal. In a sense, we would have re-enacted a Magna Carta for the 21st century, and even the Prime Minister would know what that meant. I commend this to your Lordships in all parts of the House as a way of ensuring that the noble ideals of the noble Baroness come to fruition.

We have always prided ourselves in this country, and in this Parliament in particular, on the rule of law and the fact that we are the custodians of it. One only has to think of Palmerston in another place—he was an Irish Peer so did not sit here—and that extraordinary Don Pacifico incident. To protect one harassed shopkeeper, he invoked those immortal words, “Civis Romanus sum”, “I am a citizen of Rome”, thinking back to St Paul who used that in his day—not that St Paul was entirely good and sound on the women issue. In a very dramatic and graphic way, Palmerston was saying that everyone who was subject to the sovereignty of the Queen—in that case, Queen Victoria—was deserving of the protection of the law. That is a bold claim for us to make but, in our multilingual, multiethnic and multifaith society, we must see that in the 21st century all people have the protection of the law.

I have had the good fortune to attend a couple of the briefings that the noble Baroness, Lady Cox, organised for those with an interest in the Bill. Until I got her first letter, I had not really given it much thought, but I came along and listened. Some of your Lordships here this afternoon were there last week when we heard the testimony of two brave young Muslim women who had been the victims—that is the only word one can advisedly use—of the injustice of Sharia law. The noble Baroness referred to others in her speech. I defy anyone to have listened to those testimonies and then come out of that meeting unmoved and undetermined. We are only as good as the way in which we treat the least of our citizens. Far too many in this country, through ignorance among other things, do not get the benefit of the protection of our laws. If we make a small step in the direction of remedying that deficiency by passing this Bill, we will have performed a real service.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Gardiner of Kimble]

I can assure my noble friend that the Government and all the other groups that are interested in resolving this issue will be looking at all the evidence. In reaching the conclusions on how best to take it forward, we will be bringing forward a matter that is sensitive, and therefore the Government are working hard with other groups to ensure—

[Lord Cormack]

I appreciate that this is my noble friend’s first wind-up from the Dispatch Box and that he has the good will of the whole House. However, will he discuss with his colleagues in government some of the citizenship points that I raised during this debate, because it is only through having a thoroughly well educated population aware of its rights and responsibilities that we can finally lay to rest the things which concern us so much in this House?

[Lord Gardiner of Kimble]

My Lords, I am delighted to agree with my noble friend. I shall certainly raise those matters that he raised as well as those points that all noble Lords have expressed in this debate.