Marriage (Same Sex Couples) Bill

Debate between Lord Singh of Wimbledon and Lord Lester of Herne Hill

Monday 17th June 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Singh of Wimbledon]

The amendment is not as clear as it should be. I want it to be very precise in protecting these sorts of abuses. We will come to discuss that more fully, but I personally believe that it is right and proper to air concerns at this stage.

[Lord Lester of Herne Hill]

Does the noble Lord know that under the Human Rights Act 1998 every part of this Bill must be construed, read and given effect in conformity with the European Convention on Human Rights? The convention fully protects freedom of religion, conscience, belief and expression. Does he also know that the noble Lord, Lord Waddington, had a great victory in this House in writing in free speech guarantees when we debated incitement to religious hatred? Therefore, so far as the law is concerned, there is no lack of clarity. It is not a question of majorities or minorities, and nor is it a question of opinion polls. Every individual is fully entitled to free speech, including the expression of views that I would deplore. I stand to be corrected if I am wrong, but I gather that Mr Clegg did not himself put out that highly obnoxious statement. It was put out by others and was withdrawn as soon as he saw it.

[Lord Singh of Wimbledon]

I thank the noble Lord for that intervention. I will not go too far into the Deputy Prime Minister’s views, because he then went on to say that everyone knows his views. That was a little ambiguous, and did not clarify things. It is true that many of the laws of the land in theory protect us all. In reality, those laws are not very clear. The more clarification that can be brought, the better, because many ordinary people suffer. Many ignorant people abuse those laws, or are ignorant of those laws and harass people. The more clarity we can have, the better.

To give another example, when housing associations and publicly owned venues such as the Queen Elizabeth II Conference Centre deal with people with traditional beliefs about marriage, they should treat them with respect. Yet they were excluded. If they do not treat such people with respect, they should be open to legal challenge for discrimination. When police, schools and hospitals are dealing with staff and service users, their approach to equality should include respecting those with mainstream views.

We should amend this Bill to ensure that people who, in good conscience and without a trace of malice, believe that marriage can be only between two people of opposite sexes are not disadvantaged for those beliefs, which may become minority beliefs, as has been said. They should still be allowed to have those beliefs. Amendment 19 is necessary to safeguard freedom of both belief and speech.

[Lord Lester of Herne Hill]

My Lords, to amplify briefly what I said before, Amendment 19 is completely unnecessary because the part of the Equality Act that it is seeking to amend defines protected characteristics in order to deal with discrimination, harassment and victimisation. In relation to those protected characteristics, it is clear beyond argument that if A is treated worse than B because of his or her opinions about sexuality, sex, marriage, communism, Sikhism, Judaism or anything under the sun, they are fully protected by the amendment that the noble Lord, Lord Waddington, made to the criminal law, and by the Human Rights Act and Articles 9 and 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights.

I am sorry that the noble Lord thinks that a Bill designed to prevent people becoming victims of unfair treatment is creating victims of unfair treatment. The fact that idiots in the public sector or private sector misunderstand it is no reason for us to have to amend this Bill to deal with such idiots. With respect, the state of the law is plain and obvious. It does not require this amendment. Were this amendment to be accepted, it would muddle up the entire concept of the Equality Act, which we took so long to get right.

[Lord Singh of Wimbledon]

If I may briefly respond to that, it is true that the law covers a lot of things. It does not combat ignorance. The law provides equality for Sikhs, Muslims and everyone else. When an outrage by an Islamic fundamentalist takes place, very often the target is a Sikh gurdwara or a Sikh individual. You cannot combat ignorance in that way. The more clarity we put into the law and the more determination we put into upholding the law, the better it will be for everyone.

Defamation Bill

Debate between Lord Singh of Wimbledon and Lord Lester of Herne Hill

Thursday 17th January 2013 Grand Committee

[Lord Singh of Wimbledon]

My Lords, this whole amendment is concerned with protection against those domiciled abroad using their wealth and remoteness to chill freedom of expression in the UK. It could be that the wording is clumsy. I will come back to that. It is intended to be applicable equally to wealthy businesses and religious cults. My concern is with the latter.

Many in this House will be aware of the power and influence of powerful cult leaders who claim deep religious insights denied to the rest of us. They often attract and get large donations from rich businessmen and media celebrities, which they use to acquire property and business interests, and often to fund expensive lifestyles. More worryingly, they also prey on the superstitious and vulnerable, promising to use their influence with God to help people meet life’s challenges or to cure incurable diseases. In one case, a cult leader got a woman to sign over her property in return for a promised cure for cancer. Sadly, the woman died soon after. I believe that it is in the public interest that such activities are exposed.

There are many more such cases in which superstitious and vulnerable people are deprived, sometimes of virtually all that they have. The power and attraction of such organisations is totally dependent on uncritical acceptance of their claims to special powers; they use their might and muscle to silence those who, in the public interest, dare to challenge them. Many such organisations are domiciled in the subcontinent of India, or in the United States and Canada, and use their wealth and power to stifle any public-interest questioning of their activities. They also use their remoteness from the UK to avoid paying the costs of any finding against them.

There are many examples. I will give one of a young journalist, who questioned the practices of an Indian sect and found himself in a ruinous lawsuit. After three nightmare years facing financial ruin, he eventually won his case but has no prospect of recovering some £50,000 spent in doing so, as this would involve further protracted litigation in Indian courts. The attitude of such foreign-based litigants is very much, “Heads I win, tails you lose”. It might be that the amendment’s wording is clumsy but its intention is very clear. I believe it will significantly deter those who use power and remoteness to intimidate those in the UK who are genuinely concerned about their activities..

[Lord Lester of Herne Hill]

My Lords, I shall speak briefly only to Amendment 50A, tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Singh of Wimbledon, to bring him good news as to why it is not needed because we have something else in place. When the noble and learned Lord, Lord Mackay of Clashfern, was Lord Chancellor we dealt with a Bill whose Title was something like the “private international law miscellaneous provisions Bill”—the team behind the Minister will know its correct name. I was concerned that people in countries such as Singapore or Malaysia, which have draconian libel laws and use them to suppress dissent and unpopular views without, I am afraid, any proper respect for the right to free speech, would be able to bring those laws into this country and enforce them here in libel proceedings.

I was concerned about that because the EU was in the process of harmonising tort law, including libel law, and seeking to abolish what is known as the double actionability rule of common law, which provides that if a wrong is committed in another country—a road accident in Gibraltar, for example—the victim could bring a claim for negligence in this country based on what had been done in Gibraltar, but only if it was actionable under the law of this country as well as Gibraltar’s. In other words, domestic British legal standards had to apply and be satisfied. Under the EU harmonisation programme, the danger was that if you abolished the double actionability rule it would mean that someone in one of these other countries could bring in their bad, repressive libel law and rely upon it in this country.

Of course, President Obama did precisely the same thing that I am about to say that we did to the Malaysia and Singapore. In that Act, we kept the double actionability rule in place but only for libel proceedings. The effect is that the Defamation Bill, when it becomes law, will provide the British standard; anybody coming from another country and seeking to use the defamation law coercively will have, under the double actionability rule, to satisfy the standard anyway of the Defamation Act, including the Defamation Act being read with the constitutional and conventional right to free speech. So there will already be very strong reasons in public policy why such a person will not get very far if they seek abusively to bring libel proceedings in those circumstances.