My Lords, I welcome this amendment and congratulate my noble friend Lady Cox both on her persistence in raising these issues and on her courage. I have had the privilege of travelling with my noble friend to some out-of-the-way places such as North Korea; but—perhaps more importantly in the context of this debate—before my daughter went up to university, I told her that the person she should travel with, and get to know a little of, if ever she wanted to think about going into public or political life, was my noble friend Lady Cox. She therefore accompanied my noble friend to Nagorno-Karabakh—a war zone—and I hope that she will one day be a chip off my noble friend’s block.
The House might not be aware of it, but my noble friend has arrived back today from Nigeria, which is not such a bad place to start, because we know that my noble friend travels to dangerous places to see things for herself. In Nigeria, look how Boko Haram—words that mean “eradicate western education”—treats young women. Look at what happened in Chibok. Look at the seizure of those girls. Look at the denial of education for young girls, such as those who were seized in Chibok, and then ask yourself some serious questions, as the noble Baroness, Lady Buscombe, has rightly done in her remarks a few moments ago. Look at the nature of sharia law, and ask, “Is that something we would want to have operating as a parallel law system in the United Kingdom?” It is a system, after all, that says that a woman’s evidence in a court of law is worth only half that of a man. That is surely intolerable in our society and we should resist it with every means available to us.
I attended a meeting organised by my noble friend Lady Cox a few weeks ago and became interested in this issue as a result of that meeting, which was held here in your Lordships’ House and was addressed by some formidable Muslim women and others. They highlighted the risks of having parallel systems of law in the same jurisdiction, a situation that put at risk the equality of Muslim women and failed to protect them. The principle of equality before the law should always be a central pillar of our democracy, yet we know from countless testimonies—such as those I heard that evening and others alluded to today by my noble friend—that many Muslim women in Britain are not experiencing the legal rights by which they should be protected. We heard that in the context of things such
as polygamy a few moments ago. They are not treated equally; they are not living freely, and they are inhibited from getting the help they really need.
Take, for example, the story of A’aisha—a pseudonym, of course—from the West Midlands. Upon the breakdown of her own Islamic marriage, she discovered that she was not entitled to the same rights afforded to other British divorcees. Like so many others, she had wrongly assumed that, because her religious wedding ceremony had taken place in the UK, it did not need to be accompanied by a civil marriage in order for it to be recognised under English law. As my noble friend Lady Cox has already said, this amendment seeks to protect women such as A’aisha, and to help those who might be duped into believing that they were married under the law of the land, only to find upon divorce that they have few rights in respect of finance or property. It is intolerable that women should be treated in this way.
I recognise, as my noble friend has said, that this is a probing amendment. It may well indeed need tweaking and improving, but I trust it will promote a positive response from the Front Bench. I hope that when the Minister replies, we might at least start to think about how we can bring forward more comprehensive measures to address effectively concerns such as those raised by my noble friend Lady Cox and the noble Baroness, Lady Buscombe, in your Lordships’ House this evening.
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