Andy Slaughter
MP for Hammersmith and Chiswick · Labour · United Kingdom
“I welcome the Bill, and thank the Government for introducing it and bringing it back to the House before the summer recess. It is the result of years of committed campaigning, led by the families of the victims and survivors of Hillsborough.”
“I know that case means a huge amount to the hon. Lady as a constituency MP, and I thank her for all the work she does on the Justice Committee. I think we have only begun to scratch the surface. This Bill will be a transforming piece of legislation. I will make one final comment.”
“This would be a new, independent public body that collated, analysed and followed up on the conclusions and recommendations made after official investigations into deaths and state failings, in order to improve oversight and implementation of them.”
“I think I have taken enough time, but I thank the Member for that intervention. This afternoon, the Justice Committee signed off a new major report on legal aid, which will be published on Friday. Those who are interested can read more there.”
“In the time that I have, I will focus my remarks on clauses 1 to 16, which create a new appeals body for immigration and asylum cases known as the independent immigration appeals authority.”
“From that visit, our diagnosis was that these are operational problems. There are two key questions for the House: will the IIAA fix the problems with the current system, and will it be truly independent from the Home Office?”
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“In Hammersmith Broadway, I have the Irish Cultural Centre, which is “the premier centre in the UK dedicated to the promotion and welfare of Irish art and culture abroad” and “the home of its best cultural events and Irish performances, films, music and theatre”, and I know that is true because I read it on the front of its website only a few moments ago—those are the centre’s words, before Members start intervening on me. Getting a building as prestigious and beautiful as that was a long struggle for the Irish community and their supporters. It goes back to the mid-1990s—we celebrated the 25th anniversary recently—and the foresight of my predecessor as MP and leader of the council, Iain Coleman, and Councillor Sean Reddin, who put together the funding.”
“Friend the Member for Bristol South (Karin Smyth), this has overall been an enriching and successful coming together of the British and Irish communities, and not just those communities but many other migrant communities. I often feel that the Irish presence in Britain was a pioneer and acted as somewhat of a glue and an enabler of integration across many different cultures. That is certainly true where I am. I want briefly to highlight two organisations that have not featured much in the debate so far, but they are key to the success of the diaspora. One is the network of community, cultural and social centres across the country and the other is the Government of Ireland and the embassy here.”
“I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Rochdale (Tony Lloyd) for initiating the debate and I look forward to the closing speech from my hon. Friend the Member for St Helens North (Conor McGinn), who has so often represented the diaspora in this country and done so very well indeed. I am proud to represent one of the largest and longest-settled Irish communities in Britain. The Irish presence in Shepherds Bush, Hammersmith and Fulham goes back many years before the 60 years that I have lived there, so it is not only first and second generation, but third and fourth generation Irish people who continue to make their home in that part of west London. It goes without saying that despite the difficult times rightly mentioned by the hon. Member for Rutherglen and Hamilton West (Margaret Ferrier) and my hon.”
“This is very good news, but it is not the end of the matter. Even if the Foreign Secretary will not discuss individual cases, she will be aware that a number of UK citizens and dual nationals are still being held in Iran, some of whom, for good reasons, will not be as well known as Nazanin. Will she meet the relevant Members of Parliament and the families whose relatives are still detained in Iran, and what leverage does she think she will have now that the debt has been paid?”
“Does the Secretary of State now accept that the swingeing cuts in the Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Act 2012 have hobbled access to justice for a decade? Does he accept what the chair of the Criminal Bar Association, Jo Sidhu, said about the announcement today, which was that it “will not be sufficient to retain enough criminal barristers to keep the wheels of justice turning and that means victims will be failed”? If he does not accept that, what effect will it have on the backlog? He currently has a pathetic target to reduce the backlog to 53,000 cases over the next three years. If this is a groundbreaking change, what effect will it have on that backlog?”
“I believe that the Government genuinely want to help, but let us see some proof, shall we?”
“I do not know whether this is wilful or negligent, or whether it is a matter of happenstance and the Government are trying to correct things, but the net effect is that the Government’s actions are the opposite of what they are saying. They are saying “We want to help,” “We will help,” and “We will help significantly—hundreds of thousands of people,” yet every case I see says that that is not true. Every case is stalled at some hurdle, geographical or bureaucratic, because of the way that the Home Office behaves. I ask the Minister: first, can he please reply to my emails? I do not think that that is too much to ask, given the urgency. Secondly, can he please look at this in the round, and at our duty, as a compassionate country that wants to take in refugees?”
“Once they have attended an appointment there is no indication of how long they may have to wait to hear if their applications are successful.” He ends by saying this: “They are our family, we own our own home in Shepherd’s Bush, have room to accommodate them and money to cover all their expenses. But the red tape is not allowing them to come here. I hope you are your colleagues can put pressure on the Home Office to relax the rules immediately.” I am not going to mention the name of the family, even though I do not think they would mind if I did. The Home Office has all those details. It has had them for some days. We have not had a response, and that is true for almost every case. Yes, every case will have different facts, but I hope the Minister can see that there is a common thread here.”
“Once the application is submitted on line the GOV.UK website directs you to a commercial partner’s website called TLS. There you can download a 7 page checklist which has to be completed in English. But then the website is not allowing you to download your completed checklist and accompanying documents. On the website you can also book at appointment—only you can’t because the website is not allowing you to do that either. Even when we can secure an appointment some of the evidence is in Ukrainian and so probably will not be accepted by the VAC”— The visa application centre. “Also because they fled in a hurry they do not have all the documentary evidence required.”
“They are now safely in a flat of friends of friends but she does not speak Polish or English. Because of this we have been trying to get them an appointment at the Visa Application Centre in Warsaw. This has involved us getting texts and images from Poland and Ukraine together with copies of documents we have in the UK. I have filled out their application forms, amassed all the evidence I can, and emailed it to the friends for them to print. ahead of an appointment. I am erudite but even I have struggled with some of the English on the websites. So it would be almost impossible to do this in Poland, with no knowledge of English and with no access to a computer.” He goes on to say, “Firstly the application form, which is 8 pages long, has to be completed in English.”
“I asked my caseworker for an update today on all the cases, and almost every one ends with the line: “We have had no responses from the Home Office to any of our inquiries,” or “We have made urgent inquiries to the Home Office but have had no response yet.” We are seeing a repetition of what happened with Afghanistan last year, I am afraid. The system simply is not working. Every case turns on its own facts, but I will, with your indulgence, Mr Gray, read an e-mail I have received that highlights a lot of the problems. It is from a constituent two or three days ago. The circumstances may have changed, but I do not think they have. “My wife’s daughter-in-law along with her 12-year-old son fled Ukraine and are now in Warsaw Poland. In the last four days they have both been ill, probably due to cold, exhaustion and stress.”
“Some have even got to the UK in this grotesque game of snakes and ladders, where the aim is to get to the next stage without going backwards. Some UK nationals have spouses or other relatives who are Ukrainian and are finding that visa centres are closed. I have constituents in the UK whose visas are expiring or have expired. Some have even been so delayed in applying for them that they are worried about being sent back or being sent out of the country. I hope the Minister will reassure us that there is at least no intention to exclude anybody in that way.”
“I apologise for not being here from the start of the debate, Mr Gray. I thank colleagues for their forbearance. My small London borough is one of the top 20 in the country for the number of Ukrainian-born residents. It is an extremely diverse borough. I will not pretend that we yet have as many Ukrainian refugees as we did Afghan refugees last year; we had several hundred of those. However, it is a significant number and it is growing; one of the reasons why it is growing is that the Home Office is not dealing with the problem. The circumstances are very different, but the one thing those groups have in common is that they are victims of Home Office bureaucracy. I have families in Ukraine, Poland and France. I have families who have had to split up because some could get further than others.”
“If families do manage to reach the UK and do not have immediate offers of accommodation, which is happening—I gave the example of a family who could accommodate people, but others, perhaps in overcrowded social housing, will get relatives who they will not be able to accommodate—where should they go? Is the Minister saying that they should go to the local authority, which will say, “Yes, we have funding from the Government,” or is there some other solution?”
“Mass executions are particularly grotesque and barbaric. There is no due process in the Saudi justice system, in which there is widespread use of torture, and 75% of executions are for non-lethal offences. Will the Minister specifically answer the case of Abdullah al-Huwaiti? He was a juvenile when the alleged offence was committed, and he is on death row awaiting execution. She has known about the case for months. What representations has she made to the Saudi authorities? What does she intend to do about it now?”
“There seems to be bit of a gap between the Home Secretary’s rhetoric and the reality. Last week, the Government were briefing the press that they were drawing up plans to seize British property and use it to house Ukrainians fleeing their homeland. Well, if there are only 50 Ukrainians, that is probably only one property. However, where is the freezing and seizing of assets here? All that this Bill is proposing is a relatively generous time limit on the publication of information. When are we going to get the steps that actually bite?”
“On the contrary, he was doing us all a service. The Government need to rise to the challenge now. It does not help if they are not clear on where the donors to the Conservative party are coming from at present.”
“To make sure that they are watertight, but also fair to all parties, the measures require careful drafting; they must not be done at the last minute on the back of an envelope. I was delighted to see Tom Burgis win his case against ENRC last Wednesday. It shows that, if they are given the tools, our courts are prepared to stand up in that way. I was astonished to read this comment by the losing party, ENRC: “We have seen a growing campaign of xenophobia pervade aspects of the media and parliament that targets individuals and companies based on their nationality, including bizarrely ENRC, which is a UK company with Kazakh shareholders.” I do not think that Tom Burgis is anti-Kazakh and that such prejudices were driving him when he wrote his book, “Kleptopia: How Dirty Money is Conquering the World”.”
“Indeed, we have the absurd position where the Serious Fraud Office itself is a target of SLAPP—strategic lawsuit against public participation—litigation by the Eurasian Natural Resources Corporation. I hope that we will have time to discuss the amendments of my right hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Hodge Hill (Liam Byrne) on preparing legislation on SLAPP and on protecting whistleblowers. These are difficult things to do. Oligarchs are entitled to lawyers, but they are not entitled to misuse the law in this country. This legislation requires careful drafting, as will the seizure of assets. These are draconian and dramatic steps that our courts are not used to taking.”
“That brings us on to another point that is absent from the Bill: regulation and enforcement. Let us be clear: we need not more enforcement agencies, but the ones that are there to work properly, and the National Crime Agency and the Serious Fraud Office do not. That is partly because of a lack of funding, partly because they need staff of a higher quality and ability, and partly because of the revolving door between those agencies and defendant law firms, which goes on all the time at the moment. We have got to the stage now where the Attorney General has ordered an investigation into the head of the Serious Fraud Office because cases are collapsing, or because the wrong targets are being pursued—the minnows rather than the sharks.”
“Whether the Government accept the proposal from the Chairman of the Justice Committee, the hon. Member for Bromley and Chislehurst (Sir Robert Neill), that it should be three months, or our proposal that it should be 28 days, that period has to be cut down. In addition to that—I am looking at new clause 29, tabled by the right hon. Member for Haltemprice and Howden (Mr Davis)—we need the early freezing of assets to prevent them from being dissipated during that period. The Government, if one believes their own briefing, think that we should be seizing those assets. Where are those proposals? Where is the comprehensive coverage of people whose assets can be frozen and what assets there are likely to be? How are they going to drill through the elaborate network of shell companies in order to do that?”
“I said earlier to the Home Secretary that there is a gap between the rhetoric and the reality. I was thinking of a briefing given to the Financial Times last week on the same day as the Bill was published, which said: “UK cabinet minister Michael Gove is drawing up plans to seize British property owned by Russian oligarchs with links to President Vladimir Putin, without paying them compensation. Ukrainians fleeing their homeland could be housed in the lavish UK residences of oligarchs hit with sanctions under the proposals discussed by Gove”. I do not see very much of that in the Bill. What we have seen was initially 18 months and now six months to publish information. Yes, there will be penalties for the failure to publish that information, but there will also be ample warning and time to either disburse or transfer those assets.”
“I am sure we all agree that the Bill is urgent and that it is good as far as it goes, but it is inadequate because it has been hastily drafted, and it was hastily drafted because the Government dragged their feet. If I understood the Home Secretary’s argument earlier, it was that the number of amendments that have been tabled shows the degree of support for the Bill. The number of amendments shows the gaps in the Bill and its inadequacies. Hopefully, we will correct some of them in Committee later, but I would like to hear from the Government which of the amendments they propose to accept. If they do not intend to accept them on technical grounds, I would like to hear them at least give assurances that during the Bill’s passage they will bring forward their own versions of the relevant measures.”
“What the Secretary of State is proposing on a property register sounds very weak and very slow. There are billions in dirty money circulating on the London property market behind shell companies. By the time he has identified corrupt owners, the properties will probably have already been transferred. He also says nothing about seizing assets and imposing criminal penalties. Why is he not freezing assets and transfers now, pending disclosure?”
“Statehood would benefit Palestine, but it would also benefit Israel to have a secure state alongside it, with the responsibilities of a state. When I spoke in the last debate on this subject, I quoted Naftali Bennett, who was then the Minister with responsibility for the economy, as saying that he never wanted to see a Palestinian state. Now he is the Prime Minister of Israel. We must do something to resolve this issue, because the situation is becoming steadily worse.”
“It is about displacement of a population, and it is about settlement and occupied land. Both those are war crimes. This is relatively rare, thank goodness. It happens in Crimea, it is happening in Ukraine and it happens in Western Sahara, but in Palestine it has continued since 1967 and we have done precious little about it. The Government’s own “Human rights priority countries” report on Israel and the Occupied Palestine Territories, published three months ago, refers to settler violence, settlement growth, evictions and demolitions, child detention, an “apartheid” regime, a Gaza blockade and terrible incursions into Gaza and the massacre of civilians there, and the classing of respectable non-governmental organisations as terrorist organisations. The list goes on and on.”
“Although William Hague coined the phrase “moment of our choosing”, or “when the time is right”, I think that he meant it as a statement of intent, but it has become a filibuster that is endlessly repeated by Ministers to enable them in fact to do nothing. We in the UK who have a responsibility, through the mandate and the Balfour declaration, have not recognised Palestine although 138 other countries have. We have heard that this is a precondition and not a matter for negotiation. Of course Israel and Palestine will not sit down as equals, because one is a regional superpower while the other has been impoverished by occupation, but they should at least be given the status of states so that they can do that. But this is also tied heavily to the idea of occupation, and a recognition exposing what occupation is about.”
“When the right hon. Member for Clwyd West (Mr Jones)—who I know wanted to be here today—and I went before the Backbench Business Committee about six months ago to bid for this debate, we had in mind its taking place on the anniversary of the vote in October. An advantage of its being a little overdue is that I am no longer a Back Bencher, so I have been able to hand it over to my hon. Friend the Member for Sunderland Central (Julie Elliott). She made a superb speech, a much more compelling and persuasive one than I could possibly have made, and has done real service to Palestine in the process. Back in 2014, there was more hope. President Obama said in 2010 that he hoped to see the recognition of a Palestinian state within a year.”
“That shows that when an investigative journalist publishes details of an individual before charge, the individual can, on the grounds of privacy, hide behind that ruling. Nothing is being done to support those who wish to expose what is wrong and everything is being done to protect that wrongdoing. The fact that there is Tory party money behind this stinks.”
“Many senior people in the SFO end up working for those very law firms we have heard about which are defending the oligarchs. What are the Government doing about that? It is a laughing stock in terms of criminal enforcement and prosecution in this country. What are the Government doing about SLAPPS? We have heard about that issue several times, including in the excellent debate we had here last month, led by the right hon. Member for Haltemprice and Howden (Mr Davis) and my right hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Hodge Hill. They identified the way that oligarchs and companies can persecute and prosecute investigative journalism. What will the Government, who love interfering with the courts, do in response to the Bloomberg v. ZXC case last week?”
“In the limited time I have, I want to address the failure of regulation, enforcement and prosecution. We have heard from other Members about the failure of the courts, about Companies House, about trusts and unincorporated associations, and about how things are easily concealed. It gives me no pleasure to say this, but the Serious Fraud Office suffers from its budget being a fraction of what the company it is prosecuting has to spend on lawyers and defence. But it is also true that the head of the Serious Fraud Office is under investigation for the conduct of the Ziad Akle case. The accusation is that the SFO went after the minnows and let the sharks swim away, which is exactly what the Government are doing on sanctions.”
“That is not partisan or party political, because we also heard what Lord Agnew said, which is that what is being done is “desperately inadequate”, particularly the failure to bring forward an economic crime Bill. We heard from Lord Faulks, a former Conservative Minister, who said that the Government are turning a “blind eye” to what is going on and have done nothing to stem the flow of illicit funds, and that he was misled regarding the introduction of a property register. For all the great furore that the Home Secretary made about tier 1 visas, everyone who wanted one has got one already. This is shutting the door after the horse has bolted, and there has been no enforcement related to it. Indeed, a new type of visa will be introduced, so presumably it will start all over again.”
“This debate has exposed the gulf between what is needed to deal with illicit finance—and, one could add, what the Government say they are doing or intend to do—and what they are actually doing, which is almost nothing, in terms of either introducing measures or enforcing the measures that already there. Whether oligarchs, the companies they set up to hide behind, or agents of hostile powers, they can operate freely. We heard about sanctions from the shadow Foreign Secretary in his opening remarks, from my right hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Hodge Hill (Liam Byrne) and from my hon. Friend the Member for Wallasey (Dame Angela Eagle), so we know what has to be done—there is a list of things that have to be done. There is the Russia report, and there is the economic crime report—why will not the Government act on those?”
“The right hon. Gentleman said earlier that this is public money. He will be aware that the Supreme Court, in making a judgment on the previous guidance, specifically said that it is not public money when it is employee or employer contributions; it comes from the rightful employment of the employees themselves. Why does he think that his new clause is different from that? As he has gone on to the specifics, while I am not talking about BDS here, does he think there is a possibility that decisions on investments, say, in illegal settlements, which the Government advise against on economic grounds, could also be caught by his new clause?”
“Perhaps he will speak in that debate as well.”
“However, we are in such a parlous state in relation to the shortage of judges and the crisis in the courts that I can see the force of the argument. I will be brief because, in a way, by talking too much about new clause 1, we are giving it more credibility than it deserves. It does not really deserve a place in this Bill. I suspect that the right hon. Member for Newark (Robert Jenrick) knows that, and actually, we should congratulate him on managing to squeeze it into the long title of the Bill. I felt that it was slightly surreal to be listening to a speech about the Abraham accords in relation to a technical Bill about pensions. We will have, hopefully, a three-hour debate on recognition of the Palestinian state on Thursday in this Chamber, in which it might fit, although that might be stretching it a bit as well.”
“I wonder if we should all be declaring that fact, given that although the MP scheme is not subject to the McCloud judgment, its trustees have said they will follow the McCloud judgment. For the avoidance of doubt, I put all that on the record. I do not think I have much time left now, but let us see. I generally support the Bill, which is undoing mistakes that the Government made which were exposed by the McCloud judgment. I do, however, have a slight reservation. Nobody has mentioned the matters relating to judicial retirement ages. I see exactly the force of why they need to be increased, although I share the reservations of the Law Society that going from 70 to 75 will actually set back diversity in the judiciary, hopefully only temporarily, because of those who will be eligible to stay on in their roles.”
“Perhaps I should begin by following the example of my right hon. Friend the Member for Hayes and Harlington (John McDonnell) in declaring my association with a local government pension fund. I chaired the pension committee of my local authority for a number of years. I am pleased to say that since I stopped doing that it has become much more ethical. I can now tell the House that the pension fund now has the lowest percentage of its fund invested in fossil fuels of any local authority in the UK, with the aim of net zero by 2030. I take no credit at all, other than the fact that it is now chaired by my researcher. I should also say that I used to be member of the local government pension scheme, but I moved the tiny amount of money I had in that to the MP scheme, so I do not know whether I should declare that.”
“Lord Agnew resigned as a Government Minister because the Treasury “appears to have no knowledge of, or little interest in, the consequences of fraud to our economy or society.” —[ Official Report, House of Lords, 24 January 2022; Vol. 818, c. 20.] The Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy should resign for saying that fraud is not a crime people experience in their day-to-day lives, but what about the Law Officers’ culpability? Will the Solicitor General tell us why, according to the latest figures we have obtained from his Department, the Crown Prosecution Service has cut the number of specialist fraud prosecutors by more than a quarter in the past six years, from 224 at the end of 2015 to 167 at the end of 2021?”
“Thanks for that peroration but, to come back to reality, this week the Leader of the Opposition was obstructed while entering this House by disorder on the streets outside following the Prime Minister’s inflammatory remarks at that Dispatch Box. It is the Attorney General’s job to advise Ministers, including the Prime Minister, on acting in accordance with the rule of law, so what advice does she have now to prevent his behaviour from leading to any further breakdown in law and order?”
“The UK is the destination of choice for Russian criminals and kleptocrats who then use their wealth to silence journalists and avoid scrutiny, including by launching endless oppressive lawsuits. Why should we have any confidence that the Minister’s Government and party, which have done nothing to counter that—indeed, the issue has grown year on year—will suddenly impose meaningful sanctions? The US said that there was “dismay and frustration” at the failure to tackle it.”
“Why have the Government delayed the economic crime Bill? Why are they doing nothing to stop lawfare in the UK courts? Why is the Serious Fraud Office being sued by oligarchs rather than indicting them? Without the laws, the courts and the prosecutors to tackle corruption and dirty money here in Londongrad, are the Foreign Secretary’s threats not empty and vacuous? Will she ensure that the Tories’ Russian gold finds its way back to Moscow?”
“My hospital trust, Imperial College, has done its best to care for staff in the past two years. Like other trusts, it has found it difficult to implement what was, until a few moments ago, Government policy, but it did so because it was good clinical practice to protect its patients and it gave confidence to the general public, who might say, “Why should I get vaccinated if my doctor won’t?” What advice does the Secretary of State have for the hospitals and care homes, and their staff and ex-staff, who may now feel betrayed?”
“Why have humanists been at the back of the queue for so long, and what reason is there for making them wait any longer? It is not only Labour that supports humanists and humanist marriages. As I said, colleagues from across the House support legal recognition of them—not just the Members who signed the letter that was published today but those who subscribed to speak in the debate, even if some of them have been unable to attend. The hon. Member for Gillingham and Rainham (Rehman Chishti), who was for quite a period the Prime Minister’s special envoy for freedom of religion or belief, introduced a Bill to bring about the legal recognition of humanist marriage in 2020. He said: “The lack of legal recognition of humanist marriages in England and Wales is discrimination, pure and simple.””
“They think this is a fringe issue and are saying, ‘why would we do this?’” If that was an accurate report, Mr Crosby and his colleagues were wrong both to be so dismissive of the fundamental rights and freedoms of humanists and to think it was a fringe matter, given that humanist marriages have proven, even without legal status, to be hugely popular and have grown greatly in popularity in those jurisdictions where they are legally recognised. As I mentioned, Labour has pledged to give legal recognition to humanist marriage, and that has been its consistent position for many years now. The Government have undermined their own position by introducing outdoor civil and religious marriages, as we have heard. Why are they okay? Why was that change made just a few week ago, but humanist marriage reform is not seen to be a priority?”
“To answer my question as to why humanists have been made to wait, in 2014 the Government conducted a consultation exercise about extending legal recognition in that way. The result was 95% in favour, but again the Government kicked it into the long grass. At that time, an article in The Sunday Times on the matter quoted a senior Government source as saying: “Lynton Crosby and the Tories have basically said ‘no way’.”
“One Bill that I was involved in was a private Member’s Bill introduced by the hon. Member for East Worthing and Shoreham (Tim Loughton) and, indeed, enacted. It permitted opposite-sex couples to have civil partnerships. That was a peculiarity in the law and perhaps something that needed addressing. Again, it was a long struggle. My constituents Charles Keidan and Rebecca Steinfeld fought a four-year battle, going as far as the Supreme Court, for their right to have a civil partnership. The Government do not move easily on these matters, but they move in the end, and I wonder why they have to make it so difficult. With that in mind, my advice would be to learn from their past mistakes and stop dragging their feet by giving legal recognition to humanist marriage, instead of there being further delay.”
“The Government have been reviewing the matter ever since, with several more years anticipated before they are prepared to legislate. They have not even committed to do so all this time later—the Minister could put that right today. In the face of the High Court decision in Harrison, which now looks a little disingenuous, given the position the Government took in that case, it looks as if Baroness Thornton’s question will sadly prove prescient. In November last year, I spoke for the Labour Front Bench in the main Chamber on the Marriage and Civil Partnership (Minimum Age) Bill. There has been a piecemeal approach to marriage reform over the last few years. I mentioned in that speech that there had been good movement and progressive legislation on civil partnerships and same-sex marriage.”
“Its efforts led to section 14 of the Marriage (Same Sex Couples) Act 2013, which gives the Government the power to enact legal recognition of humanist marriages by order. In other words, most of the groundwork has been done. Looking back at Hansard , I am struck by the fact that during an earlier debate, when the late Lord Eden of Winton was objecting to the attempt to get humanist marriage into the Bill, my noble Friend Baroness Thornton, speaking for the Labour Front Bench, intervened on him to ask: “Does the noble Lord think that the humanists need to wait another 19 years for another Bill to come passing by?” —[ Official Report, House of Lords, 19 June 2013; Vol. 746, c. 303.] Well, we are nine years later already, so nearly half of that time has elapsed, and humanists are still waiting.”
“Friend the Member for Stretford and Urmston (Kate Green), about putting right “a long-standing injustice in a simple and uncontroversial way.” —[ Official Report , 21 May 2013; Vol. 563, c. 1074.] The door is open, more than ajar, and the Government have only a small step to take through it. My hon. Friend said those words in a debate on the Marriage (Same Sex Couples) Act 2013, to which she, from the Labour Front Bench, was proposing an amendment that would have extended legal recognition to humanist marriages. That is now nine years ago. As has been the case throughout, she was supported by colleagues from across the House. Labour supported similar amendments during the passage of the Bill through the House of Lords.”