Lords Spiritual (Women) Bill

Baroness Perry of Southwark Excerpts

Thursday 12th February 2015 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Perry of Southwark (Con)]

My Lords, it is with great pleasure that I add my wholehearted support to the Bill. In welcoming the provisions for women diocesan bishops to take their place in this House, I add my voice to those who have paid tribute to the generous spirit in which that has been accepted by the male bishops who are affected by the provision. It is never easy to stand aside and let someone else get in front of us in the queue, and no doubt there will be some sad feelings among those who were expecting to come into this House in the next few years. Their generosity, and in particular the generous words of the Bishop of Lincoln, which we have heard today, are a reassuring symptom of the way in which the Church of England has welcomed the measure.

It has been a long journey for the women priests who felt called to ministry. Many waited long years as deacons for the right to be ordained as priests. Despite the huge value they brought to the priesthood, they again waited long years for the church to accept that their vocation extended to the episcopate. When, as I hope will happen soon, a woman diocesan bishop is appointed, it will add a valuable element to the episcopate nationally, and will provide a most welcome model of leadership in the church to the priests in their parishes and to both women and men in the pews.

Those of us who are the voice from the pews are, as I often remind my clergy friends, the largest constituency of the Church of England, and very many of us have hugely benefited from the ministry of women priests. All of us—women and men—wish to be fully represented by those who sit here on the Bishops’ Benches. However, some in the country and in this House question the continued presence of Bishops in Parliament.

As an Anglican, I am proud of the work that my church does in communities throughout the country. I am pleased, too, that the voice of my church is heard in Parliament through the contribution of the right reverend Prelates. Even though society has veered towards the secular in recent years, I am convinced that the church has a right to be represented in the work of this House. Why do I believe this? The Church of England has a very large role in education at all levels, including in higher education, and its charitable work is immense. No other institution or organisation has the presence in every community that the Church of England has in cities, towns and villages throughout the land. The leader of our church—the most reverend Primate the Archbishop of Canterbury—stands seventh in the order of precedence in England. His influence in public debate is widely recognised, as has been very vividly brought to mind by the contribution of our current most reverend Primate. He and the most reverend Primate the Archbishop of York, together with the 24 diocesan bishops—the leaders of the Church of England—rightly, therefore, have a voice and place in the deliberations of Parliament.

It is undoubtedly right that the voice of some appointed female bishops should now be added to the deliberations of this House. Those women who are called and appointed to the vocation of a bishop must be able, in their turn, to contribute to the work of the episcopate in Parliament, as their male forebears have done for many centuries. I am confident that they will fulfil their role here with wit, wisdom and warmth. For these reasons, I welcome the Bill wholeheartedly.

Children and Families Bill

Baroness Perry of Southwark Excerpts

Monday 21st October 2013 Grand Committee

[Lord Brown of Eaton-under-Heywood (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, I support the amendment as strongly as I may. The critical consideration to keep in mind here, as the noble and learned Lord, Lord Lloyd, has explained, is that what we are concerned about today is a threshold provision. The amendment would mean simply that in a small but very important additional category of cases, the court would have the jurisdiction and the power to investigate the case in depth and to consider whether in all the circumstances it should then make a care order or supervision order for the child’s protection. The small category of additional cases—again, the noble and learned Lord has explained this—is where it is established that some other child has already suffered significant harm, perhaps has even been killed, but the local authority concerned about some other child can demonstrate only the possibility, rather than the actual probability, that the perpetrator of that harm was someone who is now caring for the child in question—the child, that is, whose safety is presently under consideration.

As it happens, I was not in any of the string of cases in which the question of the true interpretation of Section 31(2) of the Children Act 1989 has arisen in recent years. Whether in the original House of Lords case I should have agreed with the majority view or with the dissenting minority view of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Browne-Wilkinson, and indeed of my noble and learned friend Lord Lloyd, does not matter. It is unnecessary to decide now which was the better interpretation of the language that Parliament originally enacted in 1989.

What is clear, as again the noble and learned Lord, Lord Lloyd, has explained, is that several judges who have had to grapple with this point, even if they felt bound by the original majority’s decision, have expressed serious misgivings about the consequences of that interpretation. In the case last year, Re J, to which again my noble and learned friend has referred, both the noble and learned Lord, Lord Judge, then the Lord Chief Justice and now a Member of this House, and the noble and learned Lord, Lord Neuberger, then Master of the Rolls and now President of the Supreme Court, agreed with Lord Justice McFarlane. His judgment expressed his trouble with the interpretation given to this section and described it,

“as a cause of concern amongst child protection agencies”.

What is certain is that the clause as originally enacted was not clear enough as to what Parliament then intended. The amendment of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Lloyd, or some comparable draft, would make it plain. It would solve the real and recurrent difficulty that this vitally important part of the law has got itself into, and it would produce a result that for my part I believe we should be striving for, which is to open the gateway to the court.

I repeat, this is only a threshold provision which would apply whenever a child is found to be at risk of being harmed, as must surely be the case when one of the caring parents is shown to have been a possible perpetrator of serious harm in the past. To anybody who is concerned that the court, following this amendment, would too readily take children away from a parent who only might have harmed some other child, I would say this is absolutely not the case. To quote subsection (2)(2A) of the proposed amendment,

“to infer that a child is likely to suffer significant harm”,

is to infer no more than that there is a risk of that child being harmed as surely there is if there is a real possibility that its carer has significantly harmed some other child. Crucially, it would then remain for the court, looking at all the facts of the case, to decide whether, under Section 1 of the 1989 Act, the child’s welfare is indeed best served by making a care or supervision order. I support the amendment.

[Baroness Perry of Southwark (Con)]

My Lords, as an amateur and a non-lawyer, I hope that the Government will be able to accept the noble and learned Lord’s amendment. How very fortunate we are to have people like the noble and learned Lord, Lord Lloyd, with us in Parliament; how important it is that people with experience as Law Lords should be able to return and give us the benefit of their expertise. I was entranced by his exposition of the amendment because, as an amateur, it is clear to me that people who abuse children do not stop: if you have abused one child, you will undoubtedly go on to harm another.

In the kind of case that the noble and learned Lord described, where a couple split up, we do not know which one of them was harming the child—perhaps it was both. They move into a new family with other children, that harm will continue and the new child will be at risk as well. It has been made clear to us that the Court of Appeal cannot at the moment understand with clarity what it is supposed to do. This would help enormously and I hope that the Minister will be able to accept it. However, he is looking very grim, so perhaps he will not.

[Baroness Hughes of Stretford]

My Lords, I want to make just a couple of remarks. First, I thank the noble and learned Lord, Lord Lloyd of Berwick, for the note that he has sent to us and for his very clear exposition today of a very complicated issue.

There is an issue here. In my own previous academic experience I did a considerable amount of government-funded research into child abuse, and child sexual abuse in particular. Apart from any other kinds of cases, we found a very significant although small number of men who quite deliberately target families and go round seeking one woman after another. In each case, there is harm to the child but it cannot necessarily be definitively proved which individual committed the harm. For a small number of children this is a problem.

It is quite difficult for those of us who are not lawyers and who have not followed the detail of the Court of Appeal and the Supreme Court and are not steeped in all this language and the issues to evaluate precisely—I cannot do so—whether there is an issue here and, if so, how the Government should act. It seems that there may be an issue here. I would be grateful if the Minister could say whether he thinks there is a problem and that it is the problem that the noble and learned Lord, Lord Lloyd, has identified. Is there a potential problem now where some children could be left in situations of risk when perhaps previously there might have been an intervention to protect them? If so, what is the best course of action for the Government to take?

I can perhaps understand the Government’s reluctance to intervene in or be seen to meddle with Supreme Court adjudications. None the less, if there is an issue here, clearly it is within the Government’s power to rectify or revert to the original intention of the Children Act, whether by Amendment 64 or by some other course of action. I certainly feel, as I suspect do other Members of the Committee, that it would be very helpful to have the Minister’s clarification on whether there is an issue here and, if so, what is the best remedy.