Antisemitism on University Campuses
Debate between Lord Wolfson of Tredegar and Baroness Deech(2 days, 1 hour ago)
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Lord Wolfson of Tredegar (Con)
My Lords, if you were a student attending Bristol University on 20 March this year—I pick a date more or less at random—you would have had the usual cornucopia of choices as to how to spend your evening. These were just a few of your options. You could have attended the French society’s games night and pub crawl, meeting at the Steam pub at 7 pm. The Christian union was holding a prayer hour at the Bristol International Student Centre and then its annual general meeting at Alma church at 6 pm. The Jewish society was holding a film screening at 6.30 pm at the JSoc house. However, unless you knew where that is, you would not have known where to go. That is because addresses for the meetings of the Jewish society, unlike those of other societies and groups, are not publicised in advance. You will not find the address on the website of the student union or on Instagram, as you would all the other locations. Instead, to get the address of the Jewish society meeting, you would need be on a private, by invitation-only WhatsApp group. It is private so that the members of the Jewish society know who is coming. That is not because they are doing anything nefarious—they were watching a film—but simply because they want to be safe. Yes, this is life as a Jewish student at our universities in 2025—addresses for meetings passed around on a need-to-know basis.
I have seen that done before when I was at university, but not at the university I attended. I saw it when I travelled as a student to visit Jewish students and dissidents—they were called refuseniks—in the former Soviet Union. They too passed around the addresses of where they were going to meet on a need-to-know basis—Moscow University 1988, Bristol University 2025.
While I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Cryer, for initiating this debate with a very fine speech—we have heard many good speeches—I am afraid that we have made many of these points before. Here we are again, with the situation getting worse and not better. I know that we have heard these points before because my first speech in this House as a Minister was in Grand Committee replying to a debate on the same topic. While on one footing it is better that we are now doing it in the Chamber and not in Grand Committee, I would far rather that we did not need to have the debate at all.
As a number of noble Lords have pointed out, we do need this debate because, as today’s StandWithUs report makes clear, the position faced by Jewish students at UK universities is getting worse, not better. The University Jewish Chaplaincy provides excellent pastoral care, and the Union of Jewish Students does fantastic work, but they are literally on the front line, day in, day out.
When a Jewish student sees a banner, “No Zionists on campus”, she will read it as “No Jews on campus”, because the overwhelming majority of Jews in this country, and therefore the overwhelming majority of Jewish students, are Zionist: they believe, as I do, in the right of Jewish self-determination, which, as the noble Lord, Lord Turnberg, reminded us, is the only thing that Zionism actually means. When Jewish students have to run the gauntlet of a protest camp, as they did at Cambridge, and they see the university authorities doing absolutely nothing for far too long, they will draw the obvious conclusion.
If noble Lords will allow me a very short digression, what really annoyed me about that protest camp at Cambridge was the sheer ignorance on display. They thought they were being clever by having a big sign in Hebrew and English with the famous words from Deuteronomy, chapter 16, verse 20:
“Justice, justice thou shalt pursue”.
They obviously did not read the second half of the same verse. It carries on:
“that you may live and possess the land”—
we all know what land is being referred to—
“which the Lord your God is giving you”.
Let me be clear: denying Jewish students the right publicly to identify as Zionists, when, for many, Zionism is a core part of their Jewish identity, is a form of religious and cultural discrimination. It is also probably illegal, but this should not be a question of legal compulsion or demanding special treatment. I would simply like to see a day when Jewish societies can publicise the addresses for their meetings in the same way that everyone else does. It boils down to this: a university where Jewish students are not welcome, or are made to feel that they are not, is an institution that has entirely forfeited its right to call itself a university.
Baroness Deech (CB)
My Lords, may I apologise for not having mentioned my interest as a member of the UJS advisory council? I am sorry; I should have done so.
No-fault Divorce
Debate between Lord Wolfson of Tredegar and Baroness Deech(3 years, 1 month ago)
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Baroness Deech
To ask Her Majesty’s Government, further to the letter from Lord Keen of Elie to Baroness Deech on 16 March 2020, what progress they have made on reforming the law governing financial provision on divorce to align with the introduction of no fault divorce.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Ministry of Justice (Lord Wolfson of Tredegar) (Con)
My Lords, the letter from my noble and learned friend Lord Keen was sent at the conclusion of the parliamentary process for the divorce Act. In the intervening two years, we have prioritised the implementation of the fundamental reforms of that Act, which will commence on 6 April. Following that commencement, we will consider how best to proceed with the commitment in that letter, and we will announce our intentions in due course.
Baroness Deech (CB)
My Lords, the new no-fault divorce law is coming into force in three weeks’ time, but the most miserable and litigious part of it will remain: the law about splitting assets and paying maintenance. That law is so bad that the ministry is paying couples £500 each to mediate and avoid it. The promise was made two years ago to review it; where is that review? Gathering evidence is no excuse for not formulating principle, and I can offer this piece of evidence right away: legal costs eat up chunks of the assets. Unless it is reformed, the no-fault divorce law will fail to achieve its aims. Will the Minister assure the House that vested interests are not blocking reform, and will he give a timetable for completion of the financial provision project?
Lord Wolfson of Tredegar (Con)
My Lords, I do not make any apology for the mediation voucher scheme; it is important to encourage mediation in family law, as indeed across the civil justice system more generally. However, we have committed to exploring the financial provision aspects of divorce after the Act comes into effect. I cannot give the noble Baroness a timetable, but I assure her that we will look at this as a matter of principle and will not be bowed down by vested interests, whether legal or otherwise.
Marriage and Religious Weddings
Debate between Lord Wolfson of Tredegar and Baroness Deech(3 years, 10 months ago)
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Lord Wolfson of Tredegar (Con)
My Lords, I think my noble friend will have seen my letter to various groups on that point. Marriage at 16 and 17 has the significant risk of people being forced into marriages and their life chances reducing. Therefore, my noble friend can take it from me that we will be looking very carefully at the Bill introduced by the Member for Bromsgrove, who now appears to be otherwise occupied.
Baroness Deech (CB) [V]
My Lords, I am sure the Minister believes that there should be equality among religions in relation to divorce, and that the law should bring justice to women who are mistreated by religious husbands and religious courts. So will he ensure changes to the Matrimonial Causes Act 1973, so that the court can refuse to finalise a civil divorce until an Islamic religious divorce has been obtained, if unfair pressure is being used in the religious proceedings? This would bring Islamic divorce in line with the Jewish get.
Lord Wolfson of Tredegar (Con)
My Lords, the premise behind the question of the noble Baroness is that the bars to effective relief are the same in Judaism and Islam, but that is not in fact the case. As I understand it, it is significantly easier for a woman to obtain a divorce in Islam than it is for a woman to facilitate or obtain a divorce in Orthodox Judaism. Therefore, the Act that the noble Baroness refers to—I believe it is Section 10A—would not have the same advantageous effect in Islamic marriages as it does in Orthodox Jewish marriages.