Cohabitation Rights Bill [HL]

Baroness Butler-Sloss Excerpts

2nd reading
Friday 17th July 2026 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Butler-Sloss (CB)]

My Lords, I am very happy often to bow to the expertise of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Garnier. It is unnecessary for him to be quite so polite about me, although I am grateful to him for it.

I supported the earlier Bill from the noble Lord, Lord Marks, and he was kind enough to send me the link so that I could read what I had said previously. This is a sensible and moderate Bill, but the question is, of course, much broader: should there be any sort of legislation for cohabitation? The Government clearly want it in their manifesto.

I have been married for 64 years and I am a patron of the Marriage Foundation, so I have thought with considerable care about the extent to which I should—as I do—support the Bill. One bears in mind that marriage is and remains the longest living partnership between parties, and that is greatly to be welcomed. Therefore, the question has to be: how far, if at all, will a cohabitation Bill affect marriage? I have come to the conclusion that I really do not think it will, because as the noble Lord, Lord Marks, said, there are the number of people living together. They have been living together regardless of marriage, and I do not think giving them any rights is going to make very much in the way of change.

I remember the noble Baroness, Lady Deech, who is speaking today, referring in a previous speech to the fact that some cohabitants do not want to have any rules, but I suspect that the majority of cohabitants—certainly those in my family—have drifted into that relationship and just stayed in it. As the noble Lord, Lord Marks, pointed out, there is a particular group of people where one has a distinct advantage over the other, who is very often women, but not always; the noble Lord’s example was of a man. I will not repeat what he said, but there is a manifest injustice in the points that he has been making.

The other group, which I think your Lordships probably would not know about, which is why I raise it, is the women coming from many parts of the world, often Pakistan, in an arranged marriage—a proper arranged marriage—living in a family in England where they go through the Muslim marriage, nikah, but they do not register the marriage. When they part—very often when the husband now has children, particularly a son, and he does not want this woman any longer—she is not married. She has no rights. She has no visa—not that I think the noble Lord, Lord Marks, will include that in the Bill, but the fact is that she is completely lost. Some form of cohabitation right would at least give her the opportunity to live in this country, at least for some period, and not be completely lost, probably with very little English. I am very concerned about this group.

I have come to the conclusion that regulation is needed. I would like to think that the Minister will pick up this Bill, run with it and add to it the various points that the Government would wish to add. That seems a very neat way of doing it, but I strongly support the noble Lord’s Bill.