Oral Answers to Questions

Andrew Selous Excerpts

Tuesday 27th June 2023 Commons Chamber

[Andrew Selous (South West Bedfordshire) (Con)]

8. What steps he is taking to ensure that there is an adequate number of prison officers.

[The Minister of State, Ministry of Justice (Damian Hinds)]

We are committed to recruiting 5,000 additional prison officers across the public and private estate by the mid-2020s. We have seen recent improvements in recruitment, with 655 additional full-time equivalent officers appointed between December 2022 and March 2023 alone.

[Andrew Selous]

At risk of being potted, kettled or attacked with toothbrushes that have razors fastened to the end, the work of a prison officer is not for the faint-hearted, yet their role is essential to keeping us free. We have just celebrated Armed Forces Week, and rightly so—I say that as a former veteran—but it troubles me that we do not have a similar week to celebrate the work of prison officers. We do not do enough to recognise their service to keep us all safe and free, across society. Can we change that, please, and urgently?

[Damian Hinds]

My hon. Friend is right about the paramountcy of safety for our brave staff, which is why we have been investing in security, body-worn cameras, PAVA spray and so on. He is also right that prison officers are often hidden heroes in our society, and they do not always get the recognition they deserve. As it happens, this evening is His Majesty’s Prison and Probation Service staff awards, which I am looking forward to attending, and I am keen to find more ways to publicly recognise these incredible people for what they do. His suggestion of a Prison Officers Week is interesting. More generally, I hope all colleagues will take the opportunity to visit their local prisons and to speak directly to prison officers.

Oral Answers to Questions

Andrew Selous Excerpts

Tuesday 21st February 2023 Commons Chamber

[Dominic Raab]

We published our response to the Bellamy review and the criminal legal aid independent review, and indeed are already implementing those reforms. They include uplifts of 15% to most legal aid fee schemes, which is very significant given the current context of public sector pay challenges. The hon. Gentleman needs to put this in some kind of perspective: just to give one aspect, criminal legal aid spend is expected to be £1.2 billion a year, so we are doing the right thing to make sure we support the most vulnerable who need access to legal aid and to the courts.

[Andrew Selous (South West Bedfordshire) (Con)]

T6. We have an excellent target—up in lights—of recruiting 20,000 more police officers, but prison officers can appear to be out of sight and out of mind. These are brave men and women who regularly get assaulted. What are we doing on prison officer recruitment and retention?

[Dominic Raab]

I thank my hon. Friend and pay tribute to him for the work he did as Prisons Minister—I remember it, because I was a junior Minister in the Department at the same time. He is absolutely right about the value of prison officers, and how they are out of sight and out of mind; people do not bang pots and pans for them in the same way they do for other public servants, but we should take every opportunity to sing their praises.

To answer my hon. Friend’s specific question, between the end of 2016 and 2022, the number of full-time prison officers increased by 3,677 to 21,632. That shows that the recruitment programme is bearing fruit.

Assisted Dying

Andrew Selous Excerpts

Monday 4th July 2022 Westminster Hall

[Andrew Selous (South West Bedfordshire) (Con)]

I, too, have had many emails from my constituents, all of which I have read carefully. I fully respect the strong feelings on both sides of this issue, and this has been a respectful debate today in the main.

One of my constituents, an ex-police officer, writes:

“I have an elderly mother who sometimes worries about being a burden and once said it would be better if she died and I didn’t have to look after her…As an ex-police officer I have dealt with people who have been manipulated into doing completely awful things…I do not think you can legislate against the very real possibility of some people being manipulated into that death is their only option.”

She is not alone in that view. I understand from polling that twice as many people feel concerned about people being pressured to end their own life so as not to be a burden as are not concerned about it.

I do not think, amazingly, that we have had reference so far in today’s debate to the fact that under the Health and Care Act 2022, for the first time ever, palliative care will be a core service in the NHS. We have only just done that, and everyone here welcomes it, whatever their view. We should perhaps just give that a little time to bed in and see what it actually means.

My experience is that my dear mother-in-law died at the end of March. I was very close to her, and I thought the provision of morphine was slow and it was difficult to get hold of. I drove to a number of GPs at weekends to get the paperwork signed for her. We always seemed to be chasing the tail a little bit. If we could have been ahead of the curve and got it more easily—perhaps some people do not have families that are as engaged to help them—that would have been better. Perhaps that is something we can do that we would all be supportive of.

Our hospices do an amazing job. We have Keech Cottage Hospice, which the hon. Member for Luton South (Rachel Hopkins) will also have supported, and my children have volunteered at local hospices. Hospices are struggling and we need to support them properly, as they do absolutely amazing work. I do not think there is anyone here who would disagree with Dame Cicely Saunders, who really founded the modern hospice movement and said:

“You matter because you are you, and you matter to the end of your life. We will do all we can not only to help you die peacefully, but also to live until you die.”

I think probably all of us could unite around that quotation.

I worry about disabled people. My mother was in a wheelchair her whole life, and I understand their vulnerabilities. Baroness Campbell in the other place has said:

“I am fearful that any change to the current law prohibiting assisted suicide may adversely affect how I, other disabled friends and the wider community of disabled people are treated in the future”.

Whatever our views on this, we need to respect the very real worries of disabled people, who think somehow that they will matter less.

I will provide a few facts on the CPS. I understand the horror of being prosecuted. I do not minimise that at all, but I looked at the figures on the CPS website this morning. Of the 174 cases between April 2009 and this year, 150 were not proceeded with, 33 were withdrawn, four were successfully prosecuted and eight were referred for prosecution for homicide or another serious crime. I do not know the details of the last eight, but it might be worth looking at that further with the CPS.

I want to make two brief final points. We have not talked a lot about mental health today, but there is no health without mental health. Are we going to get a psychiatrist to certify whether people are medically competent to do this? That is a pretty awful job to ask a psychiatrist to do, as was raised with me at the weekend, so we need to think about the pressures we are putting on clinicians. However, there is probably some progress we could make that we would all agree on.

Police Grant Report

Andrew Selous Excerpts

Wednesday 9th February 2022 Commons Chamber

[Andrew Selous (South West Bedfordshire) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to speak in this important debate. I wish to start, as I am sure every Member would, by paying tribute to the police officers and staff from Bedfordshire police. Everyone who serves as an officer or member of staff in a police force does so in a noble profession; they keep us safe and look after the most vulnerable. We cannot thank them enough for what they do.

In Bedfordshire, in the settlement, we now have 1,369 officers, which is 135 more than we had back in 2010, and we have a budget that has gone up to £136.1 million, which is an increase of 5.4%. It would be remiss of me not to say thank you for those increases. Gratitude is sometimes somewhat slow to come off the lips of politicians, but occasionally it is due and where it is due I pay it gladly. The Minister knows well that the Bedfordshire police finances have been sustained in recent years only through a series of special grants. Last year, he was kind enough to give us two of £3.6 million each, making a total of £7.2 million. It was only because we had those two special grants, which we have had for a number of years now, that we have been able to balance the books. I am sure he will agree that that is not a sustainable basis on which to go forward, and he will therefore not be surprised to hear me raise again the issue of the funding formula. In Bedfordshire’s case, this goes back to 2004 and the introduction of damping, which has taken about £3 million—the equivalent of about 95 officers on our streets—off our budgets. We are starting to make good on some of that with the increases, but it is not sustainable to leave Bedfordshire police finances where they are with the current funding formula.

This is not just about increases in budgets, because we have to look at what those budgets are asked to do. The Minister will know that we have a high number of organised criminal gangs and of county lines gangs in Bedfordshire. He will also know that from time to time we need hundreds of officers to police things such as Traveller funerals. If we look at Operation Venetic, we see that Bedfordshire had 26 packages of intelligence, whereas Hertfordshire, a much larger county, had only 11 and Cambridgeshire, bless it, did not have any. That illustrates the extent of the demand in Bedfordshire, whose budget has been adversely affected by the introduction of damping from 2004. This is not just about the total officers; it is also about where those officers are based. The largest town in my constituency is Leighton Buzzard. In 1988, it had a police station, with an inspector, six sergeants and 27 constables— 34 warranted officers in the town. Now we have a shared emergency services hub. Unfortunately, we do not have a 24/7 first responder presence, which we used to have. It takes time for officers to travel to where the crime is. They do not have magic carpets or a TARDIS to get from A to B. If they are travelling from Luton or wherever, that takes time. It is often low-paid staff in our pubs and clubs who have to deal with the first five or 10 minutes of the fight. That is not the role of bartenders and people working in hospitality, so where those officers are matters and sorting out the funding formula will enable us to deal with that issue.

[Ms Lyn Brown (West Ham) (Lab)]

Is the hon. Gentleman concerned that the closure of some police stations might make it quite a long journey to take somebody from an incident to the police station for the processing, taking too much time out of their shift, and we are perhaps getting to a point where there are not as many arrests as we would expect for the types of crimes that our constituents are seeing on the streets and would like to have tackled? Does he share my concern that the closure of police stations is not allowing us to deal with that antisocial behaviour on our streets?

[Andrew Selous]

The hon. Lady is right; time spent taking offenders to custody suites is time when those officers cannot be on the streets doing their job. However, we cannot spend the same pound twice. I would like to see a 24/7 first responder response, and there are ways we can do that. We have a large public estate, and I think we need to be a bit more imaginative about how and where we base our police officers, because the primary focus is on having officers on the beat in our large centres of population 24/7.

On the police funding formula review, I have been asking every Policing Minister about this since I was elected in 2001, and I was pleased to have confirmation from the Prime Minister recently that we are moving forward and are going to deliver on this. I also received a letter from the Minister himself, in which he said that the consultation on the police funding formula review would take place this summer—so I have it in writing in an official letter from the Home Office. I was very pleased indeed to read that. It sounds as if the train has left the station. This is about being fair to Bedfordshire and those other forces that have been left out, and I look forward to swift implementation. The Minister talked about effective transition arrangements for that review. I want it to be effective but I do not want it to take too long, and I hope he will bear that in mind.

[Mr Kevan Jones (North Durham) (Lab)]

This is welcome news, but it will be interesting to see when the train actually arrives. Does the hon. Gentleman agree that part of that review has to involve the fundamental question of what the split should be between central Government funding and what is raised locally?

[Andrew Selous]

The right hon. Gentleman is right, in that no one likes paying council tax—I have often called it the most unpopular tax in the UK. The primary focus for us in Bedfordshire is to have a well-funded force, to have enough officers and to have them in the right places, and our greatest issue is the resolution of the funding formula issue. This Government have committed to that, and they have done so very publicly. We will have the consultation this summer. It needs to deliver, and deliver quickly.

--- Later in debate ---

[Andrew Selous]

On the point about focusing on where county lines come from, they also come from Luton, which is another reason why Bedfordshire needs to be treated fairly.

[Kit Malthouse]

As my hon. Friend knows, we have been happy to fund Operation Boson, which has been dealing with serious and organised crime and drug dealing in and around Luton—which, as he says, is a particular hotspot. Our county lines settlement provides some money for receiving, or importing, forces to try to step up to the plate. However, I hope all those forces will realise that there will be a huge impact on violence specifically in their areas if they co-operate with the operations coming out of those three big exporting forces, and I hope that people will look carefully at both the funding formula and the impact of the overall investment package on their force before drawing a negative inference.

Divorce, Dissolution and Separation Bill [Lords]

Andrew Selous Excerpts

Committee stage & 3rd reading & 3rd reading: House of Commons & Committee: 1st sitting & Committee: 1st sitting: House of Commons
Wednesday 17th June 2020 Commons Chamber

[Sir Robert Neill]

The only part that I agree with my right hon. Friend about is the fact that acrimony can be a feature of the human condition. I am afraid that I have to profoundly disagree with the rest of his analysis. I regret to have to say that a divorce process that entrenches confrontation absolutely has the reverse effect to that which he suggests. The reality is that the acrimony, sadly, has arisen in the course of the breakdown, which, all too often, may have been a long time coming and may have happened for a number of reasons, which cannot be laid necessarily always at the door of one party or the other. But the law, as it stands, does not fit that reality fairly and sensibly. Whatever its intention, it actually makes matters worse, so I do have to part company with my right hon. Friend on that.

There is much to be said— I will take it out of turn but I think it relates to the principle of this—for the various amendments that relate to improving the attempts to support marriage and conciliation. I understand that and hope the Minister will have more to say about what more we can do in that regard. The truth is that, by the time we get to the issuing of the proceedings for divorce, the horse has bolted. We should do more to prevent that from happening and help couples when they run into difficulties at the beginning, but that is not what this Bill is changing.

[Andrew Selous (South West Bedfordshire) (Con)]

Do I detect from what my hon. Friend has said that he is supportive of new clause 1 and amendment 7, which are, in fact, identical in terms of marriage and relationship support? That has always been a feature of this aspect. It was part of the Family Law Act 1996. Is he supportive of what those two amendments are trying to do?

[Sir Robert Neill]

I am supportive of the objective, but I would like to hear the Minister’s comments on whether those are the best means of achieving it in the context of the Bill. I entirely accept what my hon. Friend says about the objective, and he and I share views on a number of issues. I would prefer to see the Bill pass cleanly and then to work constructively with the Government to find means of giving that sort of support, because there are other methods that I think could be used to do that. However, I take on board the importance of the point he makes.

Against that background, it is important that we seek to minimise conflict and that we face the fact that, however much we might wish it were otherwise, a bond that is no longer meaningful to a couple is not best served by forcing them together. That is neither socially desirable nor just; nor is it Christian or ethical in terms of any faith.

--- Later in debate ---

[Andrew Selous]

When we had the Second Reading debate on the Bill not so long ago, the Lord Chancellor made the very good observation that if we were serious about strengthening marriages and relationships in this country, we needed to do so through what was termed

“the right end of the telescope”.—[Official Report, 8 June 2020; Vol. 99, c. 677.]

I think he meant that we needed to have a greater focus on three areas: marriage preparation; marriage enrichment; and marriage counselling when marriages get into difficulty and relationship support for all couples. I like the phrase used in the Family Law Act 1996, which talks about marriage and relationship support, and as I said on Second Reading, although I am an enormous fan of marriage and always will be, I will always stand up for people who have never been married and those who are divorced as well as those who are married. I think that that would go for all my hon. and right hon. Friends on the Conservative Benches and no doubt across the House.

Returning to the Family Law Act 1996, a previous Lord Chancellor, Lord Mackay, was absolutely clear at that time that marriage and relationship support services were an entirely necessary part of divorce reform. That was a good, sensible point, and I do not want this Government, of whom I am an enormous supporter, to depart from that principle. What worries me a little is that the Government’s position appears to have moved slightly away from wanting to try to support saveable marriages. I say that because the previous Lord Chancellor, talking of these reforms, said:

“Sometimes, a marriage will still be reparable at the point at which one spouse seeks the divorce”.—[Official Report, House of Lords, 17 March 2020; Vol. 802, c. 1431.]

The current law offers little opportunity for repair, but it was a clear commitment by the previous Lord Chancellor, not so long ago, that we should look at being able to save marriages even when a divorce is potentially imminent.

However, what the previous Lord Chancellor says contrasts with the view of the current Lord Chancellor, of whom I am also a great fan. I believe him when he says that he supports marriage and family life, but he did say that

“by the time a decision to issue a divorce petition has been made, matters have gone beyond that, to a great extent—not in every case, but in my view, in the vast majority of cases.”—[Official Report, 8 June 2020; Vol. 677, c. 95.]

I am a huge fan of the Under-Secretary of State for Justice, my hon. Friend the Member for Cheltenham (Alex Chalk) , and I know that he is personally a great supporter of strengthening marriages and couple relationships, but perhaps he could explain why the Government’s position seems to have hardened a little in this area of marriage and relationship support over the past six months.

Looking at the figures, I note that in 2018 in England and Wales, there were 91,299 divorces. My parents also divorced, so I know the pain and grief that that causes. In some ways, I think it is a greater pain even than a bereavement. We know from academic studies that around 10% of people who engage in marriage counselling services, even when a divorce is starting to be undertaken, decide not to divorce. That would be around 9,000 divorces a year that potentially would not take place, were we to offer services that the previous Lord Chancellor seemed to say were sensible; Lord Mackay of Clashfern said they were an absolutely essential part of divorce law reform.

[Sir John Hayes]

My hon. Friend is making a compelling argument on an amendment that seeks to make what most sensible people would regard as a modest change to the Bill, which is simply to say that where we can support reconciliation, we will do so. The Government have been offered that compromise, and I am astounded, frankly, that they have not accepted it.

[Andrew Selous]

I agree with what my right hon. Friend says.

Eagle-eyed observers of the amendment paper will have noted that new clause 1, in the name of my hon. Friend the Member for Congleton (Fiona Bruce), and amendment 7 are identical. In fact, I have a confession to make to the House: neither my hon. Friend nor I wrote it. In case we are accused of plagiarism, I think it came from Lord Michael Farmer in the other place. It was a good amendment; it was raised in the other place a couple of months ago, and it has stood the test of time. When it was in the other place, I noted that it had the support of Conservatives, a Member of the Democratic Unionist party, the Liberal Democrat Front Bench and the Bishop of Salisbury.

From what the shadow Minister, the hon. Member for Stockton North (Alex Cunningham), said today, I think he supports the spirit of the amendment—not perhaps the actual words, but the objectives, as far as I understood him. My hon. Friend the Member for Bromley and Chislehurst (Sir Robert Neill), the Chair of the Justice Committee, also said he supported the spirit of the amendment, so I think we have a great deal of cross-party consensus on this issue, which I really hope we can take forward.

New clause 1 and amendment 7 need not actually cost the Government anything. Although “may” changes to “must”, the measure just says “make grants” in respect, effectively, of marriage preparation, marriage enrichment and marriage support, and the same for civil partnerships and more widely for relationship support. However, it does not specify an amount. We are not imposing a financial requirement on a Government who, my goodness me, are already struggling with enormous financial demands on them at the moment, but we are specifying where this work should take place, and on a very good evidential basis.

It was noted in another place, when the Bill was debated there, that support for marriage and relationship support has seemed to depend a bit over the years on the whim of whoever was Prime Minister and whichever set of Ministers were in place. That is a pity because, until recently, there has been cross-party support on this issue. Labour and Conservative Governments, ever since the Denning report of 1947, have seen it as core business, and there is a greatly increased need for it, not least because of lockdown, which has been referred to.

We know that family relationships are under enormous pressure in the pressure-cooker environment of lockdown at the moment. We also know that families coming through lockdown perhaps slightly better than others are often those where there are strong family relationships, and they have helped children and others to cope well. I know that Marriage Care, which contacted me after Second Reading, is having many people come to it asking for support that it and other members of the Relationships Alliance, which my hon. Friend the Member for Blackpool South (Scott Benton) quite properly mentioned, are unable to provide, because the financial means is not there, as Government support in the reducing parental conflict programme is quite narrowly focused on working couples where there is parental conflict—a laudable objective, but not actually wide enough.

Understandably, the Government are always nervous about new requests for spending, but the fact is that when these relationships go wrong, the Government pick up the tab big time. There is no debate about the benefits, the extra housing costs, the mental health support and other health support that will be paid out. We pay that out in our billions without question, so, as my hon. Friend said—and, indeed, as the Lord Chancellor said on Second Reading—let us put a bit more emphasis on the other end of the telescope to try to strengthen these relationships in the first place.

As we—hopefully—emerge from the pandemic, we need to rebuild not just a strong economy, but a strong society. All my hon. Friends were elected only last December on a manifesto that said absolutely clearly that a strong society is built on strong families. As one or two of my colleagues have said, we need evidence of that. That is a grand statement, with which we all agree. What are the actual building blocks to put that in place? I do hope that my hon. Friend the Minister, of whom I am a great fan—I was absolutely thrilled to see him be promoted—will give us some comfort on that, because very many of us really want to see it.

[Sir David Amess (Southend West) (Con)]

I rise to speak in support of amendment 1 tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for Congleton (Fiona Bruce), and in so doing I take this opportunity to praise her, particularly for all the work that she does in this and so many other areas, and our former colleague, David Burrowes, who also has done a huge amount of work on this issue. Amendment 1 would increase the minimal legal time period for divorce to 12 months, instead of the six months proposed in the Bill, and it is both necessary and sensible.

I toyed with thinking that I would not speak in this debate, because it would be a waste of time. I have been a Member of Parliament for a little while, and I have been a member of my party for more than 50 years, and when I first joined, the view that I have was the majority view. As each Parliament has gone by, I have seen some slippage, certainly among my colleagues, but I am delighted to be speaking now, because I have heard a number of speeches that I have been particularly encouraged by, including from a new colleague, my hon. Friend the Member for Blackpool South (Scott Benton). What a joy it was to hear my right hon. Friend the Member for South Northamptonshire (Andrea Leadsom) speak. My goodness am I glad that I supported her in her first attempt to become leader of my party. She addressed a whole range of issues in a succinct way, and I entirely agreed with everything she said.

This is not a debate about whether it is right that people live together and do not get married; it is not that sort of debate. It is a debate about marriage itself. Marriage is very popular in the Amess household at the moment. Last year, one of my daughters got married in America. It was one of these new-style weddings, where it is an open venue. Next week, I have another daughter in America who is getting married. My wife and I cannot be there, and it is saving us a huge amount of money. Next year, we will have another wedding here, which will be slightly over the top. Another daughter was due to get married this year in August, but as with many other colleagues, that wedding cannot go ahead and will be taking place next year.

I have many constituents who have been married for 70 years, and I say to them, “Aren’t you sick of each other?” They say, “No, we still love each other just as much as when we first got married.” I can hear my own father being asked whether he had ever had a row with my mother. He would say, “Only once, and that row hasn’t finished yet.” In my own household, my wife and I never row, because she is right about everything. Well, I give her the impression, anyway, that she is right about everything.

I say to my hon. Friend the Minister—I agree with my hon. Friend the Member for South West Bedfordshire (Andrew Selous)—that I and other colleagues are delighted to see him as a Minister, but, as my right hon. Friend the Member for South Northamptonshire said earlier, the Bill seems to treat this as a legal matter, and the emotional side just is not there at all.

When the House debates anything that can slightly be termed “moral”, the general public are not enamoured by that, because we as a class of politicians are seen as big-time sinners who should not have a view. I so agreed with what my right hon. Friend said, having represented first the constituency of Basildon, which in those days had the highest number of single parents in the country, and now Southend West. So many of us in our surgeries can see the impact of divorce at a practical level, and it seems crazy that we have people planning for their marriage for a year, two years or three years and it can now end in six months. That is quite extraordinary.

On Second Reading, the Secretary of State said that under the new law,

“the legal process of divorce will take longer for about four fifths—80%—of couples”.—[Official Report, 8 June 2020; Vol. 677, c. 104.]

There is a crucial caveat in that sentence that the House must be aware of, namely that the Secretary of State is talking about the legal process of divorce—that is only the time from the first application to the final decree. The problem with that analysis is that it does not take into account that the proposals in the Bill operate in a fundamentally different way from the current law.

In the current system the period of two years’ separation with or without fault or five years’ living apart comes before the legal process of divorce, and that accounts for about 40% of divorces. In the proposed system, the period of separation starts after the legal process has begun, so it is disingenuous to compare the length of legal divorce proceedings under the Bill and under the current law.

That is comparing the Pope with Donald Trump, frankly. It is simply not defensible to say that 80% of divorces would take longer under a six-month separation period, when 40% of divorces currently take more than two years.

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[Robert Buckland]

I beg to move, That the Bill be now read the Third time.

I thank hon. and right hon. Members from all parts of the House for their careful scrutiny of the Bill throughout its passage. I am deeply grateful to all those who have contributed to the debate in Committee today and on Second Reading last week. I acknowledge that there have been some dissenting voices on reform of the law—first, as a matter of principle—and differing opinions as to precisely how to reform it, but I am happy to make it clear that those contributions have been of no less value than those that have supported the purpose of the Bill and its approach to reform. We have been fortunate to have these debates enriched by the variety of viewpoints expressed.

During the passage of the Bill, Members have rightly raised questions about its potential impact on families, but I believe that it actually has marriage and families at its heart. It is for that reason that I believe so strongly in the measures contained within it. While no one wants marriages to break down, the proposals in the Bill are based on the very sad reality that some do. When they do, the law should seek to reduce conflict and to create the best opportunity for the parties to agree future arrangements. It is not for the law to try to keep a couple in a loveless marriage, and nor can the law in practice adjudicate on who was to blame for its breakdown. That is an intensely private and personal matter between the couple themselves.

This is a measured Bill that will bring much-needed reform. It is reform that many of its supporters believe is long overdue. It will allow parties to move forwards, not backwards, and it will deliver a legal process that reduces conflict and its impact on children while safeguarding the importance of marriage.

During its passage through both Houses, the Government have listened with interest and care to the issues raised. In the other place, there was debate concerning the law on financial provision on divorce and concerns that it, too, can drive conflict. Some Members in this place have also made that important point. My noble and learned Friend Lord Keen gave assurances that the Government would conduct a review of that area of law, which has remained unchanged for nearly 50 years. That is a substantial undertaking where we will need to be led by the evidence, which is yet to be gathered, and it is thus not a matter for this Bill.

We have also listened to concerns about the start point of the new 20-week minimum period prior to the conditional order of divorce, and we have given an undertaking that we will work with the Family Procedure Rule Committee to consider how court rules may provide for a requirement on applicants to serve notice within a specified period. We listened to concerns from the Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee about two delegated powers in the Bill that would allow the legal minimum periods for divorce orders and dissolution orders to be amended. Those powers will now be subject to the enhanced scrutiny procedure via the affirmative mechanism.

Beyond the Bill, many detailed changes will be needed to divorce procedure, court IT systems, online information and guidance. We will take the opportunity to look at ways to improve signposting to the services that can help couples when facing the prospect of a divorce and during the subsequent legal process. We recognise the value of relationship support and mediation services, which can play a vital role in addressing relationship breakdown. The Chancellor announced £2.5 million to fund research into how best to integrate family services, including the emerging family hub model. The Department for Education will ensure that strengthening relationship support is part of that research programme, so that vital work is completed in that area.

It is important to take a moment to focus on what the Bill does not do. I believe that that is necessary because I have been concerned about certain misconceptions that have arisen about it. First, it is not a quickie divorce Bill—quite the contrary. It will, for the first time, provide a new 20-week minimum period between the start of proceedings and the conditional order. Secondly, the Bill does not undermine marriage. It is a Bill to reform the legal process for divorce once the sad stage of irretrievable breakdown has already been reached.

Thirdly, the Bill does not in any way undermine the hugely valuable and vital mediation, counselling and relationship support services that can and do assist reconciliation. Finally, the Bill definitely does not come at the wrong time. Its current stage is the culmination of a lengthy process.

[Andrew Selous]

I apologise for missing the start of my right hon. and learned Friend’s remarks. I do not know whether he had a chance to watch any of the Committee stage, but looking at what his predecessor said on the Bill, there seems to have been a slight hardening of the Government’s stance in relation to counselling provision. The previous Lord Chancellor was open to that, but it seems that my right hon. and learned Friend is not quite as keen or does not think that there are so many possibilities at that stage. Could he address that specific point?

[Robert Buckland]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for his continuing interest in, support of and commitment to issues relating to the family. They are values and views that he and I share. I take the view that this legislation is not the vehicle to deliver the sort of services and support that he and I want to see. This is very much about the end of the process, as opposed to what he and I think needs to be done well before that, to support families to help themselves, to enrich family life and to ensure that every proper assistance is given to couples who perhaps do not have the benefit of wise advice from parents or other support circles and might be dealing with the problems and challenges of every relationship alone, and who, frankly, could benefit from the wherewithal and the support that I know he believes in so passionately.

For that reason, I take what I would regard as a more direct and straightforward approach. I make no apology for that. I think it is important to be direct about these issues and not to conflate legislative process with policy progress. My commitment to my hon. Friend and to all others who are legitimately concerned about these issues is that, as a Government, we will work harder to co-ordinate, to bring together the strands of policy that sit with various Departments and to ensure that we have a family policy that is fit for the 2020s, in the way that he wants to see. I look forward to that continuing dialogue with him.

As I was saying, the Bill does not come at the wrong time, because its current stage is the culmination of a lengthy process that was delayed by a general election and a new Parliament. Its timing has nothing to do with the current covid-19 emergency. The Bill’s reforms will not come into force on Royal Assent, because time needs to be allowed for careful implementation. At this early stage, we are working towards an indicative timetable of implementation in autumn 2021. As I have said, the Bill will deliver much-needed reform in respect of which there is clear, strong and broad consensus. I again thank all right hon. and hon. Members for their contributions. I commend the Bill to the House.

Divorce, Dissolution and Separation Bill [Lords]

Andrew Selous Excerpts

2nd reading & 2nd reading: House of Commons & Money resolution & Money resolution: House of Commons & Programme motion & Programme motion: House of Commons
Monday 8th June 2020 Commons Chamber

[Andrew Selous (South West Bedfordshire) (Con)]

We are in the final year of that £39 million, and there is no guarantee as to what will happen in the next financial year. Could the Lord Chancellor reassure us that he will be a doughty champion with the Treasury and at the Cabinet table to ensure that that programme is renewed, reinvigorated and properly funded?

[Robert Buckland]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend. I can make the assurance that I, in my position as Lord Chancellor, will do everything I can to reinforce the important messages about the values of family. As a Conservative, they are particularly important to me, but I know that Members of all parties in this House share those values and from their own experiences believe in the family.

I want to add this comment: it is because I believe in the family that I think these measures are the right approach. Some people might think that is contradictory, but I do not believe so, because I think it is our responsibility in the legal process to try to reduce conflict, because conflict leads to emotional difficulty. It can lead to damage. It can lead to serious consequences, not just for the adults in the relationship but, let us face it, the children, too. We owe it to them to minimise in our legal processes, rather than maximise, the damage that can be caused.

--- Later in debate ---

[Andrew Selous (South West Bedfordshire) (Con)]

This Bill is aimed at minimising conflict between separated couples to make divorce not easier, but kinder. Divorce will take a minimum of six months, with an average of four out of five divorces taking longer than under the existing law.

The Family Law Act 1996 identified funding for relationship support services as a necessary part of divorce reform—an approach that has been sustained by successive Governments since the Denning report of 1947. In 1999, the then Lord Chancellor, Lord Irvine, said that the three objectives of the 1996 Act were, first, supporting marriage; secondly, saving saveable marriages; and, thirdly, where marriages had sadly broken down, bringing them to an end with minimum distress. I will always stand up and fight for people, whether they are married, never married or divorced. I also passionately believe that marriage is one of our most important and valued institutions, which we neglect at our peril. The benefits of a couple pooling their resources, time and energy are fantastic.

On the first objective of supporting marriage, marriage rates are at their lowest level since records began in 1862. Even more worryingly, the Marriage Foundation points out that 87% of mothers from higher income groups are married, compared with only 24% of mothers at the bottom of the income scale, so the marriage gap is widening, which is a social justice disaster. We need marriage for the many, not the few.

The Bill is silent on marriage and relationship support, which is not good enough, given that there is no assurance of funding for this work after the end of this financial year. We know from research concluded after the 1996 Act that one in 10 marriages was saved at the point of divorce by offering counselling, and that half those offered counselling took it up and better managed the divorce process. Much greater provision of the separated parents information programme is something that we owe children, to reduce the distress that many will experience when the divorce process is badly managed. Prevention is always better than cure, which is why the provision of marriage and relationship support services is so vital. We should celebrate much more the work of the Relationships Alliance and its constituent members—Relate, Marriage Care, OnePlusOne and Tavistock Relationships. They are all on the frontline, battling for social justice and a better society.

Local authorities such as Rochdale, with its relationships champions programme, which I visited, lead the way among local authorities. Charities, voluntary groups and faith groups, such as Toucan, with its “build a happier, healthier life together” work; the inspirational Nicky and Sila Lee, with their marriage preparation course and marriage coursework; and Soulmates Academy, run by the redoubtable Jonathan and Andrea Taylor-Cummings, all do brilliant work and should be commended.

The Government need a cross-departmental programme to bring the work of the brilliant antenatal charity Dads to Be into every NHS hospital, not only the three that it operates in at the moment. We should ensure that marriage registrars provide signposting to the very best marriage preparation; that all GPs are as good as the very best in signposting to relationship support; and that brilliant charities such as Explore, which does such excellent work in our schools in giving children good role models for what healthy, happy, committed and respectful relationships and marriages look like, are supported. All these individuals, groups, churches and other faith organisations are doing brilliant work on the frontline and deserve our thanks and support.

As we look to rebuild our economy after the ravages of covid-19, it is not only economic matters that need our attention but the fractured and hurting relationships that we need to repair to a healthier, more respectful and more committed state. Next month, it will be 19 years since I made my maiden speech in the House. On that occasion, I spoke of the importance of the family and of strengthening family relationships, and it grieves me that the situation has got worse, not better, in those 19 years. I stand here saying the same as I said to Labour Governments in those first nine years and to coalition and Conservative Governments since: we need the political will—together across this House, from all our political traditions—to put this issue higher up the political agenda. It is a social justice matter, and it is for everyone. I implore the Government to take it seriously, and to remember that we stood on a manifesto that said strong families are the key to a strong society.

Oral Answers to Questions

Andrew Selous Excerpts

Tuesday 14th January 2020 Commons Chamber

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Justice (Wendy Morton)]

I welcome the new Member to his place on the Opposition Benches. We recognise the valuable work that law centres do in our local communities around the country, and we support them through grant funding and legal aid contracts. In two of the early visits that I made when I went into the Ministry of Justice, I visited the law centre in Southwark and another in south-west London to gain a deeper understanding of the tremendous work they do. He can rest assured that we support our law centres and the work they do, to ensure that the people who need support can receive it.

[Andrew Selous (South West Bedfordshire) (Con)]

T9. I am sure that the Government believe in leading by example and would want to emulate, and indeed go further than, companies such as Halfords, Greggs and Timpson in employing ex-offenders. Since the Government banned the box, what increase in the employment of ex-offenders has there been across Government and the wider public sector?

[Robert Buckland]

I pay tribute to my hon. Friend for his work both as a Minister in this Department and as a campaigner on this issue. I share his approach to these issues. Since we launched the going forward into employment scheme in January 2018, we have recruited 29 ex-offenders who are currently in post in civil service roles, with a further 20 due to start in post shortly. I commend the work being done on Ban the Box, the private sector community initiative, which I actively support.