Divorce, Dissolution and Separation Bill [HL]

Debate between Baroness Burt of Solihull and Lord Browne of Belmont

Committee stage & Committee: 1st sitting (Hansard) & Committee: 1st sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Tuesday 3rd March 2020 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Burt of Solihull]

My Lords, I can see the sentiment behind considering the interests of the children in this matter. We will all have been moved by the testimony of the noble Baroness, Lady Meyer, about the terrible experience that she and her children underwent, but this amendment would hand the court the impossible task of deciding what is in the children’s interests without the mechanisms to do so, as the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Butler-Sloss, just said.

How would you implement a judgment forcing parents to stay together in the children’s interests? You cannot force a couple to stay together any more than you can order warring parents to create a loving environment. I hope that we are past the stage where parents stay together for the sake of the children—unless it is a mutual voluntary agreement—because, on the whole, that has been shown to do more harm than good. Children may fare better from having two loving parents who live in different places, often with different families of all kinds. Love and the secure knowledge that they are loved are what matters, no matter who makes up their family. Research has shown that parents are usually the best judge of what is in their children’s interests. Where this is not feasible, the family courts are there to help.

I am afraid that we will not support the amendment from these Benches.

[Lord Browne of Belmont (DUP)]

My Lords, I am pleased to support Amendments 2 and 14 in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Howe.

I note with interest that these amendments were tabled in the last Session in another place by the right honourable Frank Field, who served with great distinction from 1979 until last November as the Member of Parliament for Birkenhead. He made a significant contribution to children’s issues and chaired the Field review on early years intervention. I am sure he will be pleased that the noble Baroness has taken up these amendments, which could not be debated in the other place.

Divorce affects a community: the adults involved, their friends and families and, of course, the children. The likelihood is that the effects on most children will be long-lasting. Children have to watch their parents go through a divorce, then continue their lives afterward. The research base demonstrating the damage to children from divorce is so widespread—the fact that it is now recognised as an adverse children experience, or ACE, has already been alluded to—that I will not detain the House by looking at it in any detail other than to note that family breakdown is now recognised as the biggest factor behind the UK’s child mental health crisis. More than a third of children whose parents had split up reported poor mental health, compared with a fifth of children with parents who were still together. Moreover, Hetherington and Kelly’s research interviewing the children of divorce later in life revealed that 20% to 25% of children of divorce continue to suffer lasting social and psychological problems in adulthood, compared with just 10% of children from intact families.

The fact is that, after a divorce, children find themselves in a difficult situation. As has been referred to, Cockett and Tripp’s work in The Exeter Family Study demonstrates how divorce changes family life. Their research showed that in parental conflict during marriage, the child may be able to remain on the sidelines, whereas after divorce, they may be obliged to take a central role; for example, carrying messages between resident and non-resident parents who find that they are unable to communicate face to face. Children in re-ordered families reported that their parents frequently told tales about each other or each other’s new partners. Children also sometimes felt that they had to suppress telling one parent about enjoyable times they had had with the other, or had actually been asked by one parent to keep something secret from their former partner.

Inevitably, the child’s relationship with their parents changes; for example, one may move away and the other may become more prominent in their life while finding their own way after the divorce, potentially with less financial resources. The child might find that they have to move to be with a parent and change school. A recent article on parental divorce or separation and children’s mental health said:

“Marital instability presents not a single risk factor, but a cascade of sequelae for children.”